Contemporary Challenges: Spotlight on Climate, Cryptocurrencies and SME Practices

Our lead article comes from Australian Accounting Standards Board (AASB) staff (Li and Lee 2023). It documents how top Australian Securities Exchange listed firms reported climate-related risk disclosures in 2022. This is useful for comparing the disclosures of other companies of interest to you. While the disclosures have improved, it is not clear that users’ needs are being met. The authors suggest ideas for future research and call for evidence that will assist standard setters, regulators and educators.

One of the most difficult tasks undertaken by any accountant is forecasting. Our next two articles (Choi et al. 2023; Platikanova 2023) provide advice on what is needed to enhance forecast accuracy. They underscore the importance of superior internal information (Choi et al. 2023), and advocate for heightened competition among analysts that elicits better information (Platikanova 2023). The benefits include greater employment efficiency and better investment decisions.

Over the years, researchers have addressed the issue of audit quality in numerous articles. Howard et al. (2023) offer a fresh perspective by examining shareholder ratifications of newly appointed auditors. They show that Big N auditors are perceived favourably, even when their appointment is at the end of the year, whereas non-Big N auditors are not perceived favourably at any time, and even less so as the end of the year approaches.

One of the most challenging contemporary issues in accounting is how to deal with emerging financial assets and liabilities. Cryptocurrencies are certainly such an issue (no pun intended), and Jackson and Luu (2023) answer the following questions. How do companies report digital assets? What options for reporting are provided by current accounting standards? How can these standards be adjusted to provide more relevant and useful information to users?

In the final article of this issue, Ali and Mustafa (2023) present a comprehensive analysis of over 50 previous articles on accounting firms that specialise in SMEs. This is of particular interest to accountants working in this field, as well as researchers who are interested in contributing to this important and under-researched area.