Australian Accounting Review最新文献

Amid a global war for accounting talent, this paper extends our understanding of early career accountants’ (ECAs) career values and the alignment between their career expectations and experiences when entering the profession. Drawing on survey data from 305 ECAs and 165 managers/recruiters of ECAs in Australia, the paper uses social cognitive career theory and person–organisation fit theory to explore the dynamic interplay between individual and contextual factors and career values, career choices and subsequent career satisfaction. The findings emphasise the importance of both intrinsic, and to a lesser extent extrinsic, career values for ECAs, with variations by gender and organisation setting. ECAs and managers identified different perceptions of attractors to diverse organisational settings. While ECAs were generally satisfied with their careers, satisfaction varied by organisation type. Intrinsic career values were positively associated with ECAs’ career satisfaction, along with age and closer alignment between career expectations and experiences. Our analyses suggest implications for the recruitment and retention of new accounting talent and calls to engage with individual and contextual influences on career values, experiences and satisfaction. Specifically, the paper highlights how different organisations can tailor their strategies to better attract and retain early career accountants to support more sustainable careers.

The most cited framework for environmental management accounting to date was published in the Australian Accounting Review 20 years ago. This framework has until today considerably influenced the development of the environmental management accounting field. Set against new sustainability challenges it is now time to question if the framework remains relevant or if it needs to change, and in what ways, to address the contemporary challenges now facing society. Taking stock of environmental management accounting research and practice over the last two decades, a conceptual discussion is developed which is based on extant literature and the authors’ extensive experience of the topic. Thus, the paper looks back to reflect on the developments from the perspective of the framework and looks towards how environmental management accounting could be further developed in the future. It considers the current and future potential of environmental management accounting and managers to contribute towards sustainable development. This can be through: the development of new areas of application and thematic scopes targeting aspirational sustainability goals such as those represented by the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals and planetary boundaries; extending spatial scope beyond the organisation into supply chains and circular systems; development of new social and environmental measures of performance to complement economic measures; providing information specific to the needs and roles of new personnel using environmental and sustainability information; and building awareness and implementing new drivers for environmental and sustainability management accounting such as AI and chatbots.

This paper aims to provide background information about the International Accounting Standards Board's Climate-Related Risks in the Financial Statements project. Further, we provide some observations of related disclosures in the notes to the 2022 financial statements of the top 75 Australian Securities Exchange-listed entities. Overall, we find that there has been improvement in the disclosures and considerations of climate-related risks in the financial statements in recent years. However, the disclosures appear to be generic, which may not meet the needs of financial statement users. We suggest that further research is needed to provide evidence about how such risks are considered and disclosed in the financial statements and whether such information meets user needs. Evidence will help standard setters to consider appropriate action, such as providing educational material or amending the Accounting Standards, to enhance the quality of financial reporting.

Prior studies argue that high-quality internal information improves forecasting and reduces internal information asymmetry, and hence facilitates firms’ decision-making. Consistent with this argument, we find that internal information quality (IIQ) is positively associated with employment efficiency. Furthermore, we find that better IIQ leads to an improvement in employment efficiency primarily by improving demand forecasts. The baseline finding is robust to using a setting that exploits time-series shocks to IIQ (i.e., the adoption of SFAS 158) and other sensitivity analyses. Our findings add to prior studies on the role of IIQ in decision-making.

This issue of Australian Accounting Review updates readers on six of the key areas in which the world of accounting is changing: artificial intelligence (AI); the impact of reporting key audit matters; measuring inventories at fair value; the importance of staffing for audit quality; barriers to the usefulness of not-for-profit reporting; and setting an agenda for research into corporate human rights. In all of these areas it is interesting to note that, while the context and the language are changing, many of the fundamentals of accounting will continue to be relevant into the future.

Our lead article is the address delivered at the 2022 Australian Accounting Hall of Fame Awards held in March 2023. Weber (2023) gives us the author's view of the future of AI: what it can and cannot do, what humans will still be needed to do, and how the world of accounting will adopt and adapt but not be dominated.

Two articles discuss different aspects of auditing in our changing world: the readability and informativeness of reported key audit matters (Gambetta et al. 2023), and – perhaps not so much a new aspect of auditing as a timely recognition of what has always mattered – the importance of appropriate staffing of audits, and matching the staff to the client (Wu et al. 2023).

This issue continues to address topical questions for today, with an article that questions whether fair value measurement for inventories is value-relevant (Badenhorst and von Well 2023). Readers may be interested to know that while the fair value component of the balance sheet value is not found to be value-relevant, changes in both the historical cost and fair value measures are.

Gilchrist et al. (2023) show the diversity of the changing world of accounting, asking directors, preparers and auditors about factors that undermine the usefulness of not-for-profit financial statements.

Our final update on the changing world of accounting will break new ground for many readers. Accounting for human rights is an area of corporate social responsibility that has not received much attention to date, but will become increasingly important in the future. ElKelish (2023) identifies particular aspects of human rights that will require rigorous and practical research in the future.

This issue highlights that skilled accounting practitioners with an ability to apply traditional accounting tools to new situations will continue to be relevant in the changing world of accounting. It also highlights the need for careful research to better understand that changing world, and the value of conversations between practitioners and research on these topics. We hope that this issue of Australian Accounting Review will encourage such conversations.

This paper systematically reviews the body of literature on accounting firms that serve small and medium-sized enterprises. It seeks to present the status quo, reflect on inconsistent views, uncover gaps and suggest avenues for future research. Following a database search and referral scan, 54 empirical studies published in peer-reviewed journals are identified and used for the analysis. We group the sample studies into three clusters according to commonalities in the topics addressed. A further analysis of individual clusters enables us to conclude that the role of accounting firms as business advisors is yet to be substantiated due to the absence of high-quality research in international settings. It also becomes evident that although organisational and institutional factors affect the demand for services from accounting firms, individual factors act as conditions that activate the demand. Our review also reveals deficiencies in the majority of previous studies to incorporate potential moderating variables and mediating mechanisms while examining the relationship between service acquisition and expected outcomes. This paper contributes to the ongoing knowledge debates regarding the changing nature of accounting firms, client–accountant relationships and service acquisition outcomes by specifically focusing on accounting firms at the lower end of the professional field.

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 our colleague 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 Ron Weber, Emeritus Professor at Monash University and The University of Queensland who in 2018 was inducted into the Australian Accounting Hall of Fame.

It is crucial that as a profession we continue to bring together academe, practitioners and standard setters to explore relevant challenges and issues in our field. This year's oration addresses a topical issue, which is the likely role that artificial intelligence (AI) will play as we consider the future of accounting. We are absolutely thrilled that Ron's oration is published in the Australian Accounting Review (AAR), a journal that for a long time has occupied a unique and valued position in our professional landscape. We thank sincerely the editors of the journal.

At the outset, I'd like to indicate that I'm going to take a tack that might surprise you. Specifically, I'm not going to try to ‘wow’ you with AI (artificial intelligence) innovations that potentially will turn the accounting field on its head. Hyperbole tends to leave me cold, especially when it clouds deep issues that need to be addressed. And hyperbole about the latest information technology becomes dated quickly and sometimes appears quite funny in hindsight. Instead, I want to examine the likely impact of AI on accounting from a more philosophical perspective.

Let me lay a foundation for what will follow with two anecdotes

Here is the first anecdote. When I was studying for my PhD at the University of Minnesota in the mid 1970s, I had some involvement with several academics and students who were trying to figure out how humans understood language. Their goal was to build software that would understand natural language input to a computer through either voice or text by emulating how humans understood natural language. Some of you will remember that the mid-1970s were the days before personal computers, the worldwide web, and graphical user interfaces. Working with computers was still difficult! Yes, at the time, we were living in the dark ages!

Here is the second anecdote.

Recent years have seen developments in distributed ledger technologies, such as blockchain, that have led to significant growth in the number and type of digital assets available. In this article we review the current practice of the small number of firms globally reporting digital assets on their financial statements. We then assess potential treatments under current GAAP, namely as intangibles, inventory or financial instruments. Finally, we provide policy advice to standard setters, with a call to either develop a new stand-alone standard or to amend the definition of financial instruments to include cryptocurrencies, to allow greater comparability and understandability in firms’ reporting.

Recent years have seen significant growth in the number and type of digital assets available. We review the current practices of firms reporting digital assets. We then assess potential treatments under current GAAP. Finally, we provide policy advice to standard setters, with a call to either develop a new stand-alone standard or to amend the definition of financial instruments.

The extent to which financial reports are useful is of central importance in relation to the accounting standards that underpin them. This is as true of non-profit financial reporting as it is of financial reporting in the commercial and public sectors. In this paper we report on our findings related to a research project focused on examining the usefulness of Australian accounting standards from the point of view of non-profit directors, preparers of non-profit financial statements and their auditors. Undertaking a series of round tables specific to each cohort, we examine the question of who is responsible, for what and to whom in the context of financial reporting. Our research reinforces a number of issues negatively impacting the usefulness of General Purpose Financial Reports (GPFRs) in the non-profit sector. We draw particular attention to concerns around the financial literacy of non-profit directors, potential misunderstandings in relation to financial profitability, and complexity across a range of issues, including revenue recognition. Overall, the project finds that there are manifest specific issues and aspects particular to the sector and that simply adopting the same approach with regard to accounting standards as taken in the for-profit sector is insufficient to ensure the utility of non-profit GPFRs.

Undertaking round tables for non-profit directors, preparers of non-profit financial statements and auditors, we examine the issues negatively impacting the utility of General Purpose Financial Reports in the non-profit sector. We draw attention to concerns around the financial literacy of non-profit directors, misunderstandings in relation to financial profitability, and complexity across a range of issues, including revenue recognition.

Given the important role of individual auditors in the audit process, appropriate staffing is an essential issue in audit firms. Using unique audit data for both listed and private companies in China, we define the downward mismatch between auditors and clients as an inappropriate assignment of the engagement auditors who are supposed to serve only private companies, but sign the audit reports of public companies. We find that the downward mismatch leads to poor audit quality. The results are robust to various tests, including using alternative proxies, adopting the Propensity Score Matching (PSM) procedure, and controlling for auditor–client fixed effects and audit firm-level mismatch. Additional analyses reveal that the negative effect of downward mismatch on audit quality is less pronounced for audit firms with more education and training expenditures, with more informatisation expenditures, and with more partners available. Moreover, this negative effect is more pronounced when clients’ business is more complex. Our findings shed light on the importance of staffing assignment decisions within the audit firm.