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The authors examine how political players attempt to rationalise arguments for and against the expansion of auditing into governmental affairs, and how state audit authorities respond to politically motivated boundary work. This study is motivated by growing evidence of political involvement in attempts to both expand and undermine state audit oversight of government affairs.

The authors present an interpreted history (covering relevant events from 1995 to 2016) of political rationales and associated boundary work that led to the expansion of the Office of the Auditor General of Ontario's (OAGO) mandate to audit government advertising campaigns for partisanship as well as attempts to modify this new audit remit over time.

The authors reveal substantive, formal and practical ways in which political players sought to rationalise/counter-rationalise expanding the OAGO's authority to the unfamiliar territory of advertising probity. The authors show how such justification claims ebb and flow in accordance with changeable political interests, and how state auditors react to the fraught nature of politically motivated boundary work.

The authors conceptualise important forms of rationalising rhetoric (which cannot be reduced to expressions of neoliberal government) that can be mobilised to deem state auditor authority legitimate in overseeing otherwise novel, unfamiliar and controversial government affairs. The authors also reveal a hitherto unrecognised resolve in state auditor responses to political intervention and shed further light on generalised forms of rationale that can underpin boundary work at the margins of accounting.

This study provides a history and an inventory and analysis of existing public sector accounting principles in India from the time of independence from the British in 1947 through the economic reforms of the nineties. It also analyses the factors that are affecting the current evolution in governmental accounting from an ineffective bureaucratic system to an informative decision making tool, utilizing Luder’s Contingency Model of Public Sector Accounting.

Many studies of the budgetary process focus on the national government while ignoring the state budgetary process and state budgetary actors. Executive budget analysts and legislative budget analysts are important gatekeepers in the budgetary process. These actors were surveyed to ascertain what influences their decisions and to determine what responsibilities are included in their job duties. The results show that many similarities exist between executive budget analysts and legislative budget analysts. Legislative budget analysts are more involved in the budgetary process than many believe. Consequently, they play important “gatekeeping” roles in the budgetary process.

Although in the United States derivatives have been traded since around the middle of the nineteenth century, in the Czech Republic a derivative was an unknown term until lately ‐ or rather a term referring to someplace an unknown empire. The situation started to change roughly in the second half of nineties, when as part of macroeconomic shocks and government crisis in 1997 when interest rates increased significantly and the Czech crown devaluated from day to day. At that time companies felt first time ever how heavy impact an unexpected and not counted on change of market conditions may have on them. From 2001 to 2004 another unusual phenomenon occurred which shook the business sector; should a prophet has predicted it at the end of the nineties, he would probably be crazy. The exchange rate of dollar against crown dropped from over 40 CZK/USD to 20 CZK/USD. Companies that made contracts with their customers in dollars but with suppliers in crowns bore a great exchange rate risk and they frequently paid a lot when dollar dropped. At the moment we also have to mention world prices of oil and oil products which rocketed so high that nobody could have expected it several years ago. This paper focuses on the comparison of reporting of the derivatives using International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) in comparison with the Czech accounting legislature by the companies listed on the Prague Stock Exchange (PSE). Study draws the attention to check the differences in reporting of derivatives and also compares their qualitative advantages. Results of this study are based on the analysis of annual reports of the companies listed on the PSE. Any of analyzed companies didn’t allow all of the requirements of IFRS on reporting of the financial derivatives.

The aim of this paper is to describe, analyze and explain the level of compliance of accounting practices with legislation and generally accepted accounting principles (GAAP) within the Swedish water and sewerage sector.

The empirical data are based on a document study of the annual full cost accounting reports for the financial year 2010. We obtained complete data from 250 of Sweden's 290 municipalities. The data are analyzed by statistical methods. The explanations are based on an institutional theory.

Most of the organizations surveyed in this study had taken measures in line with the new regulations, but none of them had adapted fully to the new requirements. Thus, we suggest that the industry has responded to the new regulation by compromise and avoidance. The statistical analyses show that compliance with legislation and GAAP is associated with legal form, minority governance, fee, tax base, population growth and audit firm.

This paper provides insight into the factors that explain compliance with accounting regulation. Future research would benefit from researching the decision process when organizations choose to comply or not to comply with specific accounting regulations in the public sector.

Few prior studies focus on the actual compliance of accounting practices at the municipal level in relation to accounting regulation and the factors that explain the level of compliance. Knowledge of the factors that explain compliance to accounting regulation will benefit from future policy decisions on regulation and auditing of public sector accounting.

The Republic of Moldova is a small country between Romania and Ukraine, which for more than 20 years since its independence, is still experiencing a painful process of economic and institutional reforms. The chapter provides, against a review of literature and national regulations, an analysis and possible perspectives of accounting harmonization processes in relation to historical and cultural preconditions.

Based on content analysis of national regulations and economic conditions in the Republic of Moldova, with the support of a literature review.

Our findings demonstrate that some features related to mentality, which have been formed as a result of long term political and cultural closeness and negation of individualistic and independent thinking values, are determining many contemporaneous changes in all spheres, including accounting.

There are very few publications about accounting processes in the Republic of Moldova. It is important to analyze the case of the Republic of Moldova in the context of accounting transformation in post-Soviet countries, as almost all of them have similar historical and cultural implications. The research results may be useful for further studies about accounting evolution in post-communist states and also in the Republic of Moldova itself.

This study aims to evaluate the advantages and disadvantages of auditor mandatory suspicious activity reporting versus the exercise of professional judgement in the anti-money laundering regimes of the UK and the USA.

The research draws upon the following sources. Firstly, statistics provided by the UK National Crime Agency, 2019 (NCA) regarding suspicious activity report (SAR) filing rates. Secondly, anti-money laundering legislation in the USA and UK. Thirdly, statements made in the political domain in the USA, particularly those which raised constitutional concerns during the progress of the Patriot Act 2001. Finally, statements and recommendations by a UK Parliamentary Commission enquiring into the effectiveness of the suspicious activity reporting regime.

The UK reporting regime does not accommodate professional judgement, resulting in the filing of SARs with limited intelligence value. This contrasts with discretionary reporting in the USA: voluntary reporting guides and influences auditor behaviour rather than mandating it. Defensive filing by UK auditors (defence to anti-money launderings [DAMLs]) has increased in recent years but the number of SARs filed has declined.

The study evaluates auditor behavioural responses to legislative regimes which mandate or alternatively accommodate discretion in the reporting suspicion of money laundering. Consideration of constitutional and judicial activism in this context is a novel contribution to the literature. For its theoretical framework the study uses Foucault’s concept of discipline of the self to evaluate auditor behaviour under both regimes.

Accounting researchers have performed many studies related to public sector budgeting and financial management. Public sector accounting research seeks to explain the role of accounting and auditing in the public sector. For example, researchers examine issues such as (1) the use of accounting information by elected officials, (2) the demand for auditing, and (3) the determination of bond ratings. This review of the public sector accounting literature describes some of the theoretical foundations utilized in public sector accounting research and reviews a sample of selected empirical studies.

This paper aims to suggest that companies have ethical reasons to report about biodiversity issues and to investigate whether companies act on these reasons by examining the extent of biodiversity reporting in Denmark.

For the first purpose, desk research was conducted using consequentialist ethics, while for the second purpose, data were gathered from the 2009‐2011 annual reports, CSR‐type reports and homepages of 24 Danish large‐cap companies.

Philosophically, it is shown that biodiversity preservation and reporting is an ethical issue, even on the assumption that biodiversity does not possess intrinsic value. Empirically, it is shown that Danish companies score poorly overall, both quantitatively and qualitatively, with regards to reporting on biodiversity.

Even though the importance of biodiversity can be justified on different assumptions, biodiversity reporting is under‐researched offering potential for future research on a globally important issue.

Justifying the preservation of biodiversity from an instrumental viewpoint might convince accounting audiences that are sceptical of normative ethical argumentation based on intrinsic value. The relative lack of biodiversity reporting in Denmark shows the need for the State and accounting standard setters to address this issue together with business and other stakeholders.

Few studies theorize on why there is a need for environmental reporting. Those that do are based on non‐instrumental considerations. This paper gives philosophical arguments for biodiversity reporting normally outside the scope of accounting. It emphasizes how even those who deny that biodiversity has intrinsic value are morally obliged to account for biodiversity. The argument also provides novel reasons for why thinking about discount rates should be governed by pure preference considerations. Empirically, this is only the second paper examining biodiversity reporting and the first about the Danish context.