Finance editorial board membership and research productivity

The research productivity of board members of the top academic finance journals—Journal of Finance, Journal of Financial Economics, Review of Financial Studies, Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis, and Financial Management—is investigated. Discipline specific benchmarks for substantial research excellence are determined and an evaluation of influential finance journals is presented. Publication in Journal of Finance is the most notable benchmark for selection to the editorial board of any of the finance journals evaluated. The results imply that publishing one article in Journal of Finance, Journal of Financial Economics or Review of Financial Studies in a 5-year period coupled with additional appearances in the broader top tier finance journals would be representative of exceptional research achievement.

CFO tenure,CFO board membership and accounting conservatism

We examine the influence of chief financial officer (CFO) tenure and CFO board membership on accounting conservatism among Australian listed companies. The study uses market-based (i.e., timeliness of earnings to news) and accounting-based (i.e., accrual-based loss recognition) measures of conservative accounting. The results show that while longer CFO tenure and CFO board membership increases accounting conservativism, this is not the case when CFOs become entrenched through long board-membership tenure. This entrenchment appears to lead to the use of aggressive accounting practices. Overall, the results indicate that CFO tenure and CFO board membership improve financial-reporting quality by increasing accounting conservatism in organizations, providing evidence of the importance of recognizing these two governance characteristics in policymaking and in regulation.     

Monitoring the accounting profession under the AICPA code of professional conduct: An analysis of state board of accountancy participation

We study state board of accountancy participation in monitoring the conduct of accounting professionals under the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants’ (AICPA) Code of Professional Conduct (CPC). In doing so, we examine all sanctions imposed by the AICPA under its CPC from 2008 to 2016 to determine the extent to which a state board’s reporting of violations to the AICPA is associated with its full, partial, or non-adoption of the AICPA’s CPC. Our findings suggest that widespread full adoption of the AICPA’s CPC might not result in enhanced state board participation in reporting violations to the AICPA, as might otherwise be expected. Indeed, we find that state boards that partially adopt the AICPA’s CPC report the most violations. We also highlight the variability of state board participation in monitoring the misconduct of accounting professionals and provide suggestions for enhanced monitoring.     

A longitudinal study of the research productivity of graduates of accounting doctoral programs

While the number of graduates from U.S. accounting doctoral programs has declined significantly since the early 1990s (thus producing a significant faculty shortage), many schools' research requirements to achieve promotion and tenure [P & T] have increased significantly—along with salary packages for new faculty. The purposes of the study reported here are to: (1) compare the research output of accounting doctoral graduates across time (1989–1993 period versus their 1999–2003 counterparts) to see if there is sufficiently enhanced output to justify today's higher entry level salaries; and (2) extract from productivity measures information relative to P & T decisions, thus providing benchmarks for promotion to associate and full professor. We examine research records for six and 12 years beyond graduation because these are frequently relevant to tenure and promotion decisions.     

A pragmatic model to estimate journal quality in accounting

This article presents a model to estimate the relative quality of publication outlets based on objective journal characteristics. Our model improves upon the one proposed by Bean and Bernardi [Bean, D. F., & Bernardi, R. A. (2005). Estimating the ratings of journals omitted in prior quality ratings. Advances in Accounting Education, 7, 109–127.] in three important ways. First, we develop a dependent variable that is a composite score based on five prior journal perception studies. Second, our model considers different independent variables; audience, journal availability, inclusion in the Social Sciences Citation Index (an independent measure of quality), and the journal’s submission fee. This combination of variables increases the model’s explanatory power by 21% compared to Bean and Bernardi’s average R². Finally, the results of our model are more consistent with those of prior perception studies. We also apply the model to recent accounting faculty publications, which provides a comparative rating of more than 200 journals. We expect our model for estimating journal quality to help faculty, promotion and tenure committees, and university administrators evaluate the quality of journals where accounting faculty publish, an important aspect of assessing research productivity.     

Gender differences in the first course in accounting: An achievement goal approach

We examine whether gendered patterns can be observed in first-year students' achievement goals in an introductory accounting course; a question largely overlooked by prior literature. This investigation is motivated by perceptions of accounting as a masculine field involving gender role stereotypes and business schools as competitive and performance-oriented environments. Our findings suggest that male students tend to adopt performance-approach goal, implying that they are more competitive than female students, and that their performance is thus driven by a desire to outperform others. Our findings further suggest that male students' expectations of learning accounting are higher than those of female students. The expectations explain the gender differences in the performance-approach goal. Finally, we find that this performance-approach goal mediates gender differences in course performance depending on the mode of assessment; male students received higher grades for exams but not for teamwork. Overall, our study highlights the importance of considering contextual aspects related to competitiveness, masculinity, and the mode of assessment on an accounting course when addressing students’ achievement goals and expectations of learning accounting. We thus contribute to the understanding of how learning environment, accounting pedagogy, and the broader field of professional accounting intersects with individual student attributes, creating differential learning outcomes.     

Beyond just desserts: The gendered nature of the connection between effort and achievement for accounting students

The paper evaluates gender differences in the achievement of accounting students using data from students at a large public institution in the USA. Whether one gender outperforms the other is a question that has remained open in the literature, primarily because measures have been confounded by rewards for effort. This paper finds that in an environment where effort is not materially rewarded per se, but serves as a significant means to prepare for grade-bearing evaluations, females do not significantly outperform males. Female student do, however, exert a greater amount of effort. Measures used in this study were assembled by the computer software that managed the student interface, providing practice questions, quizzes, and examinations. Implications for educational choices made by accounting instructors are offered.     

The influence of foreign equity and board membership on corporate strategy and internal cost management in Portuguese banks

This study examines the influence of foreign equity and board membership on corporate strategy and the management of internal costs of banks headquartered in Portugal using proprietary data maintained by the Central Bank. The findings reveal that foreign equity reduces both total and operating costs, and foreign board membership reduces domestic banks’ dependence on revenues from traditional areas of business and enhances the potential for generating revenues from non-traditional areas of business. These results are controlled for a variety of standard accounting ratios used in the literature. We argue that foreign equity and board membership forces banks to redirect corporate strategy and to reduce internal costs.     

The demise of the ARC journal ranking scheme: an ex post analysis of the accounting and finance journals

The recent abolition of the ARC journal ranking scheme is indicative of some problematical features of journal ranking in general and the ARC scheme in particular. An alternative citation‐based ranking scheme is applied to the accounting and finance journals to highlight some loopholes in the abandoned ARC scheme and provide some suggestions for how to proceed with ERA 2012. By re‐ranking journals according to their citation indices, it is demonstrated that the ARC ranking placed a large number of journals where they do not belong. As a result, the ARC scheme induced some adverse behavioural changes with respect to preferred publication outlets.     

Exploring corporate governance research in accounting journals through latent semantic and topic analyses

The literature on corporate governance (CG) has been expanding at an unprecedented rate since major corporate scandals surfaced, such as Enron, WorldCom, and HealthSouth. Corresponding with accounting's important role in CG, accounting scholars increasingly have investigated CG in recent years, so the body of literature is growing. Although previous attempts have been made to summarize extant literature on CG via reviews, none of these attempts has utilized recent developments in text analyses and natural language processing. This study uses latent semantic and topic analyses to address this research gap by analysing abstracts from 1,399 articles in all accounting journals that the Australian Business Deans Council (ABDC) has rated A and A*. The ABDC journal list is widely recognized as a journal‐quality indicator across many universities worldwide. The analyses revealed 10 distinct research topics on CG in the ABDC's top accounting journals. The results presented include the five most representative articles for each topic, as distinguished by topic scores. This study carries important practice and policy implications, as it reveals major research streams and exhibits how researchers respond to various CG problems.     

Continental European accounting model and accounting modernization in Germany

Classification techniques based on one or few dimensions are widely used in research studies and textbooks to explain and predict the development of accounting systems internationally. However, their usefulness in international accounting has been limited in today's globalized world. For example, in the context of the EU, IFRS are required for consolidated accounting, while national accounting systems continue to be the dominant system for unconsolidated accounting in many countries. Using Germany as a case study, the objective of this paper is to examine whether Germany can still be classified within the Continental European model of accounting following the Act to Modernize Accounting Law (Bilanzrechts-modernisierungsgesetz — BilMoG), which was promulgated on May 29, 2009. This Act introduced some major reforms to the German Commercial Code (Handelsgesetzbuch — HGB), such as removing the close connection to tax rules and introducing new recognition and valuation regulations, which changed traditional principles of orderly accounting (Grundsätze ordnungsmäßiger Buchführung). As a result, the current German approach of financial reporting separates Germany from the traditional Continental European model of accounting and moves it somewhere on a spectrum between the traditional Continental European model of accounting and the Anglo-American model of accounting.     

Complexity of financial reporting standards and accounting expertise

This study tests whether firms seek to mitigate the adverse effects of Financial Reporting Complexity (FRC) by investing in accounting expertise. We develop a measure of FRC based on the complexity of accounting standards that govern annual disclosures. We find that FRC is positively related to the accounting expertise on a firm’s board of directors and audit committee. We also find that accounting expertise mitigates the relation between FRC and negative reporting outcomes. Collectively, this study increases our understanding of the actions firms take to mitigate the negative consequences of FRC, and the role of accounting expertise in this setting.     

The Bakery: a cross-functional case study for introductory managerial accounting

This instructional case is designed to achieve four educational objectives: (1) to give students a more complete appreciation of the importance of considering accounting information along with marketing and economics-related information, avoiding a myopic focus on accounting data, (2) to give students practice in pricing, cost volume profit analysis (CVP) and outsourcing decisions, (3) to help students learn to build spreadsheets that are capable of what-if analysis, and (4) to provide an active learning experience that engages introductory accounting students. The Bakery is a non-profit organization whose primary function is to sell baked goods and beverages to students in a large campus residence hall complex. In completing the case, students utilize information provided about the costs and previous pricing structure of The Bakery, along with information they collect about competitors' product offerings, prices, and accompanying services, and their own knowledge of The Bakery's customers, college students and their parents, as a basis for making pricing decisions. Once they have completed the pricing analysis, students use the resulting variable costing income statement to perform CVP and to analyze a decision to potentially outsource The Bakery's operations.     

Independent directors' board networks and controlling shareholders' tunneling behaviorq

As one of the channels by which board directors build important relationships,board networks can affect the governance role of independent directors. Defining director board networks as their connections based on direct ties they establish when serving on at least one common board, this paper explores the role of the network centrality of independent directors in restraining tunneling behavior by controlling shareholders in the Chinese capital market.Our empirical evidence shows that tunneling behavior by controlling shareholders is negatively related to the network centrality of independent directors and that this relationship is stronger when non-operating fund occupation is used as the measure of tunneling. The results of our study show that board networks can help independent directors to restrain tunneling behavior by large shareholders, which plays a positive role in corporate governance.ó 2013 Production and hosting by Elsevier B.V. on behalf of China Journal of Accounting Research. Founded by Sun Yat-sen University and City University of Hong Kong.     

Core theory and uniformity in accounting: Rationalizing the accounting rulemaker

If there are serious constraints on investors' abilities to process information, as well as to syndicate and share information, a uniform accounting system may convey substantial benefits to investors. After describing the potential benefits of a uniform accounting equilibrium, this article examines, using core theory, whether an unconstrained competitive environment with unrestricted coalition-formation possibilities amongst firms is likely to yield a uniform accounting equilibrium, or whether an accounting rulemaker is necessary for obtaining uniformity. It shows that an unconstrained competitive system may not yield a uniform accounting equilibrium even though it may be in every firm's (and security holder's) interest to have a uniform system. First, the core of the negotiations game among firms to set up a uniform system may be empty. That is, there may be no allocation of gains among firms resulting from an overall uniform accounting system which satisfies both individual and group rationality. Second, a uniform accounting system may have public goods characteristics which make a competitive uniform accounting equilibrium less likely. Both reasons serve to rationalize the accounting rulemaker.     

Cloud-based client accounting and small and medium accounting practices: Adoption and impact

Cloud accounting represents a major disruptive technology for the accounting industry. This qualitative study used semi-structured interviews to collect data from eight small and medium accounting practices (SMPs) to test a preliminary model of the determinants and impact of cloud-based client accounting adoption by SMPs. Accordingly, the SMP was the unit of analysis. The complex triadic relationship between SMPs, their clients and cloud accounting provider necessitated an interorganisational perspective. Four factors contributed to SMPs’ adoption decisions: perceived benefits of cloud-based client accounting, perceived benefits of partner programs, organisational readiness (IT sophistication and client readiness), and external pressure (client and competitive pressures). Subsequent to adoption, SMPs experienced a decline in the levels of traditional (statutory) services provided. However, most noted increases in income from business advisory. All firms were at least as well off after adoption. Improvements in client relationships and the perceived value of accountants’ services were also noted. An adoption/impact typology predicted and found positive impacts for cloud initiators, in particular. The findings have implications for owners of SMPs, their SME clients, and for accounting professional bodies.