The association between characteristics of audit committee accounting experts,audit committee chairs,and financial reporting timeliness

We investigate the association between audit committee (AC) members' financial expertise and financial reporting timeliness, and extend the discussion by investigating how the source of accounting expertise (e.g., public accounting or CFO) differentially influences financial reporting timeliness. We predict and find that AC accounting financial expertise is associated with timelier accounting information. Further, we find that accounting expertise gained from public accounting experience is associated with timelier financial reporting; however, accounting expertise gained from CFO experience is not. We also find that AC chairs (ACCs) with accounting expertise from public accounting experience are significantly associated with timelier financial reporting while ACCs with CFO-sourced accounting expertise are not. Our results are important for two reasons. First, our results suggest that AC accounting financial expertise contributes to AC effectiveness by improving the timeliness of financial information. Second, our findings highlight how personal characteristics of accounting financial experts influence contributions toward AC effectiveness.     

Audit committee financial expertise and properties of analyst earnings forecasts

An important role of financial accounting information is to aid financial statement users in forming expectations about the firm's future earnings. Prior research finds that accounting financial expertise of the audit committee is associated with higher financial reporting quality. We extend this literature by examining the association between audit committee financial expertise and analysts' ability to anticipate future earnings. We find a significant association between accounting financial expertise on the audit committee and analyst earnings forecasts that are more accurate and less dispersed. In contrast, we do not find a significant association between non-accounting financial expertise (i.e., supervisory expertise) and forecast accuracy or forecast dispersion. These findings contribute to our understanding of the benefits of accounting expertise in audit committees by demonstrating an association between accounting financial expertise and improvements in analyst earnings forecasts.     

The Impact of the Type of Accounting Standards on Preparers' Judgments

This article examines preparers' consolidation judgments and how they are impacted by the precision of accounting standards (substance-over-form versus rules-based). The examination is performed via two laboratory experiments in a consolidated accounting setting. In Experiment 1 it was found that when subjects used a substance-over-form accounting standard they justified their consolidation judgments on case specific information rather than on different interpretations of the phrase 'capacity to control'. In Experiment 2 it was found that when subjects used a rules-based standard, incentives were found to impact on accountants' consolidation judgments and more aggressive judgments were made through their assessments of case specific information. Comparison of the judgments made in Experiment 1 with one of the treatment groups in Experiment 2 enabled a comparison to be made of consolidation judgments of subjects under both substance-over-form and rules-based accounting standards. While both groups had the same incentive not to consolidate, marginally significantly more subjects using the rules-based standard did not consolidate than subjects using the substance-over-form standard. This finding is contrary to anecdotal claims that the imprecision of substance-over-form standards may be less effective in stopping biased financial reporting than rules-based standards.     

Revenue Recognition in the Construction Industry: An Experimental Study

There have been suggestions that loan officers do not consider there is a problem in the availability of alternative revenue recognition methods, provided that sufficient disclosure of recognition procedures is made to enable adjustment of financial statements. On the other hand, the accounting literature on'functional fixity' suggests such adjustments are not made. The functional fixity literature has relied exclusively on testing for an accounting method effect on user predictions and decisions. As a result, the evidence can be interpreted as users being fixated on earnings and ignoring information about accounting methods or alternatively they may have given attention to that information and attempted a transformation although the extent of the adjustment was'inadequate'. This paper suggests that the previous evidence on functional fixity is inconclusive about lenders' suggestions that they adjust financial statements and that different actions may be required by lending institutions depending on which interpretation of the functional fixity literature is made. This study uses the joint methodologies of analysis of variance and protocol analysis to focus on both whether adjustments are made as well as whether alternative methods of recognizing profit from longterm contracts affect the judgements of experienced lenders. The results show that the majority of subjects did not attempt to adjust for alternative methods of recognizing revenues.     

The accuracy of technological forecasts, 1890–1940

Predictions of future technological changes and the effects of those changes, made by Americans between 1890 and 1940, are compared to the actual outcomes. Overall, less than half of the predictions have been fulfilled or are in the process of fulfilment. The accuracy of predictions appears at best weakly related to general technical expertise, and unrelated to specific expertise. One expert (or non-expert) appears to be as good a predictor as another. Predictions of continuing status quo are not significantly more or less accurate than predictions of change. Predictions of the effects of technology are significantly less accurate than predictions of technological changes.     

The effect of information load on decision makers' cue utilization levels and decision quality in a financial distress decision task

Seventeen practising auditors and sixty-seven accounting students participated in a decision making experiment that examined the effect of increasing amounts of accounting information on cue usage and decision quality. Each participant made financial distress decisions under three levels of information load. Approximately one-third of those participating apparently experienced information overload and exhibited an inverted-U relationship between information usage and information load; the others exhibited patterns of increasing cue usage. The individuals who apparently experienced information overload also reached decisions of lesser quality, as indicated by significantly lower decision making consistency, lesser agreement with a composite judge, and lower consensus.     

Earnings conservatism and audit committee financial expertise

Using an Australian sample of 494 firm‐year observations, this study finds that accounting financial expertise is the primary type of expertise that influences earnings conservatism, rather than nonaccounting financial expertise. The association between accounting financial expertise and conservatism holds only when the accounting financial expert(s) on audit committees is (are) independent. Overall, results suggest that audit committee accounting financial expertise is important in recognising the asymmetrical timeliness of losses. Findings provide a better understanding of the dynamics between audit committee financial expertise and earnings conservatism and demonstrate the importance of accounting financial expertise in improving financial reporting quality.     

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.     

Creative Accounting and Investment Analyst Response

This paper investigates the impact of window dressing on stockbroker analyst evaluation of a company's annual accounting numbers. A new methodological approach is used involving a laboratory experiment in which a large sample of experienced investment analysts drawn from five of the top London houses processes real company accounts. The research was conducted in the first half of 1990 at the end of a long bull market. The participating analysts were not overly concerned about the quality of published accounting information and creative accounting was not then viewed as a serious problem. Contrary to our prior expectations we found little evidence of window dressing adjustments being made by the subjects in general. However, those subjects who did correct were significantly more experienced. Possible explanations for our results and potential implications for capital market behaviour and information processing are discussed.     

Accounting aggregation: User preferences and decision making

This experiment tests the effects of alternative aggregations of accounting data in a simulated portfolio task. Certain entropy-based aggregation criteria were used to prepare differentially aggregated financial statements for use in the task. Subjects made allocations of initial edowments between hypothetical firms, disclosed confidence in their allocation decisions and reported on specific characteristics of the financial statements. Differences in reported usefulness of statement sets furnished were found to be associated strongly with measured information content. The results also provide limited evidence that decisions and judgments of subjects were affected by the information content of the accounting aggregations provided.     

Optimal versus suboptimal choices of accounting expertise on audit committees and earnings quality

By employing a Heckman two-stage selection model, we identify whether employing a financial expert with or without accounting expertise on the audit committee is optimal and how earnings quality varies across these optimal and suboptimal choices. Using four earnings quality measures (informativeness, timely loss recognition, earnings persistence, and accruals quality), we find no differences in earnings quality between firms optimally choosing an expert with or without accounting expertise, consistent with Demsetz and Lehn (J Polit Econ 93:1155–1177, 1985) and others who argue that when firms optimize their choice (i.e., accounting expertise), there should be no difference across the characteristic (i.e., earnings quality) being examined. We do find, however, earnings quality is significantly higher for firms that optimally choose an accounting expert relative to firms that choose (with/without accounting expertise) suboptimally. Finally, firms suboptimally choosing an accounting expert exhibit no improvement, or even lower earnings quality, than firms that optimally choose no accounting expert. Our results provide important evidence of the impact accounting expertise has on earnings quality when considering the firm’s choice.     

Fusion of expertise among accounting faculty: towards an expertise model for academia in accounting

This paper aims to portray an accounting faculty expert. It is argued that neither the academic nor the professional orientation alone appears adequate in developing accounting faculty expertise. The accounting faculty expert is supposed to develop into a so-called ‘flexpert’ (Van der Heijden, 2003) who is able to deploy practical accounting exposure in teaching and research. This ‘fusion’ (mix of expertise) resulting from gaining expertise in quite different occupational areas, is attainable at academic career start levels in accounting, where during one's career orientation a professor is both an academic and a professional by training. Fusion is also attainable in complementary competence building wherein the faculty member invests in training and development in the non-core competence domain. The so-called ‘fusion framework’ that is depicted in this contribution could be usefully applied in recruitment efforts of business schools in search of a promising accounting professor.     

Audit committee characteristics and financial statement comparability

Financial statement comparability enables weighing the similarities and differences in financial performance between firms. Prior studies mainly focus on the role of accounting standards in the production of comparability, but the role of economic agents has been largely overlooked. We find that a firm's audit committee size and financial expertise affect its financial statement comparability. Financial information tends to be more comparable among industry peers when audit committees are larger and more members have financial and accounting expertise. The effect of audit committee expertise on comparability is stronger for firms with less independent and smaller boards, for firms with non-Big 4 auditors and for firms with CEOs serving as the chairperson of the boards.     

Market Effects of Recognition and Disclosure

Our recognition and disclosure model reveals that price informativeness is determined by the interaction of the qualities of three information sources—the recognized amount, the disclosed information, and the information revealed by price—and accounting expertise acquisition. It also reveals that recognition of an accounting amount alters each of these, thereby affecting price informativeness. Perhaps surprisingly, we find that recognition of a highly unreliable accounting amount, rather than simply disclosing it, can result in greater price informativeness. Likewise, recognition of a highly reliable amount can result in lower price informativeness. Our findings suggest that, because of the effects of aggregation, basing recognition decisions on reliability alone is too simplistic. Reliability relative to relevance is key, not reliability per se. We also find that recognition and disclosure affect the coefficients in a regression of price on accounting amounts.     

Evidence Complexity and Information Search in the Decision to Restate Prior‐Period Financial Statements

Framed in the decision to restate financial statements, this study addresses whether behavior predicted by competing theories depends on the complexity of evidence. Two experiments observe the information‐search behavior of auditors responsible for investigating their firm's prior opinion. Experiment 1 shows that auditors confronted with few (many) summarized statements that replicate in form the materials used in prior research prefer to first search statements that are inconsistent (consistent) with the prior‐period accounting. This result generally corroborates research in accounting and confirms the predictions of information‐quantity theory in psychology. In contrast, experiment 1 also shows that, when materials mimic the detailed documents common in practice, the results are different: Auditors confronted either with few or with many detailed documents prefer to search inconsistent documents first. This result confirms the predictions of evidence‐complexity theory in psychology and shows that, compared to the materials on which prior research relies, detailed documents, such as memos, emails, letters, and analyses, drive information search toward inconsistent evidence. Experiment 2 probes further and finds that auditors evaluate documents bearing notes inscribed after the documents were prepared to be more inconsistent with the prior‐period accounting, and that the dispersion in search behavior may be reliably conditional on the presence of notes.     

Portfolio efficiency with high-dimensional data as conditioning information

In this paper, we build efficient portfolios using different frameworks proposed in the literature and drawing upon several datasets that contain an increasing number of predictors as conditioning information. We carry an extensive empirical study to investigate approaches that impose sparsity and dimensionality reduction, as well as possible latent factors driving the returns of the risky assets. In contrast to previous studies that made use of naive OLS and low-dimension information sets, we find that (i) accounting for large conditioning information sets, and (ii) the use of variable selection, shrinkage methods and factor models, such as the principal component regression and the partial least squares, provides better out-of-sample results as measured by Sharpe ratios, implied Sharpe ratios, and higher certainty equivalent returns (CER).     

Testing the limits of structuration theory in accounting research

In 1985 I published a paper in Accounting Organizations and Society with Bob Scapens titled Accounting Systems and Systems of Accountability; understanding accounting practices in their organisational contexts. The paper suggested the potential usefulness of Anthony Giddens’ structuration theory for efforts to understand accounting in its organisational contexts. Rather than engage in a further review of the use of structuration theory in accounting, this paper sets out to test our original proposition as to the usefulness of Giddens ideas for accounting research. I explore three points of possible criticism in the paper. That structuration theory does not take the ‘agency’ of accounting sufficiently seriously; that Foucault and Lacan allow us to get much closer to the ways in which accounting information works back upon human subjects; and that Giddens and accounting share a lack of ethics.     

The impact of voluntary audit and governance characteristics on accounting errors in private companies

This paper examines the extent to which the audit and corporate governance characteristics of UK private companies are associated with defective accounting information. Despite the economic importance of private firms, relatively little is known about their financial reporting and governance characteristics. Using a large sample of UK private companies, we examine the effects of voluntary audit, board gender balance and financial expertise on the likelihood of errors occurring in published annual accounts. Our results indicate that audited accounts are approximately half as likely as unaudited accounts to contain errors. In addition to contributing to recent academic research in this field, our findings are likely to be of interest to policy makers, who are considering exempting more firms from mandatory audit. We also find that gender diversity among board members is positively associated with the accuracy of accounting information, though our primary measure of directors’ financial expertise has no significant effect.     

The effect of chief financial officers’ accounting expertise on corporate tax avoidance: the role of compensation design

Review of Quantitative Finance and Accounting - Accounting expertise is closely related to corporate tax planning, and hence, corporate chief financial officers (CFOs) with accounting expertise may...     

Can knowledge based systems be designed to counteract deskilling effects?

Recent calls in the information systems research community argue that we know intelligent systems deskill users, and future research should focus on how to design systems that do not deskill, rather than continue to examine whether the phenomenon occurs. This should be a wakeup call for public accounting firms focused on implementing restrictive audit support systems, which leads to de-skilling of novice accounting professionals. Our research focuses on redesigning knowledge-based systems to facilitate expertise development and counteract the de-skilling effects that result from use of such systems. Specifically, we manipulate the design of the system interface by providing information cues in a screen format consistent with expert knowledge representations and manipulate automatic provision versus voluntary use of explanations for users during task completion. Results show that after using the knowledge-based system to complete a series of reenacted client engagements over a three-day period, both the interface design manipulation and automatic provision of explanations had a positive effect on novice accounting professionals’ development of expert-like knowledge structures. The results of the study have important implications for the development of knowledge-based systems intended to support accounting professionals’ (and other knowledge workers’) expertise development processes.