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The recent coronavirus pandemic created uncertainty across most markets. This has resulted in many valuations being reported with caveats warning that they are uncertain. However, many valuers and their clients remain unclear as to what these warnings are supposed to convey and why they are required by many valuation standards, including the International Valuation Standards. The purpose of this paper is to explain how recognition of the need for uncertainty disclosures has developed over the past 25 years and how such disclosures can enhance overall trust in valuation.

The author has been involved in the development of the guidance issued by both the International Valuation Standards Council and Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors, which included extensive consultation with financial regulators and valuation users alike. He has also examined the wider economic theories of risk and uncertainty and how these need to be clearly distinguished in valuations.

This paper identifies the situations under which valuation uncertainty can occur, and steps that a valuer can follow to determine whether it is sufficiently material to require an appropriate caveat to be issued alongside the valuation. It also examines the merits of different ways in which material uncertainty can be disclosed.

The paper should provide valuers with a better understanding of the reason why uncertainty disclosures are required and the circumstances in which they are required. It also provides principles to help them formulate disclosures that are appropriate in different circumstances.

This is an abridged version of a Valuers' Briefing “Valuation Uncertainty – Reporting the unknowable” by the author and published as either an eBook or paperback available from Amazon.

The aim of this practice briefing is to provide clarity on property valuations provided for secured lending. The principal basis of valuation is market value but there is confusion on when and where it is appropriate or inappropriate to provide a valuation with an assumption of a restricted marketing period, sometimes referred to as a “forced sale”. This practice briefing examines the nature of the problem and steps which a valuer can take to provide advice which is consistent with the valuation standards.

This practice briefing is an overview of the role of valuation standards when providing valuations for secured lending and specifically what to do when asked for a value with an assumed restricted marketing period.

This briefing is a review of valuation standards and practice.

The role of the practising valuer, when providing valuations for secured lending, is to provide a valuation to aid and underpin the lender in assessing the risk attached to the loan. This briefing considers the provision of valuations in practice.

This provides guidance on how to undertake valuations for secured lending.

Market value is an estimation of price in the market. It is value in exchange. The valuer's role is to determine the appropriate approach, the method and use the right model to achieve this aim as best as possible. However, underpinning all valuations and property analysis are valuation standards and definitions. This paper looks at the definition of market value and how some market participants may misunderstand or even misrepresent it. This is particularly true when there is a downturn in the market.

This practice briefing is an overview of the role of market value as a definition of price and how it is often misused by stakeholders in the property market.

This briefing is a review of the valuation definitions clarifying what they mean and what they do not mean.

The role of the valuer in practice is to use the appropriate definition for the task in hand. The understanding of those definitions is central to the valuation process.

This provides guidance on how valuation definitions can be presented to the client in accordance with the International Valuation Standards.

The purpose of this paper is to discuss how the concepts market value (MV) and exit price should be interpreted in thin markets and how accounting rules may need to change to take this into account.

This is a conceptual paper using hypothetical examples as a base for the conclusions.

In a thin market, actors can have rather different reservation prices. The price will then be set through bargaining and the agreed price could be considerable above the reservation price of the actor with the second highest reservation price. The exit price should then be below what the MV was before the transaction and below the entry price, and according to the current accounting rules, the value in the balance sheet should then be below the price paid. The authors’ experience is, however, that this rarely happens in practice.

The limitation of the paper is that it is a conceptual paper and not based a systematic empirical study of accounting practices.

The results of the paper indicate that there is a need to revise the current accounting rules. Possible changes are discussed.

As far as the authors know, this is the first paper that looks at problems in the current value concepts related to differences in reservation prices in thin markets.

This study examines the influence of firm management’s ethical “tone at the top” (tone) and the working relationship of an auditor with his/her supervisor (senior) on the auditor’s propensity to engage in an unethical, dysfunctional auditor behavior (DAB). Findings indicate that environmental factors influence the staff auditor’s decision of whether or not to follow a course of action suggested by the supervisor that is contrary to both the audit program and generally accepted auditing standards (GAAS). Specifically, auditors are influenced by the tone that the partner sets for the firm and by the working relationship that the staff auditor has with the supervising senior auditor. The results of this research have ramifications for the auditing profession, as they identify specific factors outside of auditing standards and beyond an auditor’s moral reasoning capabilities that can influence the acceptance of unethical, dysfunctional behavior.

The purpose of this paper is to offer a theoretical framework of whistleblowing that gives due recognition to the emotional and reflexive processes that underpin it. Modes of anger are integrated into the model based on a reading of Geddes and Callister (2007), and developed by Lindebaum and Geddes (2016) work on moral anger.

The model is derived by interrogation of the extant literature on whistleblowing with due recognition accorded to emotional and reflexive dimensions that have been underrepresented in previous research. The model was tested by a qualitative study that uses memoir analysis to interrogate a board level whistle-blower’s account of the complex, traumatic and like-changing nature of his experience.

The paper identifies key stages in whistle-blower thinking before, during and subsequent to a decision to expose corporate wrongdoing. It demonstrates how emotional and reflexive processes influence a whistle-blower’s mode of anger expression, and how different perspectives by the whistle-blower and the focal organisation may view this expression as moral or deviant anger.

The complexity of the whistleblowing process, together with possible alternative perspectives of it, makes identifying every influencing variable extremely challenging. Also, reliance on a whistle-blower’s own account of his experience means that recall may be partial or self-serving. The model can be used to analyse other whistle-blower accounts of their experience, and further confirm its applicability.

This is the first application of memoir analysis to a whistle-blower’s account of his experience that relates modes of anger expression to stages in the whistleblowing episode. It addresses a significant imbalance in whistleblowing research that hitherto has emphasised rationality in whistle-blower decision making and downplayed the influence of reflexivity and emotion.

This study examines the association between management control systems (MCSs), specifically the interactive and diagnostic use of controls, with the corporate social responsibility (CSR) disclosure-action portrayal gap (i.e. the disparity in employees’ perception of their organisation’s emphasis on CSR disclosures relative to CSR actions) and the subsequent impact on employees’ perceptions of organisational performance, both operational performance and corporate social performance. Data were collected using a survey of US lower-level managers, with the data obtained from 209 respondents and analysed using structural equation modelling (SEM). The results reveal that the interactive and diagnostic use of controls both exhibit a significant negative association with the CSR disclosure-action portrayal gap, that is, the use of these controls reduces the gap. In addition, the various dimensions of the CSR disclosure-action portrayal gap exhibit a significant negative association with both operational and corporate social performance, that is, lower gap, higher performance. The study contributes to the CSR literature by providing the first empirical insight into employees’ perception of both CSR disclosures and actions, and hence, the CSR disclosure-action portrayal gap. In addition, the study contributes to the MCS and organisational performance literature by providing the initial empirical insight into the role of MCSs in mitigating the gap through enhancing the interactive and diagnostic use of controls, and the negative association between the gap and employees’ perceptions of organisational performance.