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The current study uses an advanced machine learning method and aims to investigate whether auditors perceive financial statements that are principles-based as less risky. More specifically, this study aims to explore the association between principles-based accounting standards and audit pricing and between principles-based accounting standards and the likelihood of receiving a going concern opinion.

The study uses an advanced machine-learning method to understand the role of principles-based accounting standards in predicting audit fees and going concern opinion. The study also uses multiple regression models defining audit fees and the probability of receiving going concern opinion. The analyses are complemented by additional tests such as economic significance, firm fixed effects, propensity score matching, entropy balancing, change analysis, yearly regression results and controlling for managerial risk-taking incentives and governance variables.

The paper provides empirical evidence that auditors charge less audit fees to clients whose financial statements are more principles-based. The finding suggests that auditors perceive financial statements that are principles-based less risky. The study also provides evidence that the probability of receiving a going-concern opinion reduces as firms rely more on principles-based standards. The finding further suggests that auditors discount the financial numbers supplied by the managers using rules-based standards. The study also reveals that the degree of reliance by a US firm on principles-based accounting standards has a negative impact on accounting conservatism, the risk of financial statement misstatement, accruals and the difficulty in predicting future earnings. This suggests potential mechanisms through which principles-based accounting standards influence auditors’ risk assessments.

The authors recognize the limitation of this study regarding the sample period. Prior studies compare rules vs principles-based standards by focusing on the differences between US generally accepted accounting principles (GAAP) and international financial reporting standards (IFRS) or pre- and post-IFRS adoption, which raises questions about differences in cross-country settings and institutional environment and other confounding factors such as transition costs. This study addresses these issues by comparing rules vs principles-based standards within the US GAAP setting. However, this limits the sample period to the year 2006 because the measure of the relative extent to which a US firm is reliant upon principles-based standards is available until 2006.

The study has major public policy suggestions as it responds to the call by Jay Clayton and Mary Jo White, the former Chairs of the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), to pursue high-quality, globally accepted accounting standards to ensure that investors continue to receive clear and reliable financial information globally. The study also recognizes the notable public policy implications, particularly in light of the current Chair of the International Accounting Standards Board (IASB) Andreas Barckow’s recent public statement, which emphasizes the importance of principles-based standards and their ability to address sustainability concerns, including emerging risks such as climate change.

The study has major public policy suggestions because it demonstrates the value of principles-based standards. The study responds to the call by Jay Clayton and Mary Jo White, the former Chairs of the US SEC, to pursue high-quality, globally accepted accounting standards to ensure that investors continue to receive clear and reliable financial information as business transactions and investor needs continue to evolve globally. The study also recognizes the notable public policy implications, particularly in light of the current Chair of the IASB Andreas Barckow’s recent public statement, which emphasizes the importance of principles-based standards and their ability to address sustainability concerns, including emerging risks like climate change. The study fills the gap in the literature that auditors perceive principles-based financial statements as less risky and further expands the literature by providing empirical evidence that the likelihood of receiving a going concern opinion is increasing in the degree of rules-based standards.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the contribution of big data in the transforming process of an IT firm to a learning organization.

The authors adopted a qualitative research approach to define and interpret the ideas and experiences of the IT firms’ employees and to present them to the readers directly. For this purpose, they followed a single-case study design. They researched on a small and medium enterprise operating in the IT sector in Düzce province, Turkey. This paper used a semi-structured interview and document analysis as data collecting methods. In all, eight interviews were conducted with employees. Brochures and website of the organization were used as data sources for the document analysis.

As a result of in-depth interviews and document analysis, the authors formed five main themes that describe perception of big data and learning organization concepts, methods and practices adopted in transforming process, usage areas of big data in organization and how the sample organization uses big data as a learning organization. The findings of this paper show that the sample organization is a learning IT firm that has used big data in transforming to learning organization and in maintaining the learning culture.

The findings contribute to literature as it is one of the first studies that examine the influence of big data on the transformation process of an IT firm to a learning organization. The findings reveal that IT firms benefit from the solutions of big data while learning. However, as the design of the research is single-case study, the findings may be specific to the sample organization. Future studies are required that examine the subject in different samples and by different research designs.

In literature, research on how IT firms’ managers and employees use big data in organizational learning process is limited. The authors expect that this paper will shed light on future research that examines the effect of big data on the learning process of the organization.

The current study aims to analyze the role of International Federation of Accountants (IFAC) in sustainability issues and its impact on the attitude of practitioners (auditors) in industrial companies. The current study relies on the analytical method, one of the tools of the inductive approach, by examining the literature of researchers, international and local organizations, publications, series, alerts, and topics dealt with by the IFAC, as well as reviewing studies, theoretical and applied research, periodicals, books, and statistics. And specialized publications for this subject, which is related to other sciences – such as – environmental science, economic, and political sciences. The study reached many results, the most important of which are: (1) The first half of the current decade has seen high interest from the IFAC, has led to the issuance of International Auditing and Assurance Standards Board (IAASB) international standard on assurance engagements 3410, (GHG) Statements. (2) Sustainability has become important to a growing number of enterprises, and may have a significant influence, in certain cases, the financial statements, also became the sustainability of the topics under increasing attention from users of financial statements. Thus, the financial statements will need a practitioner to take into consideration sustainability issues and a private greenhouse gas when auditing the financial statements. This study is distinguished by analyzing the role of the IFAC and the IAASB for the period from 1998 to 2023 regarding sustainability issues.

The purpose of this study is to propose a framework for the convergence of maturity model and education and evaluation in accounting.

The present research was conducted in two phases. In the first phase, to determine the indicators of convergence of the maturity model and education and evaluation in accounting, a Meta-Synthesis method was used. The conceptual model includes two dimensions of “Teaching and learning processes” and “Evaluation methods"; five levels of initial, repeatable, defined, managed and optimized; and a total number of 35 indicators. In the second phase, a questionnaire was developed, and academics as accounting faculty members in Iranian public universities were employed to fill out the questionnaire electronically and present a final framework. Having received the questionnaires, 66 questionnaires were analyzed statistically.

The results showed that the two dimensions of “Teaching and learning processes” and “Evaluation methods” considering initial, repeatable, defined, managed and optimized levels include 35 indicators, which form a framework for the convergence of maturity model and education and evaluation in accounting. The results show that both dimensions have positive and significant regression path coefficients in the convergence model. Moreover, the dimension of teaching and learning processes has the highest regression path coefficient indicating a greater impact on the convergence model. Besides, all five levels have positive and significant regression path coefficients with dimensions. Finally, in this study, all indicators were prioritized according to five levels.

Due to the success of maturity models and the urgent developments that require transformative improvements in accounting education, maturity models can respond to the challenges associated with education and learning in accounting. Thus, conceiving an image of the convergence of maturity model, education and evaluation in accounting seems imperative which has been scarcely investigated previously.

This study aims to contribute to the debate on goodwill accounting by examining the information content of impairment losses recognized in half-yearly reports. Half-yearly reports provide a suitable context to examine the effectiveness of the impairment process. Due to IFRIC 10 requirements, indeed, managers may have incentives to avoid recognizing impairment losses at the interim reporting date.

The study adopts an archival approach. Based on the traditional Ohlson’s model (1995), it explores the information content of half-yearly impairment losses in the European context over the period 2007–2017.

Findings confirm the relevance of half-yearly reports and suggest that half-yearly impairment losses are significantly associated with stock prices. In particular, investors positively value companies that recognized goodwill impairment losses at the interim reporting date.

The study contributes to the academic debate on goodwill and the effectiveness of the impairment procedure. In particular, it provides empirical evidence on the recognition of goodwill write-offs when it is possible to avoid the impairment test in the absence of indications of impairment.

Findings of this study can support the current debate on accounting for goodwill also in the light of the recent proposals of the IASB on the need to improve the effectiveness of the impairment test.

This study provides original empirical evidence on the goodwill impairment test in half-yearly reports, extending previous research that typically examines this issue in annual reports.

Today, with the increasing involvement of the environment and human beings business units, paying attention to fulfilling social responsibility obligations while making a profit has become increasingly necessary for achieving sustainable development goals. Attention to profit by organizations should not be without regard to their social and environmental performance. Social responsibility accounting (SRA) is an approach that can pay more attention to the social and environmental performance of companies, but it has many barriers. Therefore, the purpose of this study is to identify barriers to SRA implementation and provide strategies to overcome these barriers.

In this study, the authors identify barriers to social responsibility accounting implementation and provide strategies to overcome these barriers. By literature review, 12 barriers and seven strategies were identified and approved using the opinions of six academic experts. Interpretive structural modeling (ISM) has been used to identify significant barriers and find textual relationships between them. The fuzzy technique for order performance by similarity to ideal solution (TOPSIS) method has been used to identify and rank strategies for overcoming these barriers. This study was undertaken in Iran (an emerging market). The data has been gathered from 18 experts selected using purposive sampling and included CEOs of the organization, senior accountants and active researchers well familiar with the field of social responsibility accounting.

Based on the results of this study, the cultural differences barrier was introduced as the primary and underlying barrier of the social responsibility accounting barriers model. At the next level, barriers such as “lack of public awareness of the importance of social responsibility accounting, lack of social responsibility accounting implementation regulations and organization size” are significant barriers to social responsibility accounting implementation. Removing these barriers will help remove other barriers in this direction. In addition, the results of the TOPSIS method showed that “mandatory regulations, the introduction of guidelines and social responsibility accounting standards,” “regulatory developments and government incentive schemes to implement social responsibility accounting,” as well as “increasing public awareness of the benefits of social responsibility accounting” are some of the essential social responsibility accounting implementation strategies.

The findings of the study have implications for both professional accounting bodies for developing the necessary standards and for policymakers for adopting policies that facilitate the implementation of social responsibility accounting to achieve sustainability.

This paper creates a new perspective on the practical implementation of social responsibility accounting, closely related to improving environmental performance and increasing social welfare through improving sustainability.

Experts believe that the strategies mentioned above will be very effective and helpful in removing the barriers of the lower level of the model. To the best of the authors’ knowledge, for the first time, this study develops a model of social responsibility accounting barriers and ranks the most critical implementation strategies.

In developing countries, how risk management technologies influence management accounting and control (MAC) practices is under-researched. By drawing on insights from institutional studies, this study aims to examine the multiple institutional pressures surrounding an entity and influencing its risk-based management control (RBC) system – that is, how RBC appears in an emerging market attributed to institutional multiplicity.

The authors used qualitative case study research methods to collect empirical evidence from a privately owned Egyptian insurance company.

The authors observed that in the transformation to risk-based controls, especially in socio-political settings such as Egypt, changes in MAC systems were consistent with the shifts in the institutional context. Along with changes in the institutional environment, the case company sought to configure its MAC system to be more risk-based to achieve its strategic goals effectively and maintain its sustainability.

This research provides a fuller view of risk-based management controls based on the social, professional and political perspectives central to the examined institutional environment. Moreover, unlike early studies that reported resistance to RBC, this case reveals the institutional dynamics contributing to the successful implementation of RBC in an emerging market.

This study aims to investigate the factors associated with the intention to use information technology in audit (ITIA) in Iraq.

The study uses a quantitative approach based on a questionnaire survey of 186 respondents. The study population includes respondents who are board members, senior executives, internal auditors and information technology (IT) assistants in various Iraqi organizations from different sectors. Structural equation modeling has been used to estimate the results.

The findings exhibit that most auditors in Iraq use basic IT software. However, among several specialized and advanced IT audit software packages, only generalized audit software is used by about 20%. The results also indicate that social factors significantly and positively impact auditors’ and practitioners’ perceptions of ITIA use. Moreover, the results reveal that companies and auditors who use or audit complex accounting systems perceive higher benefits and intent to adopt ITIA. However, the results report that organizational support, professional support, competency and IT education have an insignificant effect on ITIA adoption.

The originality of the present research lies in several aspects. First, the research study focuses specifically on Iraq, which is an emerging and less developed country influenced by social and economic. This research context provides a unique perspective and contributes to the understanding of ITIA adoption in less developed countries. The study investigates how external factors, including social and external pressure and the support of government professional bodies, affect the adoption of ITIA. Further, it assesses the influence of firms’ specific factors such as management support, level of competency and complexity of accounting information systems. Second, the study uses a quantitative approach with a questionnaire survey from various Iraqi organizations and sectors. The specific sample composition adds originality by capturing insights from different levels of organizational hierarchy and diverse professional backgrounds. Third, the findings shed light on the current IT usage in auditing practices in Iraq, highlighting that most auditors use basic IT software and the limited adoption of specialized IT audit software packages. Finally, the study’s originality is also reflected in its contribution to expanding knowledge on the perceived benefits and challenges associated with ITIA adoption in less developed countries. By emphasizing the need for broader awareness of emerging technology-enabled auditing software and considering the unique characteristics of less developed countries, the research provides valuable insights and implications for practitioners, policymakers and researchers.

To effectively integrate sustainability education into accounting, the needs of stakeholders such as educators, practitioners, regulators, students, and politicians must be considered. While existing literature reflects their separate perceptions, this study considers their influence on the integration process. Sustainability accounting can play a key role in supporting sustainability practices, which businesses need to be accountable for. This study focuses on how sustainability accounting education can improve corporate sustainability practices. However, most existing studies only consider one stakeholder group, and there is a gap in literature on sustainability accounting education in developing countries, particularly in the Middle East. This study informs future researchers about various research gaps in sustainability education.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the relationship between tax avoidance and earnings persistence in the light of a developing economy, with the main focus on China.

In the analysis, the author conducts a survey on the tax avoidance situation of Chinese listed companies from 2012 to 2020. Then, a multivariate regression analysis is performed in order to analyse the relationship between corporate tax avoidance and earnings persistence.

The findings of the present study show that tax avoidance has a significant positive effect on earnings persistence. However, when the degree of tax avoidance is high, the “risk effect” of tax avoidance exceeds the “value effect”, and tax avoidance will reduce the persistence of earnings. This conclusion is even more prominent when the company is non-state-owned. Further research shows the increase of institutional investors’ shareholding ratio can improve “value effect” of tax avoidance, lessen “risk effect” of tax avoidance, and positively affect the relationship between tax avoidance and earnings persistence.

This study provides evidence for investors to understand the dual effect of tax avoidance on earnings persistence. The results may have implications for regulatory bodies. They can provide a better understanding of the corporate governance role of institutional investors in curbing opportunistic tax avoidance.

This study enriches the research on tax avoidance effects by analysing the impact of tax avoidance on earnings persistence. This study also compensates for the shortcomings of analysing earnings persistence mainly from the perspective of tax differences in the past, and promotes the study of the corporate governance effects of institutional investors under different levels of tax avoidance.