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Prevalence of hearing impairment is quite common in people with learning disabilities (double jeopardy). However, this debilitating co‐morbidity remains largely undetected by carers and professionals due to presence of additional disabilities and complex clinical presentation in this population on the one hand, and lack of specialist hearing impairment service provision and difficulty in accessing generic audiology services on the other hand. This article aims to provide practical guidance on assessment and management of hearing impairment in people with learning disabilities by offering a narrative review of available literature on gaps in service delivery.

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.

This paper aims to consider the relevance of asset impairments when evaluating stewardship by management.

This paper considers association of earnings (including and excluding asset impairments) with contemporaneous stock returns which are used as a measure of management performance and demonstration of stewardship.

Evidence is provided of earnings including asset impairments (an accounting measure of current measure firm performance) having a higher explanatory power for contemporaneous stock returns (an objective evaluation of current period firm performance) than earnings exclusive of asset impairments. Consistent with this, recognized asset impairments are significantly associated with contemporaneous stock returns. These results occur across firm years generally, as well as for firm years exhibiting indicators of impairment and firm years recognizing asset impairments.

This paper adds to the literature providing evidence of asset impairments not being recognised on a timely basis. Additionally, challenges are identified in evaluating the relevance of accounting information for so-called growth firms.

These findings support continued recognition of asset impairments in the Statement of Profit or Loss if stewardship is accepted as an objective for financial reporting. It also suggests issues with the recognition of asset impairments that might be addressed by enhanced disclosure.

This paper is distinctive in that it considers the relevance of accounting information for evaluating stewardship, as distinct from decision-making. It also considers alternate measure of performance (earnings including and excluding asset impairments) for all firms rather than only those disclosing an alternate measure (i.e. a fair horse race)

The article investigates the patterns of asset impairment recognition in search of signs of “big bath” earnings management practices across an internationally diversified sample of public companies. It also elucidates the incentives that may underlie such practices and explores possible safeguards embedded in the existing corporate governance mechanisms.

The article applied static panel and binary logit models to an international firm-level panel dataset of 1045 public companies observed between 2003 and 2018.

Our empirical results suggest that recognition of asset impairment has no determinate impact on earnings volatility. Investigating the possibility of “big bath” earnings management practices, the authors found no impact of asset impairment recognition on total senior executive compensation in firms, which pay performance-based remuneration. The quality of corporate governance has appeared to impact the firms’ intertemporal proclivity to recognize asset impairment with those having the more entrenched and management-controlled boards being more likely to time impairment recognition by delaying it during exceptionally good and exceptionally bad years. While generally unlikely, recognition of asset impairment in a period with a recorded negative operating performance is found to be closely associated with key executive departures.

The article corroborates the salient role of corporate governance mechanisms in shaping the intertemporal patterns of asset impairment recognition. The possible remedies to the phenomenon should be derived therefrom.

This paper aims to report the findings of a survey study exploring perceptions about cognitive impairment. These findings are relevant to public health campaigns and education programmes.

A survey exploring respondents’ views and knowledge about mild cognitive impairment (MCI) was circulated via UK networks. A total of 417 respondents completed the survey, including people living with cognitive impairment (n = 10), care partners (n = 23), older adults (n = 83), younger adults (n = 83), general health-care professionals (n = 96), dementia specialist health-care professionals (n = 48) and dementia specialists (n = 40).

Respondents were more confident in their knowledge about dementia than cognitive impairment but wanted more information about both conditions. Younger adults were uncertain about many aspects of MCI, and were the most likely to view MCI as a normal part of ageing. Diet (45.1%, n = 188) and personal behaviour (63.8%, n = 266) were the least endorsed possible causes of MCI, suggesting a lack of awareness of lifestyle choices as risk factors for MCI.

The results highlight the need to provide education and awareness raising about MCI to enable people to seek help in a timely manner and be able to make informed lifestyle choices that may reduce their risk of MCI and dementia. Implementing education about MCI and dementia in schools is a key target, as younger people were the most uncertain or misinformed about these topics. It is clear that further public health initiatives around MCI are both warranted and welcomed by the general public.

This paper aims to examine the effects of managerial ability (MA) on the likelihood and the timeliness of goodwill impairment and explore whether the desirable effect of MA vary with the degree of agency problems.

The authors propose a unified framework to simultaneously examine the effects of MA on the likelihood and the timeliness of goodwill impairment by incorporating a market-based impairment indicator (denoted as BTM), MA and the interaction of BTM with MA to this study’s regression model to account for the likelihood of goodwill impairment. BTM addresses the timeliness of goodwill impairment.

This study finds that firms with higher MA have lower likelihood of goodwill impairment, and such firms are more likely to recognize goodwill impairment in a timely manner when the underlying value of goodwill is economically impaired. This desirable effect of MA is more pronounced in non-state-owned enterprise (SOEs) and firms without chief executive officer (CEO) duality.

Firms can reduce the losses arising from goodwill impairment by enhancing the ability of their management teams combined with improved corporate governance structure.

This paper provides novel insights on understanding the role of MA in not only reducing the likelihood but also enhancing the timeliness of goodwill impairment. The findings help advance the upper echelons theory by uncovering the heterogenous effects of executives with different levels of ability.

When the FASB adopted an impairment test approach in 2001, rather than amortisation, the accounting for goodwill arising from an acquisition took a step in a new direction. The IASB, seeking international convergence and global harmonisation, also implemented this change when it issued IFRS 3 in 2004. Moving away from amortisation towards an impairment test involves a radical change. The research on which this paper is based was undertaken to examine these two very different accounting practices for the treatment of goodwill and to assess the possible impact that a transition from the one to the other may have on financial reporting.

This paper aims to provide evidence that will inform the convergence debate regarding accounting standards. The authors assess the ability of impairment reversals allowed under International Accounting Standard 36 but disallowed by the Financial Accounting Standards Board to provide useful information about a company.

The authors use a sample of 182 Malaysian firms that reversed impairment charges and a matched sample of firms which chose not to reverse their impairments. Further analysis examines if reversing an impairment charge is associated with motivations for and evidence of earnings management.

The authors find no evidence that the reversal of an impairment charge marks a company out as managing contemporaneous earnings. However, they document evidence that firms with high levels of abnormal accruals and weak corporate governance avoid earnings decline by reversing previously recognized impairments. In addition, companies that have engaged in big baths as evidenced by high accumulated impairment balances and prior changes in top management, use impairment reversals to avoid earnings declines.

The results of this study support both the informative and opportunistic hypotheses of impairment reversal reporting using Financial Reporting Standard 136.

The results also demonstrate how companies that use impairment reversals opportunistically can be identified.

The results support IASB’s approach to the reversal of impairments. They also provide novel evidence as to how companies exploit a cookie-jar reserve created by a prior big bath opportunistically.

Through adoption of the psycho-emotional model of disability, this study aims to offer consumer research insight into how the marketplace internally oppresses and psycho-emotionally disables consumers living with impairment.

This paper draws insight from the interview data of a wider two-year interpretive research study investigating access barriers to marketplaces for consumers living with impairment.

The overarching contribution offers to consumer research insight into how the marketplace internally oppresses and psycho-emotionally disables consumers living with impairment. Further contributions offered by this paper: unearth the emotion of fear to be central to manifestations of psycho-emotional disability; reveal a broader understanding of the marketplace practices, and core perpetrators, that psycho-emotionally disable consumers living with impairment; and uncover psycho-emotional disability to extend beyond the context of impairment.

This study adopts a UK-only perspective. However, findings uncovered that the model of psycho-emotional disability has wider theoretical value to marketing and consumer research beyond the context of impairment.

The insight offered into the precise marketplace practices that disable consumers living with impairment leads this paper to call for a revising of disability training within marketplace and service contexts.

Extending current consumer research and consumer vulnerability research on disability, the empirical adoption of the psycho-emotional model of disability is a fruitful framework for extrapolating insight into marketplace practices that internally oppress and psycho-emotionally disable consumers living with impairment.

This paper explores the findings from a recent study about the assessment and management of care for older people who may have a sensory impairment. Using qualitative research methods, the work focused on non‐specialist practitioners who are responsible for the assessment and management of care for older people and their carers. The findings are based upon the analysis of in‐depth interviews with non‐specialist practitioners, specialist workers and managers from statutory and voluntary sector agencies. Older people with a hearing impairment or a visual impairment are not a homogenous group of people with a single set of needs or service support networks. It is the existence of non‐specialist practitioners, carrying out the assessment and management of care for older people that draw together in one study the three areas of visual impairment, hearing impairment and dual impairment. The findings relate to practitioners' awareness of sensory impairment in their local community; how practitioners assess and manage care; access to services; staff training and development; and, information strategies. The interface between non‐specialists and practitioners with particular expertise in sensory impairment is also examined. The implications for policy and practice are identified.