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The purpose of the study is to evaluate whether the selection of accounting method used to value inventory increases or decreases the probability of a retail firm's ability to remain in existence.

This study employs a binary logistic regression model to predict group membership and the probability of failure. The study utilizes an unbalanced sample of US publicly traded failed and functioning retail firms over a ten-year period.

The results clearly support the conclusion that there is a difference in the probability of retail firm failure with respect to the accounting method used to value inventory. Merchants using a cost-based valuation method were 2.3 times more likely to fail than firms using a price-based method. The results also affirm existing bankruptcy literature by finding that profitability, liquidity, leverage, capital investment and cash flow are factors in retail failures.

The results suggest that traditional merchants cannot simply blame e-commerce or shifts in demographics for the retail Apocalypse; good management and proper valuation of stock still matter.

This study is the first to look at firm failure in the retail sector after the great recession of 2008, in an era known as the “retail Apocalypse.” In addition, this study differs from other firm failure literature by incorporating cost- and price-based inventory valuation methods as a variable in firm failure.

This study aims to explore the calculations and valuations that unfold in everyday practices within social care settings. Specifically, the paper concerns the role of accounting in dealing with multiple calculable and non-calculable spaces within the case management process. The study sheds light on the multiplicity produced in constructing the client as an object through the calculations and valuations embedded in the costing and caring practices in social work.

This is a qualitative case study in a Swedish social care organisation, with a specific focus on the calculations and valuations within the case management process. The data have been gathered from 20 interviews with social workers, team leaders, managers and a management accountant, along with more than 36 h of on-site observations and internal organisational documents, including policy documents, guidelines and procedural lists.

The case management process involves interconnected practices in constructing the client as an object. While monetary calculations and those associated with worth are embedded in costing and caring practices, they interact and proliferate in various ways. Three elements are found: transforming service units into centres of calculation, constructing the accounts of calculation and establishing the cost-value calculations. Calculations and valuations are actuated in these elements in describing the need, matching the case with the unit and caseworker and deciding on the measure. The objectification of the client entails the construction of accounts, for example, ongoing qualifications, categorisations and groupings of units, juridical frameworks, case types, needs and measures. As an object multiple, the client becomes different objects at different stages, challenging the establishment accounts, and thus producing a range of calculations and valuations. Such diversity in calculations concomitantly produces more calculations to represent the present and absent multiple facets of the client, resulting in a multiplicity of costing and caring.

The study might flag up for practitioners the possible risks and unintended consequences of depending too much on fixed guidelines and (performance) indicators since social work involves object multiples, which are always in diversity and changeable in situ. Considering the multiple dimensions within the specific contexts could thus be helpful to mitigate such risks in the evaluation of social care processes and the design of (performance) metrics.

This study contributes to the literature on accountingisation by extending the concept as a part of ongoing organisational practices, materialised within the calculations of money and worth in everyday social care. Besides demonstrating their reconsolidation, this study shows a multiplicity of costing and caring practices depending on the way the client is constructed, resulting in the proliferation of accounting(s) and ultimately accountingisation of social work.

Traditionally in the UK, accountants and their concepts of value have held little interest for those involved with the technical aspects of property management. Indeed, property valuers and accountants have traditionally adopted differing professional approaches towards the concept of valuation, despite nominally agreed valuing practices dating back to 1974. Most particularly, notwithstanding these agreements, the accounting profession has regarded the theory of property valuation for company accounts as a monopoly of its professional domination of the creation and implementation of accounting standards. Because of the lack of a codified conceptual framework, property assets were regarded identically to other assets. Equally, property managers attended to technical, infrastructural and legal aspects of managing properties. Examined in this paper, the development process behind Financial Reporting Standard 15: Tangible Fixed Assets (FRS 15) provided a realistic and fundamental shift of attitude. Not only were the opinions of valuers actively sought over the issue, but also the final standard adopted the definitions of value created by The Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors (RICS). Moreover, property assets now figure prominently in financial statements and so impinge directly on the net asset value and borrowing capability of the firm. Property management and modes of holding property have become central to running the business. This paper examines some of the arguments presented within the discussion process undertaken in the creation of FRS 15, highlighting the different approaches to the issue, and noting the likely negotiations to the standard to follow.

This paper debates the key concepts of fair value, value in use and existing use, as they relate to the valuation of owner‐occupied property assets. Changes to the professional body regulatory and advisory frameworks (International Valuation Standards Committee (IVSC), the European Group of Valuers’ Association (TEGoVA) and the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors (RICS)) controlling the valuation of fixed assets for balance‐sheet have taken place. These, it argues, require valuers to re‐appraise the role of existing use value (EUV) as an acceptable valuation concept. The treatment of owner‐occupied property differs with the IVSC no longer recognising EUV, which it holds to be contrary to the principles of fair value, as enshrined within International Accounting Standards. Yet, the basis is still recognised by TEGoVA, which also espouses fair value, whereas the RICS prefer the value to the business model. The crux therefore lies in the interpretation of fair value. This paper argues for the abandonment of EUV in UK and European standards, to fall in line with International Standards. It is contended that, if market value or value in use is the only acceptable approach to accounting valuations, this will have implications for corporate entities and may give their advisers some practical problems. If EUV is abandoned, it also calls into question the appropriateness of DRC (depreciated replacement cost) as a valid surrogate of market value or EUV. The paper contends that fair value embraces both value in exchange and value in use. It argues that EUV fulfils little useful purpose and calls for its abandonment and for the development of an agreed methodology for establishing value in use. In the quest for this it suggests that there would be merit in re‐exploring the notion of going concern value, which was effectively written out of UK practice with the introduction of RICS guidance.

This study aims to test empirically the validity of the accounting valuation model that is based on earnings and book values for loss‐reporting firms under a conservative accounting regime.

The empirical tests are performed by employing returns models on data derived from non‐financial firms listed on the Athens Stock Exchange for the period 1992‐2000.

The empirical results suggest that there is no unique concept of income, which is applicable, for valuation purposes, in all circumstances. Total income may be the appropriate income concept to use for the valuation of profit reporting firms but not for loss‐reporting ones; for loss‐reporting firms, ordinary income appears to be a more useful concept for valuation purposes. Extraordinary income was also found to be value relevant. Further, different versions of the accounting valuation model appear to be more relevant for different groups of firms (groups defined in terms of various firm characteristics, such as: size, growth opportunities and riskiness.

The study examines the informational content of the various earnings and loss items in the income statement and provides conclusions that are useful for standard setters, accounting policy makers and market participants.

It provides further evidence on the value relevance of losses, as opposed to that of earnings. It coincides with the development of a new project initiated by the International Accounting Standards Board, i.e. “Reporting Comprehensive Income”, concerning the content of the income statement. The analysis is carried in an accounting environment that adopts only historic cost accounting for the recording and measurement of assets and liabilities, revenues and expenses.

This article seeks to unravel the mechanisms through which financial actors agreed upon a sustainability accounting standard without financializing social and environmental issues, i.e. assigning a monetary value to sustainability.

The article examines the Reporting and Assessment Framework created by the United Nations Principles for Responsible Investment (UN-PRI), the leading reporting sustainability framework in the asset management industry. It relies on a longitudinal case study that draws upon interviews, participant observation, and archival data.

The article demonstrates that the conception of the framework was a funnelling process of sustainability valuation comprising two co-constituted mechanisms: a process of valorization – judging what is deemed of value – and a process of evaluation – agreeing on how to assess value. This valuation process was unfolded by creating the framework, thanks to two enabling conditions: the creation of non-prescriptive evaluative criteria that avoided financialization and the valuation support of an enabling organization.

The article helps understand how an industry can encompass the diversity of motives and practices associated with the adoption of sustainability by its economic actors while suggesting a common framework to report on and assess those practices. It uncovers alternatives to the financialization process of sustainability accounting standards. The article also offers insights into the advantages and inconveniences of such a framework. The article enriches the literature in the sociology of valuation, financialization, and sustainability accounting.

The survival rate of newly listed firms is low, and there is evidence of a surge of poorly performing new listed firms leading up to the crash of the dot.com bubble. The author investigates this phenomenon and analyzes investors' ability to understand the quality of accounting information and to adjust their expectations.

The author employs the dividend discount model in conjunction with clean surplus accounting discussed by Ohlson (1995) to compare the value relevance of earnings and research and development (R&D) expenditures for short and longer listed National Association of Security Dealer Automated Quotations (NASDAQ) firms between 1980 and 2014. The author also uses univariate tests and logistic regression to analyze both recently listed and short-listed firms. In this analysis, the author compares the differences in investors' expectations for the first five years for both types of firms.

The author provides convincing evidence that markets clearly placed lower valuation weights on accounting earnings and R&D expenditures for short-listed firms on NASDAQ. Market participants originally had high expectations for these ventures. But, they gradually understood the lower quality of accounting information and adjusted their expectations downward.

The author’s results show that optimistic expectations along with easy equity financing created a surge of new listings. My analysis of the interplay between the quality of accounting information and investors' expectations indicates a negative spillover effect where investors are overoptimistic about firms that rode on waves of new listings backed by liberal financing. The author shows that analysis of Tobin's Q and negative earnings can separate ill-prepared from longer-listed firms.

This study examines the value relevance of earnings and Book values derived under the Kuwaiti accounting system that assures a complete compliance with the International Accounting Standards. Using a valuation model provided by Ohlson (1995), the study uses statistical association between stock prices and both earnings and book values to measure value‐relevance of the accounting system. The study also compares the incremental explanatory power of earnings and book values and examines some conditions under which earnings or book values would explain a relatively higher proportion of the variation of stock prices. The results show that earnings and book values jointly and individually are positively and significantly related to stock prices. The incremental information content of earnings is greater than that of book values. Earnings become less value‐relevant and book values more so as firms experience negative earnings. The best fit for the model was obtained for the industrial and food sectors followed by service and financial institutions. Earnings add more to the overall explanatory of the valuation model than book values for financial institutions, services, investments and real estate sectors; whereas book values have superiority only for the industrial sector. The results of our study are generally consistent with the results obtained from U.S. and other developed markets except for the fact that the incremental information content of earnings is greater than that of book values.