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Auditors are now concerned with environmental issues as some transactions may lead to loss contingencies which must be disclosed in financial statements. Reviews accounting principles concerning such contingencies and discusses auditing standards with regard to illegal acts, environmental specialists and reportable conditions. Refers to statements on auditing standards (SAS) concerning the client representation letter, lawyer's letter, going concern, audit report and communication with audit committee.

Reports on research concerning the role and nature of communication during the innovation process of new financial services. A causal framework has been developed on the antecedent role of communication in financial service innovation and its impact on success. Project team communication is conceptualized by: intra‐project communication (communication between project team members); and extra‐project communication (boundary‐spanning communication). Examines the effectiveness of these communication flows from an information processing perspective and assesses the amount of uncertainty reduced about customers, competitors, technologies and resources. Also assesses the impact of the reduction of uncertainty on new financial service performance. In view of the context, i.e. financial service innovations, we included the specific characteristics of services (intangibility, inseparability of production and consumption, heterogeneity and perishability) into our theory and research design. Finally, the theoretical and managerial implications are discussed.

The purpose of this paper is to identify and examine the major issues and challenges that impact the implementation of wikis as KMS. Wikis have been referred to as next generation KMS, providing an alternative to traditional knowledge management systems by addressing many of their limitations. However, research shows that there are cases where wikis have failed to achieve this potential. Further research on the range of issues and challenges surrounding the implementation of wikis in the corporate environment is required in order to enable organizations manage them more effectively and reap maximum benefits.

This paper begins by providing a review of previously published empirical studies on wiki deployment in organizations. The disparate discussions are then synthesised by identifying the major issues and challenges in wiki implementation.

Six major issues and challenges are identified including lack of a clear purpose for the wiki, wiki usability, integrating wikis into established work practices, social issues, role of management and organizational culture that supports knowledge sharing and collaboration.

It is posited that in order for organizations to successfully implement wikis, it is necessary to first understand the issues and challenges surrounding wiki implementation. This paper contributes to practice by identifying the key issues and challenges in the implementation of wikis and suggesting strategies for using wikis to manage knowledge effectively. Building on this review, we critically analyse the findings and propose a model for the implementation of wikis which addresses these issues and identifies research areas that further need to be investigated.

The purpose of this paper is to report on the development of a knowledge transfer project, part funded through TE3, designed to encourage innovation and improve the capability of SMEs in the West Midlands region of the UK. Knowledge is critical to developing competency within small businesses and managers that understand how their customers behave and translate that insight into innovative products/services are more likely to succeed.

Adopting an action research methodology, the paper aims to describe the TE3 funding process and address the effectiveness of a project designed to overcome some of the contextual issues relating to the development of SME capability through technology supported learning. It describes the development of a knowledge transfer framework (The Collaborative Learning Environment) designed to specifically target the needs of SMEs.

Firms that efficiently tap into all relevant sources of knowledge are likely to thrive, whilst those that cannot may struggle. However, an obstacle to SME development is often an inability to access technical and business knowledge. The Technology Enhanced Enterprise Education (TE3) initiative was found to provide a solution to this problem by funding the development of technology supported learning solutions delivered through a collaborative network of UK Higher Education Institutions

The paper outlines a proposal for a collaborative learning environment. This model will provide value to designers of virtual learning environments and funded support providers.

Reports the findings of an exploratory case study research on the contribution of internal and external communication to the commercial success of financial service innovations. An extensive case study research involving four innovation projects was conducted within a leading Belgian bank. The desk research and the 32 in‐depth interviews with senior managers and project leaders served as a platform for theory development. A propositional framework was developed that offers a contingency perspective regarding the role of communication during the different stages of the service innovation process. While many of the existing studies in the field have exclusively focused on external communication, the effectiveness of internal communication is a critical success factor. Furthermore, path dependency effects were created in the project life‐cycle of the financial service innovation projects. Finally, the findings suggest that the effectiveness of internal and external communication depends on the level of intangibility, heterogeneity, simultaneity and perishability of the new service offering.

The purpose of this study is to investigate Egyptian auditors’ ethical reasoning, to understand whether auditors’ ethical reasoning is influenced by audit firm size and/or auditor’s position.

This paper draws on 178 questionnaires that include six different ethical scenarios. This paper also uses the accounting ethical dilemma instrument that is developed by Thorne (2000) to measure the ethical reasoning of Egyptian auditors.

The findings are threefold. First, this study finds that the general level of deliberative ethical reasoning of auditors working in the Central Auditing Organization (CAO) and small firms are categorized in the post-conventional level, while auditors working in big and medium firms are categorized in conventional level. Second, the result suggests that there is a negative relationship between ethical reasoning and audit firm size in Egypt. Finally, the results show that ethical reasoning levels decrease when the position of auditors increase except for auditors working in CAO.

This study adds to the scarce literature in developing countries that measure auditors’ ethical reasoning. The findings suggest that auditors’ ethical reasoning depends on auditor’s firm size and the position the auditor holds within the firm. These findings will aid policymakers and regulators, especially in developing countries, to avoid any potential risk regarding professional misconduct and in evaluating the adequacy of the current code of ethics.

The purpose of this paper is to explore, using fine-grained exploratory multi-case studies, organisational learning practices – and associated constraints – impacting the performance of four small- and medium-sized project organisations which deliver energy efficiency projects in South Africa and whose learning practice mixes are of wider significance for the emerging project society in the region.

The unit of analysis is the Energy Efficiency Demand Side Management (EEDSM) programme; a US$104m grant funded the initiative directed at supporting energy efficient retro-fit projects across local municipalities in South Africa. Thematic analysis is undertaken, based on multiple exploratory interviews with project practitioners working for small- and medium-sized EEDSM project organisations.

Recognising the criticality of tacit knowledge as a focus for learning, within unstructured, novel, non-routine and technically specialised learning contexts in particular, the widespread lack of organisational harnessing through linkages to strategy and performance are noted, and advocacy is offered for the development of appropriate learning cultures linked to communities of practice that bring specialists together from across regional project societies.

The socio-political context of the EEDSM programme, although briefly addressed for its organisational cultural implications, was not given detailed consideration in the exploratory interviews. This would have enhanced the idiographic complexity of the findings, while also reducing prospects for distilling generalisable organisational learning improvement opportunities for emerging project societies. However, the study does not seek to provide evidence for specific learning practice effects on performance as this was not something the interviewees felt able to comment on in significant detail.

Learning practice studies for small- and medium-sized project organisations remains sparse, so are studies of business environments within developing countries, in general, or sub-Saharan Africa, in particular. Looking beyond narrow individual project views of performance, the present study’s project society-based business environment is theorised as both constraining and benefiting from the project-learning practices discussed by the respondents.

Technological advances and new business models have contributed to the usage of self-service technology (SST) by firms. As SST continues to create organizational efficiencies, firms have jumped on the bandwagon without considering their own readiness to use SST. To date, there has been no systematic attempt to develop a valid scale of firm SST readiness and assess its influence on firm performance. The purpose of this paper is to present and validate a multidimensional firm SST readiness scale.

A series of studies was conducted for the development and validation of the firm SST readiness scale. Study 1 included generating items from semi-structured interviews with managers and an extensive literature review. Study 2 comprised item reduction and identifying the dimensionality of the scale through exploratory factor analysis (n=177 participants from service organizations). The reliability and validity of the scale were tested in Study 3 by performing confirmatory factor analysis using data obtained from managers of service organizations in the USA (n=257). Study 4 measured the predictive validity of the firm SST readiness instrument using several structural models.

This paper proposes a new multidimensional construct labelled “firm SST readiness”, consisting of four dimensions: managerial acquiescence, customer alignment, employee engagement, and channel integration. The predictive validity of the new scale on two key firm outcome variables: customer value and firm performance is also demonstrated.

This is the first study to provide a comprehensive, psychometrically sound, and operationally valid measure of firm SST readiness.

The purpose of this paper is to analyze the effect of organizational learning on technical innovation and the role of organizational culture as a determinant of the organizational learning processes.

After reviewing the literature on organizational learning and its relationship with both, technical innovation and organizational culture, this paper analyzes those relationships using a sample of 451 firms.

Findings reveal that organizational learning is positively associated with technical innovation and that organizational culture can foster both organizational learning and technical innovation but can also act as a barrier. Additionally, findings show that in order to enhance innovation neither a flexibility focus nor an external focus are enough. Both of them are necessary to characterize organizational culture.

The main limitations of this paper are the cross‐sectional design of the empirical research and the fact that data were collected from one source only.

Findings can guide managers' efforts in the development of an organizational culture which fosters both organizational learning and innovation since they show that adhocracy culture fosters both of them and that a hierarchy culture may act as a barrier for them.

The paper focuses on the little‐researched relations between organizational culture, organizational learning and innovation. Moreover, it focuses on the Spanish context, where there is a lack of studies on this issue. Finally, the paper provides empirical evidence that these relations exist. In particular, adhocracy enhances both learning and innovation the most, while hierarchy inhibits them most.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the evolution of the ethical discourse of the US public accounting profession over the last century in relation to Foucault's concept of “codified discourse”. The ethical discourse of the US public accounting profession has evolved from its first code of ethics promulgated in 1917, which focused primarily on protecting the economic interests of the profession, to a position in the most recent promulgation of the code of professional conduct, which contains aspirational elements regarding ethical behavior, but which incorporates few enforceable provisions. It is therefore necessary to look elsewhere for the ethical discourse of the profession, which appears to be located more in the behaviors of accountants practicing in large international public accounting firms, in which the professional accountant becomes molded into an “ethical being” in the Foucaultian sense, as one who is self-regulated and self-formed into an ideal member of the profession.

Using Foucault's concept of “codified discourse”, the author examines changes to the code of ethics of the US public accounting profession of over a period of 100 years. The code of ethics of the US public accounting profession has been one of the primary means through which the ethical discourse of the profession has been communicated to its members. The author addresses the question whether the code of ethics has been principally directed towards protecting the public interest or serving the private interests of the profession. Extending Preston et al. and Beets, the author argues that the changes to the code of ethics have been prompted primarily by market forces and the accounting profession's desire to expand its scope of its services, thus protecting its private economic interests.

The author demonstrates that the ethical discourse of the profession can be found more in the self-forming practices of the profession rather than its code of ethics. These self-forming practices commence early in the career of a prospective accountant and shape the accountant into an idealized “ethical being” in the Foucaultian sense; not an ethical being who complies with a code of ethics, but rather an ethical being who is self-regulated and self-formed into an ideal member of the profession, one who seeks to serve clients while at the same time giving the appearance of acting with integrity and conforming to professional ideals.

The limitations of this paper are similar to those of all qualitative studies in that there is a lack of generalizability.

Most academics are unaware of the informal ethical discourse that is effectively communicated to entry level and junior accountants. Making accounting students cognizant of the actual ethical discourse that they will face in their careers may help them to better deal with the ethical challenges that they will face.

No previous research has dealt with codes of ethics in the public accounting profession as a self-forming practice, using Foucaultian terminology.