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The purpose of this paper is to present findings from face-to-face interviews undertaken with 16 care and nursing home managers employed in homes situated in two English local authorities. The research sought to explore managers’ perceptions of the role of contract monitoring in the prevention of abuse.

Semi-structured interviews were undertaken with 16 care and nursing home managers.

Though personnel employed by the local authority who conducted contract monitoring were generally thought of positively by care home managers on a personal level, their effectiveness was perceived to be limited as a result of their lack of experience and knowledge of providing care, and the methods that they were required to use.

Though the research draws upon the experiences of only 16 care and nursing home managers in two local authorities, data suggest that current contract monitoring activity is of limited utility in determining the true nature of care and the presence of abuse.

Unusually, the paper explores care and nursing home managers’ perceptions of contract monitoring processes in terms of how they perceive their effectiveness in preventing abuse.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the strategies of civil service reforms in Hong Kong and Thailand. It seeks to identify the drivers of reforms in the two cases and explain the divergence in processes that were intended to achieve similar ends.

This paper adopts a case study approach along with a thorough review of the literature. It is based on secondary materials, including academic studies, government publications and websites, and media reports. It compares approaches, strategies and outcomes of civil service reforms in Hong Kong and Thailand.

Civil service reforms in Hong Kong focused on improving management through the implementation of New Public Management (NPM) principles, while governance values were prominent in civil service reforms in Thailand.

This paper compares civil service reforms in two dissimilar Asian cases. It highlights the impact of global trends on traditional bureaucratic organizations and reform strategies, and recognizes the impacts of traditions, culture and capacity on civil service reforms.

This paper aims at comparing and contrasting the Ao Man-long scandal with the Ho Chio-meng case in Macau, drawing lessons from the two events and casting lights on the literature on corruption scandals.

The study used documentary research and interpretative and analytical approaches.

The two cases show considerable administrative discretion on the part of the principal officials involved, and remedial measures along the line of having more rigorous and frequent internal auditing may be necessary.

Original analyses were conducted together with literature review and documentary research. This paper would be of interest to scholars and practitioners concerned with how Macau combats corruption.

The main aim of the present study is to assess the moderating effect of joint audit (JA) on the relationship between audit committee effectiveness (ACEFF) and audit quality (AQ) in Egypt.

The sample included 61 non-financial corporations listed on the Egyptian Exchange from 2016 through 2020. The results are estimated using panel data analysis with fixed-effect models.

The findings exhibit that audit committee (AC) independence, ACEFF; and audit firm size negatively affect AQ. Conversely, the influence of AC meetings on AQ is positive and significant. The findings also reveal that JA moderates the relation between the ACEFF and AQ.

The study offers theoretical contributions to corporate governance mechanisms, JA; and AQ by using data from listed firms in Egypt. The study is the first one that examines the moderating role of JA on ACEFF and AQ.

The study has practical implications for investors, board members, practitioners, academicians; and policymakers. Moreover, the study contributes using a composite measure for the ACEFF score.

The findings, supported by agency, resource dependence; and signaling theories, contribute to a better understanding of the relationship between ACEFF, AQ; and JA. The evidence about JA is still unknown in developing countries. Further, revisiting AQ with different measures, particularly accounting conservatism, has not been a subject of prior studies.

Public sector auditing research has changed rapidly over the past four decades. This paper aims to reveal how the field has developed and identify avenues for future research.

The authors used a structured literature review following Massaro et al. The sample comprises papers on public sector auditing published in accounting and public sector management journals between 1991 and 2020.

The present analysis highlights that academic research interest in public sector auditing has grown and become more diverse. The authors argue this may reflect a transformation of the public sector in recent decades, owing to the developing institutional logics of public sector reforms, from traditional public administration to new public management and now new public governance.

This paper offers a comprehensive review of the public sector auditing literature, discussing different perspectives over time. It also outlines the various public sector reforms introduced over the period of the study. In reviewing the existing literature, the authors highlight the themes for future research and policy settings.

This paper focuses on bank audit committees and examines whether audit committee members who are former auditors are associated with the acquisition of audit and non-audit services from their former employers.

The study empirically examines a sample of large banks that are included in the S&P Composite 1500.

The paper reports significantly lower audit fees and a higher proportion of non-audit fees to total fees when the audit committee chair is an alumnus of the incumbent audit firm. Moreover, additional analysis reveals that these findings are stronger for banks with more earnings management.

Overall, the findings indicate that audit firms might consider banks using their alumni as audit committee chairs to be less risky or easier to audit, thus requiring relatively less effort from the auditors. The reduced effort required to audit clients with audit firm alumni on their audit committees then has the effect of reducing the audit fees charged. Alternatively, their auditing experience and cognitive proximity might influence the assessment of the need for auditing or the ability to negotiate lower audit fees on the part of audit firm alumni.

This paper provides empirical evidence of the association between audit firm alumni in influential positions on an audit committee and fees paid to those audit firms in the banking industry. The findings contribute to the literature by suggesting that banks with affiliated former auditors chairing their audit committees not only have significantly lower audit fees but also a higher proportion is spent on non-audit services.

The purpose of this study is to provide fresh insights into whether there is an expectation gap between external auditors' and other stakeholders' perceptions of external auditors' responsibilities in an emerging economy, in light of recent changes to the global audit landscape.

A quantitative approach in the positivistic paradigm was adopted, and a structured questionnaire was used to gather data.

The findings suggested that there was a statistically significant discrepancy between external auditors' and social groups' perceptions of the responsibilities of external auditors. More than half of the gap was due to deficiency in standards, 19% due to unreasonable expectations by society, while 25% of the gap was found to be due to deficient performance.

The study focused on the duties of external auditors and not on the duties of other types of auditors while examining the audit expectation-performance gap (AEG), and this was due to the drastic differences in the scope of their duties.

The findings of this study are likely to have direct policy implications for regulators, authorities, educators and auditing professionals, who should take immediate actions and measures to reduce the AEG in light of the current global audit landscape advancements and changes.

The present study used a substantially updated model to measure the AEG to suit the contemporary changes in the auditing landscape, and could be considered as a pioneering study that measures the AEG in an emerging economy amid recent changes.

This article analyses community care services (CCS) in terms of availability, awareness, accessibility, and acceptance (the Four A’s approach), untangles the deep-seated factors underlying the CCS and provides some short-term, medium-term, and long-term recommendations.

A literature review was conducted, including relevant government reports, consultation papers, Legislative Council papers and articles from academic journals from 1980 to the present.

The Four A’s approach shows that applicants to both centre-based services and home-based services endure lengthy waiting times because of the limited number of CCS. Furthermore, the awareness of day respite services is approximately 50 percent, which lags behind other CCS. Accessibility is contingent on a cross-district day respite service system and a lack of consistency between the quota and the proportion of older adults in the districts. Finally, the level of service provided by CCS is unsatisfactory due to inflexible service provision. Reviewing the brief history of long-term care services (LTC) reveals the deep-seated factors at the core of their heavy reliance on the subvention model, in contrast to the adoption of the ‘mixed economy of care’ by residential care services (RCS). An imbalance in budget allocation to RCS and CCS is also revealed.

Although the principle of ‘ageing in place’ was introduced in 1977, the institutionalisation rate (6.8 percent) of older adults remains unexpectedly high in Hong Kong, even surpassing its Asian counterparts, whereas the usage rate of CCS hovers around 0.8 percent. Thus, how to implement policy concerning LTC services for older adults must be re-evaluated.

This study aims to investigate why and how shared service centres (SSCs) are implemented as well as how they affect audit firm practice and audit quality.

In this qualitative study guided by the theoretical framework of institutional theory, the authors conducted 25 semi-structured interviews in seven European countries, including 16 interviews with audit partners from Big 4 firms, 6 with audit team members, 2 with interviewees from second-tier audit firms and 1 with a member of an oversight body.

The authors show that the central rationale for audit firms to implement SSCs is economic rather than external legitimacy. The authors find that SSC implementation has substantial effects on audit practices, particularly those related to standardisation, coordination and monitoring activities. The authors also highlight the potential impacts on audit quality.

By exploring the motivation for and effects of SSC implementation amongst audit firms, the authors offer insights into the best practices related to subsequent change processes and audit quality.

This study aims to review the academic literature on the utilization of blockchain in accounting practice and research to identify potential opportunities for further scientific investigation and to provide a framework for how accounting practices are impacted by blockchain.

This study is based on a systematic literature review (SLR) of 346 research products available on Scopus, which were mapped with bibliometric analyses and critically discussed in relation to three main topics: the impact of blockchain on accounting and auditing, cryptoassets and finance, business models and supply chain management.

Blockchain has many potential implications for accounting practice and research. In addition to providing the state-of-the-art of accounting research on blockchain and additional avenues for further studies, this study discusses why practitioners are interested in this technology: triple-entry bookkeeping, the inalterability of transactions, the automation of repetitive tasks that do not require discretionary choices, the representation of cryptocurrencies in financial statements, value-chain management, social and environmental auditing and reporting and business model innovation.

The novel contribution of this study is integrated and threefold. First, this SLR provides a clear picture of the state of the accounting research on blockchain using bibliographic and narrative analyses. Second, it investigates how accounting and auditing practices are impacted by blockchain. Third, it contributes to the accounting literature with its discussion of the potential future research trends related to blockchain for accounting.