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The authors provide a general framework of behavior under asymmetric information and develop indices of diligence, objectivity and quality by an analyst and analyst firm about a studied firm, and relate them to the accuracy of its forecasts. The authors test the associations of these indices with time.

The test of Public Information versus Non-Public Information Models provides the index of diligence, which equals one minus the p-value of the Hausman Specification Test of Ordinary Least Squares (OLS) versus Two Stage Least Squares (2SLS). The test of Objectivity versus Non-Objectivity Models provides the index of objectivity, which equals the p-value of the Wald Test of zero coefficients versus non-zero coefficients in 2SLS regression of the earnings forecast residual. The exponent of the negative of the standard deviation of the residuals of the analyst forecast regression equation provides the index of analytical quality. Each index asymptotically equals the Bayesian ex post probability, by the analyst and analyst firm about the studied firm, of the relevant behavior.

The authors find that ex post accuracy is a statistically and economically significant increasing function of the product of the indices of diligence, objectivity and quality by the analyst and analyst firm about the studied firm, which asymptotically equals the Bayesian ex post joint probability of diligence, objectivity and quality. The authors find that diligence, objectivity, quality and accuracy did not improve with time.

There has been no previous work done on the systematic and objective characterization and joint analysis of diligence, objectivity and quality of analyst forecasts by an analyst and analyst firm for a studied firm, and their relation with accuracy. This paper puts together the frontiers of various disciplines.

The purpose of this paper is to provide a review of the recent literature on internal audit independence and objectivity and discuss opportunities for future research. The topics examined are the organizational status of internal audit, the internal auditor's dual role as a provider of assurance and consulting activities, internal audit's involvement in risk management, outsourcing and co‐sourcing of internal audit activities, and the use of internal audit as a training ground for managers.

The approach used in this paper is a review of the literature followed by an identification of further research opportunities.

The paper summarizes the existing body of knowledge relating to internal audit independence and objectivity and identifies gaps in the literature where further research is needed.

The paper provides researchers with a useful summary of the literature on internal audit independence and objectivity and stimulates them to engage in further research in the area.

This study examines the effects of incentive compensation and guanxi, a type of informal personal relationship between people, on the objectivity of Chinese internal auditors. Given that the objectivity of internal auditors is essential for promoting financial reporting quality, it is important to investigate the effectiveness of internal audit functions, especially in emerging markets where the corporate governance mechanisms designed to promote objectivity are less mature.

The research employs a 2 × 2 between participants experiment with 116 graduate accounting student participants.

After controlling for internal auditors’ ethicality, we find that close-guanxi between management and internal auditors and incentive compensation in the form of bonuses based upon meeting earnings targets both have the capacity to impair the objectivity of Chinese internal auditors. Participants were more tolerant of management’s attempts to manage earnings when there was close guanxi or bonus compensation. Further, compensation structure only influenced internal auditors’ support of management when guanxi was distant, but when there was close guanxi between internal auditors and management, internal auditors were unlikely to challenge management regardless of the compensation structure.

This study aims to examine the objectivity of accounting professionals based in India.

To examine the objectivity of accountants based in India, this study performs an experiment using a well-established instrument from prior literature. The authors asked accounting professionals based in India to act as either the seller or buyer in a hypothetical acquisition scenario. Participants were asked to evaluate the obsolescence of an apparel company’s inventory, assessing both the probability of inventory obsolescence and the likelihood they would propose an inventory write-down.

The results indicate external auditors and tax professionals were able to remain objective, reflected in the consistency of their assessments across the buyer and seller conditions. Internal auditors were less objective, evaluating inventory obsolescence as more likely when their client was considering buying a subsidiary than when their client was considering selling a subsidiary. Internal auditors were also more likely to recommend an inventory write-down adjustment when hired by the buyer than when hired by the seller.

This study informs regulators and accounting professionals. Offshoring has “prompt(ed) questions regarding the factors that affect the quality of work in India” (Dickey et al., 2022, p. 680). While the authors do not prescribe specific actions, this study provides evidence on the decision-making process of accounting professionals based in India that regulators might use to craft policy. Furthermore, this study responds to calls for additional evidence on the decision-making process of accounting professionals based in India (Spilker et al., 2016; Mohapatra et al., 2015), and for evidence on the objectivity of internal auditors (Burt and Libby, 2021; Stewart and Subramaniam, 2010).

The purpose of this paper is to investigate whether transformational leadership affects auditor objectivity.

The investigation is based on a field survey of 198 practicing auditors employed by audit firms operating in Sweden.

This study finds that transformational client leadership negatively affects auditor objectivity and that the effect is only partially mediated by client identification. Given these results, suggesting that auditors are susceptible to influence by their clients’ perceived exercise of transformational leadership, leadership theory appears relevant to the discussion of auditor objectivity in the accounting literature.

Previous accounting research has applied the social identity theory framework and found that client identification impairs auditor objectivity. However, the effect of transformational client leadership on auditor objectivity, which reflects an intense auditor-client relationship, has been neglected before this study.

This chapter explored how authenticity and objectivity in autoethnography research are viewed from a new materialist perspective. The study is framed within Barad’s (2007) concept of agential realism, which reconceptualizes how objects are examined, and knowledge created in scientific activities. The findings showed that in terms of authenticity, new materialism suggests a non-representationalist voice, which argues against the need to exactly mirror pre-existing phenomena in some metaphysical world through language in traditional research paradigms. This means the researchers must give up the authority of their narrative voice as a privileged source of knowledge with a valued property of authenticity. The study suggests performative voice as an alternative. The performative narrator is concerned not with identifying who researchers are, and how they are similar or different from the Other, but how their experiences constrain what they know and how they represent participants or themselves in their worlds. Writing autoethnographies now is less a way of telling than a way of knowing in being. An agential-realist account of objectivity posits that “distance is not a prerequisite for objectivity, and even the notion of proximity takes separation too literally” (Barad, 2007, p. 359). So objectivity does not mean to be removed or distanced from what we, as individual subjects of cognition, are observing. Objectivity, instead, is embodied through specific material practices enacted between the subject and the object. This entails that “objectivity is about accountability and responsibility to what is real” (Barad, 2007, p. 91). This understanding of objectivity engenders a reconfiguring of data as diffractive phenomena and reliability as axiological intra-actions in what I now call an auto-ethico-ethnography.

This paper takes a broad introductory look at the notion of objectivity within the western philosophic tradition of liberal individualism and exposes how this is related to, or sets the stage for, the creation of learning objects as a concept. Objectivity is predicated on ideas such as the removal of context and the ability to transcend social, cultural and discursive position. Learning objects have often been conceptualised as outside of context as well. This paper presents some of the criticisms of this approach in transcending context and suggests that this conceptualisation may prove problematic in the successful execution, creation and distribution of learning objects.

The purpose of this article is to chronicle the publication events in the 1980s and 1990s that framed the development of the series of controversies in marketing that are known as the “philosophy debates”.

The article uses a participant’s retrospective approach.

The article finds that seven publication events are key to understanding marketing’s philosophy debates. The seven are the publication of the “little green book” by Grid, Inc. in 1976; the philosophy of science panel discussion held at the Winter American Marketing Association Educators’ Conference in 1982; the special issue of the Journal of Marketing on marketing theory in 1983; three articles on the “critical relativist perspective” by the Journal of Consumer Research in 1986 and 1988; the “blue book” by South-Western in 1991; a trilogy of articles on truth, positivism and objectivity in the Journal of Marketing and the Journal of Consumer Research in 1990-1993; and an article on “rethinking marketing” in the European Journal of Marketing in 1994.

Chronicling the key publication events enables readers to understand what the debates were about and provides readers a starting point for further investigating the issues in the debates.

Practising internal and external auditors regularly find that crucial concepts governing how they operate are the twin terms of independence and objectivity. Part of the problem is that the two terms are often equated. The impact can be conflict with the auditee, misunderstanding with other stakeholders, impairment of efficiency and effectiveness, and role conflict within the internal audit department. The Institute of Internal Auditors is reviewing some of the cherished notions of internal audit in the light of pressures and developments in the business environment. It has already produced a new definition of internal auditing, which, as before, includes the terms independence and objectivity. Consistently, it decided to re‐evaluate these two terms, and established an international research team. This was the briefing submission from the UK, which was highly influential in determining the final product, not yet in the public domain. It considers professional statements and standards, research and developments in both internal and external auditing.