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This study aims to investigate how professional financial statement users use carbon accounting information in their decisions and whether this use is sensitive to changing the decision context from an investment to a donation.

Using a sample of 173 US professional financial statement users, the authors conduct an experiment that manipulates an investment or donation choice to evaluate how differing levels of carbon sequestration affect decision-making across contexts.

Carbon sequestration information affects users’ donation decisions but does not affect investment decisions. Variation in the reliability of the information and whether the information is linked to strategy do not affect users’ decision-making.

This study is performed by an experiment and informs our understanding of the relevance to users of carbon sequestration disclosure. Results indicate that carbon sequestration disclosure has value for donation but not investment decisions. The authors interpret this as evidence of some value of this type of disclosure in professional financial statement users’ decision-making but not for a financially focused evaluation.

This paper provides unique insights into the effect of reporting carbon sequestration on decision-making. There has been significant research on the broader topic of corporate sustainability, and capital markets research indicates that the market values increased sustainability disclosure. This study extends the research by examining a specific component of carbon disclosure that is not currently widely reported and by the use of information for different types of evaluations. The results find evidence that the value of this type of carbon disclosure does not stem from a purely financial perspective but instead, from other nonpecuniary factors.

This study aims to examine the implementation of AASB 15 Revenue from Contracts with Customers to provide insight into preparers’ perspectives on the challenges, costs and benefits experienced in implementing a new and complex standard.

The study uses a survey of 143 financial statement preparers engaged in implementing AASB 15.

The results reveal significant variation in the approach to, and progress in, implementing AASB 15.

The study provides evidence of the role of proprietary costs in implementing a new standard and suggests that preparers adopt a more pragmatic view of the nature of compliance compared to standard-setters.

The evidence in this study strongly suggests that there is little to be gained in deferring effective dates for new standards. It suggests that standard-setters can motivate entities by framing a standard in terms of how it improves the business itself, rather than from a compliance framing.

This study provides a rare perspective on the actual implementation experience of preparers confronted with the introduction of a new standard. Such a perspective is of value to standard-setters and preparers and offers insight to researchers that cannot be gained from traditional capital market archival approaches.

This study focusses on the participation of women in the development of the specialist international accounting history literature. Based on an examination of the three specialist, internationally refereed, accounting history journals in the English language from the time of first publication in each case to the year 2000, the study provides evidence of the involvement of women through publication and also through their membership of editorial boards and editorial advisory boards. In doing so, the study builds on the earlier work of Carnegie and Potter in 2000 and aims to augment our understanding of publishing patterns in the specialist international accounting history literature.

In recent years in Australia, accounting regulations have been developed that require the adoption of commercial accounting and reporting practices by public‐sector organisations, including the recognition of cultural, heritage and scientific collections as assets by non‐profit cultural organisations. The regulations inappropriately apply traditional accounting concepts of accountability and performance, notwithstanding that the primary objectives of many of the organisations affected are not financial. This study examines how this was able to occur within the ideas outlined in Douglas’s (1986) How Institutions Think. The study provides evidence to demonstrate that the development; promotion, and defense of the detailed accounting regulations were each constrained by institutional thinking and, as a result, only certain questions were asked and many problems and issues associated with the regulations were not addressed. Thus, it seeks to further our understanding of the nature and limits of change in accounting and the role of institutions in promoting and defending changes to accounting practice.

Nonprofit museums and performing arts organizations have become subject to closer attention in recent years, following the collapse of some seemingly stable cultural organizations. These events have stimulated a renewed interest in accountability and technology in nonprofit cultural organizations, as they are put under pressure to provide value for money. At the same time, technology has an important role to play in the extent to which nonprofit cultural organizations utilize available resources efficiently and effectively. Consequently, this study examines nine nonprofit museums and performing arts organizations in Victoria, Australia and establishes that while technology is used to increase viability and to some extent promote vitality, it does not solve all the problems for museums and performing arts organizations.Part of the reason for this is due to the fact that the notion of accountability has been hijacked by accountants and economists, enabling some to forget the true mission of these nonprofit museums and performing arts organizations, which are vitality‐oriented.

This chapter reports research conducted in Melbourne, Australia that is focused on the use of information and communication technologies (ICTs) in schools and families. The emphasis is on the relationship between technology, learning, culture and (dis)advantage. It is generally agreed that ICTs are associated with major social, cultural, pedagogical and lifestyle changes, although the nature of those changes is subject to conflicting norms and interpretations. In this chapter we adopt a critical, multi-disciplined, relational perspective in order to examine the influence of ICTs, in schools and homes, on a sample of students and their families.

Accounting and water industry experts are developing general‐purpose water accounting (GPWA) to report information about water and rights to water. The system has the potential to affect water policies, pricing and management, and investment and other decisions that are affected by GPWA report users' understanding of water risks faced by an entity. It may also affect financial returns to accounting and auditing firms and firms in water industries. In this paper the authors aim to examine the roles of the accounting profession, water industries and other stakeholders in governing GPWA. Recognising that the fate of GPWA depends partly upon regulatory power and economics, they seek to apply regulatory theories that explain financial accounting standards development to speculate about the national and international future of GPWA.

Official documents, internal Water Accounting Standards Board documents and unstructured interviews underpin the authors' analysis.

The authors speculate about the benefits that might accrue to various stakeholder groups from capturing the GPWA standard‐setting process. They also suggest that internationally, water industries may dominate early GPWA standards development in the public interest and that regulatory capture by accounting or water industry professionals will not necessarily conflict with public interest benefits.

Accounting for water can affect allocations of environmental, economic, social and other resources; also, accounting and water industry professional standing and revenues. In this paper the authors identify factors influencing GPWA standards and standard‐setting institutional arrangements, and thereby these resource allocations. The paper generates an awareness of GPWA's emergence and practical implications.

This is an early study to investigate water accounting standard‐setting regulatory influences and their impact.

The purpose of this paper is to examine and explain the complex interrelationships which influence the ability of firms to create value for their providers of finance and other stakeholders (loosely referred to in practice as “integrated thinking”). In doing so it examines the interrelationships between: environmental, social and governance (ESG) risk; delivering on corporate strategy; non-financial corporate reporting; and, board oversight.

Interviews were conducted with board chairs and non-executive directors of large listed companies on the Johannesburg Stock Exchange (where Boards are required to have a social and ethics sub-committee and approve integrated reports which have been mandatory since 2010) and the Australian Stock Exchange (where Board directors’ liability legislation results in Boards being reluctant to adopt integrated reporting which is voluntary).

The research finds that contemporary reporting processes, and in particular those set out in the King III Code and the International Integrated Reporting Framework, influence cognitive frames enhancing board oversight and assisting organisations in managing complexity. This results in increased awareness of the impact of ESG issues together with a broader view of value creation despite investor disinterest.

A number of avenues of research are suggested to further examine the interrelationships identified.

The research assists the development of practice and policy by articulating and enhancing the understanding of linkages, which loosely fall under the vague practitioner term “integrated thinking”.

The conceptualisation can inform national and global discussions on the appropriateness of corporate reporting and governance models to achieve sustainable development and contribute to the Sustainable Development Goals.

The paper conceptualises emerging and complex interrelationships. The cross-country comparison allows an assessment of the extent to which different national social contexts with differing governance and reporting frameworks lead to different perspectives on, and approaches to, value creation.

Because access to new technologies is unequally distributed, there has been considerable discussion in Australia and elsewhere about the growing gap, the “digital divide,” between the information-rich and information-poor (Bolt & Crawford, 2000; Castells, 2001; Companie, 2001; Gordon, 2001; Haywood, 1998; Negroponte, 1996; Nixon, 2001). Most schools have incorporated computers and Internet access into classrooms, partly in response to concerns about the gap between technology “haves” and “have nots” (Facer et al., 2001). Such concerns have led to high-profile information technology policy initiatives in the USA (Lentz, 2000; US Department of Commerce, 1999), U.K. (Selwyn, 2000), Australia (Foster, 2000) and other nations. Many families have invested in computer systems at home in order to provide their children with access to the growing body of information available through technology. Similarly, in an attempt to “redress the balance between the information rich and poor” by providing “equal access to the World Wide Web” (Virtual Communities, 2002), the Australian Council of Trade Unions (ACTU), Virtual Communities (a computer/software distributor) and Primus (an Internet provider) in late 1999 formed an alliance to offer relatively inexpensive computer and Internet access to union members in order to make “technology affordable for all Australians” (Virtual Communities, 2002).