Search results

The purpose of this paper aims to investigate whether the source of audit committee accounting expertise influences the internal audit function (IAF) effectiveness in the Tunisian setting.

In the analysis, the authors conduct a survey of chief internal auditors from Tunisian listed companies. Then, a multivariate regression analysis is performed in order to analyze the relationship between audit committee financial expertise and IAF effectiveness.

The findings of the present study show that audit committee accounting financial expertise is most likely to be positively associated with the implementation of internal audit report recommendations. The authors also find that only financial expertise gained from accounting education and experience (e.g. an audit committee member with experience as a certified public accountant, auditor, chief financial officer or chief accounting officer) is associated with a stronger implementation of IAF recommendations, but not financial expertise gained from work experience in finance positions.

These results may have implications for regulatory bodies. They can provide a better understanding of the role of the audit committee expertise in monitoring internal audit processes. The major contribution of this study is that the audit committee's oversight role is strengthened if the committee members have accounting and auditing expertise.

The study extends prior literature by providing evidence that the source of audit committee accounting financial expertise enhances internal audit effectiveness beyond the outcomes it has on financial reporting quality. The study also contributes to the ongoing debate in the corporate governance literature concerning the definition of the financial expertise of audit committee members.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate whether the characteristics of the audit committee (AC) chair affect audit report timeliness. In particular, the direct association between AC chair accounting expertise and audit report delay, and the moderating effect of other characteristics of AC chair on this association are examined.

To achieve the purpose of this study, the characteristics examined by this study are AC chair expertise, shareholding, tenure and multiple directorships. Furthermore, a sample of Malaysian companies during the period 2005–2011 and the fixed effects panel data method are utilized.

The results suggest that an AC chair with accounting expertise is associated with a reduction in audit delay. The reduction is more obvious when the chair holds shares in the company, but is weakened by longer tenure and multiple directorships. These results are robust after conducting several robust tests. Using mediating analysis, the authors also document that an AC chair with accounting expertise can enhance the timeliness of audit reports even when the quality of financial reporting is lower. The reported result is supported by additional analysis that finds that AC chairs with accounting expertise and AC chairs with accounting expertise and shareholding are significantly associated with shorter abnormal audit delay.

This study provides comprehensive analysis concerning the association between AC chair and audit report timeliness using a unique setting. It is among the limited evidence that reports the moderating effect of AC chair characteristics on the role of such chair on audit report timeliness.

This essay focuses on accounting expertise and what is happening to it as the millennium turns, drawing some speculative conclusions about developments we might expect in the near future. The positions taken are drawn from my research and teaching experiences. As this is an essay, citations are not made in the text but a bibliography is appended. Those sources gave me ideas, but they are not responsible for where I have taken the ideas!

The purpose of this study is to examine how the accounting expertise of audit committee members is associated with the disclosure of forward-looking information.

Manual content analysis is used to analyze forward-looking information disclosed in annual reports as well as gather data about the accounting expertise of directors. Regression analysis is performed to study the association between the disclosure variables and the accounting expertise of audit committee members.

The results show that the accounting expertise of audit committee members is associated with forward-looking disclosure practices, particularly with information of a financial and strategic nature.

The evidence has direct implications for companies in the selection of directors, as stakeholders may demand nomination committees to appoint audit committees with the accounting experts. They may also request regulatory actions regarding the structure of the audit committee, as these add to the evidence on the benefits of selecting such experts.

The evidence on the role of accounting expertise could also help the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) to narrow the definition of financial expertise to specifically consider accounting expertise, as is already happening in the EU context.

This paper extends prior research on corporate governance and voluntary disclosure by showing the association between the company having at least one accounting expert in the audit committee and the level of disclosure of value-relevant information.

Research investigating the association between religiosity and earnings management has concentrated on accruals-based earnings management, relying heavily on society’s religiosity, but it has neglected the interaction between religiosity and formal monitoring mechanisms. This study aims to examine how the religiosity and accounting expertise traits of top leaders are associated with real earnings management (REM) and how they interact to eliminate these practices.

Using a sample of 943 year-observations from more religious settings, this paper collects data for four measures of REM, and for religiosity and accounting expertise of audit committee (AC) chair and chief executive officer (CEO). Multivariate regression is used to test the study hypotheses.

The findings are consistent with the predictions that religious top leaders are not associated with lower REM, while top leaders with accounting expertise, in some cases, are associated with lower REM. This paper also finds that a leader with religious belief and accounting expertise dramatically lowers REM. These findings are robust under a battery of sensitive analyzes. In an additional analysis, this paper observes the interaction effect between these two traits is strengthened if the board chair is religious, and persists even for larger firms or those with a highly concentrated ownership structure.

The paper provides evidence that may serve a variety of decision-makers. It is the first to show that the interaction between religiosity and expertise is crucial in curbing REM. It also provides the first evidence for the role of the AC chair in relation to REM.

Recent reports suggest that employees have concerns about their company’s leadership and ethical environment. Despite more stringent regulations, top executives are continuing to pursue aggressive financial reporting practices by managing earnings. In this study, the authors find that individuals have more significant concerns about the workplace environment when the chief financial officer (CFO) manages earnings that result in personal gain relative to when the CFO manages earnings that benefit other stakeholders (i.e., employees and investors). Further, the authors show that this negative effect of earnings management for personal gain on workplace environment quality becomes more prominent when the control environment is weak and when the CFO possesses accounting expertise. The authors add to the body of academic knowledge on financial reporting, ethical leadership, and the workplace environment. Business practitioners can use our study to inform their decisions, particularly those about financial reporting and managing the workplace environment.

Within the emergent professional field of carbon accounting, we analyse the institutional work that gives birth to a nascent profession in a multi-actor arena. We therefore contribute to enhancing our understanding of the birth of professions – in their very first steps and infancy.

This study employs a qualitative approach. We collected data from 1999 to 2015 and conducted 15 semi-structured interviews. One of the researchers was active in the field for two years and participated in carbon accounting events in France as a “participant observer”.

Our research contributes to an understanding of the dynamic professionalization process in which the different actors mobilize both creative work and sabotage work. We further theorize how nascent professions structure their project around knowledge, identity and boundary work. At the same time, we develop the notion of sabotage work, which is comprised of two sub-categories of institutional work: counter-work and the absence of work.

To our knowledge, this is one of the first attempts to analyse the birth of an environmental accounting profession. We emphasize both creative work and sabotage work in the professionalization project. We conclude on further research that could be performed on environmental accounting professions.

This paper examines the historical background of accountingization, colonization and hybridization in the health services by exploring the relationship between hospital accounting and clinical medicine in Britain between the late 1960s and the early 2000s.

The paper draws on an analysis of professional journals, government reports and other documentary sources relating to accounting and medical developments. It is informed by Abbott's sociology of professions and Eyal's sociology of expertise.

The paper shows that not only accountants but also elements within the medical profession sought to make the practice of medicine more visible, calculable and standardized, and that accounting and medical attempts to make medicine calculable interacted in a mutually reinforcing manner. Consequently, it argues that a movement towards clinical forms of quantification within the medical profession made it more open to economic calculation, which underpinned hospital accounting reforms and the accountingization, colonization or hybridization of health services.

The paper demonstrates that a fuller understanding of the relationship between accounting and public sector professions can be developed if we examine their mutual interactions rather than restricting ourselves to analyzing accounting's effects on public sector professions. The paper moreover illustrates instances of intraprofessional conflict and inter-professional cooperation, and draws on the sociology of expertise to suggests that while hospital accounting reforms have curbed the power of medical professionals, they have also enhanced the power of clinical expertise.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the effect of audit committee (AC) characteristics (size, independence, the number of meetings and expertise) on compliance with International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) for related party disclosures (CRPD) in the South African context.

This paper is based on an analysis of the consolidated financial statements of 120 non-financial firms listed on the Johannesburg Stock Exchange (JSE) for the period 2012 to 2014. Panel regressions have been used.

The findings of this paper reveal that CRPD is positively influenced by AC independence. However, AC size and the number of AC meetings do not affect CRPD. Regarding expertise, the authors find that there is a positive and significant relationship between CRPD and have combined industry expertise with accounting and financial expertise. However, while accounting expertise by itself is associated with CPRD, industry expertise by itself is not associated with CRPD.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, there are no empirical studies that have addressed the effect of AC characteristics on compliance with IFRS for CRPD.

This study aims to analyze the effect of top management team (TMT) expertise on real earnings management (REM) and accrual earnings management (AEM) activities in companies in Indonesia by examining a hand-collected secondary data from non-financial publicly listed companies in Indonesia in 2016 and 2017. The expertise of TMT members is measured by possession of a master’s degree, understanding and experience of managed core functional areas, and possession of accounting certifications such as CA or CPA. The results of the study show that the expertise of the members of the TMT has no influence on the activity of AEM in companies in Indonesia. Meanwhile, understanding and experience on the managed core functional areas have a positive influence on REM activities through abnormal cash flows. Possession of accounting certification has a positive influence on REM activities in companies that are in accordance with managerial entrenchment effects, as well as a negative influence on REM activities in companies through abnormal discretionary expenses that are in line with incentive-reduction effects.