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This study aims to identify the factors that lead non-financial companies listed in the UK to use an internal audit function (IAF) as a monitoring mechanism. Although the use of an IAF in the UK is voluntary, no prior research has examined the drivers for using one.

Financial and non-financial data were collected from the annual reports of 332 UK non-financial companies listed on the London Stock Exchange (LSE) Main Market. Univariate tests and multivariate logistic regression tests were used to test the research hypotheses. A theoretical framework based on both agency theory and transaction cost economics (TCE) theory was used to explain the economic factors affecting the use of an IAF.

The study provides evidence that firm size, level of internal risks, agency problem between owners and managers and existence of an effective audit committee are associated with the existence of an IAF. Thus, the need to have strong internal control and risk management systems and to reduce both internal and external agency costs drives companies to have an IAF. These results suggest the importance of IAF as an internal corporate governance tool and the effectiveness of UK governance regulations in monitoring the effectiveness of internal control systems.

Given the importance of the IAF’s corporate governance role, the study provides some policy implications. Regulators should pay more attention to the issue of maintaining an IAF, especially by large companies, the relationship between the IAF and other governance parties, especially the audit committee, and the disclosure of more relevant information about the IAF’s characteristics and practices.

This is the first study to examine the factors affecting the existence of the IAF within the UK’s distinctive regulatory approach of “comply or disclose reasons”. Furthermore, it provides a theoretical framework that explains how both the agency theory and TCE theory can interpret the adoption of internal audit.

This paper explores the role that the control system – understood as a set of financial and non-financial mechanisms – introduced by the Ministerial Decree of 15th February 1860 played in promoting the ethical tolerance of prostitution in the Kingdom of Italy.

A qualitative research method was adopted. Specifically, this study draws on literature on accounting and deviant behaviors and on Suchman's theories of legitimation (1995) to interpret empirical evidence collected from archival primary sources as well as secondary sources.

The paper highlights how the accounting mechanisms introduced by the law were molded to limit the serious consequences of prostitution from a public health standpoint and to demonstrate that the State neither profited from prostitution nor used public money to fund it. This should have stimulated ethical tolerance of the law itself and, consequently, of the prostitution that was regulated.

This paper opens a new research avenue in the field of accounting history by exploring the connection between accounting and prostitution. Moreover, unlike the extant literature on accounting and deviant behaviors, this study delves into the role played by accounting mechanisms to promote ethical tolerance rather than to activate normalization processes.

The current research takes a closer look at the investment intention of Generation Z and its relation to investing in a speculative market. The study applies the theory of planned behaviour (TPB) to understand the dominant factors leading to Generation Z investment decisions in speculative markets. The main objective is to identify whether these decisions are learnt decisions or herd behaviours.

Structural equation modelling is used to evaluate the research model, and examine the mediation effect of financial literacy using bootstrapping in AMOS software. Information was gathered from 271 students studying at the University of Technology and Applied Sciences. The questionnaire used for the survey was adapted from previous related studies examining the TPB.

The findings show financial literacy and behavioural outcome (attitude) are key components associated with investment intention. Motivation to comply (subjective norm) affects the intention to invest if mediated by financial literacy. The subjective norm has no bearing on the intention to invest in a speculative market. This implies social peers have no bearing on their intention to invest unless mediated by financial literacy.

The main limitation of the study is that the group from which the sample is drawn consists of all students at a state-funded university who receive stipends. This limits the applicability of related findings. Furthermore, the variables have dynamic properties, which implies their impacts may vary over time.

Generation Z comprises a large number of small investors who can make a significant difference to the overall economic trends of the country. The digital world, which is time- and space-infinite, is shaping the next generation. It is only possible to reach and sway their opinions by conducting extensive behavioural science research.

Academic institutions ought to be viewed as a resource for conducting additional in-depth research on a variety of subjects to assist and shape the current generation for a better future.

Although the TPB has been used by many researchers to explore the behavioural intention of Generation Z, very few have used financial literacy as a perceived behaviour control to study its direct and indirect effects on behaviour intention.

The aim of the paper is to investigate the associations between hedge fund activism and corporate internal control weaknesses.

In this paper, the authors identify hedge fund activism events using 13D filings and news search. After matching with internal control related information from Audit Analytics, the authors utilize ordinary least square (OLS) and propensity score matching (PSM) to analyze the data.

The authors find that after hedge fund activism, target firms report additional internal control weaknesses, and these identified internal control weaknesses are remediated in subsequent years, leading to better financial-reporting quality.

The findings indicate that both managers and activists have incentives to develop a stronger internal control environment after targeting.

The study analyses how management control supports the organisation's response to the COVID-19 pandemic lockdown.

Video interviews with top and middle-level managers who were directly involved in handling the response to the COVID-19 crisis in late winter and spring 2020 form the empirical base. The object-of-control framework and the distinction between organic and mechanistic management controls inform the exploratory case analysis of a large food retail cooperative in Italy.

Both organic and mechanistic management control mechanisms enabled an immediate response and management of the crisis. The use of cultural, action and results controls supported employees' health and safety coordination, a tight monitoring of financial performance and social interventions in support of the local community.

The study provides original exploratory insights on the use and role of management control in the context of an unprecedented emergency and an unplanned setting (i.e. a pandemic crisis), which is an under-investigated topic in the accounting literature. The study shows how management control operated, linking moral and technical aspects as well as facilitating organisational adaptation and pandemic effects mitigation.

Illegal wildlife trade (IWT) is a transnational organized crime that generates billions in criminal proceeds each year. Yet, it is not regarded by many countries as a serious crime. There is also no general consensus on its recognition as a predicate offence for money laundering. In this regard, banks are misused in different ways to facilitate financial flows linked to IWT. This paper aims to illustrate the importance of the banking sector in combating money laundering relating to IWT. It also aims to demonstrate the need for a general recognition of IWT as a predicate offence for money laundering.

This study investigates the implementation of money laundering controls by banks in the illegal-wildlife-trade context. As background to this investigation, it provides an overview of IWT, which is followed by an exploration of some of the general characteristics of the banking sector, before discussing the relevant Financial Action Task Force (FATF) recommendations.

This study finds that the banking sector is well-placed to combat money laundering relating to the IWT and is, by virtue of its international nature and strong focus on compliance, able to be effective in preventing the use of the proceeds of IWT as well as in identifying broader trafficking networks. Moreover, the banking sector is well-equipped to develop appropriate platforms to facilitate the swift, easy and effective sharing of financial intelligence between banks at the local, regional and especially international level.

This study draws on publicly available information on financial flows relating to IWT. Little data and research are available on the financial flows and consequently the money laundering techniques used in cases suspected of IWT.

There has been little scholarly research on the relationship between money laundering and the IWT as well as the financial flows of IWT in general. This study highlights some of the money laundering techniques used in relation to IWT by drawing on the works of various international organizations, including the FATF.

People are increasingly responsible for making sound financial decisions to foster their financial satisfaction and well-being, which magnifies the importance of financial literacy, and this concept and measurement is still not yet crystallized in the literature, specifically capturing different behavior perceptions. Moreover, there is not a distinction based on different classifications of behavior, such as over or underconfidence, to understand the relation between literacy and decision process. To fill this gap, this paper aims to investigate whether the financial literacy conceptual model proposed applies similarly to every group independently of their previous self-confidence perception. For this purpose and quality control, OECD (2016) data were used with a final sample of 1,487 Brazilian citizens. Quantitative analysis technique using partial least squares structural equations path modeling and differences between groups using multi-group analysis was applied. In line with general studies, when analyzing the financial literacy usual model for the group as a whole, financial knowledge construct positively influences self-confidence, and both together positively affect financial behavior. However, for individuals with low financial knowledge and low self-confidence, as well as for those with too much or too little confidence, the model did not hold. Therefore, self-confidence perception influences the way financial knowledge is used for financial decisions and should be addressed in financial education and training to be more effective.

To operationalize the variables and test the paper’s hypotheses, the authors used the methodology developed in OECD (2016), based on the research instrument’s Brazilian application adapted from the questionnaire developed in OECD (2015), with data initially used and made available by Garber and Koyama (2016). Based on the recommendations of Hair Jr et al. (2017a, 2017b), the authors used partial least squares modeling PLS-PM (SmartPLS 3.2.6) to estimate the structural models.

Concerning structural relationships, the final model showed knowledge with a positive influence on self-confidence, self-confidence with a positive effect on behavior and knowledge with a positive influence on behavior, both directly and, through its relationship with self-confidence, indirectly. This underscores that, for the total sample, the greater people’s knowledge and self-confidence, the better their behavior. The unexpected absence of attitude in the final model, even allowing for potential measurement problems, brings up an important reflection on the mediating effect that the self-control variable may exert between attitude and behavior. A person may believe that saving for the future is important (attitude) but whether they actually save (behavior) may depend on self-control, which is needed to prevent immediate gains from being prioritized in practice.

The findings reported so far concern the study’s total sample. However, as expected from the literature review that provides the basis for the sixth and the most important hypothesis, respondents were found to be heterogeneous in terms of knowledge and self-confidence levels. These differences were evaluated by means of multi-group analyses that indicated that the model does not apply to respondents with low knowledge and low self-confidence and to those who are over- and underconfident. This implies inferring that financial education programs may be of little use if they only address technical knowledge development and fail to consider behavioral aspects such as those related to self-confidence, as this paper points out, and others. This signals the importance of diagnosing people’s profiles to enable developing solutions capable of minimizing the presence of behavioral biases. This need to be studied further.

The results imply inferring that financial education programs may be of little use if they only address technical knowledge development and fail to consider behavioral aspects such as those related to self-confidence, as this paper points out, and others. Models must be reviewed in light of natural diferences of cognition and lead to customized financial education.

This signals the importance of diagnosing people’s profiles to enable developing solutions capable of minimizing the presence of behavioral biases. Therefore, not only training topics in personal finance but also a deeper education program since the kindergarden must be considered.

Its practical contribution is to suggest the development of financial education programs that also take account of the potential presence of behavioral biases, which may prevent the misallocation of (scarce) public- and private-sector funds stemming from a limited focus on developing the population’s actual financial knowledge.

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.

The reality of domestic violence does not disappear when people enter the digital world, as abusers may use technology to stalk, exploit, and control their victims. In this chapter, we discuss three unique types of technological abuse: (1) financial abuse via banking websites and apps; (2) abuse via smart home devices (i.e., “Internet of Things” abuse); and (3) stalking via geo-location or GPS. We also argue pregnancy and wellness apps provide an opportunity for meaningful intervention for pregnant victims of domestic violence.

While there is no way to ensure users' safety in all situations, we argue thoughtful considerations while designing and building digital products can result in meaningful contributions to victims' safety. This chapter concludes with PenzeyMoog's (2020) “Framework for Inclusive Safety,” which is a roadmap for building technology that increases the safety of domestic violence survivors. This framework includes three key points: (1) the importance of educating technologists about domestic violence; (2) the importance of identifying possible abuse situations and designing against them; and (3) identifying user interactions that might signal abuse and offering safe interventions.

This study aims to test empirically the differences between Islamic and conventional banks in terms of impacts of the audit committees' quality on financial performance between Subprime and Corona crises.

The variables are articulated in four hypotheses tested by the GLS analysis. The data were collected via DATASTREAM and from banks' annual reports. The collected data covered four continents: America, Asia, Africa and Europe. The financial performance measures and audit committee's determinants of the conventional and Islamic banks concerned 112 banks of each type after the Subprime crisis and before the Corona crisis (2010–2019).

Results showed that the audit committee reduced the profitability of two bank types. Moreover, it harmed the conventional banks' efficiency, but reported an unclear effect within Islamic banks. Even so, the authors noticed that the audit committee had a positive impact for the conventional banks' liquidity, while the same effect was apparently ambiguous on the Islamic banks' liquidity. For solvency, the audit committee positively influenced conventional banks, while it affected that of Islamic banks.

Empirically, the authors’ results can serve as a reference for decision-makers allowing to clarify the data on the financial competitiveness of two bank types to facilitate the planning of strategic performance programs based on the audit committee quality. Theoretically, researchers found that the differences between the results are due to the audit committee quality of each bank type or to the financial performance evaluation method. However, there are further factors that are related to the research peculiarities, the methodology, the data and the interpretation.

Based on the comparative literature review between conventional and Islamic banks, this study is the first conditional and comparative research between the audit committee quality and the financial performance of conventional and Islamic banks in a specific period (after Subprime and before Corona crises).