Giving credit where credit is due: Summary analysis of the most prolific authors in 15 high-impact accounting journals

The most prolific contributing authors to a set of high-impact accounting journals are summarized. These contributors are an unusually productive and successful group, accounting for a disproportionate share of the appearances in this significant set of the academic literature. Additionally, findings are presented demonstrating that the second tier of accounting journals tend to be dominated by the same researchers who dominate the top-tier journals, thus suggesting that getting published in the second tier of accounting academic journals may be as difficult a hurdle as publishing in the top tier.     

Publishing characteristics,geographic dispersion and research traditions of recent international accounting education research

This paper describes, analyses and critiques accounting education research over the period 2005–2009. In doing so, it compares and contrasts the distinctive North American research tradition with that of Europe and the rest of the world. Six journals and 446 publications by 963 authors were included in the sample frame, along with a further 70 publications in other journals. The findings identify distinguishing characteristics among these publications that range from the composition of their editorial teams to the nature and type of output they publish. Evidence was found of geographic dominance and divergent research traditions which has mitigated against the development of a genuinely international accounting education research community. Possibilities for further research are identified and guidance for researchers publishing in this field is presented.     

Beauty is in the eye of the beholder: Research quality in accounting education

Accounting education research is often considered not to be of comparable quality to other accounting research, thereby providing secondary careers for those researching within the niche sub-discipline. We present several factors that have influenced this perception, with the most notable being the various journal quality guides where specialist accounting education journals typically do not rank well. We also explore possible explanations for why specialist accounting education journals do not rank highly. We discuss the ill-defined and contested concept of research quality and research impact, concluding that the determination of research quality differs according to which stakeholder group is conducting the assessment; academe, the accounting profession, governments or students. We also discuss the findings from the three papers in this special issue and offer suggestions for future research in this area.     

Social accounting research: An Australasian perspective

This paper provides an insight into the nature and the extent of social accounting research being undertaken within Australasia. It demonstrates that Australasian researchers account for a significant amount of internationally published social accounting research, but emphasises that the research effort seems to be confined to a limited number of researchers perhaps reflecting a lack of ‘take-up’ in this area in terms of the scale of participation. Information is also presented about the relative propensity of journals within the sample to publish social accounting research, and identifies that ‘top tier’ accounting journals historically have not published social accounting research. The paper also considers various factors which seem to be impeding the ‘recruitment’ of new social accounting researchers.     

Corruption culture and accounting quality

This paper examines the impact of corruption culture on accounting quality (AQ) of listed firms at the municipal level in China. We consider municipalities with (without) corrupt top government officials as having high (low) corruption culture. To isolate the effect of corruption culture, we use the arrest of corrupt officials (the events) to capture the change in local corruption culture, and apply the difference-in-difference method to compare AQ of firms operating in the jurisdictions of corrupt officials pre and post the events, compared to control firms. We find that AQ of firms affiliated with corrupt officials is higher after the events, which is robust to the placebo test, time-trend analysis, and various robustness tests. We complement the literature by showing that the increase in AQ is greater for firms associated with more powerful officials and having stronger connections with corrupt officials. Moreover, the positive effect on accounting quality is stronger in the post-2012 period. Further, we document that firms improving AQ after the events issue more SEOs and have lower cost of capital. Finally, analyses on channels firms used to improve AQ show that firms switch to higher quality auditors, have better internal control, and issue more management forecasts. This study has implications for policymakers in countries that suffer from corruption.     

A Weberian model applied to the study of accounting stagnation in late Qing China

The industrialization and commercial expansion that China experienced following foreign intrusion, in 1840, necessitated the modernization of its accounting, but its accounting technology continued to stagnate for more than half a century. Weber's socio-historical model provides a framework for posing the question why indigenous accounting systems persisted even though superior western bookkeeping techniques were available. Weber's framework for the study of the relations of accounting to organizations and society may be divided into two analytic layers: structural conditions of accounting and the historical dynamic arising from the tensions between formal and substantive rationalities. All structural conditions specified in his first analytic layer as necessary for capital accounting were basically satisfied in Qing China. The second layer of Weber's framework is ideational. Rationality is the key concept in Weber's work. Replacing traditional accounting amounted to a direct challenge to substantive rationality of ti ('substance', 'essence') by the formal rationality of yung ('instruments', 'utility').     

Tightening credit standards: the role of accounting quality

Over the latest 20 years, the average credit rating of U.S. corporations has trended down. Blume et al. (1998, Journal of Finance, 53, 1389–1413.) attribute this trend to a tightening of credit standards by agencies. We reexamine the observed decreases in credit ratings in several ways. First, we show that this downward trend does not apply to speculative-grade issuers. Second, our analysis of investment-grade issuers suggests that the apparent tightening of standards can be attributed primarily to changes in accounting quality over time. After incorporating changing accounting quality, we find no evidence that rating agencies have tightened their credit standards.

Firm incentives,institutional complexity and the quality of “harmonized” accounting numbers

In this paper, we investigate how firm reporting incentives and institutional factors affect accounting quality in firms from 26 countries. We exploit a unique multicountry setting where firms are required to comply with the same set of international reporting standards. We develop an approach of cross-country comparisons allowing for differences between firms within a country and we investigate the relative importance of country- versus firm-specific factors in explaining accounting quality. We find that financial reporting quality increases in the presence of strong monitoring mechanisms by means of ownership concentration, analyst scrutiny, effective auditing, external financing needs, and leverage. Instability of business operations, existence of losses, and lack of transparent disclosure negatively affect the quality of accounting information. At the country level, we observe better accounting quality for firms from regulatory environments with stronger institutions, higher levels of economic development, greater business sophistication, and more globalized markets. More importantly, we find that firm-specific incentives play a greater role in explaining accounting quality than countrywide factors. This evidence suggests that institutional factors shape the firm's specific incentives that influence reporting quality. Our findings support the view that the global adoption of a single set of accounting standards in isolation is not likely to lead to more comparable and transparent financial statements unless the institutional conditions and the firm-specific reporting incentives also change.     

Auditor specialization,accounting information quality and investment efficiency

This study is examined how the auditor specialization moderates the effect of accounting information quality on investment efficiency, i.e., whether the effect of accounting information quality on investment efficiency is increasing or decreasing with the presence of the specialist auditor.The reached result reveals that the accounting information quality appears to help decrease the overinvestment problem. Similarly, the auditor specialization has been discovered to help greatly in improving investment efficiency, while reducing the underinvestment problem. We further find that the accounting information quality and the auditor specialization are two mechanisms with some degree of substitution in enhancing investment efficiency. The accounting information quality is positively associated with investment efficiency for firms whose auditor is an industry specialist.In addition, to check the robustness of the main results, this paper investigates the causal relationships between investment efficiency, auditor specialization and accounting information quality from the dynamic simultaneous-equation models.     

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.     

Productivity in “Top‐Ten” Academic Accounting Journals by Researchers at Canadian Universities*

We examine the research productivity of academic accountants at Canadian universities for the 11‐year period 1990‐2000. Our analysis is based on the “top‐ten” ranked refereed journals in accounting, auditing, and taxation, as documented by Brown and Huefner (1994). We first provide an overview of the importance of publishing in highly ranked accounting journals for individual academics, departments, and business faculties. We then provide details of the proportion of articles published in each of these journals by academics from Canadian universities; the type of research published in each journal (auditing, financial accounting, managerial accounting, and taxation); and details of editorial board service. Our results indicate that even at the most productive Canadian university (in terms of “top‐ten” publications), faculty members publish (on average) approximately one article every seven years. Six Canadian universities have faculty members with, on average, more than one article in “top‐ten” journals every 10 years. We also provide results of analyses that rank each Canadian university, after controlling for the relative quality of each journal, using impact factors published by the Social Science Citation Index. In addition, statistics are provided with regard to the 15 most productive researchers, in terms of “top‐ten” publications, in the 11‐year period. Finally, in conjunction with the 25th anniversary of the Canadian Academic Accounting Association, we examine the productivity of academic accountants at Canadian universities over the past 25 years by combining our results with those reported by Richardson and Williams (1990).     

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.     

Investor protection,cross-listing and accounting quality

Using 42,808 firm-year observations from 32 countries around the world, we investigate whether cross-listing in the US is associated with better accounting quality, and whether investor protection moderates the effect of cross-listing on accounting quality. Our main results show firms that are cross-listed in the US exhibit more timely reporting of losses, greater tendency to manage earnings downward, and more value relevance of accounting numbers as compared to their domestic counterparts. Cross-listed firms originating from high investor protection jurisdictions, particularly in high anti-director rights and common law countries, exhibit greater tendency to recognise a more timely reporting of losses and to manage earnings downward but exhibit lower value relevance of earnings as compared to cross-listed firms domiciled in low anti-director rights and non-common law countries. These results suggest that the strength of investor protection in home country plays an important role in determining the quality of accounting numbers of cross-listed firms.     

Examining dual accounting systems in Europe

After adoption of International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) for consolidated financial statements by European-listed companies, a number of European countries still require the use of local standards in the preparation of legal entity financial statements. This study investigates whether this requirement can be explained by a low demand for high-quality financial reporting and an orientation of accounting toward the fulfilment of regulatory needs in these countries. Specifically, using accounting quality as an indicator of the focus of accounting on capital providers' needs, we compare accounting quality between countries permitting and prohibiting the use of IFRS in individual financial statements. Consistent with our expectations, we find that countries requiring the use of local standards in the preparation of legal entity financial statements exhibit a significantly lower level of accounting quality, both prior to and after IFRS adoption. We interpret these results as evidence that these countries have local standards more oriented toward the satisfaction of regulatory needs, rather than investors' needs. Furthermore, since differences in accounting quality persist after the implementation of IFRS, results suggest that firms in these countries face a lower demand for high-quality financial reporting.     

A comprehensive effort to recruit and retain accounting students

This paper describes a series of coordinated and proactive recruitment and retention efforts within the accounting department of a southeastern university. Each semester, recruitment of successful students in Principles of Accounting classes is a departmental priority. The intention is to encourage Principles students to declare a major in accounting. For accounting majors in the junior and senior years, a series of programs is offered for professional development. Each year students are surveyed to gauge the perceived value of the time spent out-of-classroom. The results indicate that the time spent out-of-classroom is beneficial. Most important, the results of our efforts to recruit to the major from Principles classes correlate to previous research that indicates contacting potential majors in the introductory course is crucial.     

The incidence of documented standards for research in departments of accounting at US institutions

Evidence suggests that standards for research in accounting are vague to junior faculty at the same time business schools are placing more emphasis on scholarship when evaluating faculty for tenure and promotion (T&P). In response, we investigate the incidence of accounting-specific documented standards for research in T&P decisions based on an email survey of accounting department administrators at US institutions. In addition, we report respondent data about the use of documented and informal journal lists. Our findings suggest that few accounting departments, regardless of accreditation status, utilize department-specific written scholarship standards or journal lists, supporting faculty perceptions that scholarship requirements for T&P are vague. As part of our analysis we review implications of the Final Report of the AACSB International Impact of Research Task Force (AACSB International, 2008) on the use of journal lists for tenure and promotion decisions. We summarize by advocating for specific accounting department-level policies for T&P, including consideration of explicit journal lists.     

A Knowledge-engineering approach to accounting education

In the context of the massive expansion of the knowledge base facing all fields of professional activity, instructional science (which embraces the use of a knowledge-engineering approach to curriculum design) could well help to unvael the complexity of important pedagogical issues confronting accounting educationalists. The delineation and use of an expert knowledge base within the framework of the ‘dimensions of processing model’ of human information processing provides a valuable focus for making decision about the breadth, depth and nature of specific educatinal objectives. Knowledge engineering, which is fundamental to this process, appears to provide an appropriate framework for the systematic planning, development, delivery and evaluation of high-quality education and training programmes. Such an approach base while ensuring practitioners and teachers to keep pace with their rapidly changing knowledge base while ensuring that students acquire and become competent in the use of the cognitive skills they need in order to work effectively in their chosen profession.     

Knowledge Preservation in Accounting: A Citational Study

This study explores knowledge preservation in accounting research through an examination of a sample of 428 published accounting articles and their nearly 11,000 citations. The examination shows that accounting scholars tend to cite very recent literature. The small volume of cited pre-1960 literature (preponderantly from non-accounting sources) and the low incidence of historical research articles in most non-historical journals suggests that earlier accounting knowledge may become lost to future generations of accounting scholars. This conclusion implies that accounting scholars can play an important role in the preservation and dissemination of previous generations of accounting knowledge.     

Commentary on: A synergistic approach to an accounting educator's primary responsibilities

Many students find the application of sampling theory to audit testing difficult, even if they have a good grounding in business statistics. This paper describes an action-learning technique used to teach audit sampling theory to third-year business degree students at The Open Polytechnic of New Zealand. Feedback from students indicated that they found action-learning better than traditional lectures and printed material in enhancing their understanding of sampling theory and practice and in maintaining their interest and enjoyment.     

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.