Organizational and environmental influences in the adoption of computer-assisted audit tools and techniques (CAATTs) by audit firms in Malaysia

Despite the usefulness of computer-assisted audit tools and techniques (CAATTs) in increasing audit productivity and reducing costs, their adoption by audit firms is low in developing countries. The aim of this study is to investigate whether organizational and environmental factors can help explain CAATTs adoption in less developed countries, such as Malaysia. The research framework was developed based on the Technology-Organization-Environment framework (TOE). The results reveal that for environmental factors, the complexity of clients' accounting information systems (AIS) and perceived level of support of professional accounting bodies (PABs) affect CAATTs adoption. For organizational factors, firm size, top management commitment and employee IT competency were found to be significant factors. Moreover, firm size partially moderates the influence of clients' AIS complexity on CAATTs adoption. This paper contributes to existing adoption theory by extending our understanding of the impact of factors unique to CAATTs adoption.     

SMEs' tax compliance costs and IT adoption: the case of a value-added tax

The objective of this study is to examine the factors behind the adoption of a tax-compliant accounting system among small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) using the technological–organizational–environmental (TOE) framework, particularly the role of tax compliance costs in fostering the adoption of this system. This study makes a novel contribution by attempting to link the influence of tax compliance costs to the information technology (IT) adoption literature. Questionnaires were distributed to 401 SMEs, and data were analyzed using partial least squares. The results suggest that the TOE framework is useful for examining factors that affect SMEs' IT adoption decisions; the influence of perceived compatibility, complexity, relative advantage, and mimetic and regulatory pressure is important for the adoption of a value-added tax (VAT)-compliant accounting system. Moreover, the impact of compatibility, learning from external sources, and perceived coercive pressure on the adoption of a VAT-compliant accounting system is moderated by tax compliance cost.     

Effect of internal cost management,information systems integration,and absorptive capacity on inter-organizational cost management in supply chains

Inter-organizational cost management is a strategic cost management approach to managing costs that span organizational boundaries in supply chains. Drawing on the resource-based view of the firm, we develop a model to predict which inter-related resources might enable companies to manage inter-organizational costs. We test this model using a survey of managerial accountants whose organizations are part of a supply chain. Using structural equation modeling, we conclude that the resources of internal electronic integration, external electronic integration, internal cost management, and absorptive capacity play significant direct and indirect roles in the development of an inter-organizational cost management (IOCM) resource. We find that these resources are inter-related and together are useful in enabling companies to ultimately benefit from managing inter-organizational costs. We find in particular the importance of relational resources associated with absorptive capacity in the development of an IOCM resource. Our research contributes to theory and practice by explaining how specific resources can be combined in allowing companies to better manage inter-organizational costs.     

XBRL’s impact on analyst forecast behavior: An empirical study

This paper investigates the benefits of mandatory adoption of the eXtensible Business Reporting Language (XBRL) in the U.S. Using a sample of Phase I and Phase II filers in year 2009 and 2010, we examine whether there exists a positive association between the number of analysts following a firm as well as analyst forecast accuracy and the XBRL mandate by the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). Our empirical results demonstrate a significant positive association between mandatory XBRL adoption and both analyst following and forecast accuracy. In addition, our findings show that such an association is stronger for Phase I filers than for Phase II filers in 2010. The magnitude of the association between XBRL mandate and analyst following is also larger for Phase I filers in year two than in year one of adoption. Our findings not only support the SEC’s requirement of detailed tagging of footnotes but also show that the benefits of adopting XBRL are realized regardless of errors found and concerns raised at the early stage of adoption.     

网络财务报告：XBRL标准的理论基础研究

XBRL研发中由于没有一个现成的概念框架予以指导和规范,导致的问题是建立的信息标准缺乏必要的理论支持,XBRL报告的内部组织也缺乏必要的层次和结构,信息之间的关系得不到合理解释。目前无论是国际还是国内,从会计角度研究XBRL基本理论都处于起步和探索阶段,本文将会计理论、数据库理论相结合。尝试建立了以财务信息元素为结构的XBRL理论体系,并对该理论体系的逻辑关系和层次结构进行了论证。该理论无论在国际还是国内都是首次提出并加以论证的,我们认为它不仅仅可以作为财务报告系统信息标准开发的理论基础,也适用于作为簿记系统、交易和事项系统信息标准开发的理论基础。     

Examine ERP post-implementation stages of use and value: Empirical evidence from Portuguese SMEs

There is a great interest among researchers and practitioners in accounting information systems (AIS) value. This is particularly important in cases of systems such as enterprise resource planning (ERP). This paper empirically measures and analyses the determinants of ERP use and value in a single framework, as well as provides empirical evidence from Portuguese small and medium enterprises (SMEs). Drawing upon theories on the process and contexts of information technology (IT) we postulate nine hypotheses. Used the technology–organization–environment (TOE) framework to hypothesize how compatibility, complexity, efficiency, best-practices, training, and competitive pressure explain ERP use. Based on the resource-based view (RBV) theory we hypothesize how ERP use, collaboration and analytics explain ERP value, and its potential contribution for the nature of management control and accounting information systems on Portuguese SMEs. Through structural equation modeling, a data set of 134 web-surveyed firms is used to test the hypotheses. Our empirical analysis leads to six main findings: 1) compatibility, complexity, best-practices, and efficiency are more important determinants for ERP use as well as training and competitive pressure, suggesting that technological, organizational and environmental characteristics are the main drivers of ERP use among Portuguese SMEs. 2) Similarly, collaboration and analytics are more important for ERP value upon use, suggesting that system capability characteristics are the main drivers of ERP value. 3) ERP value benefits from system enhancements to firms' business processes in the post-implementation phases. 4) For Portuguese SMEs the mostly valued metric attained through ERP is management control. 5) Impelled by legislation, Portuguese SMEs are using ERP as the accounting system for management, financial and tax accounting. 6) Portuguese SMEs invest more than 70% of their annual IT budget to ERP use. Together, these findings offer insights into how Portuguese SMEs use and extract value from ERP, and how enhancements positively impact the system's value. Unlike the typical focus on ERP adoption described in the literature, this research focuses on the post-implementation phase, linking actual use with value creation, adding an empirical study to the AIS literature.     

Health information technology and patient outcomes: the role of information and labor coordination

Health information technology (IT) adoption, it is argued, will dramatically improve patient care. We study the impact of hospital IT adoption on patient outcomes focusing on the role of patient and organizational heterogeneity. We link detailed hospital discharge data on all Medicare fee‐for‐service admissions from 2002–2007 to detailed hospital‐level IT adoption information. For all IT‐sensitive conditions, we find that health IT adoption reduces mortality for the most complex patients but does not affect outcomes for the median patient. Benefits from health IT are primarily experienced by patients whose diagnoses require cross‐specialty care coordination and extensive clinical information management.     

Centralized end-to-end identity and access management and ERP systems: A multi-case analysis using the Technology Organization Environment framework

System security is a top issue facing global organizations. This study investigates the constraints and benefits of a successful centralized end-to-end identity and access management (CIAM) implementation and the moderating role that ERP systems have in the implementation. We apply the Technology Organization Environment (TOE) framework to a case study approach. We find that organizational and technological factors result in lapses in IT governance and act as barriers to CIAM. Environmental factors also hinder CIAM implementation. Additionally, ERP systems facilitate the development of a CIAM due to integration and standardization of identities and automated provisioning. When the ERP system supports CIAM, the organization and its employees experience significant benefits including single sign-on capabilities, increased security and privacy, efficiencies in user provisioning and password management, and audit process improvement. Our results will be of value to any organization implementing CIAM and ERP. Researchers can also use our findings to further study IAM, ERP or extensions to the TOE framework.     

XBRL环境下财务报告鉴证框架的建构——基于XBRL财务报告元素的角度

基于XBRL财务报告元素的角度,构建了由总体鉴证目标(XBRL财务报告真实恰当地反映了企业的经济事实或者纸质报告)、具体鉴证目标(XBRL财务报告的合规性和可靠性)和管理层认定组成的XBRL环境下财务报告的鉴证框架,并对XBRL财务报告进行了鉴证,发现在XBRL财务呈报中出现了违反基本元素标记的完整性和元素数据的金额准确性等的错报。在XBRL财务报告的推进过程中需要贯彻实施通用分类标准,加快制定行业扩展分类标准,并加强对XBRL财务报告质量的人工校验以及完善编制流程的内部控制等。     

The impact of XBRL adoption on local bias: Evidence from mandated U.S. filers

This paper investigates how eXtensible Business Reporting Language (XBRL) adoption affects the information advantage of local investors relative to their non-local counterparts. By employing the recent staggered SEC mandates of XBRL as a natural shock, we show that institutional investors’ local bias decreases after firms adopt XBRL when preparing their financial statements. These results hold in a difference-in-difference research design with firm and year fixed effects or using matched nonadopting firms as controls, as well as a regression discontinuity design. The impact of XBRL adoption on reducing local bias can be explained by three economic channels: decreased information processing costs, increased corporate disclosures, and improved analyst coverage. We further find that institutions’ superior stock returns in geographic proximate equity investments significantly reduces after the XBRL mandate. The observed reduction in institutional investors’ local bias within U.S. companies following the XBRL mandate also applies to the international setting. Overall, our findings support regulators’ claim that XBRL adoption levels the playing field between local and non-local investors.     

XBRL adoption and expected crash risk

The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) mandated the adoption of eXtensible Business Reporting Language (XBRL) in 2009, with the aim of facilitating data exchange and reducing information processing costs. To shed light on the economic consequences of this important disclosure regulation, this study investigates whether and how XBRL mandate impacts investor expectations of future crash risk. Using the steepness of the option implied volatility smirk as a proxy for ex ante expectation of crash risk, we find that expected crash risk decreases after adoption of XBRL. Moreover, we document that the effect is more pronounced for firms with higher financial opacity, more volatile earnings, and greater analyst forecast dispersion. Further, our analysis generates evidence that the use of customized extension XBRL elements attenuates the effect of XBRL reporting on reducing expected crash risk. Our empirical results are robust to a variety of sensitivity checks. Overall, the findings indicate that XBRL reduces information processing costs and strengthens information transparency of capital markets, which in turn, reduces investor expectations of future crash risk.     

The impact of information technology on performance in the not-for-profit sector

The relation between IT usage and performance has been a central question in the AIS literature since the late 1990s. Empirical research has not yet examined whether organizational-level differences in how IT is used are associated with performance, nor whether the lagged performance effects found in for-profit settings carry over to a not-for-profit setting. Spending on information technology (IT) in K-12 schools has grown significantly in the U.S. over the past decade and performance in this sector has significant spillover effects in other sectors. This study examines the effects on performance of a change in how IT is used on a continuum from an automation role to an informating/transforming approach. A sample of over 6300 organizations (schools) having over 700,000 students in grades 3, 8 and 11 is examined. Both short-term (year-over-year) and longer-term (four-year) performance effects are investigated. We find that a change in how IT is used is associated with an increase in performance in two of the three school levels, and that these mean effects are comparable in magnitude to those found for IT spending in for-profit settings. These effects only become positive after four years, and vary across school level. This is the first study to provide large sample evidence of the performance effect of a change in how IT is used at the organizational level. This has significant implications for research investigating the effects of investments in IT on organizational performance and for stakeholders including policy makers, managers, legislators and taxpayers.     

Youth-led social change: Topics,engagement types,organizational types,strategies, and impacts

This paper provides a framework for evaluating youth-led social change. The framework considers: seven topics (e.g., environment, human health and safety, and education); nine engagement types (e.g., volunteerism, research and innovation, and political engagement); six organizational types (e.g., advisory body, social enterprise, and individual); three strategies (socialization, influence, and power); and three scales of impacts (individual, community/inter-organizational, and national/international). Using this framework, empirical research provides evidence of how youth – defined as young people 15–24 years of age – have been agents of change in Canada over the 35 years from 1978 to 2012. A media content analysis of 264 articles, combined with frequency and chi-square tests, were completed to study the factors and the relationships among them. The results show a strong relationship between the impact and the strategy, topic, engagement type, and organizational type. The results also show a strong relationship between the strategy and the impact, engagement type and organizational type. The findings have implications for youth leaders and those who advocate for, work with, support, and educate them, and for those interested in evaluating social change efforts.     

XBRL and Accruals: Empirical Evidence from China

We examine whether XBRL adoption by publicly traded firms on the Shanghai Stock Exchange and Shenzhen Stock Exchange is related to the level of total accruals that firms report in the pre‐XBRL versus post‐XBRL periods. Our results indicate that the level of total accruals in the post‐XBRL period is lower relative to the pre‐XBRL period. This finding is robust to several controls for macroeconomic conditions and firm fundamentals. Moreover, we find this main effect is most prominent for firms that are most likely to benefit from greater transparency: high‐growth firms, small firms, and firms in high‐technology industries. One interpretation of our results is that XBRL implementation decreases investor’s information acquisition costs and thereby improves their ability to detect earnings management; managers in turn reduce accruals.     

On IT governance structures and their effectiveness in collaborative organizational structures

Organizations today engage in various forms of alliances to manage their existing business processes or to diversify into new processes to sustain their competitive positions. Many of today's alliances use the IT resources as their backbone. The results of these alliances are collaborative organizational structures with little or no ownership stakes between the parties. The emergence of Web 2.0 tools is having a profound effect on the nature and form of these alliance structures. These alliances heavily depend on and make radical use of the IT resources in a collaborative environment. This situation requires a deeper understanding of the governance of these IT resources to ensure the sustainability of the collaborative organizational structures. This study first suggests the types of IT governance structures required for collaborative organizational structures. Semi-structured interviews with senior executives who operate in such alliances reveal that co-created IT governance structures are necessary. Such structures include co-created IT steering committees, co-created operational committees, and inter-organizational performance management and communication systems. The findings paved the way for the development of a model for understanding approaches to governing IT and evaluating the effectiveness for such governance mechanisms in today's IT‐dependent alliances. This study presents a sustainable IT-related capabilities approach to assessing the effectiveness of suggested IT governance structures for collaborative alliances. The findings indicate a favorable association between organizations' IT governance efforts and their ability to sustain their capabilities to leverage their IT resources. These IT-related capabilities also relate to measures business value at the process and firm level. This makes it possible to infer that collaborative organizations' IT governance efforts contribute to business value.     

企业内部控制专家系统研究——以GLNT集团采购成本控制为例

内部控制系统在内部控制理论转化为实践应用过程中的作用不言而喻,但目前有关内部控制系统的构建,特别是基于现代信息技术的系统构建成果却较缺乏。本文贡献在于,依据专家系统的原理和理论,结合内部控制五要素及特征,提出内部控制专家系统的观念,论证了其建设的现实必要性和技术可行性,初步设计出一个基于知识库的内部控制专家系统模型,建立了一套基于工作分解结构方法、XML/XBRL和知识库技术的系统构建方法,并通过一个内部控制系统建设案例对文中模型及建构方法予以初步应用示例,以期推进我国企业内部控制系统建设由理论研究转向指导实践的进程。     

Control of inter-organizational relationships: evidence on appropriation concerns and coordination requirements

This paper presents a framework of the control of inter-organizational relationships. Building on transaction cost economics and organizational theory, two control problems are identified that arise when firms engage in inter-organizational relationships: the management of appropriation concerns and the coordination of tasks. The control mechanisms used to manage these control problems and their interrelationships with informal (trust-based) mechanisms are discussed. The explanatory power of the framework is assessed by a case study of a strategic alliance between a buyer and a supplier of railway safety equipment.     

Designing management control in hybrid organizations: The role of path creation and morphogenesis

Path-creating change in organizational form is proposed as an important element in achieving management control in hybrid organizations. Using case examples from large-scale projects in the architectural, engineering, and construction industry, as well as from joint ventures in the oil and gas industry, we highlight the role of mindfully synthesizing new organizational forms in the design of management control systems. A series of paradoxes is disclosed, in which attempts to achieve control through mimetic adoption of established management control techniques lead to reduced control. On the other hand, path-creating deviations from institutionalized practices, resulted in improved project and venture performance. It has been argued that the design of inter-organizational management control systems seeks to enable organizations to compete for resources and efficiency, and also to obtain institutional legitimacy. Institutional theory proposes that isomorphism permits organizations to obtain that legitimacy and explains their design. In this paper, we propose that path creation and morphogenesis, which deviates from isomorphism, is an additional consideration in explaining management control system design.     

Does one size fit all? Evidence on XBRL adoption and 10-K filing lag

This paper examines how XBRL adoption is associated with 10-K filing timeliness. Using a sample of 10-K filings from 2007 to 2016, we find that 10-K filing lag decreases for Tier 1, Tier 2 and Tier 3 accelerated filers following the XBRL mandate. For Tier 3 smaller reporting companies, however, filing lag increases significantly in the post-XBRL period. Results from a difference-in-differences specification as well as using an alternative measure of filing timeliness produce similar inferences. We then investigate factors associated with the delay. We find that 10-K filing lag increases with XBRL filing complexity, whereas the deployment of a more experienced service provider can mitigate the lag. Overall, this study provides evidence that XBRL mandate improves preparer efficiency for most firms; however, our finding that the effect for smaller reporting companies goes in the opposite direction leads to the question whether XBRL can be viewed as a one-size-fits-all solution to financial reporting.     

Research issues on the use of ERPS in interorganizational relationships

The use of enterprise resource planning systems (ERPS) is a critical component of a firm's strategy for the proper management and control of inter-organizational relationships. This research note utilizes recent research findings that bear on the effectiveness of the implementation and use of ERPS in business organizations and extends these findings in the inter-organizational context. The major purpose of this essay is to present theoretical bases on which future research could justify theoretical models and present theoretically-sound arguments for the examination of the use of ERPS in the management and control of inter-organizational relationships. The implications of a number of theories are examined, including: (a) the theory of co-opetition from organizational strategy, as it relates to the necessity for carrying out simultaneous activities in inter-organizational cooperation and competition, (b) the economic theory of complementarity, as it emphasizes interactions in different elements of organizational design and explains how different elements of organizational strategy and management process relate to one another, and (c) the real options theory from finance as it relates to the degree of managerial flexibility in making infrastructure investment decisions. Each of these theories offers important implications for the examination of use of ERPS in inter-organizational relationships. This essay develops a number of research propositions in order to motivate research in this area. Future research not only could benefit from these theoretical bases but also could make contributions for the extension of these theories in the use of ERPS for the management and control of inter-organizational relationships.