Research on extended external reporting assurance: Trends,themes, and opportunities

The assurance of non‐financial information (NFI) included in extended external reports (EERs) is a global activity that has far‐reaching consequences for business, investors, other stakeholders, and society. EERs remain largely unregulated with few standards. Along with our companion paper (Krasodomska, Simnett, & Street, 2021, Journal of International Financial Management and Accounting, 25, 209), we contribute to the current discussion on EER assurance by providing an overview of the academic literature to inform the standard setting initiatives of the International Auditing and Assurance Standard Setting Board (IAASB), as well as the practice of assurance of EERs. We identify 121 articles on extended external reporting (EER) assurance published between 2009 and 2020 across 35 journals ranked A*, A, and B on the Australian Business Deans Council (ABDC) 2019 Journal Quality List. These articles cover archival, experimental, interviews, case studies, surveys, and content analysis research methods and serve as a possible input for standard setting activities. We document a rapid increase in this literature with almost half of the articles published in the last 3 years, 2018 to 2020. Finally, we offer ideas for future research directly linked to the proposed Guidance of the IAASB on EER assurance. We encourage researchers to engage in these and other issues of the IAASB’s Guidance to assist them with valuable input for their standard setting activities.     

The rational choice of not applying project risk management in information technology projects

The management of risk is considered a key discipline by the Project Management Institute and the Association for Project Management. However, knowledge of what needs to be done frequently fails to result in action consistent with that knowledge. The reasons for this seem to have received little attention. This study researched the degree of use of project risk management and barriers that prevent IT project managers from using risk management. Interviews and a survey were carried out. The results show that, in one‐third of cases, because of the problem of cost justification, no formal project risk management process was applied.     

Research in business service purchasing: current status and directions for the future

Management Review Quarterly - This paper provides a systematic literature review and a future research agenda on the topic of purchasing of business services (BuSe). BuSe purchasing has...     

Outsourcing via reverse auction with a built-in menu of change orders

Many firms invent and design products while outsourcing their production to independent contractors. We consider a dominant strategy mechanism that selects a contractor using a reverse auction, combined with a menu of permitted change orders from which the contractor can choose after updated cost information has become available. That mechanism maximizes the gain from trade, allows the firm to extract the second highest surplus, and induces the contractor to make efficient adjustments to output after updated cost information has emerged.     

The effects of Turkish accession to the EC on population and the labour market

Demography and the labour market are two important aspects that will have to be discussed in connection with possible Turkish membership of the European Community. The following article discusses these aspects primarily with regard to the situation in the EC and in Germany, which in the past was the main host country for Turkish migrants and will probably continue to be so in the future.     

Integrated reporting: background,measurement issues,approaches and an agenda for future research

We discuss the background to integrated reporting, a new reporting framework focused on firms’ future value creation narrative. We consider why integrated reporting is an area of interest for the accounting profession, accountants, investors, regulators and managers. We provide an overview of the integrated reporting literature, discuss measurement and research design issues to take into account when designing studies on integrated reporting and identify approaches and set an agenda for future research.     

Human appropriation of aboveground net primary production in Spain, 1955-2003: An empirical analysis of the industrialization of land use

The human appropriation of net primary production (HANPP) is an indicator of the human domination of ecosystems that measures to which extent human activities alter the amount of biomass available each year in ecosystems. This paper analyses the development of aboveground HANPP (aHANPP) in Spain for the period from 1955 to 2003. During this period, Spain's agriculture underwent a transition from a largely pre-industrial to a highly intensified production system. Changes in land use patterns include a reduction of cropland area and an expansion of forest area. Results show that aHANPP declined from 67% of potential aNPP in 1955 to 61% in 2003. Biomass harvest strongly increased from 68 million tons dry matter biomass per year (Mt/yr) to 106 Mt/yr, with nearly all of this increase occurring on cropland. Productivity losses due to human-induced land conversions dropped significantly from 112 Mt/yr to 63 Mt/yr, mainly as a result of the surge in cropland productivity and the increase in forest area. Despite its decrease during the last decades, aHANPP in Spain is still at a remarkably high level in comparison with the global average or other industrialized countries.     

Technological driving forces of LUCC: Conceptualization,quantification, and the example of urban power distribution networks

Consideration of technology is important for understanding the driving forces of human induced land-use and land-cover changes (LUCC). However, technological driving forces (TechDF) are seldom considered in quantitative analyses of LUCC because technology is difficult to quantify. In this paper we suggest addressing this difficulty by deducing quantification rationales from conceptualizations. We use the example of a comparative study of urban medium-voltage networks (MV networks) and urban land-use distribution to illustrate our approach. First, we outline how the effect of TechDF on LUCC can be conceptualized based on ‘contextualism’, a position concerning the role of technology in social and environmental change, and contrast this with the more common assumption of technological determinism. We outline further how MV networks can be conceptualized based on network genealogy, deduce a quantification rationale based on contextualism and network genealogy, and quantify MV networks. As a result of our case study we find that based on contextualism and network genealogy, the Tech DF of MV networks can be conceptualized as relational graphs of supplier–consumer interactions. Thus, the supplier–consumer-land-use interactions are specific for each context, for example for each city. A number of graph-theoretic measures of network topology provide a corresponding quantification rationale. Second, we use the results of a statistical analysis to discuss whether the quantification and quantification rationale for MV networks correspond to the conceptualization of MV networks based on contextualism and network genealogy. We answer this question broadly in the affirmative. Third, we discuss the issues that remain ambiguous for a conclusive answer. We also discuss the results of the statistical analysis in the light of comparative studies of urban land-use distribution. In conclusion, we regard combining conceptualization, quantification rationale, and quantification as promising in overcoming difficulties with the quantification of Tech DF in general.