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Trust is an essential ingredient in facilitating financial transactions. The financial reporting process helps to create trust, but it, in turn, has to be trusted. Auditing and professional standards have been the traditional means by which trust in financial reporting has been fostered. Recently, these institutions have been put under great pressure by changes in the size and scope of financial markets. The consequence is likely to be a continuing change in the nature of trust and the means by which it is supported. In the future, personal trust is likely to be substituted increasingly by trust in systems supported by regulatory bodies. This does not mean that trust is no longer important, but rather that the form which it takes has changed. The importance of trust needs to be recognised by those engaged in shaping the future of financial reporting, if they are to meet the needs of users of financial information.

This is an extract from an exploratory essay on liabilities and how to account for them written by Andrew Lennard, Director of Operations at the Accounting Standards Board in London. It deals with the objective of financial statements and users’ needs in that context and then provides some overall conclusions.

This paper aims to analyse the character and strength of the claims made in an emerging literature offering a sociology of financial reporting principles.

The analysis evaluates exemplary works in the literature against the characteristics of the paranoid style first identified by Richard Hofstadter: overheated claims of a far-reaching, malign and collusive machinery of influence; a reductive, rationalistic and dualistic reading of events; weak empirics; and weak theorisation.

A significant stream within the literature is coming to be constructed in the paranoid style. Paranoid stylistics, used as a diagnostic tool, alerts us here to distorted judgement.

Alternative ways of avoiding the dangers of paranoid-style readings are suggested, ranging from resisting the temptations towards such readings to a radical re-working of the epistemics of “socio-accounting”.

The danger of allowing the conclusions advanced in the literature to go unchallenged is that they may influence society’s attitude to accounting, public policy-making and scholars’ willingness to contribute to the crafting of reporting principles and standards.

Although paranoid style analysis has been widely used to examine narratives in other academic fields, to the best of the author’s knowledge, this is the first study to apply it to scholarly accounting.

The purpose of this paper is to revisit the special issue of Accounting, Auditing & Accountability Journal published in 1996 on the theme “Accounting history into the twenty‐first century”, in order to identify and assess the impact of the special issue in shaping developments in the accounting history literature, and to consider issues for future historical research in accounting.

A retrospective and prospective essay focusing on developments in the historical accounting literature.

The special issue's advocacy of critical and interpretive histories of accounting's past has influenced subsequent research, particularly within the various research themes identified in the issue. The most significant aspect of this influence has been the engagement of increasing numbers of accounting historians with theoretical perspectives and analytical frameworks.

The present study examines the content and impact of a single journal issue. It explores future research possibilities, which inevitably involves speculation.

In addressing recent developments in the literature through the lens of the special issue, the paper emphasises the unifying power of history and offers ideas, insights and reflections that may assist in stimulating originality in future studies of accounting's past.

The London Mayoral Election of 4 May 2000 was probably the first in British electoral history when all the candidates had established a presence in cyberspace. An analysis of the 11 websites showed that politicians are beginning to realise the potential influence of the Web in political circles, both as a means of publication and also for canvassing support. Most of the web pages were well designed with a reasonable amount of content and simple levels of interactivity. Multimedia features were also evident on most sites, though in terms of currency and timeliness of information, some improvements could still be made.

This paper examines the impact of occupational stress on public accountants' job performance. The responses of 354 junior‐level public accountants to a survey questionnaire were analyzed using structural equation modeling. The structural model comprises measures of occupational stress, job satisfaction, organizational commitment and job performance. The results indicate that the emotional reaction of occupational stress has a negative and direct effect on public accountants' levels of organizational commitment and job satisfaction. The cognitive role of occupational stress has a direct impact on job performance. There is an indirect effect of the emotional reaction and cognitive role of occupational stress on public accountants' job performance through organizational commitment and job satisfaction.

This article focuses on one court case concerning the regulation of Anti-Abortion protesting and asks: (1) Do the various actors involved in this case recognize a tension between their actions and their broader beliefs concerning the regulation of political protests? (2) If this tension is recognized, how do the actors resolve it, and if it is not recognized, why is it not? While concerned with legal consciousness and cognitive dissonance, the article is framed by broader questions concerning tolerance and the interaction of law and political passions.