Cultural relativity of accounting professionalism: Evidence from New Zealand and Samoa

This study investigates the value orientations of two culturally distinct countries in the South Pacific, namely, Samoa and New Zealand, with a view to providing empirical evidence on the relationships between accounting and culture. It uses Rokeach's value survey (1973), Schwartz and Bilsky's motivational domains (1987, 1990), and Hofstede–Gray framework to establish the possible linkages between values and accounting professionalism. The results provide culture-related evidence that suggests the possibility for the existence of major differences in the levels of accounting professionalism in the two countries. This study may have implications for the application of International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) and the analysis of differences in judgments of professional accountants on measurement, disclosure, and ethical issues. It is the first substantial accounting study on Samoa.     

m-Double Poisson Lévy markets

We develop novel mispricing of markets under asymmetric information and jumps for informed and uninformed investors, called m-Double Poisson markets, driven by independent Double Poisson processes. In the special case m?=?1, called the Double Poisson pure-jump Lévy market, both types of investors hold the same optimal portfolio and expected utility, and hence, the informed investor has no utility advantage over the uninformed. For the general market, instantaneous centralized moments of returns are used to compute optimal portfolios and utilities. The mean, variance, skewness and kurtosis of instantaneous returns are reported using jump amplitudes and frequencies.     

A Psychological Contract Perspective of Expatriate Failure

The expatriate literature needs to move beyond maladjustment as a primary reason for expatriate failure. This article draws on the psychological contract as a valuable lens to observe changes in expatriate behavior that may determine expatriate success or failure on international assignments. Prior research on the expatriate psychological contract has focused solely on an expatriate's social exchange relationship with the assigning parent company. This article offers a dual‐foci perspective of the expatriate psychological contract and suggests that expatriates’ perceptions of psychological contract breach arise from two sources—the assigning parent company and the receiving host company. The conceptualization of breach with dual foci forms the basis for the proposed model of expatriate failure. The model proposes that differences in expatriates’ contexts will influence their likelihood of perceiving breach and that breach, once perceived, will affect expatriate behavior through its influence on sense‐making, affect, conation, and attitudes. The propositions developed in this article provide a foundation for future theorizing and empirical work on expatriate cognitions of psychological contract breach. © 2016 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.     

Regulatory impact on voluntary climate change–related reporting by Australian government‐owned corporations

This paper concerns voluntary climate change–related reporting of government‐owned corporations (GOCs). We investigate whether the Australian National Gresenhouse and Energy Reporting Scheme (NGERS), a regulation stipulating the disclosure of greenhouse gas emissions to government, subsequently made publicly available on a Website, has a positive impact on the voluntary disclosure of climate change–related information not required by the regulation. We find that implementation of NGERS has a positive effect on voluntary climate change‐related disclosures by GOCs. Hence, mandating disclosure of organisations’ negative environmental performance, such as greenhouse gas emissions, can influence voluntary disclosures of a broad range of related information particularly in organisations that are not subject to capital markets incentives. However, upon later but concurrent implementation of a Carbon Tax after a highly partisan and divisive political debate, climate change–related disclosures by GOCs reduce, consistent with the de Villiers and van Staden (2006) argument that when disclosures might increase awareness of sensitive issues, avoidance of attention to the issue might be the best strategy to retain legitimacy.     

The adoption of International Financial Reporting Standards in a non-colonized developing country: The case of Nepal

The purpose of this paper is to provide a systematic and rigorous analysis of the accounting environment in Nepal. Based on the accounting ecology framework developed by Gernon and Wallace (1995) and interviewing selected key stakeholders, it critically examines issues related to the adoption of International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) in Nepal. It contributes to the literature by examining issues associated with the adoption of IFRS in a non-colonized developing country. This study finds that the decision to adopt IFRS in Nepal is not driven by the needs of local organizations and is rather imposed by donor organizations such as the Asian Development Bank, International Monetary Fund and World Bank. The findings of this study provide evidence that the adoption of IFRS is likely to be problematic due to the country's contextual environment. Specifically, there is a severe lack of qualified accountants in Nepal and the accounting profession is not ready to adopt IFRS. The study also finds that social problems such as widespread corruption and fraud are likely to cause problems for the adoption of IFRS.     

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.     

Accounting Practice Harmony, Accounting Regulation and Firm Characteristics

Harmonization of accounting standards has been the subject of many initiatives taken at international, regional and national levels in recent years. Policy makers advancing this idea believe that accounting regulation harmony will lead to practice harmony. The literature in the area of accounting harmonization also generally relies on a similar belief.
Comparing accounting regulations and accounting practices of two countries that are pursuing a program of harmonization, Australia and New Zealand, revealed some association between the levels of regulation harmony and practice harmony. Although this indicates that regulatory harmony can improve practice harmony, the association is 'noisy', suggesting that there are also other factors affecting practice harmony. Evidence adduced here shows that accounting practice harmony is also associated with firm-specific characteristics.     

Voluntary Disclosure in the Annual Reports of New Zealand Companies

New Zealand is currently experiencing a liberal and competitive economic environment which has led to a greater investment interest in corporate securities. Likewise, New Zealand firms are also developing strategies to attract investors, for example, through voluntary disclosure of information. Therefore, the level of information voluntarily disclosed by New Zealand companies is of interest to prospective investors. The purpose of this study is to examine empirically the relationship between five firm-specific characteristics and the general level of accounting information voluntarily disclosed by companies listed on New Zealand Stock Exchange (NZSE). In this study the a priori expectations are based on agency theory. The five firm-specific characteristics examined are: firm size, leverage, assets-in-place, type of auditor, and foreign listing status. The results obtained from cross-sectional regression show that firm size, foreign listing status and leverage are significantly related to the extent of voluntary disclosure. In contrast assets-in-place and type of auditor are not significant explanatory variables. A study of this type would be of particular relevance to accounting policy makers because, inter alia, it helps them in (a) understanding corporate disclosure behaviour, (b) explaining why firms adopt certain disclosure strategies, and (c) developing a coherent and acceptable set of mandatory disclosure requirements.     

Globalisation and the Major Accounting Firms

Driven mainly by deregulation and technological change, globalisation is a common tendency among firms seeking better opportunities and lower costs. This paper discusses the nature of globalisation in accounting firms, in particular the "Big 5" (the paper was written before the Big 5 became the Big 4). The firms seem to exhibit two forms of the phenomenon: establishment globalisation (spread of a firm's establishments in different locations) and product globalisation (addition of new services in a bid to extend global reach). The paper examines the effect of globalisation on the demand for accounting information and how globalisation transforms the major accounting firms.     

Customer-focused manufacturing strategy and the use of operations-based non-financial performance measures: A research note

This note follows and extends Abernethy and Lillis (Accounting, Organizations and Society, 1995) by examining: (i) whether firms which maintain a customer-focused manufacturing strategy also maintain an emphasis on non-financial (operations-based) measures in their performance measurement systems; and (ii) whether such an emphasis is associated with enhanced performance for those firms. Data are obtained via questionnaire survey of a random sample of manufacturing firms in Sydney, Australia. Support is found for the hypothesized association between customer-focus strategy and the use of non-financial performance measures (and hence for Abernethy and Lillis) but not for the link to organizational performance.