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The aim of the study is to identify the latest trends in accounting forensic work in Australia by examining how accounting firms that specialise in forensic services meet the needs of their clients, and to inform universities on the appropriate curricula to ensure the knowledge and skills of future graduates meet industry expectations.

The methodological approach taken in this study was exploratory, and qualitative semi‐structured interviews were the primary data collection instrument used.

Findings from 32 interviews with Australian practising forensic professionals suggest that these services are broad and complex. Opinions differ widely on the best way forward for this area of the accounting profession. Both work‐based and personal attributes required by practising forensic professionals together with the wide range of complex services offered in Australia are presented in a posited model, providing a unique contribution to international forensic accounting literature. Forensic services firms require strong work‐based skills such as oral and written communication skills, technology and analytical skills, in addition to an accounting qualification, as part of their under‐graduate or post‐graduate degrees.

Perceptions were also that graduates require strong interpersonal skills, enthusiasm, intelligence and the ability to work independently and although this has been reported in the literature previously, findings from this study suggest there is still a deficiency in forensic accounting graduates skill set, particularly in relation to oral and written communication. The lack of an Australian‐based forensic accounting certification was also raised.

Both work‐based skills and personal attributes are presented in a posited model of the Australian forensic accountant, providing a unique contribution to international forensic accounting literature.

Typical accounting firms offer three types of accounting services to their clients: accounting and auditing (AA), tax (TAX) and management advisory services (MAS). Each accounting service has a different revenue persistence. Moreover, revenue persistence is affected by exogenous events such as new regulations (e.g. Sarbanes-Oxley Act [SOX] in 2002) and market conditions (e.g. the financial crisis of 2008). This paper aims to examine the revenue persistence of accounting services and how it is affected by SOX and the financial crisis.

Using 742 firm-year observations from 100 of the largest US accounting firms from 1999 to 2015, this paper examines whether revenue from AA, TAX and MAS has different degrees of persistence and how SOX and the financial crisis in 2008 change the revenue persistence of each accounting service.

This paper finds that MAS generates more persistent revenue than AA and TAX. SOX enhances the revenue persistence of MAS. The financial crisis makes revenue from AA less persistent than during the pre-financial crisis period.

This paper contributes to the understanding of the revenue persistence of accounting services and the impact of exogenous events such as SOX and the financial crisis of 2008.

This paper aims to analyse the extent to which undergraduate courses in New Zealand contain content on issues from the public and not‐for‐profit sectors, in addition to a for‐profit business focus.

The research is based on the premise that contextually‐appropriate accounting is required within the public services sphere where transactions are complex and ambiguous, have a long‐term focus, and where the government often performs a regulatory role. It is informed by a survey of educators, document reviews and semi‐structured interviews.

This research finds that profit‐oriented financial accounting education in New Zealand crowds out the teaching of public services content, especially when the same accounting concepts can be applied to all sectors. The imposition of sector‐specific accounting standards offers an opportunity to highlight public services, but its inclusion in a crowded curriculum may require coercion from the profession.

This paper offers a contemporary analysis of the focus of teaching in New Zealand at a time when accounting standards and auditing regulation is on the brink of change.

Examines the role of professional associations, governmental agencies, and international accounting and auditing bodies in promulgating standards to foster auditor independence domestically and abroad. Focuses specifically on the role played by the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants, the Institute of Internal Auditors (IIA), the Securities and Exchange Commission and the US Government Accounting Office. Also looks at other professional associations in banking, industry, and manufacturing sectors dealing with sensitive issues of auditors′ involvement in such matters as management advisory services, operating responsibilities, outsourcing, opinion shopping, auditor rotation, and other conflicts of interest which may impair auditor independence.

This study aims to explore how small and medium-sized accounting practices (SMPs) make sense of and position themselves against the changing demand for services. It is argued that changing demand for services from pure compliance to advisory acts as a trigger for sensemaking among SMP owners.

A qualitative multiple case study research approach is adopted, including semistructured interviews with key informants from seven Norwegian SMPs as well as document analysis.

The findings suggest that there is heterogeneity in the small practitioner segment of the accounting profession in making sense of changing demand for the nature of services. Three different situations emerged due to sensemaking, thus, the three distinct positions. Metaphors, namely, chameleons, turtles and bulls, are used to represent the positioning of SMPs. The sensemaking of actors as an adaptation led them to act as chameleons while distancing and resistance resulted in their positioning as turtles, and bulls, respectively.

Despite the richness of data indicating a clear variation in interpretation among actors, the study is case based, with a limited number of SMPs, and caution should be exercised when generalising its conclusions.

The centrality of people as a driving force for positioning among SMPs and diversity among SMPs in value creation provide insights for both SMPs and their customers.

This study highlights the meaning and patterns of value creation and the positioning of accounting firms according to their sensemaking within an under-studied segment of the accounting profession.

Increasingly, emerging information technologies such as shared software and continuous accounting are offering alternative ways to perform accounting tasks in a supposedly more efficient fashion. Yet, few studies have investigated how they affect the provision of accounting services, especially in the context of small accounting firms, which provide legal and tax services to entrepreneurs and businesses. Drawing on the service perspective, the paper critically examines how technological innovation challenges and reconfigures the co-production of accounting services in these firms.

The paper answers calls issued in prior studies to conduct empirical research on emerging information technologies for accountants. It focuses on the specific context of small accounting firms and draws on interviews with small accounting firms' managers (n = 20).

The study emphasizes five significant challenges that accounting firm managers face when using information technologies to support the provision of their services (ensuring reliability, factoring in their heterogeneous client base, repricing, training clients to use new technologies and promoting advisory services). Information technologies are shown to have a structuring role in the co-production of accounting services, as they lead to reconfigurations of the relationships between accountants and their clients. A range of four configurations is developed to highlight accountants' strategies to maintain collaborative relationships with their clients while integrating new technologies into their work practices.

By conceptualizing accounting services as a co-production process, the paper offers new insights into the implications of emerging information technologies for small accounting firms.

This article aims to focus on one of the most intriguing issues related to the public sector reforms: the accountability systems. In particular the paper aims to deal with the relationships between accounting‐based reforms, forms of accountability, and people‐changing or people‐processing approaches to service provision within Italian social work.

The paper draws on the accountability and people changing/processing literature to interpret and discuss the evidence gathered in an in‐depth longitudinal case study conducted in a social service public organization between 2007 and 2009.

The article reveals that the case study site had developed two distinct groups of services: “Territoriali” and “Residenziali”. “Territoriali” engage in a traditional mode of social care, they provide professional support to clients with, sometimes, quite intractable problems, and aim to modify clients' characteristics, behaviour and attitudes. In contrast, “Residenziali” deal with, and often outsource, more standardized care packages in the form of residential care, day care and some home‐based services. The accounting reforms were received very differently in these two areas. “Territoriali” was resistant to the changes but, in large part, “Residenziali” embraced them. The article then argues that this reflected the extent to which each service area was willing and able to implement a people‐processing rather than a people‐changing approach. The adoption of the people‐processing method had profound implications for the ways that accountability was both experienced and delivered in the services.

This article deals with the under‐researched area of social care. It integrates two literatures not previously articulated together: accountability and people changing/processing. A three‐year longitudinal study is presented, enabling an in‐depth appreciation of the changes affecting social services and the differential responses to accounting and consequent shifts in accountability in two contrasting service areas.

The purpose of this paper is to identify and analyze the literature related to accounting and auditing services quality.

The authors performed a systematic literature review that considered 22 papers on the topic. The authors also applied a bibliometric analysis in order to identify the main characteristics of these studies to discuss and provide research opportunities in this field.

The bibliometric results indicate that most papers were published in services and marketing journals. The accounting service quality theme has been rarely researched in accounting field. In addition, based on our review, it was possible to identify that most papers use quantitative methods, such as surveys. The papers' conclusions diverge from each other, demonstrating a still fragmented literature.

Taken together, the paper shows how accounting services quality is relevant and emerging topic that demands future research about accounting professionals' skills, their activities and how their customers perceive quality in an environment of constant change.

The analyses indicate that there are six broad areas for future research on this topic: successes and failures of accounting services providers; the role of “client centricity”; digital accounting services; services quality and accounting education; services quality when considering different types of accounting and auditing services and development of a measurement scale and a theoretical model for accounting services quality. This paper contributes for the ongoing debate about how competition, technology and innovation are changing the landscape for accounting and auditing services providers.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate user versus provider perceptions of management accounting system (MAS) services using the DeLone and McLean information system success model and the theoretical lens of social perception theory.

Quantitative survey data were collected and analyzed using ordinal regression. Qualitative interview data concerning user‐provider perceptions of MAS service information quality, importance, use, and satisfaction were utilized to corroborate and explain the data analysis.

The results suggest that there are significant perceptual differences about MAS service quality by users versus providers. For this organization, the paper identifies what these differences are, why they exist, and how organizations may identify and narrow identified gaps.

The paper is based on a case study that may not be generalizable to broader populations. It uses a cross‐sectional, correlational, self‐report survey, therefore is unable to make causal or directional inferences. Future research should assess MAS services in different organizations, industries, and cultures.

The paper is among the first to provide quantitative and qualitative evidence of perceived differences in accounting service quality, approaches to uncovering sources of differences, and steps that organizations may take to improve service quality.

This paper is the first to apply the DeLone and McLean information system success model in the context of MAS service quality. The paper examines perceptions of MAS providers and users to evaluate services and investigates perceptual differences across functions and at different organizational levels.

This paper aims to explore the relationship between market share and performance of large accounting firms. It also investigates whether the performance of international accounting firms is better than that of non-international accounting firms.

This paper divides the empirical analysis into two stages. The first stage constructs a multiple regression model to explore the relationship between market share, international operations and the performance of large accounting firms. The second stage uses the Tobit regression model to identify the determinants of market share of international accounting firms.

Empirical results show that there is a significant, positive relationship between market share and performance, and that the performance of international accounting firms is better than that of non-international accounting firms. Second, from the perspective of business characteristics, the scope of the most international accounting firms is traditional auditing services; namely financial attestation and tax business services.

From the clients' viewpoint, market share is one of the key indices in determining the quality of the accounting firms' service.

As the market for auditing services in Taiwan is saturated, in the future, the accounting industry will be concerned with non-auditing services. It is suggested that the large accounting firms could follow the demand changes of their clients: employ professionals in various fields to provide specialized services, adjust the range of transnational and management consultant services, and operate management consultant services more aggressively. These measures would have advantages in a fiercely competitive market.