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This paper investigates the financial disclosure practices of corporate annual reports published in Asian countries including Bangladesh, Indonesian, Malaysia and the Middle East countries including Bahrain, Iran, Jordan, Kuwait, Oman, Pakistan, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and Turkey. The purpose of the study is to measure the financial disclosure diversity in these countries, with a view to developing a classification of their similarities and differences in respect to their compliance with International Accounting Standards (IAS). Annual reports of 126 public companies liisted on the countries' stock exchanges are the central data source, supplemented with other relevant information about financial disclosure practices in each country. A disclosure checklist adopted from all IASs and summarised in 306 individual items of financial disclosures is used as a means of extending an understanding of financial reporting in these countries. Results show the relative degree of conformity with IASs for each of the countries included in this study.

Little is known of how accounting is used in the home, or about the potential relevance of business‐like techniques in this domain. This paper reports findings from an exploratory study into the practices of home accountants. Ten cases based on interviews with both accountants and lay people were used to investigate four broad areas of accounting practice: budgeting, record‐keeping, decision making and long‐term financial planning. The findings suggest that simple accounting practices are used in the home to serve multiple purposes. Domestic cash budgets, financial records and decision‐making rules of thumb offer a valued sense of financial control and security. Home accounts are also drawn on in rationalising financial choices, and accounting practices reinforce a personal sense of identity. This study revealed little difference between the practices of accountants and those of lay people, suggesting that the “mind‐set” and practices of home accountants may be attributed to factors other than command over technique. Any “theories” of home accounting and prescriptions for practice may have limited relevance, therefore, if they fail to account for the particular characteristics of the home as an accounting domain.

The aim of this paper is to explore the causes of variations in financial accounting and disclosure practices in a municipal setting highly influenced by governance reforms – the Swedish municipal waste management sector. This focus is motivated by the claim that recent governance reforms have made the organization of public services delivery more diversified and fragmented, which may have had a negative effect on transparency and accountability.

To document the accounting and disclosure practices of the Swedish solid waste management organizations, a questionnaire approach was selected. The study uses a conceptual theoretical framework that complements the basic variables considered to influence public sector financial accounting and disclosure practices with factors such as competition and municipal governance forms.

The results show that compliance accounting and disclosure transparency to some extent have different antecedents and that the external environment, including market competition, size and economic input, influences both. The governance forms, on the other hand, only influenced compliance accounting (negatively and positively) and not the willingness to disclose information in general. The overall conclusion is that changes to the economic and institutional context mixed with different municipal governance forms introduces a multiplicity of forces that makes the accounting practices themselves diversified and fragmented and not necessarily only in a “negative” direction.

From a policy perspective the results indicate that the changing institutional and organizational environment has not been matched by attention to, and regulation of, reporting structures that secure external vertical accountability processes. The general implication for future regulations should therefore be to recognize the influence of different economic and institutional forces and develop accountability models that enable and preserve the benefits of governance reform initiatives without losing accountability and transparency.

Few prior quantitative studies have theoretically related municipal accounting and disclosure practices to factors such as market competition and popular municipal governance forms (municipal corporation, regional cooperation, outsourcing, etc.). Knowledge of how reforms might influence municipal accounting practices might benefit future policy decisions on accountability models with aim of enable and preserve the benefits of governance reform initiatives without losing accountability and transparency.

This study aims to investigate the claim that there is no coherent and homogeneous body of concepts and practices that can be classified as “Islamic accounting”.

The study focuses specifically on Islamic accounting and uses a qualitative historical documentary analysis methodology to study an original manuscript from the 14th century.

The analysis of the manuscript argues that religious accounting can be seen as a value-based system for achieving social good and that in the context of Islamic accounting, it can be conceptualised as a coherent body of ideas and practices.

Firstly, the study conceptualises Islamic accounting as a homogeneous discipline with its own knowledge, concepts and practices. Secondly, it contributes to current accounting literature by examining an ancient manuscript from the 14th century, which serves as a foundation for understanding the Islamic accounting system within the context of accounting, religion and spirituality. The paper further contributes by arguing that this conceptualisation of religious accounting as a value-based approach enables its practitioners to evaluate their own accountabilities in delivering on socioeconomic objectives related to inter-human/environmental, social and financial transactions within the context of religious accounting practices.

This study seeks to explore the financial priorities, financial planning and control practices in locally‐established voluntary organisations (LVOs) in a developing country context.

Two data collection methods are used to gather views from the LVO treasurers: a questionnaire survey and face‐to‐face interviews.

Treasurers are less focused on priorities involving internal planning and control and are found to be using financial planning and control practices to a limited and seemingly unsophisticated extent. In consideration of the theoretical implications of organizational legitimacy, overall findings suggest that internal practices are: extensively used to convey a symbolic message of rationality, in the pursuit of a pragmatic or a moral form of legitimacy towards a defined funding body or towards a perceived internal target audience, respectively; used in a limited and informal way due to their perceived inappropriateness in legitimating organizations, in “deference” to the voluntary organizations' (VO) primary social objectives; or are virtually inexistent, due to the strong influence of trust embedded in an “emotional‐led” context, thereby explaining the irrelevance of financial/control practices – even for symbolic reasons.

The questionnaire response rate has been relatively low but the findings are enhanced by the diversity of organizations which participated in the questionnaire and interview stages.

This study focuses on locally established organizations in a developing country context, which are typically less subjected to VO regulation and are “managed” by (unpaid) volunteers. The interviews involved a cross‐section of LVOs, which has been instrumental in contemplating the potential relevance of the legitimacy perspective.

This paper proposes a framework to facilitate description of national financial accounting systems. Its first element, broad aims, identifies the fundamental purpose of national financial accounting systems as being to effect a macro‐user or micro‐user orientation. From this emerges the second element, institutional environment, which describes the nature of regimes put in place to effect regulation. This influences the third element, the specific accounting rules and practices adopted. Aspects of international practice relating to each of these three elements are illustrated. The pedagogical benefits of the framework are demonstrated. The standard vocabulary and the structured format of the framework is used to describe, in capsule form, the national financial accounting systems of Korea and Indonesia. The framework seems likely to enhance understanding of the similarities and differences in national financial accounting systems and to contribute useful insights to international accounting matters.

This study aims to scrutinize the relationship between the perception of big data (BD) features and the primary outcomes of financial accounting. Likewise, it explores whether financial accounting practices moderate the relationship between BD features and firm sustainability.

The study used a questionnaire survey based on the Likert scale for two distinct groups of participants: academic scholars and industry practitioners operating in the BD era within the energy sector.

The results reveal significant positive associations between BD features and firm performance, reporting quality, earnings determinants, fair value measurements, risk management, firm value, the efficiency of the decision-making process, narrative disclosure and firm sustainability. Besides, the path analysis indicates an indirect impact of BD on firm sustainability via financial accounting practices. The results suggest that energy firms should consider incorporating BD analysis into their financial accounting processes to improve their sustainability performance and create long-term value for their stakeholders.

The findings are particularly interesting to academics in accounting and business to improve the accounting curriculums to fit the technological revolution, especially in the field of BD analytics. Practitioners within energy industries must also refine their skills and knowledge to meet the challenges of BD in the foreseeable future. The results provide important implications for policy setters to revise current financial accounting standards to cope with technological innovation.

The study makes a valuable contribution by critically examining the impact of BD on various financial accounting practices neglected in prior research. It highlights the transformative power of BD in the domain of financial accounting and provides insights into its potential implications for energy firms.

This paper offers a way of revivifying classical accounting research in the form of a pragmatist neoclassical programme with a sound epistemological underpinning.

The paper draws on a pragmatist perspective on financial accounting and accounting research springing from John Dewey's theory of inquiry.

Although a pragmatist underpinning does not entail specific methodological prescriptions, it can provide fruitful insights in research design. The paper discusses the structure and content of a research programme drawing on a pragmatist underpinning and sets out proposals for a practical research agenda. Although the agenda is shaped around the topic of identifiable intangibles, much of the paper has substantially wider relevance.

The approach justifies a revival in scholarly research employing classical methods and directed at improving accounting methods and standards.

The approach would promote closer engagement between scholarly accounting and practitioners such as standard-setters, making some contribution to closing the widely acknowledged gap between research and practice.

The paper offers a neoclassical programme of research drawing considerably more extensively on pragmatist philosophy than did theorisation in the classical period.

The purpose of this research is to examine the accounting output of the reformed financial accounting system of municipalities in Belgium, particularly in Flanders. For the first time ever in Belgian governments, an accounting reform transferred from business accounting was imposed. The research hypothesizes that the level of material comparability of the accounting output is very poor in spite of the strict accounting regulations. The empirical results indicate that the annual accounts are actually incomparable in many respects and that these problems cannot be explained away by a lack of experience.

Forces of globalization have driven international convergence in corporate governance and accounting considerably over the past few decades. Nevertheless, despite the global trend, convergence of corporate governance and financial reporting remains a subject of debate. This research monograph critically examines whether China’s convergence with Anglo-American corporate governance principles and the International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) is likely to produce the expected outcomes of improving the transparency and comparability of accounting information in Chinese firms. In this chapter, we discuss the motivation for and the significance of the study; describe the issues associated with the adoption of internationally acceptable standards and principles in China; explain the theoretical framework used to inform the study and research methodology; and present the aim and objectives of the monograph.