The ownership structure of UK firms and the informativeness of accounting earnings

This paper provides evidence that in the UK, a firm's ownership structure is related to the informativeness of its accounting earnings for price. Evidence is reported that concentrated outside ownership is negatively related to the contemporaneous price-earnings association. This is interpreted as indicative of more non-accounting information being collected and disseminated for firms whose ownership includes large outside (non-managerial) blocks and a consequential loss of informativeness of contemporaneous accounting earnings. Having controlled for the information environment, we provide evidence that the overall relation between return and earnings is attenuated for firms with diffuse outside ownership. This is interpreted as evidence of the market anticipating opportunistic managerial manipulation of earnings when outside ownership is diffuse.     

Integrating human resource accounting into the public policy process: An illustration

Traditionally, public policy formulation has been accomplished through political compromise. In recent years, growing public pressure for austerity and accountability in the use of public resources has made the analytical approach to policy formulation and evaluation increasingly important. This exploratory study illustrates how the human resource accounting model can contribute to an objective and systematic evaluation of a complex public policy issue. The study considers the attrition of commissioned officers from the U.S. Army as a loss of human resources and examines the relative investment in human resources from two primary sources of commissioning. This type of systematic analysis provides valuable information for the policy maker in making logical decisions on human resource development.     

会计师事务所品牌建设中的文化内涵——基于会计师事务所与一般企业的比较分析

会计师事务所的人合特征、社会责任和专业属性决定了其在品牌建设方面有着与一般企业不同的要求和内涵。会计师事务所品牌建设的核心是文化的建设,文化建设包括择善固执的诚信文化、戒慎恐惧的风险文化和执经达变的执业文化三个方面。作为一个市场主体,会计师事务所也需要进行品牌建设并在市场中推广,本文就以品牌建设和推广为导向的会计师事务所社会与企业属性中的文化内涵作一些分析,寻找具有会计师事务所特质的品牌建设与推广策略与方式。     

Voluntary IAS 1 accounting disclosures prior to official IAS adoption: An empirical investigation of UK firms

This paper focuses on firms’ voluntary compliance with the reporting requirements of the International Accounting Standard (IAS) 1 before the official adoption of IASs. The paper seeks to identify the motives for the voluntary adoption of IAS 1 and investigates the relation to the provision of voluntary accounting disclosures, the increase in equity capital, managers’ remuneration and firms’ stock returns. The study shows that the decision-making process of firms is significantly influenced by the intention to improve key financial measures, such as leverage, profitability and growth. Firms would tend to adopt an accounting policy or regulation when they feel that adoption would favourably impact on their financial situation. For example, the study indicates that firms voluntarily adopted IAS 1 before the official IAS adoption date in order to provide evidence of superior managerial ability and high quality reported accounting information. It is found that firms that perform well are more motivated to voluntarily abide by IAS 1. The study also reports that firms that provide voluntary accounting disclosures and perform increases in their equity capital appear to voluntarily adopt IAS 1. Similar findings are obtained for firms that display higher management remuneration and stock returns.     

百家会计师事务所排名变迁的初步分析

国务院办公厅转发了《财政部关于加快发展我国注册会计师行业若干意见的通知》(以下简称通知),文件高度肯定了加快发展我国注册会计师行业,对于提高经济发展质量,维护国家经济信息安全具有重要意义。为了解我国注册会计师行业发展,本文拟对2003年至2009年百家会计师事务所排名变迁进行初步分析,以进一步评价行业的发展状况。因为自2003年中国注册会计师协会公布百家会计师事务所榜单以来,事务所排名已经成为社会各界了解注册会计师行业发展的风向标。尤其是近年来随着财政部积极推动行业做大做强,会计师事务所竞相合并,排名次序受到各界广泛关注。排名的位次不仅影响会计师事务所的声誉,而且也成为会计师事务所增加业务承揽的筹码。     

Executive turnover in UK firms: the impact of Cadbury

This study examines whether the Cadbury Committee recommendations regarding board structure have increased the power of boards to replace poorly performing CEOs. It also looks at whether institutional investors have become more proactive in this regard post-Cadbury. The study employs a comprehensive sample of UK listed firms between 1990 and 1995. Firm performance, CEO ownership and institutional ownership are found to be significantly related to the probability of non-routine top executive turnover. It appears that the managerial labour market is disciplining managers more quickly after Cadbury. However, there is no evidence that this is because boards have become more likely to remove CEOs following poor performance. Neither is any evidence found to support the assertions of institutional investors who claim to be more proactive since Cadbury. It is concluded that neither the Cadbury board structure reforms, nor the professed change in behaviour of institutional investors, has reduced the agency problem of managerial entrenchment in large UK firms.     

建立和完善内部治理机制 推动事务所和谐健康发展

中注协在《会计师事务所内部治理指南》中指出:为了加强会计师事务所内部决策和管理机制,提高事务所风险和质量控制能力,为事务所做大做强奠定坚实的微观基础。据此,我们联系实际,建立和完成诚信执业、质量控制、开拓创新、民主法治、公平分配和所企互动等内部治理机制,推动事务所和谐健康发展,为做强做大创造条件。     

Custom fabric ventures: An instructional resource in job costing for the introductory managerial accounting course

Job costing is a core foundational concept in the introductory managerial accounting course. The purpose of this instructional resource (IR) is to provide a thorough hands-on, active learning resource that will allow introductory students to experience a full set of accounting and management activities necessary to produce a job and assign production costs to it. For example, the IR requires students to analyze overhead costs, determine the optimal job size, schedule production, calculate the amount of materials to purchase, complete material requisitions, update raw materials records, analyze labor time records, complete a job cost record and address critical thinking questions. The IR was developed for use in a “flipped classroom” in which students work under the guidance of the instructor, but could alternatively be assigned as an unsupervised out-of-class assignment or on-line project. Since the IR was specifically developed as a learning tool for novice introductory managerial accounting students, adequate guidance is provided throughout the activity. However, to add realism and challenge students to think beyond the confines of simple mechanics, management and accounting issues are seeded throughout. Student feedback indicates that the IR not only helps students learn how a job costing system operates, but also helps students become aware of management decisions and accounting issues that impact the costs assigned to a job.     

Framing financial responsibility: An analysis of the limitations of accounting

In organisations, accounting—understood broadly as calculative practices—is claimed to serve as a critical vehicle when introducing forms of individual financial responsibility. Whereas most prior accounting research has been preoccupied with asserting this claim, this paper opens an opportunity to examine the limitations of accounting as a technology of responsibilisation. It does so by moving the empirical focus beyond the borders of people's work settings and into the private sphere of everyday life, investigating governmental efforts to turn high school students into financially responsible citizens. The analysis, informed by framing theory, reveals that the efficiency of accounting is conditioned by people's calculative understanding. Hence, in situations where individuals are expected to lack this basic calculative competency, accounting is presumed to be inappropriate as a means of introducing financial responsibility. This has implications for re-considering how the relation between accounting and responsibility is constituted.     

Desired attributes of public accounting firms in the job selection process: an empirical examination of accounting graduates' perceptions

The purpose of this study is to identify attributes of public accounting firms that accounting graduates find most desirable in their job selection decisions, and the impacts of individual differences on these perceptions. Factor analysis performed on the responses of 167 final-year accounting students in Hong Kong to a 30-item questionnaire identified seven factors. The results indicate that accounting graduates considered help in finishing their professional accounting examinations and good staff relationships as the most important criteria in their choice of employers. In addition, female accounting graduates were more concerned about the possibility of being required to travel or be transferred, but were less concerned about the reputation and profile (such as the client base and the size) of the firms than their male counterparts. Accounting graduates with a higher grade point average (GPA) were less concerned about the working environment, but more concerned about a firms' reputation and profile than those with a lower GPA. The implications of these results are discussed.     

Private benefits of control and firm leverage: An analysis of Korean firms

This paper investigates the leverage choices of an entrenched controlling party. If debt effectively curbs the private benefits of control, the controlling shareholder is given incentives to avoid debt. Using estimates of the private benefits of control and financial statement data from selected Korean firms, we find that a controlling party with large private benefits tends to lower debt. This relationship was concentrated after the Asian financial crisis. However, before the crisis, firms that affiliated with Korean conglomerates, chaebols, used more debt as private benefits increased. A financial reform program triggered by the crisis seems to have actuated the disciplining role of debt. JEL Classification G32, G34     

An analysis of inflation and stock returns for the UK

Whether common stocks provide a hedge against inflation has been long debated. This paper focuses on this question by investigating the relationship between inflation and stock returns in the short term and medium term and under different inflationary regimes using the UK data. Empirical evidence suggests that the UK stock market fails to hedge against inflation in the short term. However, in the medium term there is mixed results. Results from different inflationary regimes show that the relationship between inflation and returns varies in different regimes.     

Bank acquisition of mortgage firms and stockholders' wealth: An empirical analysis

This paper examines the behavior of the returns on the securities of bank holding companies (BHCs) acquiring mortgage firms after the announcement of such an acquisition and the release of the Federal Reserve Board's decision. The stockholders of acquiring BHCs do not realize abnormal returns following the announcement of the acquisition of a mortgage firm. This reconfirms previous findings in unregulated industries and is consisten with the hypothesis that any economic rent which is generated by such an acquisition is captured by the acquired mortgage firm: This implies that there exist BHCs — other than the acquiring one — that could also affect a profitable merger with the mortgage firm. Another finding is that stockholders of BHCs that were 3enied permission to acquire mortgage firms sustained significant losses during the five weeks following the Board's decision.     

Financial and corporate social performance in the UK listed firms: the relevance of non-linearity and lag effects

Using environmental, social and governance scores compiled by Reuters Datastream for each company’s corporate social performance (CSP), we examine the relationship between CSP and corporate financial performance (CFP) of 314 UK listed companies over the period 2002–2015. We further evaluate the relationship between prior and subsequent CFP and prior and subsequent CSP. Based on the system-GMM estimation method, we provide direct evidence that suggests that while CFP and CSP can be linked linearly; however, when we examine the impact of CSP on CFP, the association is more non-linear (cubic) than linear. Our results suggest that firms periodically adjust their level of commitment to society, in order to meet their target CSP. The primary contributions of this paper are testing (1) the non-monotonous relationship between CSP and CFP, (2) the lagged relationship between the two and the optimality of CSP levels, and (3) the presence of a virtuous circle. Our results further suggest that CSP contributes to CFP better during post-crisis years. Our findings are robust to year-on-year changes in CFP and CSP, financial versus non-financial firms, and the intensity of corporate social responsibility (CSR) engagement across industries.

     

美国与墨西哥的审计准则与事务所内部治理

去年底,中注协审计准则与事务所内部治理考察团一行6人,先后拜访了美国加利福尼亚州注册会计师协会洛杉矶分会、美国公众公司会计监督委员会(PCAOB)、美国注册会计师协会和     

Tax education in the UK: a survey of tax courses in undergraduate accounting degrees

This paper presents the results of a postal survey designed to examine the teaching of taxation in UK universities. The project looks at taxation in undergraduate accounting degree programmes and adopts an objective centred focus. The principal aim of the survey was to examine the relationships between some characteristics of individual tax courses, including the course objectives and coverage, staffing, teaching and assessment methods, in an attempt to draw some conclusions on the nature of tax education in UK accounting degrees. The results of the survey and consequent analysis may provide taxation and accounting educators, professional bodies and researchers into accounting education with an insight into approaches to, and methods used in, taxation teaching. It may also present a framework for comparative international research in tax education.     

A comparison of the dominant meta programme patterns in accounting undergraduate students and accounting lecturers at a UK business school

Meta programmes are a means of describing the behavioural traits that a person exhibits when interacting with other people. An understanding of meta programmes can improve communication between individuals and this may have implications for teaching. The purposes of this study are first to identify the dominant meta programme patterns of first year accounting undergraduates at a UK business school. An earlier pilot study validated use of the Motivation Profile Questionnaire (MPQ) to elicit the dominant meta programmes of accounting lecturers at the same Business School (Brown, 2002). Secondly, the students' meta programmes are compared with those of their accounting teachers to identify whether there are any differences or similarities between the two groups. The matching of the meta programmes of the teachers and students would enhance communication whilst major differences in meta programmes would make communication more difficult. A sample of 62 first year accounting undergraduates and 20 accountancy teachers completed the MPQ. The results indicate that, on average, the accounting students have similar dominant meta programme patterns to their accounting teachers. The implications of the findings for improving communication and therefore teaching are discussed, along with the scope for further research.     

An analysis of majority owner‐managed companies in the UK

This paper investigates the characteristics of 73 UK companies in which managers have an ownership stake of greater than 50 per cent. We find that majority owner‐managed companies make less use of alternative corporate control systems and are less likely to remove their chief executive officer or other board members following poor performance. However, our sample firms actually outperform diffusely held companies of similar size in the same industry. The determinants of majority control appear more closely related to the characteristics of the controlling shareholders rather than the firm's operating environment. Changes in the ownership structure of our sample companies owe more to changes in owner‐specific characteristics and security issuance than they are related to changes in the company's operating environment or company performance. We conclude that despite the obvious agency costs of managerial entrenchment for closely held companies, for the present sample at least the incentive alignment benefits of large director shareholdings are beneficial to outside shareholders.     

From voluntary to state control and the emergence of the department in UK hospital accounting

This paper explores the development and diffusion of accounting techniques in UK hospitals and finds that attempts to utilise accounting data, for performance measurement and control, predate the introduction of the NHS in 1948. The main focus of the paper is the move from the uniform system of accounts, first introduced in 1893, to departmental accounting information in 1956. After identifying the antecedent accounting conditions the paper explores both why and how change occurred by analysing the roles of dominant individuals, institutions, political and economic forces that led to the introduction of departmental accounting. The process of change, after the nationalisation of the hospitals in 1948, had a significant impact on the accounting technology adopted: with departmental budgeting being dropped. Finally, the role of the medical profession in the departmentalisation debate is explored and possible explanations for the reluctance to adopt new management accounting techniques are discussed.