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This study aims to fill the research gap regarding the usability of group reporting information in the central government. It answers the question of how the consolidated information should be formed to benefit the real needs of governmental information users.

The empirical research is based on a survey and interviews among key internal preparers and users in the central government sector in the case country, Finland.

Results show that the private sector approach regarding consolidation is not appropriately transferable to the central government sector. The key stakeholders identified several economic and financial reporting needs that exceed what formal Consolidated Financial Statement (CFS) can offer. Consolidation is needed but not according to the extensive full control approach, but rather following the budgetary approach consolidating units of the legal person of the government, and further using the partial control approach for consolidating by discretion essential special purpose SOEs.

Respondents and interviewees represented governmental internal organisations, free experts, auditors and financial managers from the group entities. Politicians and citizens were not directly represented.

Research gives applicable insights into central governments planning and developing group reporting for information needs in a favourable cost-benefit ratio. Findings benefit the development of EU's EPSAS (European Public Sector Accounting Standards) project which is still incomplete.

Research recommends governments to make a thorough analysis before deciding on a new financial reporting system. A critical analysis prevents governments to waste money and resources on a reporting system not fulfilling the real needs of information users.

The value of this research is that the private sector approach in consolidation was not taken as granted. This study investigated critically and empirically the real need for consolidated information serving steering and overseeing purposes of the government's group entities.

The purpose of this paper is to analyze the effects of financial restatements (FRs) on the likelihood of the top management team (TMT) dismissal. It investigates the effects of types of FRs [corrective note and reissuance of financial statement (RFS)], of FR severity and of FR related to international financial reporting standards (IFRSs) easy or difficult-to-estimate.

The authors hand-collect: data about 96 FRs from the Italian public oversight board documents; chief executive officer (CEO) name, chairman name, year of the financial statement under investigation, total assets and operating income, from their financial statement. The authors use multivariate regression to test the effects of FRs on the probability of TMT dismissal.

The authors find that the RFS leads to a higher likelihood of chairman dismissal. A greater magnitude of misrepresentation on income statements, and FRs, which decrease net income, increase the likelihood of CEO dismissal. Difficult-to-estimate IFRSs increases the likelihood of CEO dismissal.

FRs are significant determinants of the CEO/chairman dismissal. The authors show that FRs directly involving shareholders (RFS) have negative consequences on the chairman of the board of directors, while the CEO is more affected by FRs that involve technical factors (FR severity or financial statement associated with difficult-to-estimate IFRSs).

This paper aims to determine whether local governments (LGs) use non-consolidated municipally owned companies (MOCs), excluded from public sector entities and, consequently, from sub-national debt to avoid fiscal debt limits. This paper contributes to the literature by analysing the fiscal debt rule’s impact on the off-budget municipal activities in total and separate in different types of local government units.

This paper uses difference-in-differences and the system general method of moments model with the Blundell–Bond estimator for dynamic panel data analysis of MOCs owned by 866 Polish municipalities in 2010–2018.

This paper shows that the MOCs’ revenues support limited local public debt capacity by indebtedness restrictions imposed on municipalities in 2014. As a result, less indebted municipalities have higher off-budget revenues. The tightening of fiscal rules related to sub-sovereign indebtedness increased off-budget activities, but that effect is much stronger in rural and rural–urban municipalities than in urban municipalities and big cities.

This paper contributes to the literature by exploring the fiscal debt rule’s impact on the off-budget municipal activities in total and separate in different types of local government units. In this paper, the authors combine theories relating to private and public finance; this is a novel approach and one that is also necessary – as, in fact, the worlds of public and private actors intersect – as exemplified by the existence of MOC.

The purpose of this study is to identify the norms that underlie and condition the decisions made by preparers of financial reports.

This interview-based study illustrates how financial report preparers engage in behaviors linked to the perception of recognition and measurement of internally generated intangible assets by important stakeholders. All of the companies included in the study adhere to International Financial Reporting Standards when creating their consolidated financial statements. The participants selected for the study are involved in accounting decisions related to research and development in accordance with International Accounting Standard (IAS) 38.

The authors identify the normative assumptions underlying the recognition and measurement of internally generated intangibles, which are based on concerns of consistency, credibility and reasonableness. The authors find that the normative basis for legitimacy in financial accounting is primarily related to cognitive legitimacy and is not of a moral or pragmatic nature.

The study reveals that recognition and measurement of internally generated intangibles in financial accounting relate to legitimacy. The authors identify specific norms that form the basis of this legitimacy, namely, consistency, credibility and reasonableness. These identified norms serve as constraints, mitigating the risk of judgment misuse within the IAS 38 framework for earnings management.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the differences of audit quality of financial statements among auditors, including Big 4 and non-Big 4 auditors.

By employing cross-sectional analysis of compliance (a proxy of audit quality) of goodwill impairment testing of listed firms in the context of Hong Kong, the variation of audit quality of financial statements of auditees has been shown.

Audit quality of Big 4 auditors is viewed to be higher than that of non-Big 4 audit firms and the homogeneity of audit quality among Big 4 auditors is not long accepted, but variation.

Even though unqualified opinions have been given on the auditors’ reports, the quality of financial statements audit is a skeptical issue because of the high level of non-compliance of goodwill impairment testing under International Financial Reporting Standards.

This study does emphasize the higher audit quality of financial statements of Big 4 auditors than that of non-Big 4 auditors and stresses the variation of audit quality among Big 4 auditors.

The purpose of this paper is to explain how public sector accounting has changed and is changing due to public governance development.

This paper conducts a traditional literature review based on selected studies in the fields of accounting, public administration and management. The aim of the review is to explain how diverse forms of public governance influence the fate of public sector accounting, including accountability, performance measurement, budgeting and reporting practices.

Public governance is developing into more inclusive but also complex forms, resulting in network, collaborative and digital governance. Consequently, the focus and practices of public sector accounting have changed, as reflected in new types of accountability, performance measurement, budgeting and reporting practices.

Drawing upon literature from different fields enables a deeper understanding of the changes in public sector accounting. Nevertheless, the intention is not to execute a systematic literature review but to provide an overview and resolve the scattered body of knowledge generated by previous contributions. The areas of risk management and auditing were not included and deserve further attention.

This paper discusses the need to continually redefine and reassess public sector accounting practices, by recognising the interdependencies between different actors, citizens and digital technologies.

The purpose of this study is to explore the usefulness of popular reporting (PR) in an Italian city as a dialogic accounting tool for promoting citizens’ engagement with digital platforms. This study aims to contribute to the debate on democratic accounting technologies with a focus on PR and digital platforms, using the theoretical lens of dialogic accounting.

A longitudinal case study is used to analyse the implementation and evolution of PR in the city of Turin, Italy and explore how the city involved its citizens with digital platforms.

This study contributes to the debate on public accountability through dialogic accounting tools.

Multiple sources (surveys, interviews and interventionist workshops) are used to analyse Turin, Italy as a longitudinal case study.

This study offers practical reflections for legislators, politicians and public managers who need new knowledge and empirical analysis of the effective implementation of the PR as a tool for dialogue and empowering public accounting to hold continuous dialogue with the citizens.

PR can be considered a useful dialogic accounting tool for politicians, managers and government experts to encourage citizens’ engagement in a pluralistic society.

Accounting practices vary not only across firms, but also across countries, reflecting the respective legal and cultural background. Attempts at harmonization therefore continue to be rebuffed. The purpose of this paper is to argue that different wordings in national laws, and different interpretations of similar wordings in national laws, can be explained by taking recourse to the philosophy of language, referring particularly to Searle and Wittgenstein.

The example of the substance over form principle, investigated in seven countries, is particularly suitable for this analysis. It is known in all accounting jurisdictions, but still has very different roots in different European countries, with European and international influences conflicting, which is reflected in the different wording of the principle from one country to the next, and the different socially constructed realities associated with those wordings.

This paper shows that, beyond accounting practices, the legal and cultural background of a country affects the wording of national law itself. The broad conclusion is that different socially constructed realities might tend to resist any attempt at harmonized socially constructed words.

The paper contributes to the debate surrounding the possible homogenization of accounting regulations, illustrating the theory of the social construction of both “reality” and “language” on the specific application of one common principle to various Member State environments.

The paper identifies the types of risks disclosed by Italian organisations using integrated reporting (IR). This paper aims to understand the level and features of risk disclosure with the adoption of IR.

The authors use risk classifications already provided in the literature to develop a content analysis of Italian organisations’ integrated reports published.

The content analysis reveals that most of the Italian organisations incorporate many types of risk disclosure into their integrated reports. Organisations use this alternative form of reporting to communicate risk differently from how they disclose risks in traditional annual financial reporting. That is, the study finds that the organisations use their integrated reports to disclose a broader group of risks, related to the environment and society, and do so using narrative and visual representation.

The paper contributes to a narrow stream of research investigating risk disclosure provided through IR, contributing to the understanding of the role of IR in representing an organisational risk.

The present study aims to assess the impact of narcissism, self-confidence and auditor's characteristics on audit report readability for companies listed on the Tehran Stock Exchange.

The study’s statistical population comprises firms listed on the Tehran Stock Exchange. The present research used a systematic elimination method, and 1,162 firm-year observations were obtained for seven years from 2012 to 2018. Three variables including auditor tenure, audit fee and audit specialization are used for measuring auditing features. The Fog index is used as a proxy for measuring audit report readability. In addition, in this paper, four regressions, including fixed effects, random effects, pooled and T+1, are used to estimate reliable coefficients.

The findings show a negative and significant relationship between auditor’s characteristics (tenure, fee and specialization) and audit report readability. Moreover, the variables of the auditor’s narcissism, self-confidence and mandatory auditor change have a positive and significant association with audit report readability. This study lends support to the theories of personality disorder and behavioral decision.

Since narcissism and self-confidence are two characteristics that shape an individual’s character and personality, some involved behavioral factors in auditors’ characteristics contribute to their decisions. The effects of these should be detected to enhance the decision-making process. The said factors significantly impact audit report readability. Hence, this paper attempts to assess the effect of the said factors on audit report readability.