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The study examines how calculative practices and accountability appear in a rural community of marginalised people in Egypt who depend on jasmine plantations that contribute to the production of global essences.

The data were collected from various sources, namely conversations with villagers, documents and relevant videos and news available on social media and the Internet. This study draws on the concepts of social accountability, the politics of blame avoidance and using calculative practices as a language to explain accountability in context.

The author found a lack of accountability on the part of the government and business owners, with serious implications for the livelihoods of people in a community that has been wholly dependent on jasmine plantations for a century. Power holders have deployed a blame-shifting game to avoid social responsibility. In response, calculative practices rather than advanced accounting tools are used by the poor in the community to induce power holders to be accountable.

The findings of this study show that authorities need to take proactive steps to address the disadvantaged position of powerless people in the lower echelons of society, recognising their accountability for those people.

This paper enhances the understanding of the status of calculative practices and accountability in a community of marginalised people who contribute to the production of global commodities. The paper also enhances the understanding of what goes on behind the scenes with popular and prestigious commodities, whose development is initiated in poor countries, with the end product marketed in rich Western countries.

In developing countries, how risk management technologies influence management accounting and control (MAC) practices is under-researched. By drawing on insights from institutional studies, this study aims to examine the multiple institutional pressures surrounding an entity and influencing its risk-based management control (RBC) system – that is, how RBC appears in an emerging market attributed to institutional multiplicity.

The authors used qualitative case study research methods to collect empirical evidence from a privately owned Egyptian insurance company.

The authors observed that in the transformation to risk-based controls, especially in socio-political settings such as Egypt, changes in MAC systems were consistent with the shifts in the institutional context. Along with changes in the institutional environment, the case company sought to configure its MAC system to be more risk-based to achieve its strategic goals effectively and maintain its sustainability.

This research provides a fuller view of risk-based management controls based on the social, professional and political perspectives central to the examined institutional environment. Moreover, unlike early studies that reported resistance to RBC, this case reveals the institutional dynamics contributing to the successful implementation of RBC in an emerging market.

This study analyses the socioeconomic impact of COVID-19 on government accountability regarding the employment of both national and migrant workforces by bringing evidence from an emerging market. In doing so, this study addresses if/how the government discharged its accountability to the public during this recent global health crisis, which started in late 2019, with its effects still being felt today.

This study is based on a close reading of the relevant news media (local and international), published research and official reports, as well as ten conversations with business managers to analyse the socioeconomic impact of COVID-19 on government accountability in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA). This study draws on insights from public choice theory in trying to understand why some governments take an economic perspective while exercising accountability to their population during the pandemic.

It was found that COVID-19 led the government to pursue plans for the localization of the professions and increase employment rates among nationals vs. foreigners or migrant workers. The crisis was exploited by the government to achieve macro socio-political and economic goals, demonstrating its accountability to citizens, rather than foreign workers. This shift shows that difficult and exceptional circumstances can present opportunities for policymakers in emerging markets to achieve national policy and political aims.

This study enhances the author’s understanding of accountability during crises (i.e. crises-induced accountability) in emerging markets. The analyses presented enrich the crisis management literature by highlighting the implicit actions of national leaders that affect the lives and well-being of their constituents, especially vulnerable groups.

This paper aims to examine the association between income smoothing and the cost of debt in two different countries, namely, the UK and Nigeria.

The authors used a sample from listed firms in the UK and Nigeria during 2000–2019. The study hypotheses are examined by implementing quantitative methods, including panel regression analysis, cross-sectional regression analysis and parametric independent samples t-test.

The results reveal that Nigerian companies have a substantially higher cost of debt and are more active in using income-smoothing practices. However, the relationship between income smoothing and the cost of debt is not found to be statistically significant in both countries. Besides, the results of this study show that financial leverage, profitability, company size and asset turnover are significantly associated with the cost of debt.

The study contributes to the existing literature by providing new insights concerning the contrast between developed and developing countries in financial and reporting issues.

This study aims to examine whether corporate governance mechanisms – board size, board independence and CEO duality – influence the actions of oil companies operating in Nigeria to clean up oil spills from their facilities.

Both binary logistic regression (linear) and random-effects logistic regression models were used to test three hypotheses using a unique data set of 1,262 oil spill events involving 24 oil companies from 2017 to 2019.

The study found that board size and board independence are positively related to oil spill cleanup.

Private oil companies in Nigeria should encourage larger and more independent boards in their corporate governance (CG) structures, as these boards may be more effective in serving the interests of stakeholders by bringing diverse knowledge and experience to the boards. Similarly, regulators should extend the enforcement of CG codes to private firms.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first study that investigates the influence of CG attributes on oil spill cleanup.

This paper aims to examine the value relevance (VR) of accounting information (AI) presented by Egyptian listed non-financial companies. Further, the study investigates the influence of institutional ownership on the value relevance of AI in a developing market, namely, the Egyptian market.

The study uses data from 2014 to 2017 with a total of 248 observations and analyses the data using regression analysis. Data are collected from the nonfinancial companies listed on the Egyptian Stock Exchange.

The authors found that the AI reported by the Egyptian listed non-financial companies is value relevant. Regarding the influence of institutional ownership, it is found to significantly impact the VR of AI reported by the sample companies. This model investigated the effect of corporate size and financial leverage as controlling variables and found that they have an insignificant influence on the VR of AI.

The current study findings enrich the literature by enhancing the understanding regarding institutional owners’ impact on corporate value. Further, bringing evidence from an emerging market can have implications for accounting researchers interested in addressing other emerging markets with similar contextual and institutional environments.

This study aims to investigate the impact of audit fees on audit quality, the impact of audit quality on firm value and whether these effects are conditional on audit tenure by bringing evidence from an emerging market.

Different regression techniques are used, such as logistic regression, probit regression, ordinary least squares regression and fixed effects regression. The authors used panel data of 80 nonfinancial Egyptian-listed firms over 2016–2020.

The authors found a significant positive relationship between audit fees and audit quality and a significant positive relationship between audit quality and firm value. Furthermore, the authors found that the positive relationship between audit fees and audit quality is less pronounced for higher audit tenure firms. Finally, the authors also found that the positive relationship between audit quality and firm value is stronger for lower audit tenure firms.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first study to bring evidence from an emerging African market about the joint association between audit tenure, audit fees, audit quality and firm value. It provides beneficial insights to regulators regarding the possibility and the benefits of improving audit quality, which is critically needed in contexts with weak governance systems.

This study aims to examine anti-corruption disclosure (ACD) following government legislation, specifically the UK Bribery Act, 2010, through focusing on the UK extractive industry.

This study uses content analysis for data analysis with an ACD checklist developed to capture ACD in annual reports during the period 2003–2019.

The study found an increase in ACD following 2010, with companies answering ACD questions and addressing categories that they previously ignored.

Most of the previous studies have examined voluntary ACD; this study contributes to the literature by applying an index developed from government regulation to investigate the difference that regulation can make to disclosure. Hence, this study provides evidence of how, from an institutional perspective, legislation plays an important role in facilitating and endorsing anti-corruption reporting.

This study aims to examine the association between anti-corruption corporate disclosure and earnings management practices by bringing evidence from a developed market.

The study uses data from non-financial FTSE 100 Shares in 2016 and 2017. This study develops a disclosure index to capture the anti-corruption disclosures and run pooled, fixed effects and generalized methods of moments regression models to explore the anti-corruption disclosure–earnings management association. This study also disentangles discretionary accruals into positive and negative, use adjusted discretionary accrual computation and take a more conservative view on discretionary accruals computation as an additional analysis.

The results show a negative and significant association between anti-corruption disclosure and earnings management practices. When disentangling discretionary accruals (overvalued/positive and undervalued/negative), the authors found that higher anti-corruption disclosures were negatively associated with positive discretionary accruals, but not associated with negative discretionary accruals. The additional analysis confirmed the previous results, showing that anti-corruption disclosures are perceived as a substantive practice, rather than a mere disclosure practice for legitimacy reasons.

This study contributes to debate on the symbolic versus the substantive uses of anti-corruption disclosures in the UK context.

The purpose of this study is to examine both the responses of auditees to corporate governance audit (CGA) regulation and the practices of CGA auditors.

The study used a mixed method. Content analysis of 200 annual and CGA reports was carried out for 13 years, from 2008 to 2021, split into voluntary disclosure and mandatory disclosure periods. Quantitative analysis was also conducted using Kruskal–Wallis and Dunn's tests. Data gathered were interpreted through the lens of isomorphism and Oliver's (1991) strategic responses to institutional processes.

The study revealed that in the voluntary disclosure period, auditees responded mainly with acquiescence, motivated by mimetic isomorphic pressure. In the mandatory disclosure period, auditee responses ranged from acquiescence to dismissal of corporate governance regulation (i.e. coercive isomorphic pressure). Auditor reporting of CGA findings was found to be heterogeneous, suggesting that normative and mimetic isomorphism did not homogenize auditor practices.

The absence of uniform auditee responses to CGA regulation during the mandatory disclosure period suggests that the purpose of mandating the regulation has not yet been achieved and may signal inadequate coercive isomorphic pressure from the Financial Reporting Council of Nigeria (FRCN). Similarly, heterogeneous reporting of CGA findings by corporate governance auditors inhibits the comparability of audit findings, limiting their value for information users.

This study examines corporate governance auditor practices and auditee responses to corporate governance audit regulation.