Australian Accounting Review最新文献

This paper makes a number of observations on the International Accounting Standards Board's Discussion Paper DP/2020/2 Business Combinations under Common Control. I address issues such as the choice of the controlling party or transferred business book, the principles and objectives of the Discussion Paper, and the relationship with related party disclosures.

This paper discusses the controlling entity's perspective in business combinations under common control (BCUCC) and suggests some issues for the International Accounting Standards Board (IASB) to consider in its redeliberations on the preliminary views in the Discussion Paper. The paper explains the use of a book-value approach in practice, specifically by listed companies and pre-listing initial public offering (IPO) candidates in Hong Kong, the relevance of the controlling entity perspective and the importance of pre-combination information to users of the financial statements. This paper discusses the controlling entity's perspective in BCUCC and suggests some issues for the IASB to consider in its redeliberations on the preliminary views in the Discussion Paper.

We explore implications of asbestos for the measurement and reporting of liabilities, assets and expenses by diverse entities. We argue that entities in both public and private sectors are failing to recognise or appropriately measure liabilities related to asbestos and that the implications of asbestos for assets and expenses in financial statements are rarely reported. While we focus on recognition and measurement implications for Australian entities, we also examine relevant requirements in other jurisdictions and for sustainability reporting.

The role of management control practices in product innovation is a subject that has received great attention in management control literature. This research explores the relationship between target costing (TC) functionality, the quality of information systems (IS) and product innovation. We conducted an empirical study in 108 large industrial enterprises, which have research and development departments. The results show that there is a positive relationship between TC functionality and product innovation in terms of product newness and innovation rate. A direct effect of the quality of IS information on product innovation was not established but rather it was found that the positive association between the functionality of TC and product innovation is stronger in firms that provide IS information of higher quality as compared to firms that provide IS information of lower quality.

Accounting for exploration and evaluation (E&E) costs is one of the last major issues to remain largely unregulated by International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS), even though extractive firms are an important part of several big stock markets. Under a temporary permissive standard (IFRS 6), which has been in place since 2004, firms use a wide range of accounting policies for E&E costs, thus undermining comparability. We review the IFRS annual reports of a large number of firms, looking for different policies. We identify many distinguishable methods of accounting. Along with this, we discover that disclosures are often confusing, partly because of the lack of definitions in IFRS 6. To aid insight into this complexity, we prepare a classification of these methods and give real examples of each. We then assess the methods in the context of IFRS 6 and other relevant parts of IFRS. We find that nearly all the methods comply with IFRS. This leads us to a proposal for narrowing the variety of practice by withdrawing IFRS 6, and putting E&E costs within the scope of IAS 38 Intangible Assets. As part of this, IAS 38 could be further revised to extend the scope of capitalisation of other development costs, thereby addressing one of the criticisms of current reporting practice and bringing IAS 38 more into line with the latest version of the Conceptual Framework.

Despite the heightened interest in corporate social responsibility (CSR) in recent years, the question of whether CSR affects a firm's financial performance remains unresolved. Using a sample of Australian publicly listed firms over the period 2009–2015, we find that CSR enhances financial performance. The positive relationship is more pronounced in mining firms than it is in non-mining firms. However, the financial benefit of CSR is negatively moderated by the level of industry competition. These empirical findings remain robust after controlling for sample selection bias and endogeneity and employing alternative variable measures and estimation methods. Overall, our findings highlight the importance of industry characteristics in explaining the effects of CSR on financial performance.

We examine factors likely to influence charity managers’ propensity to manage their charitable program expense ratios. To this end, we survey 202 Canadian charities. First, we ask managers whether they think a high charitable program expense ratio is important. The results suggest that managers are less concerned with charitable program expense ratios when there are no regulatory restrictions for this figure, but they are more (less) inclined to post a high charitable program expense ratio when the charity depends on private donations (relies on government grants). We also find a positive relationship between education level and managers’ perception of the importance of having a high charitable program expense ratio. Second, for managers who believe having a high charitable program expense ratio is important, we use a logit model to analyse their propensity to manage the ratio upward. We show that improving the management team's reputation, avoiding losing the organisation's charitable status and retaining or obtaining government grants propel charity managers to alter the ratio. However, managers with more experience in a management position in charities and those with higher levels of education are less likely to engage in this practice.

This article points to gaps between academic research and the needs of accounting standard-setters. In part it attributes those gaps to the academic literature seeming to be inaccessible and oriented to ideas apparently unrelated to the policy-making issues facing standard-setters. As a means of partially reducing that perceived inaccessibility, the paper provides a way for standard-setters to identify and classify the various forms of academic accounting research so that they can evaluate their usefulness. Two prominent strands of research (agency theory/costly contracting and value relevance) are, as illustrations, analysed so that standard-setters can see how they might approach those strands. The paper suggests a users’ needs/demand driven approach to improving understanding, rather than a supply (by academics) driven approach. Finally, the paper explains how the performance metrics faced by academics can be inconsistent with the readiness expressed by standard-setters to have academics assist them. The paper provides a suggestion as to how there could be some alignment of academic performance metrics and standard-setters’ needs.

The first aim of this paper is to ascertain the extent to which Master-level accounting units across Australian universities incorporate five specific employability skills: digital technology and intellectual, communication, teamwork and leadership and management skills. The accounting profession considers these skills as the skills required of accountants in the foreseeable future. Using the International Education Standards as a benchmark, we review unit outlines and synopses to identify whether these employability skills are reflected in unit learning outcomes and graduate attributes. Our research indicates that too often not evident in the documents examined are exposures to 1) digital technology and accounting software and systems, 2) assessment of oral presentation capability, 3) training that fosters teamwork skills before completion of assessable team tasks and 4) situations that model and develop leadership and management skills. The second aim of this paper is to offer recommendations for the inclusion of these skills into curricula. Based on the literature and best practices identified in this study, we formulate 13 recommendations that we feel, if implemented, would remedy the issues uncovered and improve the integration of these skills into all accounting programs.

This paper explores how directors of New Zealand institutional investor entities perceive the role of audit committees in their investee firms. We find that perceptions of audit committee mechanisms by directors of New Zealand institutional investor entities are distinct in terms of: (1) the directors’ knowledge of audit committee mechanisms; (2) directors’ evaluation of the governance role of audit committees; and (3) whether and how audit committees in investee firms affect the investment decisions of institutional investors. We argue that the identities of directors and contextualising events may have contributed to the discrete views taken by the directors of New Zealand institutional investor entities. We use institutional theory and discourse analysis to design and analyse the interviews. Our paper presents evidence from New Zealand, where the adoption of audit committees has been largely driven by regulatory changes overseas. Findings from this paper may be of interest to regulators, researchers and practitioners to make informed comparisons with observations from other countries in examining the function of audit committees and in evaluating the implications of corporate governance regulatory changes. Regulators and other corporate governance stakeholders may benefit from this paper by reflecting on the reciprocal influence between an audit committee and the institutionalisation of governance practices.