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This study examines differences in the extent of predictability in the pricing of the two main classes of equity traded in China, namely: A shares (available to Chinese investors) and B shares (traditionally available only to non‐Chinese investors). The study extends previous work by conducting a wider range of analyses and extending the sample period until the relaxation of rules preventing domestic investors from purchasing B shares. The results suggest that earlier evidence of greater predictability in the pricing of B shares is not entirely robust to changes in the method of analysis, and may only partially explain why Chinese authorities have recently decided to widen participation in the B market.

In this chapter, the authors argue that organizational controls are best depicted and studied as sets of control configurations. Concepts from extant control research streams describing basic control elements as well as ideal types of control systems are used to identify and classify control configurations. The authors present compositional distinctions among four control configurations using a decade-long case study of a start-up company. By displaying how specific control elements are simultaneously distinct and intertwined in this company, the authors reveal significant theoretical insights that can assist scholars in distinguishing between different configurational patterns and in comprehending dynamics present in holistic perspectives of control. The authors conclude by discussing how conceptualizing controls as configurations most accurately reflects both organizational and managerial practice in ways that can motivate the development of new theories and approaches to studying this key aspect of organizational design. Because control configurations inherently reflect interdisciplinary concerns, and because such configurations affect the attainment of strategic goals, this work provides findings and ideas that fit the interests of a broad audience.

The Managerial Auditing Journal (MAJ) started publication in 1986 and celebrates its 35th year of publication in 2020. The purpose of this study is to provide a detailed bibliometric analysis of the journal’s primary trends and themes between 1986 and 2019.

This study uses the Scopus database to analyse the most prolific authors in the MAJ along with their affiliated institutions and countries; the work also identifies the MAJ articles cited most often by other journals. A range of bibliometric devices is applied to analyse the publication and citation structure of MAJ, alongside performance analysis and science mapping tools. The study also provides a detailed inter-temporal analysis of MAJ publishing patterns.

The MAJ publishes around 40 articles each year with citations of this work steadily growing over time. The journal has attracted contributors from around the globe, most often affiliated with the USA, the UK and Australia. Thematic evolution of the journal’s themes reveals that it has expanded its scope to include topics such as internal auditing, internal control and corporate governance, whilst co-authorship analysis reveals that the journal’s collaboration network has grown to span the globe.

As this study uses data from the Scopus database, any shortcomings therein will be reflected in the study.

This study provides the first overview of the MAJ’s publication and citation trends as well as the evolution of its thematic structure. It also suggests future directions that the journal might take.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the views of 18 users and preparers regarding the corporate internet reporting (CIR) practices of companies listed on the Egyptian Stock Exchange (EGX).

A decision-usefulness theoretical framework is used as a lens for the study, in order to shed light on: internet infrastructure and its use for disclosure purposes in Egypt; the benefits of and trends in practices relating to CIR in Egypt; how the information presented accords with the qualitative characteristics of “usefulness” set out in the IASB’s conceptual framework of 2010; and the potential economic consequences of CIR.

The results indicate reasonable satisfaction with internet infrastructure in Egypt. The interviewees are intensive users of the internet, including accessing electronic sources of corporate information, but the perception remains of hard copy financial reports as the most important source of disclosure. With the exception of verifiability, the majority of respondents viewed CIR as having a (potentially) positive impact on the qualitative characteristics of accounting information as set out in the IASB framework.

The use of the interview method is subject to some limitations. These include: the perceived lack of anonymity, which may restrict the extent to which participants speak honestly or openly about the topic being investigated; the non-standardisation of responses – which can result in the inability to make systematic generalisations; and interviewees’ perceptions being influenced by events which have taken place prior to the discussion.

This research provides substantive insights for policy makers about the current attitudes of interested parties concerning CIR in Egypt.

This study contributes to our knowledge in a number of ways, as it provides up-to-date evidence of interested parties’ views concerning CIR practices and it indicates how CIR has affected the quality of financial information disclosure practices. Moreover, this study extends prior research on the use of the internet as a disclosure channel by considering a different empirical site, namely Egypt, and also by adopting a different theoretical framework.

The purpose of this paper is to provide exploratory evidence about the use of the internet for disclosure purposes by non-financial companies listed on the Egyptian Exchange – and influences thereon – at two points in time: 2010 and 2011. Selection of these periods permits direct investigation of the extent to which the disruption caused by the popular uprising in early 2011 impacted on practice.

The sample comprises all of the 172 non-financial listed companies at the end of 2010. A disclosure index was developed to evaluate the content of the investigated websites in 2010 and 2011. Univariate and multivariate analysis is used to examine the cross-sectional determinants of disclosure both in total and in terms of three specific content categories.

The study reveals that 40.7 and 42.7 per cent of the sample companies provided some form of financial information via their websites in 2010 and 2011, respectively (i.e. pre and post the Spring 2011 political revolution). The results of the multivariate analysis indicate consistency across the two years in terms of total score determinants, but some variation in the disaggregated evidence.

This study indicates that Egyptian firms have started embracing the power of the internet as a disclosure channel, but the extent of these practices is still limited, with great variations evident amongst the sampled companies in this regard. Encouragingly, the disruption caused by the political upheaval in 2011 appears not to have caused reduction in the propensity to provide online disclosures.

Earnings quality is of great concern to corporate stakeholders, including capital providers in international markets with widely varying regulatory pedigrees and ownership patterns. This paper aims to examine the association between the cost of equity capital and earnings quality, contextualised via tests that incorporate the potential for moderating effects around institutional settings. The analysis focuses on and compares evidence relating to (common law) UK/US firms and (civil law) German firms over the period 2005–2018 and seeks to identify whether, given institutional dissimilarities, significant differences exist between the two settings.

First, the authors undertake a review of the extant literature on the link between earnings quality and the cost of capital. Second, using a sample of 948 listed companies from the USA, the UK and Germany over the period 2005 to 2018, the authors estimate four implied cost of equity capital proxies. The relationship between companies’ cost of equity capital and their earnings quality is then investigated.

Consistent with theoretical reasoning and prior empirical analyses, the authors find a statistically negative association between earnings quality, evidenced by information relating to accruals and the cost of equity capital. However, when they extend the analysis by investigating the combined effect of institutional ownership and earnings quality on financing cost, the impact – while negative overall – is found to vary across legal backdrops.

This paper uses institutional ownership as a mediating variable in the association between earnings quality and the cost of equity capital, but this is not intended to suggest that other measures may be of relevance here and additional research might usefully expand the analysis to incorporate other forms of ownership including state and foreign bases. Second, and suggestive of another avenue for developing the work presented in the study, the authors have used accrual measures of earnings quality.

The results are shown to provide potentially important insights for policymakers, creditors and investors about the consequences of earnings quality variability. The results should be of interest to firms seeking to reduce their financing costs and retain financial viability in the wake of the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic.

The reported findings extends the single-country results of Eliwa et al. (2016) for the UK firms and Francis et al. (2005) for the USA, whereby both reported that the cost of equity capital is negatively associated with earnings quality attributes. Second, in a further increment to the extant literature (particularly Francis et al., 2005 and Eliwa et al., 2016), the authors find the effect of institutional ownership to be influential, with a significantly positive impact on the association between earnings quality and the cost of equity capital, suggesting in turn that institutional ownership can improve firms’ ability to secure cheaper funding by virtue of robust monitoring. While this result holds for the whole sample (the USA, the UK and Germany), country-level analysis shows that the result holds only for the common law countries (the UK and the USA) and not for Germany, consistent with the notion that extant legal systems are a determining factor in this context. This novel finding points to a role for institutional investors in watching and improving the quality of financial reports that are valued by the market in its price formation activity.

This study explores Ghanaian views about accountability discharge by firms and government in the context of the nation's newly discovered oil and gas resources. The research focusses on a range of issues relating to stakeholder interaction, communication flows and the impact of decision-making on Ghanaian lives, as perceived by individuals on the ground.

The paper adapts elements of legitimacy theory to interpret the outcome of a series of semi-structured interviews with members of key accountee and accountor groups including citizens and representatives of the state and private firms in the oil and gas industry in Ghana.

The results indicate that rather than attempting to effect substantive accountability discharge, Ghana's government and oil and gas firms employ a wide range of legitimation strategies despite the apparently complete absence of the accountee power normally seen as driving the need for social contract repair.

The findings suggest that accountability discharge in Ghana is cursory at best, with several legitimising strategies in evidence. The representatives from state institutions appear to share some of the concerns, suggesting that the problems are entrenched and will require robust enforcement of a strengthened regulatory approach to effect meaningful change.

This paper contributes to the literature on the discharge of institutional accountability by building on earlier conceptualisations of legitimacy theory to explore perceptions around a recent natural resource discovery. The analysis highlights grave concerns regarding the behaviour of state and corporate actors, one that runs counter to sub-Saharan African tradition.

Financial shenanigans are the omissions or actions undertaken with the purpose of misrepresenting an organisation's financial statements. Many examples now exist of such behaviour emerging in the context of a desire to deceive the users of financial reports. In this context, research has illustrated how investors can find themselves impacted by such behaviour, with incorrect decision-making around investment decisions being a major issue. However, auditors' perspectives, of obvious importance in such scenarios, given these individuals' role in attesting to the veracity of financial disclosures, have not been investigated. The aim of this study is to address this gap by seeking the experiences of auditors in the developing nation of Pakistan, an environment in which the significant impact of financial improprieties is well-documented.

Interviews with 50 Pakistani-based auditors were conducted to gather perceptions about the nature and prevalence of financial shenanigans. The questions posed were structured to address issues relating to both the drivers of and methods used to operationalise financial malfeasance.

The views expressed by the participants suggest that this type of malpractice is common, with a variety of forms employed and a level of audacity and shamelessness is striking. The results indicate the absence of the three institutional pillars conventionally associated with motivating organisational attempts to legitimise behaviour and maintain social contracts. When considered alongside recent findings that the audit profession in Pakistan may not always play an effective monitoring role, we argue that the evidence suggests the existence of motivations for legitimising strategies are not yet fully understood.

This contention helps address recent calls for investigation of issues around legitimising tendencies where theoretical understanding is incomplete. A full understanding of the embedded practices will provide capital providers with the opportunity to make more informed decisions regarding their investments in Pakistani firms by highlighting the financial shenanigans involved, including the sheer audacity apparently associated with the observed behaviour.

Earnings management and auditing have not been studied widely in Pakistan despite the abundant and persistent nature of corporate scandals across the nation for many decades. Whilst implementation (and enforcement) of some accounting and auditing standards have taken place recently, the financial collapses continue, and understanding regarding the on-going fraud is urgently needed. The extent and shameless nature of the perceived behaviour are striking, suggesting that those closest to financial reporting in Pakistan see fraudulent financial reporting as being close to, if not yet fully representative of, normal practice.

Research suggests that memory for unfamiliar faces is pictorial in nature, with recognition negatively affected by changes to image-specific information such as head pose, lighting and facial expression. Further, within-person variation causes some images to resemble a subject more than others. Here, the purpose of this paper is to explore the impact of target-image choice on face construction using a modern evolving type of composite system, EvoFIT.

Participants saw an unfamiliar target identity and then created a single composite of it the following day with EvoFIT by repeatedly selecting from arrays of faces with “breeding”, to “evolve” a face. Targets were images that had been previously categorised as low, medium or high likeness, or a face prototype comprising averaged photographs of the same individual.

Identification of composites of low likeness targets was inferior but increased as a significant linear trend from low to medium to high likeness. Also, identification scores decreased when targets changed by pose and expression, but not by lighting. Similarly, composite identification from prototypes was more accurate than those from low likeness targets, providing some support that image averages generally produce more robust memory traces.

The results emphasise the potential importance of matching a target's pose and expression at face construction; also, for obtaining image-specific information for construction of facial-composite images, a result that would appear to be useful to developers and researchers of composite software.

This current project is the first of its kind to formally explore the potential impact of pictorial properties of a target face on identifiability of faces created from memory. The design followed forensic practices as far as is practicable, to allow good generalisation of results.

This study aims to explore individual perceptions about how the government, as the main architect of policies and regulations, discharges strategic accountability in Ghana’s oil and gas sector and, in so doing, promotes resource sustainability.

The study reports on a series of interviews with key actors using institutional theory as a lens for discussion and interpretation of results. This approach forms the basis for a number of specific contributions to knowledge regarding strategic accountability around natural resource discoveries.

Whilst many deeply-set problems appear to persist, the paper reports some favourable movement in public perceptions regarding institutional accountability that has not been identified previously. The empirical findings demonstrate how the three elements of institutional theory work together in an emerging country’s natural resource industry to drive a potentially holistic strategic institutional legitimacy, contrary to the existing pervasive picture of detrimental regulative, normative and cognitive institutionalism found within the region.

The findings suggest that, contrary to existing regional evidence regarding institutional financial accountability practices around natural resources, Ghana has made favourable strides in terms of strategic accountability discharge. This discovery implies that with persistence and commitment, a meaningful degree of intelligent strategic accountability can be achieved and, with appropriate empirical methodology, identified and rationalised.

The persistent coercive pressure from the Ghanaian society that caused the government to listen to overtime and take positive steps in the institutionalisation of their strategic accountability process which translated into a holistic institutional legitimacy that has eluded the sub-region for decades, is a glimmer of hope for other societies within the sub-Saharan region that all is not lost.

The paper suggests an empirically driven approach to understanding the institutionalisation of strategic accountability practices and their impact on sustainability around natural resources in sub-Saharan Africa. The focus on the strategic aspect of accountability – rather than the financial as in most prior work – and the consideration of opinions at more than a single point in time permits the identification of novel evidence regarding accountability in emerging economies.