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The belief-adjustment model has been an integral part of accounting research in belief revision, especially in the examination of order effects. Hogarth and Einhorn ((1992) Cognitive Psychology, 24, 1–55) created the belief-adjustment model to serve as a theoretical framework for studying individuals’ decision-making processes. The model examines several aspects of decision-making, such as encoding, response mode, and task factors. The purpose of this chapter is to provide a comprehensive examination of the accounting studies that have used the theoretical framework of the belief-adjustment model in auditing, tax, and financial accounting contexts. Roberts’ ((1998) Journal of the American Taxation Association, 20, 78–121) model of tax accountants’ decision-making is used as a guideline to organize the research into categories. By using Roberts’ categorization, we can better sort out the mixed results of some prior studies and also expand the review to include a more comprehensive look at the model and its application to accounting. While many variables have been examined with respect to their effect on accounting professionals’ belief revisions, most studies examine them in isolation and do not consider the interaction effects that these variables may have. Our framework also identifies areas of the belief-adjustment model that need further research.

This chapter examines whether professional auditors’ affect toward client management influences fraud likelihood judgments and whether accountability and experience with fraud risk judgments moderate this effect. This research also explores the process by which affect influences fraud judgments by examining affect’s influence on the evaluation of fraud evidence cues. Results indicate that more positive affect toward the client results in lower fraud likelihood judgments. Accountability is found to moderate this effect, but only for experienced auditors. These findings have implications for fraud brainstorming sessions where all staff levels provide input into fraud risk assessments and because client characteristics are especially salient during these assessments. Importantly, results also support the proposition that affect impacts inexperienced auditors’ fraud assessments through errant attribution of client likability to evidence cues that refer to management, rather than biasing all client-related evaluations. Together, these findings suggest that education and training can be improved to better differentiate relevant and irrelevant cues in fraud judgment.

The evaluation of evidence is a key component of the tax research task. This study adds to the current literature regarding evidence evaluation and confirmation bias in the accounting profession. Previous studies have suggested that tax professionals prefer evidence that confirms their initial opinion, which is consistent with the findings in the psychology literature. This study considers the effects of the tax professional's environment in which these decisions are made. First, staff accountants responsible for finding and evaluating evidence are directly accountable to a supervising accountant. Second, client advocacy is prevalent in all decisions in public accounting. Client advocacy results in a preference for the client-favorable position. Staff accountant subjects in this study were found to be affected by the opinions of their supervisors. However, this effect was moderated by the preference for the client-favorable position. Subjects in an evidence evaluation task confirmed their supervisor's opinions (going against their own initial opinions) only when the opinion was the client-favorable position. When the supervisor's opinion was not client-favorable, accountants confirmed their own initial opinions (going against their supervisors' opinions). These findings supplement the findings of previous studies by determining how contextual factors such as accountability and client advocacy affect the influence of confirmation bias in an evidence evaluation task.

In recent years, practitioners have identified a number of problems with traditional performance management (PM) systems, arguing that PM is broken and needs to be fixed. In this chapter, we review criticisms of traditional PM practices that have been mentioned by journalists and practitioners and we consider the solutions that they have presented for addressing these concerns. We then consider these problems and solutions within the context of extant scholarly research and identify (a) what organizations should do going forward to improve PM practices (i.e., focus on feedback processes, ensure accountability throughout the PM system, and align the PM system with organizational strategy) and (b) what scholars should focus research attention on (i.e., technology, strategic alignment, and peer-to-peer accountability) in order to reduce the science-practice gap in this domain.

Urban renewal through the regeneration and redevelopment of public housing estates has become a major policy initiative in most Australian state housing authorities since the mid-1990s. These policies have involved a mix of both physical renewal and community development in response to the problems that have emerged in the public housing sector over the past two decades. While the origins of these problems are well established and reflect the changes experienced by public housing sectors in other comparable countries (Hayward, 1996; Peel, 1995), the impact of policies to address these problems in the Australian context has attracted less attention in the academic literature (Arthurson, 1998; Randolph & Judd, 2000). While there is an emerging body of evaluation and research that has attempted to assess the outcomes of renewal programmes and policies, it can be argued that there is still a relatively poor level of general understanding of what aspects of renewal are effective or what outcomes have actually been achieved. At the same time, there has been little effective development of an exchange between researchers or evaluators on the effectiveness of the various evaluation methodologies – qualitative and quantitative – that have been used to assess renewal policies. This is particularly evident at the national level (Spiller Gibbin Swan, 2000).

The scoring system for the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards (NBPTS) assessments was a groundbreaking undertaking that brought with it a host of unanticipated challenges. These, in turn, generated a complete revision of the approach to scoring and the design underwent a number of changes during the first decade. Beginning with an analytical model which was so ambitious that it was entirely too cumbersome and complex to be undertaken within a reasonable timeframe, assessment developers had to systematically redesign a scoring system that would be at once reliable, valid, and operationally feasible.

The essay studies the introduction and use of audio-visual media in contemporary Swedish courtroom praxis and how this affects social interaction and the constitution of judicial space. The background to the study is the increasing use of video technology in law courts during the last decennium, and in particular the reformed trial code regulating court proceedings introduced in Sweden in 2008. The reform is called A Modern Trial (En modernare rättegång, Proposition 2004/05:131). An important innovation is that testimonies in lower level court proceedings now are video recorded and, in case of an appeal trial, then are screened in the appellate court. The study of social interaction and the constitution of judicial space in the essay is based in part on an ethnographic study of the Stockholm appellate court (Svea hovrätt) conducted in the fall 2010; in part on a study of the preparatory works to the legal reform; and in part on research on how media technology affects social interaction and the constitution of space and place.

Objective – The first wave of experiences of exemptions policies suggested that poverty-based exemptions, using individual targeting, were not effective, for practical and political economic reasons. In response, many countries have changed their approach in recent years – while maintaining user fees as a necessary source of revenue for facilities, they have been switching to categorical targeting, offering exemptions based on high-priority services or population groups. This chapter aims to examine the impact and conditions for effectiveness of this recent health finance modality.

Methodology/approach – The chapter is based on a literature review and on data from two complex evaluations of national fee exemption policies for delivery care in West Africa (Ghana and Senegal). A conceptual framework for analysing the impact of exemption policies is developed and used. Although the analysis focuses on exemption for deliveries, the framework and findings are likely to be generalisable to other service- or population-based exemptions.

Findings – The chapter presents background information on the nature of delivery exemptions, the drivers for their use, their scale and common modalities in low-income countries. It then looks at evidence of their impact, on utilisation, quality of care and equity and investigates their cost-effectiveness. The final section presents lessons on implementation and implications for policy-makers, including the acceptability and sustainability of exemptions and how they compare to other possible mechanisms.

Implications for policy – The chapter concludes that funded service- or group-based exemptions offer a simple, potentially effective route to mitigating inequity and inefficiency in the health systems of low-income countries. However, there are a number of key constraints. One is the fungibility of resources at health facility level. The second is the difficulty of sustaining a separate funding stream over the medium to long term. The third is the arbitrary basis for selecting high-priority services for exemption. The chapter therefore concludes that this financing mode is unstable and is likely to be transitional.

Research in psychology and accounting suggest that affect (client likeability) toward a person can impact human judgment, resulting in more favorable treatment for likeable than dislikeable individuals. This study investigates whether two debiasing mechanisms, justification and self-review, mitigate the impact of affect (client likeability) on fraud risk assessments. Consistent with prior research on nonfraud audit judgments, this study finds that in absence of any debiasing mechanism, inexperienced auditors are susceptible to affect biases in fraud judgments. Extending prior research, we find justification is not sufficient to mitigate likeability, but self-review is an effective mechanism to mitigate the effect of client likeability in a fraud judgment task. Supplemental findings indicate that general accounting experience, in itself, does not mitigate client likeability; however, the effectiveness of the self-review mechanism extends to these participants.