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1 – 10 of 268Abdul-Rashid Abdul-Aziz, Subashini Suresh and Suresh Renukappa
The purpose of this study is to track the series of setbacks by a few like-minded persons since the early 1990s to entrench building surveying as a profession in Malaysia.
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this study is to track the series of setbacks by a few like-minded persons since the early 1990s to entrench building surveying as a profession in Malaysia.
Design/methodology/approach
Data were sourced from elite interviews with authoritative individuals who have been championing building surveying as a profession and supplemented by secondary sources.
Findings
Established professional bodies became hostile to what they perceived as attempts to encroach on their professional jurisdictions. There was even a move to subjugate building surveyors to the auxiliary role. The ultimate aim to obtain statutory “ring fence” around the proposed building surveying profession did not find favour with lawmakers.
Research limitations/implications
The limitation of small sample size was compensated by referral to past publications.
Practical implications
Latecomers face an uphill challenge in negotiating for legitimacy from established professions and lawmakers alike in a situation when no new work demand avails. Building surveyors in Malaysia have to either wait for external changes which would allow their traditional role to be formally recognised or take up new specialisations.
Originality/value
Additional empirical findings were uncovered to complement past studies. The main contribution lies in demonstrating the explanatory powers of the sociological lens for future studies on professions in the construction industry.
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Namrata Malhotra, Timothy Morris and C.R. (Bob) Hinings
This chapter examines the sources of variation in organizational form among accounting and law firms. We first summarize research in the organization of professional service firms…
Abstract
This chapter examines the sources of variation in organizational form among accounting and law firms. We first summarize research in the organization of professional service firms and explain its evolution. This is followed by the argument that variations around the P2 archetype have emerged in response to different market and institutional pressures faced by accounting and law firms. Drawing on contingency and institutional theory, we show how the changing balance between the influence of market and institutional factors has resulted in structural variation.
Olivier Boiral, Iñaki Heras-Saizarbitoria and Marie-Christine Brotherton
The purpose of this paper is to examine the professionalism and professionalization of sustainability assurance providers based on the experiences and perceptions of auditors…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to examine the professionalism and professionalization of sustainability assurance providers based on the experiences and perceptions of auditors involved in this activity.
Design/methodology/approach
The empirical study was based on 38 semi-directed interviews conducted with assurance providers from accounting and consulting firms.
Findings
The findings highlight the division of this professional activity between accounting and consulting firms, each of which question the professionalism of the other. The main standards in this area tend to be used as legitimizing tools to enhance the credibility of the assurance process rather than effective guidelines to improve the quality of the verification process. Finally, the complex and multifaceted skills required to conduct sound sustainability assurance and the virtual absence of recognized and substantial training programs in this area undermine the professionalization of assurance providers.
Research limitations/implications
This work has important practical implications for standardization bodies, assurance providers and stakeholders concerned by the quality and the reliability of sustainability disclosure.
Originality/value
This study shows how practitioners in this area construct and legitimize their professional activity in terms of identity, standardization and competences. The work contributes to the literatures on the assurance of sustainability reports, self-regulation through standardization and professionalization.
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This ethnographic investigation of a general hospital aims to critically analyse a much lauded corporate culture. Rather than accepting the managerial and academic claims…
Abstract
Purpose
This ethnographic investigation of a general hospital aims to critically analyse a much lauded corporate culture. Rather than accepting the managerial and academic claims concerning the mobilisation of corporate culture at face value, this study builds upon a labour process analysis and takes a close look at how it actually seems to work.
Design/methodology/approach
The paper explores and describes how executive managers seek to design and impose corporate culture change and how it affects the nursing employees of this organisation. This was achieved by means of a six month field study of day‐to‐day life in the hospital's nursing division.
Findings
The results lend little support to the official claims that, if managerial objectives are realised, they are achieved through some combination of shared values and employee participation. The evidence lends more support to the critical view in labour process writing that modern cultural strategies lead to increased corporate control, greater employee subjection and extensive effort intensification. The contradiction this brings into the working lives of the employees leads to the conclusion that the rhetoric of corporate culture change does not affect the pre‐existing attitudes and value orientations of nursing employees. However, there were considerable variations in how employees received the managerial message and thus, by their degree of misbehaviour and adaptation, affected the organisation itself as well as using the cultural rhetoric against the management for their own ends.
Originality/value
The paper concludes that an extended labour process analysis is necessary to challenge the way in which corporate culture change is explored and described by management academics and practitioners.
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The purpose of this study is to analyse historical events to argue the improbable prospect of radical accounting reform in corporate financial reporting (CFR) due to the absence…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this study is to analyse historical events to argue the improbable prospect of radical accounting reform in corporate financial reporting (CFR) due to the absence of abstract accounting knowledge as part of accountancy professionalisation (AP).
Design/methodology/approach
A historical database of CFR and AP events in the UK is categorised and analysed to observe the evolution of accounting in CFR from the perspective of the sociology of professions relating to abstract knowledge in professionalisation.
Findings
CFR has always been a statutory function in the UK dependent on arbitrary accounting rules rather than expert measurements based on abstract accounting knowledge. Accounting rules have evolved as part of AP and currently form part of the statutory regulation of CFR. The accountancy profession has eschewed abstract accounting knowledge in a mutually beneficial and uncompetitive relationship with the law profession in CFR.
Research limitations/implications
The study is limited to the history of CFR and AP in the UK and its findings are contrary to the sociology of professions regarding abstract knowledge, consistent with the accountancy profession’s 19th-century experience of court-related services, and indicative of normative accounting research’s redundancy.
Practical implications
Regarding CFR and AP in the UK, the accountancy profession is an expert subordinate branch of the law profession and has no incentive to alter the status quo of statutory accounting rule compliance prevailing over abstract accounting knowledge-based expertise in CFR.
Originality/value
The study questions the optimism of prior research of accounting in CFR that suggests the possibility of radical reform using abstract knowledge.
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The purpose of this paper is to illustrate how the occupational identity of management accountants working in the public sector is influenced by a change in management accounting…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to illustrate how the occupational identity of management accountants working in the public sector is influenced by a change in management accounting and control systems as well as the underlying management agenda.
Design/methodology/approach
From interviews with management accountants and their associates in five public hospitals, the paper illustrates how a change in new public management (NPM)‐related managerial agendas interacts with how the management accountants perceive their professional roles.
Findings
It is argued that the focus of the NPM agenda in Finnish public health care has shifted from a “down grid agenda”, emphasising private sector accounting and control methods, to a “down group agenda” that emphasises accountability, visibility and comparability. This change in agendas has materialised in the implementation of the diagnosis‐related groups (DRG) system, and the resultant abandoning of activity‐based costing (ABC) systems. Health care management accountants who rely on private sector ideals for constructing their occupational identity may resist the implementation of DRG if they interpret it as a shift in managerial discourse.
Originality/value
The paper links two different and sometimes contradictory agendas within the NPM framework with the occupational identity of management accountants. The observed reaction to the shifting agendas has implications for understanding why some accounting systems carry more appeal than others.
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Christina Vadasi, Michalis Bekiaris and Andreas Andrikopoulos
This paper aims to explore internal audit effectiveness through its contribution to corporate governance. Namely, the authors attempt to investigate the impact of internal audit…
Abstract
Purpose
This paper aims to explore internal audit effectiveness through its contribution to corporate governance. Namely, the authors attempt to investigate the impact of internal audit professionalization on internal audit’s contribution to corporate governance.
Design/methodology/approach
Using a research framework informed by institutional theory, the authors predict that internal audit’s contribution to corporate governance is associated with factors related to internal audit professionalization. To investigate the arguments, the authors combine data from a survey of 49 listed companies in the Athens Stock Exchange with publicly available information from annual reports.
Findings
Empirical results indicate that internal audit professionalization affects internal audit effectiveness, as internal audit’s contribution to corporate governance is improved for organizations where internal audit function complies with internal auditing standards and internal auditors hold professional certifications. The findings also suggest that internal audit’s contribution to corporate governance is shaped by some company-specific characteristics, namely, CEO duality and audit committee quality.
Practical implications
The results have implications for internal auditors who wish to increase the efficiency of their work, corporate governance mechanisms such as the board of directors and the audit committee, which can use the findings of this study to better respond to their responsibilities concerning internal audit and regulators who can also benefit to strengthen areas with substantial impact on internal audit’s contribution to corporate governance.
Originality/value
This paper contributes to the academic discussion on the role of internal audit in corporate governance and complements the work of other researchers in the field of internal audit professionalization. This study tries to fill a gap in the literature on the effect of internal audit professionalization elements on internal audit’s contribution to corporate governance.
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Widya Ais Sahla and Ardianto Ardianto
This study aims to examine the fraud tendency on the perception of external auditors triggered by five components of the fraud pentagon: pressure (P), opportunity (O)…
Abstract
Purpose
This study aims to examine the fraud tendency on the perception of external auditors triggered by five components of the fraud pentagon: pressure (P), opportunity (O), rationalization (R), competence (C) and arrogance (A). In addition, ethical values (EV) are placed as a moderating variable for this relationship.
Design/methodology/approach
This is a quantitative study with a survey to external auditors around Indonesia. A moderation model for a research framework was developed to investigate the moderating role of ethical values.
Findings
The findings have shown that the five components of the fraud pentagon theory are not fully proven as triggers of fraud in the perception of external auditors. Only C and A have a significant value in influencing the perception of fraud tendency (PFT). Other findings also provide evidence that EV moderate the relationship between C and A to PFT. This shows that EV can be used as an anti-fraud strategy in the external auditor environment.
Originality/value
The originality of this paper is one of the first study that examines the fraud pentagon theory in the field of behavioral accounting. In addition, this paper contributes to the integration of ethical values as an anti-fraud strategy in the external auditor environment.
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Sociologists have long recognized that stable patterns of exchange within a market depend on the ability of market actors to solve the problem of cooperation. Less well recognized…
Abstract
Sociologists have long recognized that stable patterns of exchange within a market depend on the ability of market actors to solve the problem of cooperation. Less well recognized and understood is a second problem that must be solved – the problem of Knightian uncertainty. This chapter posits that the problem of Knightian uncertainty occurs not only in the market; it underlies a variety of exchange contexts – not just markets, but art worlds and professions as well. These three exchange contexts are similar in so far as a generally accepted quality schema arises as an important solution to the problem of Knightian uncertainty; however, the quality schemas that arise in these three contexts differ systematically along two dimensions – the complexity of the schema and the extent to which the “non-producers” have a voice in the determination of the quality schema. By comparing and contrasting the way in which quality schemas arise in these three domains, this chapter (1) gives some specificity to the notion of quality as a social construction; (2) provides some preliminary insight into why a particular good or service becomes perceived as a market, artistic, or professional offering; and (3) offers an imagery for conceptualizing the mobility of goods and services between these three domains.