The most influential journals in academic accounting

In this article we summarize the findings of articles that have ranked academic accounting journals, as well as articles that provide other bases for considering journal quality. Results indicate that five journals—Accounting, Organizations and Society, Contemporary Accounting Research, Journal of Accounting and Economics, Journal of Accounting Research, and The Accounting Review—rank consistently as the top journals in the field. However, these five journals differ substantially as to the numbers of articles they publish overall as well as the proportions of articles that are related to the various specialty areas of accounting. Further, the relative proportions of articles by area do not correspond to the numbers of individuals working in the specialty areas. Financial accounting articles appear in disproportionately high numbers for all journals except Accounting, Organizations and Society, whereas management accounting articles appear in disproportionately low numbers for all journals except Accounting, Organizations and Society. In all journals, systems and tax articles also appear to be disproportionately low vis-à-vis the numbers of individuals working in these areas. Auditing receives fairly even exposure across journals and vis-à-vis individuals in the area, except in the Journal of Accounting and Economics.     

Supply Chain Specific? Understanding the Patchy Success of Ethical Sourcing Initiatives

As a number of high profile companies have found to their cost, corporate reputations can be significantly affected by firms' management of sustainability issue, including those that are outside their direct control, such as the environmental and social impacts of their supply networks. This paper begins by examining the relationship between corporate social responsibility, reputation, and supply network conditions. It then looks at the effectiveness of one tool for managing supply network sustainability issues, ethical sourcing codes of conduct, by examining how the characteristics of three supply networks branded clothes, DIY wood products and branded confectionary affects the implementation ethical sourcing codes of conduct. It ends by setting out conclusions on why implementation of such codes has been so much more successful in some sectors than others and recommendations on effective approaches to managing sustainability issues in supply networks.     

Financial Expectations,Consumption and Saving: A Microeconomic Analysis*

We explore the determinants of individuals' financial expectations using data from the British Household Panel Survey, 1991–2003. Our findings suggest that individuals' financial predictions are influenced by both the life cycle and the business cycle. We also investigate the extent to which the accuracy of past financial expectations affects current financial expectations. Regardless of the accuracy of the prediction, past financial optimism has a positive effect on current expectations formation whilst past financial pessimism has a negative effect. We also explore the relationship between financial realisations and expectations and we find that expectations tend to fall short of financial realisations. Finally, we investigate how financial expectations influence saving and consumption. Our findings suggest that financial optimism is inversely associated with saving and that current financial expectations serve to predict future consumption.     

Strategy tools‐in‐use: A framework for understanding “technologies of rationality” in practice

In response to critiques of strategy tools as unhelpful or potentially dangerous for organizations, we suggest casting a sociological eye on how tools are actually mobilized by strategy makers. In conceptualizing strategy tools as tools‐in‐use, we offer a framework for examining the ways that the affordances of strategy tools and the agency of strategy makers interact to shape how and when tools are selected and applied. Further, rather than evaluating the correct or incorrect use of tools, we highlight the variety of outcomes that result, not just for organizations but also for the tools and the individuals who use them. We illustrate this framework with a vignette and propose an agenda and methodological approaches for further scholarship on the use of strategy tools. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Identifying Water Prices at which Australian Farmers Will Exit Irrigation: Results of a Stated Preference Survey

Among the measures taken by the Australian government to address one of the worst droughts on record in the Murray‐Darling Basin, exit package issues have rarely been investigated. A stated preference survey was designed to identify the range of water prices required for irrigators to sell all their water entitlements and leave the irrigation industry. Farmer participation responses are generally price elastic. There are large regional differences in price elasticities, but within a region there are few differences based on subgroups of farmers.     

Influential Leadership and Media: How a Single Statement Can Affect an Industry

Historically, the most powerful political and organizational leaders have been described as being charismatic. With technology's increasing impact on society, these leaders have widespread access to the masses. Utilizing charismatic leadership and media saliency theories, this study aims to analyze the impact that occurred in the Las Vegas convention industry after the President made specific comments concerning Las Vegas. These comments implied that convention spending in Las Vegas was wasteful, and resulted in the cancellation or relocation of over 400 conventions in one week. This research utilizes monthly, aggregate convention data from January 2002 to March 2014 to evaluate the impact of this comment empirically. Time series regression analysis was conducted to estimate the effect of President Obama's comment, controlling for other factors. The results suggest that President Obama's comments had a significant negative effect on both convention attendance and the number of meetings held. The findings provide insight into the effect of singular comments made by influential leaders.     

An examination of firms' employment costs

The existence of quasi-fixed costs of work may affect firms' desired employee hours and number of workers, which has important implications for the estimation of labour supply parameters. Firm-level data from the 1982 Employment Opportunity Pilot Project is used to estimate the importance to firms of employee quasi-fixed costs related to searching, hiring, training, and firing. Specifically, this paper examines how these costs affect number of workers and hours per worker, turnover, and vacancies, to the extent that the costs are determined by the firm's presumably exogenous industrial classification. An attempt is made to control for biases due to employee heterogeneity as well. Results show that higher costs are associated with lower turnover, fewer vacancies, and longer hours as predicted by a model of labour demand.     

Favor trading in public good provision

Favor trading is common. We do something nice for someone and they do something nice in return. Several motives might underlie such behavior, including altruism, strategic motives, and direct or indirect positive reciprocity. It is not yet well-understood how these fit together to affect behavior, how they interact in various institutional structures, and how they play out over time. We use a laboratory experiment to study the elements and dynamics of favor trading in a particular setting: the private provision of a public good. In our experiment, giving subjects the ability to practice targeted reciprocity by making a simple, low-cost change in information provision increases contributions to the public good by 14 %. Subjects reward group members who have previously been generous to them and withhold rewards from ungenerous group members. Strategic concerns cannot explain all of this behavior, and it must be at least partly due to direct reciprocity. When someone cannot directly benefit from favor trading, he gives much less to the public good. People thus excluded from the “circle of reciprocity” provide a clean and strict test of indirect reciprocity. Contrary to previous studies in the literature, we do not observe indirect reciprocity.     

Consumer response to norm-breaking pricing events in e-commerce

e-commerce allows for many innovations in pricing: some have been embraced by consumers, others rejected. Using an online experiment, we explore the role of norms in predicting consumer responses to differential pricing arrived at either by violating an established pricing norm (dynamic posted pricing; setting prices based on individual consumer demand) or not (two retailers pricing differently). Our findings support the critical role of norms, such that belief in the norm is a strong predictor of negative responses (i.e., fairness, trust, purchase, search and complaint intentions) and priming people to consider norms generally increases the negative response. We also find that prior trust in the firm acts as a partial buffer against the negative response to norm breaking but at a diminishing rate as prior trust increases.