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This research aims to examine and understand the rationales and modalities behind the use of disclosure before, during and after a corporate governance scandal involving CPA Australia (CPAA).

Data beyond CPAA's annual reports were collected, such as news articles, media releases, an independent review panel (IRP) report, and the Chief Operating Officer's letter to members. These disclosures were manually coded and analysed through the word counts and word trees in NVivo. This study also relied on Norbert Elias' conceptual tool of power games among networks of actors – figurations – to model the scandal as a power game between the old Board, the press, concerned members, the IRP and the new Board. This study analysed the data to reveal a collective and in fieri power balance that changed with the phases of the scandal.

A mix of voluntary, involuntary, requested and absent disclosures was important in triggering, managing and ending the CPAA scandal. Moreover, communication and disclosure fulfilled a constitutive role since both: mobilised actors, enabled coordination among actors, contributed to pursuing shared goals and influenced power balances. Such a constitutive role was at the heart of the ability of coalitions of figurations to challenge and restore the powerful status quo.

This research introduces to accounting studies the collective and in fieri dimensions of power from figurational theory. Moreover, the research sheds new light on using voluntary, involuntary, requested and absent disclosures before, during and after a corporate crisis.

This study is the maiden attempt to understand the effect of specific human resource practices (HRPs) on employee retention (ER) with the mediation of job satisfaction (JS) and moderation of work experience (WE) and job hopping (JH) in the context of the textile industry.

This study adopted a quantitative methodology and applied quota sampling to gather data from employees (n = 365) of leading textile companies in India. The conceptual model and hypotheses were tested with the help of Partial Least Squares-Structural Equation Modelling (PLS-SEM).

The findings of a path analysis revealed that compensation and performance appraisal (CPA) have the highest impact on JS followed by employee work participation (EWP). On the other hand, EWP had the highest impact on ER followed by grievance handling (GRH). The study revealed that JS significantly mediates between HRPs like CPA and ER. During Multi-group analysis (MGA) it was found that the importance of EWP and health and safety (HAS) was more in employee groups with higher WE, but it was the opposite in the case of CPA. In the case of JH behavior, the study observed that EWP leads to JS in loyal employees. Similarly, JS led to ER, and the effect was more pronounced for loyal employees.

In the context of the Indian textile industry, this work is the first attempt to comprehend how HRPs affect ER. Secondly, it confirmed that JS is not a guaranteed mediator between HRPs and ER, it could act as an insignificant, partial or full mediator. Additionally, this study establishes the moderating effects of WE and JH in the model through multigroup analysis.

The purpose of this study is to establish a systematic framework to characterise the safety of air routes, in terms of separation minima infringements (SMIs) between en-route aircraft, based on the definition of models known as safety performance functions.

Techniques with high predictive capability were selected that enable both expert knowledge and data to be harnessed: Bayesian networks. It was necessary to establish a conceptual framework that integrates the knowledge currently available on the causality and precursors of SMIs with the hindsight derived from the analysis of the type of data available. To translate the conceptual framework into a set of causal subnets, the concepts of air traffic management (ATM) barrier model and event trees have been incorporated.

The model combines analytics and insights, as well as predictive capability, to answer the question of how airspace separation infringements are produced and what their frequency of occurrence will be. The main outputs of the network are the predicted probability of success for the ATM barriers and the predicted probability distribution of the vertical and horizontal separation of an aircraft in its closest point of approach.

The main contribution of this work is that, by virtue of the calculation capacity obtained, the network can be used to draw conclusions about the impact that a modification of the airspace and of the traffic, or operational conditions, would have on the effectiveness of the barriers and on the final distributions of distance between aircraft in the CPA, thereby estimating the probability of SMI.

There are no management decisions deprived of ethical or political consequences. Political corporate social responsibility (CSR) has been highlighting this assertion but research at the microlevel on this topic is scarce. This study aims to contribute to the microlevel research by proposing a behavioral framework where leaders’ political skills are determinants of engagement in strategic CSR and perceived CSR leverages their ascribed legitimacy to perform a political role outside the boundaries of the organizations.

Building upon political CSR and critical realism theories, this study offers a general review on key political CSR microlevel concepts and examines multiple dimensions of CSR to explain the indirect effect between boards' political skills and political legitimacy.

This research suggests that high politically skilled leaders are associated to more CSR adoption which fosters higher legitimacy to act as political influencers. Among these, CSR activities directed toward community members and employees are seemingly the most successful from a political standpoint.

This study proposes a contemporary form of political influence to business leaders that, in contrast with other strategies such as lobbying or financing political campaigns, does not end up damaging corporate image and reputation. Also, this study proposes that not all CSR activities leverage corporate political legitimacy per se, therefore they do need to be differentiated. This study then offers a comprehensive future research agenda, including detailed suggestions for research designs and measurements.

This paper aims to examine the current practice of reporting on translation issues in qualitative, interdisciplinary accounting research. Based on an analysis of the methodological consideration of the translation of quotations from non-English interviews and additional interviews with experienced researchers, the authors aim to develop recommendations for the reporting on such translation procedures in future accounting research relying on interviews not conducted in English.

The analysis is based on papers published in four highly ranked interdisciplinary accounting journals: Accounting, Auditing and Accountability Journal (AAAJ), Accounting, Organizations and Society (AOS), Critical Perspectives on Accounting (CPA) and Qualitative Research in Accounting and Management (QRAM). The subjects of the analysis are publications of non-English-speaking researchers who conducted non-English interviews and therefore were confronted with translation issues when attempting to get published in these English-language journals. Additionally, to gain deeper insights into reporting decisions on language and translation issues, the authors conducted interviews with experienced researchers in the field of qualitative, interdisciplinary accounting research whose mother tongue is not English. The authors combine these empirical insights with current developments in translation studies.

As suggested by translation studies, translation is an act of sense making and reconstruction of meaning, and therefore is a complex task that needs to be carried out with caution. However, the findings suggest that in current interdisciplinary, qualitative accounting research, the reporting of language and translation issues, especially with regards to the translation of quotations from interview data, have so far received only limited attention. The authors therefore call for more awareness of and sensibility toward dealing with language and translation issues, which should be reflected in more transparent reporting on translation processes to support the credibility and authenticity of qualitative accounting studies based on non-English interviews.

This paper is limited to the reporting on the methodological consideration of translating quotations from non-English interviews in papers published in AAAJ, AOS, CPA and QRAM between 2004 and 2015. For future accounting research that relies on such interviews, the authors call for more transparency and provide specific recommendations. This in turn should strengthen the awareness that language and translation are factors to be considered and reported.

This paper is the first to develop recommendations for the reporting of translation processes in accounting research studies, which are based on interviews not led in the English language.

Blockchain is expected to impact reporting and auditing processes. Indeed, the increasing use of blockchain could affect the nature and extent of information available to auditors and how audits are performed. This paper aims to investigate how auditors are assessing the relevance of the current auditing standards in light of the emergent use of blockchain technology.

Based on qualitative content analysis, this paper analyzed semi-structured interviews with auditors to understand their shared perception of how the current auditing standards address blockchain’s emergence.

The findings reveal a growing demand for information technology (IT) auditing standards, as well as a mismatch in timing between the quickly changing IT environment and the regulators’ slowness in releasing new standards or updating standards.

The findings reflect the external auditors’ points of view and cannot be generalized to all countries, but future studies should address the development of specific IT-related auditing standards to better fit the fast-evolving technology environment in ways that consider the other stakeholders’ points of view, including those of the standard setters.

The results of this study show that auditors consider the current auditing standards for IT to be too vague, and they need more guidance on both auditing blockchain and using technologies as audit tools.

The original contribution of this study lies in the in-depth understanding it provides of the adequacy of the current auditing standards to audit companies using blockchain, which is an under-researched topic.

This paper aims to review the research on accounting professionalisation in China to develop insights into how the research is developing, offer a critique of the research to date and outline future research directions and opportunities.

This paper adopts a methodological approach of systematic literature review, as suggested by Tranfield et al. (2003) and Denyer and Tranfield (2009), to identify, select and analyse the extant literature on the Chinese public accounting profession. In total, 68 academic works were included in the review process.

This paper finds that the extant literature has produced fruitful insights into the processes and underlying motivation of accounting professionalisation in China, demonstrating that the Chinese experience has differed, to a large extent, from the hitherto mainly Anglo-American-dominated understandings of accounting professionalisation. However, due to the lack of common theoretical vernacular and an agreed upon focus, the extant literature illustrates a fragmented and contradictory picture, making attempts to accumulate prior knowledge in the field increasingly difficult.

This paper focusses only on research published in English. Consequently, the scope of review has been limited as some works published in languages other than English may be excluded.

This paper provides one of the pioneering exercises to systematically review the research on accounting professionalisation in China. It explores significant issues arising from the analysis and provides several suggestions for furthering the research effort in this field.

While the three lines model (TLM) provides an organizational structure to execute risk and control duties, research and practice show limitations in the model's implementation. These limitations result in governance issues. Such issues, together with control weaknesses, could be addressed by leveraging properties of distribution, transparency, and immutability of blockchain technology. To this end, in this paper the authors propose a conceptual control framework based on blockchain technology to augment control practice.

The design of the resulting blockchain-based control framework (BBCF) and its prototype, based on the design science research methodology (DSRM), is presented and discussed in terms of the potential impact in the context of the identified problems within the TLM.

One potential outcome of BBCF could be to redefine the scope and boundaries of some of the activities in audit and control practices from a more static to a more dynamic and prospective role. In a larger context of improving governance practices, the BBCF could set the path for a more inclusive and participatory interaction between the different governance actors of an organization.

However, this assumes that blockchain is more widely adopted despite its complexity and rigidity.

BBCF covering both a conceptual model design and a reference implementation provides an innovation in audit and control. BBCF could include all relevant stakeholders who have an interest in corporate governance and control activities, including the regulators.

The contribution intends to serve both as a starting point for discussing the evolution of audit and control practice based on blockchain technology, as well as an initial actionable prototype for experimentation and further development.

The purpose of this paper is to analyze how “New Deal” regulatory initiatives, primarily the Securities Acts and the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), changed US auditors’ professional knowledge conception, culminating in the 1938 expansion of the Committee on Accounting Procedure (CAP), the first US body to set accounting principles.

The paper combines Halliday’s (1985) knowledge mandates with Hancher and Moran’s (1989) regulatory space to attain a theory-based understanding of auditors’ changing knowledge conceptions amid regulatory pressure. It draws on a range of primary and secondary sources to examine the period from 1929 to 1938.

Following the stock market crash, the newly created SEC aimed to engage auditors as a means to regulate companies’ accounting practices based on a set of codified principles. While entailing increased status, this new role conflicted with the auditors’ knowledge conception, which was based on professional judgment and personal integrity. Pressure from the SEC and academics eventually made auditors agree to a codification of their professional knowledge and create the CAP as a cooperative regulatory solution.

The paper explores the role of auditors’ knowledge conceptions in the emergence of today’s standard setting. It is suggested that auditors’ incomplete control of their professional knowledge made standard setting a form of co-regulation, located between the actors occupying the regulatory space of accounting.

The purpose of this study is to present a review of the literature on strategic management accounting (SMA). Specifically, it focuses on the trend of SMA research since the publication of Langfield-Smith’s (2008) influential paper “Strategic management accounting: how far have we come in 25 years?” which raised the question of relevance of further SMA research.

The study reviewed articles published on SMA as a whole (comprising a set of advanced management accounting techniques) and its specific techniques for the period of 2008 to 2019 in 23 leading accounting journals.

The review finds that research on SMA has focused on the contingencies influencing the adoption and implementation of SMA techniques and the effects of such adoption on various aspects of firm and employee performance. The renovation and modification of existing practices in attempt to match with the organizational context has also attracted the attention of several SMA scholars. In addition, a noticeable shift to the strategic management theory and case study method was observed during the study period.

The study focuses on the trend of SMA research in an attempt to revisit the relevance of further research in this arena, particularly as a response to the criticism raised by Langfield-Smith (2008).