Accounting Perspectives最新文献

This study is a literature review on corporate governance. Its objective is to consolidate our knowledge in this field, examine its evolution, and propose avenues for future research. In our review of the past and present literature on various governance measures and their effect on firm performance, we find that the empirical results are mixed for many of the governance mechanisms studied. We propose that these mixed results may be due to applying a “one size fits all” set of governance measures, which is not effective for all types of firms due to the complexity of organizations and the differences in ownership structures. We therefore explore more technologically advanced methodologies, including machine learning. We believe that this line of research could not only improve and refine existing governance measures but also allow us to better target which set of mechanisms might be appropriate for a firm based on its particular characteristics. We encourage future researchers in corporate governance to consider this approach in order to shed light on and fill the gaps in this area of research.

This paper assesses the current state of scholarly work on risk factor disclosures (RFDs) with the goal of synthesizing existing literature and stimulating further research in this area. To a large extent, prior research studies have examined different aspects of the disclosure of corporate risk information in annual reports. Beginning in 2005, the US SEC proposed changes to the disclosure of risk information in annual 10-K reports. The changes mandated large firms in the United States to disclose risk factors in Item 1A of their 10-Ks. While research studies on the impact of the changes are still ongoing, there are concerns among stakeholders that RFDs are vague, repetitive, and boilerplate. As a result, the SEC called on firms to ensure that they clearly disclose all the risks they faced. The SEC's call resulted in the release of an amendment that provides directions to further improve firms' RFDs. Using a systematic literature review method, this paper classifies the RFD literature into five research themes: (i) contents, (ii) informativeness, (iii) determinants, (iv) quality, and (v) effects on firm performance. The paper also reviews theories that have been dominantly applied in RFD studies and provides suggestions for future research.

When firms face pressures to reduce costs, evidence from the field suggests that they often reduce labor costs (i.e., wages, benefits, payroll taxes). Because of the prevalence of labor cost reduction in the field, academic research has begun to investigate the consequences of management's decisions to reduce labor costs. I provide a structured literature review on the employee-level consequences of three labor cost reduction practices: employee downsizing, furloughs, and pay cuts. My literature review synthesizes the labor cost reduction research through a lens of a discretionary management accounting decision to reduce costs and highlights opportunities for management accounting researchers to explore the consequences of labor cost reductions on employees' attitudes and behaviors. To synthesize the literature on labor cost reduction, I develop a model that proposes that management's labor cost reduction decisions, which include features of the implementation and contextual factors, influence employees' perceptions of management's and employees' attitudes and behaviors. Consistent with my model, my synthesis of the literature shows that labor cost reduction generally has negative employee-level consequences. However, features of management's implementation of the labor cost reduction practice and contextual factors can alter employees' perceptions and mitigate these negative consequences.

In recent years, academic researchers, policymakers, and the public have increasingly focused on the tax avoidance behavior of corporations. At the same time, firms are increasingly pressured to incorporate corporate social responsibility (CSR) into their decision making, leading to heightened academic interest in CSR. Given that opponents of corporate tax avoidance often argue that avoiding tax is socially irresponsible, we review the growing literature surrounding this issue. We begin with a theoretical review of how corporate tax avoidance fits into the CSR framework. We then review the empirical evidence on the interrelationship between CSR and firm reputation in the tax avoidance literature. We frame our review around three questions: (i) Do firms view tax avoidance as a CSR issue? (ii) Do stakeholders view tax avoidance as socially irresponsible, leading to reputational costs of tax avoidance? And (iii) Do firms change their tax avoidance behavior due to fear of these reputational consequences? Throughout our review, we provide discussions on the state of the current literature and offer suggestions for future research opportunities.

Subjectivity is an important element of employees' performance evaluations because its use can motivate employees and improve their productivity. Given this importance, it has been a prominent area of research within the management accounting literature. Using a structured approach, I review articles from 11 highly ranked accounting journals across 12 years with the objective of synthesizing and assessing the research to identify research gaps and opportunities for future research. I observe that two types of subjectivity are commonly studied: subjective performance measures and ex post discretion, across a wide range of settings. Research questions are investigated, drawing on theory from economics, psychology, and organizational behavior and using experimental, field study, survey, archival, analytical, and interview methods. My synthesis of the literature highlights many opportunities for future research to further the study of subjective performance evaluations. This study contributes to practice and accounting research by synthesizing and providing insights about the subjectivity literature as well as identifying opportunities for future research.

Understanding corporate disclosures is important for accounting researchers, as information plays a central role on financial markets. A generation of accounting and finance researchers has shown how readability of different financial and nonfinancial disclosures affects our understanding of organizational behaviors. We review 138 papers from 1950 to 2020 using the five Ws analysis method (Who, What, HoW, Why, and to Whom) developed by Culiberg and Mihelič (2017). We organize the literature into a comprehensive framework, the readability wheel, which provides an overview of existing studies, helps with understanding the complexity and issues of readability, and outlines an agenda for future research. We also use the readability wheel to discuss the evolution of these studies.

Internal audit provides useful and valuable services to organizations, and academic research has established its importance in improving corporate governance. However, the body of internal audit research is still relatively small. Indeed, there are many emerging, lesser-known topics and practitioners would like guidance. The primary focus of this paper is to make specific recommendations for future research based on surveys, interviews, and discussions with practitioners. We identify three broad areas for additional academic research: innovation in information technology, staffing and personnel development, and agile auditing. In each area, we describe current practices and discuss the relevant accounting literature, noting gaps where additional inquiry is needed. We also provide a list of testable research ideas to help inform academics about practice-relevant research questions that would not only add to the academic literature, but would benefit practitioners who seek guidance. We hope this paper will inspire more academic research that investigates important internal audit questions.

An international comparison of the accounting professoriate provides useful information to both key decision makers and individual faculty. We compare characteristics of the academic accounting professoriate in the United States and Canada. Our comparison includes the size of accounting departments (measured by the average number of accounting faculty) and the relative level of research versus teaching focus in accounting departments (proxied by the proportion of tenure-track vs. non-tenure-track faculty). We also examine the relative mobility of accounting faculty (proxied by the number of faculty employed in the same country where they received their final degree vs. the number of faculty employed in a different country). We examine the time it takes for tenure-track faculty to obtain tenure and the time for tenured associates to become full professors, broken out by obtaining their final degree in the same country where they are employed versus faculty who obtained their final degree in a different country.