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The purpose of this paper is to contribute to a better, empirically grounded and theoretically informed understanding of data analytics (DA) use and nonuse in accounting for decision-making. To that end, it explores the links between accounting logic, commercial logic and DA use in financial due diligence (FDD).

The paper reports the findings of a case study of DA use in the FDD practice of a Big Four accounting firm in Sweden (Pseudonym: DealCo). The primary data comprises semistructured interviews, observations and additional meetings. Institutional logics is mobilized as method theory.

First, accounting logic and commercial logic both drove and hindered DA use in DealCo’s FDD practice in different ways. Second, conflicting prescriptions for DA use existed mostly within commercial logic rather than between accounting logic and commercial logic. Third, accounting logic and commercial logic, as perceptual and conceptual filters, seemed to shape DealCo’s advisors’ understanding of DA and give rise to an efficiency-centric DA logic. This logic, in turn, as a high-level model of how to use DA in the context of FDD, governed DA use broadly.

The paper draws attention to direct and indirect links between accounting logic and commercial logic, on the one hand, and DA conceptions and use, on the other hand. It, thereby, advances prior theorization of DA use in accounting for decision-making.

The paper investigates the relationship between accounting and promises in the context of digital change.

Relying on emergent literature on accounting and promises, a qualitative field study has been conducted covering 57 interviews with municipal directors, digitalization strategists, administration managers and CFOs in a Swedish region consisting of 13 municipalities.

The paper provides insights into how municipalities draw on accounting in attempts to reconstruct promissory narratives of the digital. By highlighting two contrasting cases, we show how this can involve practices of either restoration or transformation. Likewise, we find that attempts to restore promises can sometimes have unanticipated effects, in our case a transformation of the promise instead.

We introduce a “promise” lens to the literature on accounting and digital change and empirically describe how accounting is implicated in shaping promises in the context of public sector digital change.

This study investigates the progress of the Broad-Based Black Economic Empowerment (B-BBEE) Act 2003, and its associated Chartered Accountancy Profession Sector Code. In doing so, we explore why B-BBEE affirmative action has not yet achieved the Code's representational intentions, including systemic subtleties inhibiting this success.

Using semi-structured interviews, we explore the lived experiences of Black aspirant Chartered Accountants (CAs) undertaking articles in global audit firms. The experiences are thematically analysed, embracing a comprehensive theoretical approach that encompasses professional and social closure, as well as boundary work, to adequately understand why affirmative transformational endeavours persistently face uphill tasks. The utilisation of multifaceted theorisation is deemed essential for a more nuanced portrayal of the intricacies inherent in the CA profession in South Africa.

The narratives presented by Black aspiring CAs unveil a complex web of exclusionary practices entrenched in institutionalised historical, professional, and social contexts. The multifaceted nature of closures, symbolised by racial, cultural, and linguistic factors, significantly impacts the experiences of Black trainees. The findings furthermore show that deliberate intervention beyond compliance with the Government’s framework is necessary for meaningful transformation.

The paper brings to the fore the current lived experiences of underrepresented Black CAs in global auditing firms. In doing so, these firms are empowered with incremental knowledge of the prevailing challenges and can thus make tangible improvements towards authentic transformation. Additionally, the results help in tracking the advancements made through affirmative action, acting as a feedback loop for future developments in transformation policy.

Contributing to the critical accounting literature, our study extends scholarship on the barriers faced by CAs and the limitations in their capacity to challenge these obstacles within global audit firms. We offer practical policy-focused recommendations that, if implemented, can address the complex socio-political realities obstructing the success of affirmative action. By sharing first-hand accounts, our study aims to empower auditing firms and other related stakeholders with actionable insights, enabling them to improve genuine inclusivity and foster equitable representation in the accounting profession.

This paper aims to unravel the puzzle that the United Kingdom’s high-quality government accounting and fiscal architecture is associated with low-quality outcomes, including poor productivity growth, high public debt, public services which do not meet citizen expectations and historically high levels of taxation. It contributes to public sector accounting research in the fields of fiscal transparency and governance.

This paper uses Miller and Power’s (2013) economization framework and Dunsire’s (1990) concept of collibration to explain why being a global leader in public sector accounting reform and in fiscal and monetary architecture has not protected the UK from weak governance. The intersection of economization’s roles of accounting with modes of government accounting clarifies the puzzle.

Whereas accruals government accounting contributes to fiscal transparency, this is not a sufficient condition for well-judged policy and its effective application. Collibration is the dominant mechanism for mediation in the fiscally centralized UK, but it has failed to deliver stable outcomes, in part because Parliament is limited in its ability to hold back inappropriate behaviour by the Executive. Subjectivization has disrupted adjudication because governments at all levels resist constraints on their behaviour, with unpredictable and often damaging consequences.

This paper provides insights through the combined lens of economization and modes of government accounting, demonstrating the practical value of this conceptualization. Although some causes for unsatisfactory outcomes are specific to the UK, there are cautions for accounting and fiscal reformers in other countries, such as Member States of the European Union.

Based on the comprehensive definition of accounting of Carnegie et al. (2021a, 2021b), this study examines how visual imagery can expand and enhance accountability to stakeholders and create room for more human-centric accounts. This study aims to understand how this use can elucidate and prompt interpretations of rhetorical features aimed at envisioning legitimacy and being perceived as accountable.

Following a methodological interpretative approach, this paper draws on a qualitative case study based on a Portuguese charity, the Santa Casa da Misericordia do Porto, from 2019 to 2021, including the COVID-19 crisis period, analysing visual rhetoric in annual and sustainability reports.

The study illuminates how the visual images interact and evoke shared cultural understandings, shaping meanings that can symbolically foster organisational legitimacy and envisions accountability. These symbolic and emotive elements capture and make visible social impacts and reflect broader societal concerns.

The study of visual images within the accounting context can enrich the understanding of accounting as a technical, social and moral practice, while expanding the scope of accountability and promoting a more human-centred approach to accounting. It also adds to the literature on the persuasiveness and rhetoric of accounting and reporting visualisations and on charities’ accountability in crisis period.

This article centres on the pertinence of redefining accounting for tomorrow, particularly for facilitating the attainment of the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and, thereby, for shaping a better world. In aspiring for accounting to reach its full potential as a multidimensional technical, social and moral practice, this paper aims to focus on ideas, initiatives and proposals for realising accounting’s future potential and responsibilities.

The study deploys a further developed “strategic implementation framework”, initially proposed by Carnegie et al. (2023), with an emphasis on accounting serving “the public interest” so as “to enable the flourishing of organisations, people and nature” (Carnegie et al., 2021a, p. 69; 2021b). It depicts strategies towards the future of accounting and the world.

Significant opportunities are identified for accounting and accountants, working closely with a diversity of stakeholders, to become alert to and cognisant of the nature, roles, uses and impacts of accounting. The evidence presented notes a predominant inattention of accounting and accountants to the SDGs despite the deteriorating state of our social and natural environment.

Whilst this article examines other articles in this special issue (SI), there is no substitute for carefully reading, reflecting on and deliberating upon these articles individually.

The time for accounting to focus on creating a better world can no longer be extended. Accounting’s full potential will not be realised by remaining in a narrow and complacent, technicist state.

New digital technologies are reshaping the business landscape and accounting work. This paper aims to investigate how incorporating more data and new data analytics (DA) tools impacts the role and use of judgment in financial due diligence (FDD).

The paper reports findings from a field study at a Big Four accounting firm in Sweden (“DealCo”). The primary data includes semi-structured interviews, observations and other meetings. Theoretically, it draws on Dewey’s The Logic of Judgments of Practise and Logic: The Theory of Inquiry and distinguishes between theoretical (what is probably true) and practical judgment (what to do).

In DealCo’s FDD practice, using more data and new DA tools meant that the realm of possibility had expanded significantly. To manage the newfound abundance and to use DA effectively, DealCo’s advisors invoked practical and theoretical judgments in different stages and areas of the data-driven FDD. The paper identifies four critical uses of judgment: Setting priorities and exercising restraint (practical judgment) and forming hypotheses and doing sense checks (theoretical judgment). In these capacities, practical judgment and theoretical judgment were essential in transforming raw data into actionable insights and, in effect, an indeterminate situation into a determinate one.

The study foregrounds the practical dimension of knowledge production for decision-making and contributes to a better understanding of the role, use and importance of accounting professionals’ judgment in a data-driven world.

This paper analyzes the ways in which accounting enables operations managers to enter and perform multiple roles in their interplay with organizational groups on the shop floor and in management, and the associated negotiations that operations managers have with “the self.”

Using field-based studies in a mining organization, the study draws on Goffman’s backstage–frontstage metaphor to analyze how operations managers enter and perform several roles with the aid of accounting.

The findings show that accounting legitimizes operations managers when they cross organizational boundaries, as accounting gives them an “entry ticket” that legitimizes their presence with the group. Accounting further allows operations managers to embrace more than one role by “putting on a mask” to become an outsider or insider in relation to a group. In performing their roles, operations managers exhibit varying attributes and knowledge. Accounting can thereby be withheld from, or shared with, organizational groups. The illusion of accounting as deterministic presented frontstage is not necessarily negotiated that way backstage. Rather, alternatives discussed backstage often become silenced in the frontstage performance. The study concludes that operations managers cross boundaries, embrace roles and exert agency as they navigate with accounting, enrolling it into their performance simultaneously as they backstage reflect upon accounting and its role for their everyday work.

This study relies on the frontstage/backstage metaphor to visualize the discrepancies in how accounting is enrolled into role performances and how seemingly categorical fronts do not necessarily share that dominant position backstage.

This study aims to explore natural resources from a public sector accounting perspective, focusing on their definitions, classifications, recognition criteria and disclosure requirements provided by different standard-setters and regulators at both international and national levels.

By reviewing accounting frameworks for natural resources, this study extrapolates accounting dilemmas around the debate on natural resource accounting, using the dialogic accounting perspective as a theoretical framework.

Natural resources cannot be defined as a single category. Various categories have different characteristics, requiring different standards to recognize multiple orientations. This avoids monetary reductionism. Furthermore, uncertainty, both in existence and measurement, may disqualify some of these resources from being considered assets. Perhaps, concentrating on the flow of services derived from natural resources is better than focusing on their valuation. This may lead to a split-asset approach (flows and underlying assets) for certain resources. This study’s findings indicate that public-sector entities should consider preparing a separate non-financial report regarding the management of natural resources with the objective of maintaining inter-generational equity.

This study contributes to the debate on natural resources from an accounting and reporting perspective, highlighting the importance of holding public-sector entities accountable for the use of natural resources.

This paper uses test panel data for the biggest companies listed on the boards of directors of the Palestine Stock Exchange from 2016 to 2022 and will focus on the relationship between the corporate governance index, accounting conservatism, and the comprehensive index of corporate governance.

The relationship between corporate governance and accounting conservatism is experimentally investigated for its impact on the likelihood of stock price breakdown and decline among companies listed on the Palestine Stock Exchange between 2016 and 2022, using a mixed utilities approach.

The findings demonstrated the adverse correlation between corporate governance, accounting conservatism, and stock prices. Higher levels of corporate governance can effectively reduce the likelihood of future stock price increases, while conservative accounting policies can effectively prevent stock price collapses in these listed companies. Higher levels of corporate governance can greatly lessen the detrimental effect of accounting conservatism on the likelihood of future stock price breakdowns and declines. Both accounting conservatism and corporate governance have substitution effects in decreasing the danger of stock price collapse.

The limitations of the current research are that higher levels of corporate governance can significantly reduce the harmful effect of accounting conservatism on the probability of stock price breakdown and decline in the future on the study sample used, and these results cannot be generalized to all company stocks that were excluded in this study. The last research limitation is that the sample size of this study is somewhat small, and therefore the effects of the results cannot be used on all unlisted companies, and they cannot be generalized to all of these companies except only to companies listed on the Palestine Stock Exchange.

Our findings have interesting managerial and policy implications. Listed firms should first strengthen external audit oversight, improve the method of disclosing accounting information, and improve the system architecture to raise the level of accounting conservatism. Moreover, it is imperative to enhance and improve the ownership structure of publicly traded firms, construct a robust mechanism for replacing shareholders, fortify the duties of the board of directors, proficiently fulfil the role of independent directors, and develop and refine the internal and external framework for corporate governance.

This study provides insights about reducing the probability of a stock market breakdown and collapse from two sides: enhancing corporate governance, improving accounting conservatism, enhancing the reliability and integrity of disclosure, and growing the number of sustainable disclosures. These suggestions can also be used as a template for Palestine's capital market's gradual and sustainable expansion.