Australian Accounting Review最新文献

The Colin Ferguson Oration is the address given to attendees at the annual Australia Accounting Hall of Fame dinner and presentation evening. It is an invited oration, whereby an eminent modern-day leader addresses the audience on matters at the intersection of business, government and the academe as they relate to the rich history, the current state and/or the future direction of the accounting profession. The oration is named in honour of Professor Colin Ferguson (1949–2014). Colin was the key figure driving the inception of the Australian Accounting Hall of Fame. In a decorated academic career, he worked tirelessly for many years and with great distinction at the intersection of accounting thought and practice encompassing auditing, forensic accounting and accounting information systems, so it was only fitting that this oration is named in his honour. This year's oration was delivered by Brad Potter, an Associate Professor of Accounting and a Director of the Centre for Accounting and Industry Partnerships at the University of Melbourne. Brad's research and consulting experience encompasses financial accounting and disclosure for both private sector and public sector entities. In particular, he has successfully managed and coordinated research projects involving the Australian Accounting Standards Board, National Water Commission, CPA Australia, the Institute of Chartered Accountants, Australia, Royal Botanic Gardens and the Institute of Public Accountants (IPA). This year's oration uses a unique dataset to gain insights into the development of the auditing profession, a topic of interest to academe, practitioners and standard-setters, and one that is eminently suitable for publication in the Australian Accounting Review.

The involvement of corporate CEOs/directors in not-for-profit (NFP) leadership is significant for corporate and NFP sectors. We refer to this activity as ‘benevolence’. These benevolent leaders bring synergistic effects to each leadership position. Although research has examined various characteristics of NFPs and corporate leaders independently, the impact of this combination of serving NFPs and listed firms is worth examining, given current debates on the form and function of stakeholder capitalism. We provide preliminary exploration of NFP leadership positions of CEOs/directors, from 2010 to 2019. Data were hand-collected from CEO/director biographies in annual reports. NFP roles were verified through public sources (e.g., Australian Charities and Not-For-Profit Commission). We identify meaningful patterns in NFP leadership positions held by the those in the top echelons. In evaluating whether benevolent leaders influence corporate ethical outcomes, we find a significant positive association. Our findings establish the foundation for future inquiries on the influence of benevolent leaders on many corporate outcomes.

This research explores how managers implement integrated reporting (IR) in their organisations and its impact on practices. We use 25 semi-structured interviews with top and middle managers of early adopters' private companies to examine the conditions under which managers initially made sense of IR long before its institutionalisation. Conceptually drawing from practice theory, we show how top and middle managers make sense of (practical intelligibility) IR and how this influences core operational practices. The analysis shows that IR practices can be more or less totalitarian, revealing the importance of the institutional pressures and teleo-affective structures held and promoted by the managers in charge. This research offers a counterpoint to studies that suggest that accounting has a limited impact when practised in a less totalitarian form. It also highlights the importance of affective aspects and the crucial role of managers in these aspects. Given the rapid changes in the regulatory context, understanding how managers make sense of integrated tools is of utmost importance.

This study attempts to shed new light on how the state, as a minority shareholder, can affect the tax planning of non-state-owned enterprises (non-SOEs). We examine publicly traded non-SOEs in China and find that non-SOEs engage in more tax avoidance when the government is a minority shareholder, indicating that minority state ownership has had a ‘shelter effect’ on tax avoidance of non-SOEs. Further analysis shows that the sheltering effect of minority state ownership is more prominent for firms located in areas with heavier social burdens, worse tax enforcement and firms with stronger incentives to avoid taxes. Furthermore, non-SOEs with minority state ownership increase excessive capital expenditures and employ redundant employees but still have higher firm value. Overall, our findings suggest the state, as a minority shareholder, shapes the tax-planning activities of non-SOEs in a ‘two-way favour exchange’ manner and it is beneficial for non-SOEs to maintain a close relationship with the government in China, where the government controls key resources.

Readability is a key issue in the presentation of hedging risk information. We use psychological theories and experiments to analyse and examine the effects of the readability of hedging risk and hedge effectiveness information on investors’ assessment of investments. We find that when hedging risk information presentation is more readable, investors’ judgement of the attractiveness of an investment is higher when hedging effectiveness is high than when hedging effectiveness is low. However, when hedging risk presentation information is less readable, there is no significant difference in their judgement of the attractiveness of an investment between two hedging effectiveness levels. Meanwhile, we further identify the mediation effects of the readability of hedging risk information on investors’ judgement of an investment's attractiveness. The findings of our study have significant implications for improving accounting information readability and enhancing accounting information quality.

This study investigates the relationship between the risk committee (existence and effectiveness) and the quality of integrated reports of the top 200 listed companies on the Australian Securities Exchange (ASX). A composite ordinal proxy for the firms’ integrated reporting was constructed using data that were hand-collected from annual reports. The main result reports that the existence of a standalone risk committee is negatively and significantly associated with the quality of integrated reporting; however, integrated reporting is positively associated with firms adopting a combined risk and audit committee and risk committee effectiveness.

Concerns about the success of professional accountancy in terms of its social dimension have been expressed in the literature. This study uses data from a questionnaire survey administered to a Portuguese community sample to provide insights for a better understanding of the social dimension of professional accountancy at the macro level. It examines how lay society in accounting posits accountants along the social judgement variables of status, competition, competence and warmth and tests these variables’ influence on accountants’ social image using structural equation modelling. The results indicate that status, competition, competence and warmth are all critical factors in constructing the social image of modern accountants. Accountants are perceived as modestly warm, highly competent and a cooperative lower middle-class group. These findings confirm the profession's difficulties in enhancing accountants’ perceived social standing and reinforce the view of limited social mobility in the accountancy profession. The high level of competence identified suggests weak social power in the case of accountancy. Future research may investigate how soft skills and networking abilities in the perceived prototype of competence can promote the higher social standing of the accountancy group.