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Prior research finds evidence that audit quality is positively associated with the joint purchase of tax nonaudit services (NAS) and concludes that jointly provided tax services result in audit-related knowledge spillovers that lead to improved audit quality. We extend this line of research. We examine the relation between auditor-provided tax services and restatements and determine whether this relation differs when the auditor is a small or large accounting firm. We also examine whether the Securities Exchange Commission’s restrictions on certain tax consulting practices (SEC, 2006) altered this relation. Specifically, we measure whether the probability of financial statement restatements varies with (1) variation in accounting firm size (measured as PCAOB annually inspected firms versus PCAOB triennially inspected firms), and (2) the joint provision of audit and tax services. We find a negative relation between auditor-provided tax services and restatements which is consistent with prior research. We also find that this relation is significantly more negative when the auditor is a small accounting firm. Finally, we find that the lower probability of a restatement associated with the joint provision of audit and tax services persists regardless of auditor size after the SEC-imposed restrictions on certain tax consulting services in 2006. Our study provides evidence that accounting firms, and particularly small accounting firms, benefit from knowledge spillovers when jointly providing audit and tax services and these benefits lead to improved audit quality. Prior research concludes that large auditors provide higher audit quality and that the provision of tax services improves audit quality. Our results provide evidence that audit quality improvements are greater for small auditors and their clients. This improvement narrows that audit quality gap between large and small auditors. We do not find evidence that the SEC’s restrictions on certain tax consulting services altered the relation between audit quality and tax services.

This research provides accounting-ethics authors and administrators with a benchmark for accounting-ethics research. While Bernardi and Bean (2010) considered publications in business-ethics and accounting’s top-40 journals this study considers research in eight accounting-ethics and public-interest journals, as well as, 34 business-ethics journals. We analyzed the contents of our 42 journals for the 25-year period between 1991 through 2015. This research documents the continued growth (Bernardi & Bean, 2007) of accounting-ethics research in both accounting-ethics and business-ethics journals. We provide data on the top-10 ethics authors in each doctoral year group, the top-50 ethics authors over the most recent 10, 20, and 25 years, and a distribution among ethics scholars for these periods. For the 25-year timeframe, our data indicate that only 665 (274) of the 5,125 accounting PhDs/DBAs (13.0% and 5.4% respectively) in Canada and the United States had authored or co-authored one (more than one) ethics article.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the presence of generational differences in items measuring workplace attitudes (e.g. job satisfaction, employee engagement).

Data from two empirical studies were used; the first study examined generational differences in large sample, multi-organizational administrations of an employee survey at both the item and general-factor levels. The second study compared job satisfaction ratings between parents and their children from a large nationwide longitudinal survey.

Although statistically significant, most generational differences in Study 1 did not meet established cutoffs for a medium effect size. Type II error was ruled out given the large power. In Study 2, generational differences again failed to reach Cohen’s cutoff for a medium effect size. Across both studies, over 98 percent of the variance in workplace attitudes lies within groups, as opposed to between groups, and the distributions of scores on these variables overlap by over 79 percent.

Prior studies examining generational differences in workplace attitudes focused on scale-level constructs. The present paper focused on more specific item-level constructs and employed larger sample sizes, which reduced the effects of sampling error. In terms of workplace attitudes, it appears that generations are more similar than they are different.

This chapter develops a sketch of a critical social ontology and contrasts it to a theory of sociality as presented in the work of Michael Brown. I argue that the ontology of our social forms requires categories for understanding them descriptively, functionally as well as in evaluative terms. I contend that a theory of power is needed for an understanding of the ontology of our social forms and that this can contribute to the construction of a more critical social ontology. I argue that a critical social ontology is a more attractive and satisfying paradigm for critical theory than current post-metaphysical approaches that emphasize discourse, recognition or other neo-Idealistic aspects of human sociality.

Recently there has been a resurgence in the study of how ideas shape policies. Two perspectives which dominate this literature are what Habermas has called the empirical‐analytical tradition and historical‐hermeneutic tradition. These two epistemological positions represent contrasting views. They depict very different pictures of how ideas sway popular values and the policy choices confronted by policymakers. Each also raises important questions about how the processes of knowledge formation and promotion unfold and what actors play a dominant role in furthering these developments.

This paper discusses video ethnography as part of a multimethod study of the introduction of information technology to streamline pathology test order entry in hospitals and its effect on the work of pathology laboratory scientists. The paper opens with an overview of video research in health care settings. After acknowledging the limitations inherent in video data, the paper offers a description of how video footage served to enhance insight in three ways. First, the footage enhanced the researchers’ own appreciation of the significance of particular facets of the data, which led them to reassess information collected through interviewing, focus groups and research field notes. Second, the footage enhanced the pathology laboratory scientists’ appreciation of the problems they experienced when incorporating the new information technology into their daily work practice, by enabling them to articulate these problems to outside researchers. Third, by being watched (by the video camera) and by watching themselves perform their work they were enabled to redesign their practices. The paper suggests that, as a result of interactively performing their work in front of the camera, the scientists came to apprehend their practices ‘from under a different aspect’. The paper concludes that by allowing video ethnography as a research method to remain underdefined and emergent, the modality of engagement and uptake shown by participants in the video research can be considered as a further enriching aspect of video ethnography as a research process.

Compiled by K.G.B. Bakewell covering the following journals published by MCB University Press: Facilities Volumes 8‐18; Journal of Property Investment & Finance Volumes 8‐18; Property Management Volumes 8‐18; Structural Survey Volumes 8‐18.