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Examines the financial accountability implications arising from the adoption of accrual‐based accounting principles by Australia’s largest public sector employee pension fund manager, the State Authorities Superannuation Board of the Australian State of New South Wales (SASB), during its brief existence from 1988 to 1996. While the adoption of accrual‐based accounting principles increased management’s political accountability concerning the performance of SASB’s commercially‐managed asset portfolio, it reduced the level of generational accountability concerning the under‐funding of its major pension fund, the State Authorities Superannuation Scheme (the SAS). Negative political visibility associated with management’s voluntary compliance with a controversial financial reporting standard, together with government’s adoption of accrual accounting, resulted in two major changes in the SASB’s organizational structure. The impact of political visibility on the generational accountability behavior of SASB management is examined by comparing stock and flow funding trends of the SAS over time.

The financial crisis and the subsequent distrust of the existing banks have created an opportunity for new competitors to enter the market for financial services. Organisations from outside banking could use their trusted brands, their stronger grasp of information technology and their stronger customer service ethos to potentially shake‐up the provision of financial services and hence to take business away from the “traditional” players. This paper aims to examine the potential for these “non‐banks” to enter and expand into the UK financial services sector and to analyse their prospects, before finally reflecting on how big a challenge they face in entering this market.

The paper is based on a report entitled “Tesco Bank and Virgin money: prospects for banking without the banks” released in 2010, which offers an analysis of the UK market and of the main potential entrants. It presents a much abridged version of the report and has also been revised to provide a more international relevance.

The paper discusses the strengths and weaknesses of the two main potential entrants, Tesco Bank and Virgin Money, and draws conclusions based on some of the challenges that they will face in seeking to enter this market.

The paper is very relevant, given the publicly espoused aspirations of both Tesco Bank and Virgin Money to enter the market for financial services in the UK. It may also have lessons for other new entrants in other countries.

Building on the research program of Dillard and Brown (2015) and Dillard and Vinnari (2019), specifically related to an “ethic of accountability,” this paper recognizes accountability systems as key to how organizations conceptualize their responsibility to society. The objective is to explore how managers of hybrid organizations conceptualize responsibility and the role of accountability systems in their conceptualization.

This paper studies hybrid organizations that are for-profit entities with explicitly recognized non-economic imperatives. Semi-structured interviews are conducted with managers of organizations that pursue certification as a B-Corporation, often in conjunction with a legal designation as a benefit corporation.

Managers of the hybrid organizations evidenced a broader responsibility logic that extends beyond responsibility to shareholders. This pluralistic orientation and broader set of objectives are expressed in a set of certification standards that represent an accountability system that both enables and constrains the way responsibility is understood. The accountability system reflects a “felt” accountability to the “other” manifested, for example, as generational accountability, with the other (re)created relative to the certification standards.

Certifications and standards represent accounting-based accountability systems that produce a type of accountability in which the certification becomes the overall objective nudging out efforts to take accountability-based accounting seriously (Dillard and Vinnari, 2019). At the same time, the hybrids under study, while not perfect exemplars, incline toward an ethic of accountability (Dillard and Brown, 2014) that moves them closer to accountability-based accounting.

The findings reveal perspectives of managers embedded in hybrid organizations, illustrating their experiences of responsibility and accountability systems in practice (Grossi et al., 2019). The insights can be extended to other hybrid contexts where accountability systems may be used to demonstrate multiple performance objectives. We also recognize the irony in the need for an organization to be required to attain a special license to operate in a more responsible manner.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate an element of the internal politics of standard setting by reference to the International Accounting Standards Board’s (IASB) movement to the International Financial Reporting Standard for Small and Medium-Sized Entities (IFRS for SMEs). The authors examine the politics of the IASB’s expertise in technocratic governance by focussing on how the IASB defined SMEs, gave the standard a title and issued a guide for micro-entities.

The narrative case study focusses on central “moments” in the development of IFRS for SMEs. The authors employ Laclau and Mouffe’s condensation, displacement and overdetermination to illustrate embedded politics in articulating IFRS for SMEs.

The authors extend literature on the internal politics of standard setting, such as agenda setting, by examining the condensing of disagreements between experts and political pressures and processes into central decision moments in IFRS for SMEs. The authors illustrate these moments as overdetermined, manifesting in an act of displacement through the production of a micro-entity guide. This form of politics is hidden due to the IASB’s attempt to protect their technocratic neutrality through fixing meaning.

The authors make three contributions: first, overdetermination through condensation and displacement illustrates the embedded nature of politics in regulatory settings, such as the IASB. Second, the authors provide a theoretical explanation of the IASB’s movement from listed entities to IFRS for SMEs, drawing on Laclau and Mouffe. Third, the authors reinforce the necessity of interrogating the internal politics of standard setting to challenge claims of technocracy.

The purpose of this article is to evaluate revenue efficiency performance of life insurance companies in India. The study also compares if private or public insurance sector is more “revenue efficient”. Furthermore, the study determines the nature of return to scale (RTS) and identifies the leaders and laggards amongst insurance companies operating in India.

Revenue efficiency is calculated by employing data envelopment analysis – a non-parametric approach, on a data set of 24 insurance companies over the period 2013–2014 to 2017–2018.

The empirical results suggest that life insurance companies in India could generate only 34.4% of revenue, which is very less than what these are expected to generate from the same inputs. Majority of life insurance companies operating in India are operating at decreasing return to scale (DRS). There is a reduction in leaders and the highest proportion of companies is falling in the category of laggards.

As per the best knowledge of researchers, no empirical work has been carried out with respect to measuring the revenue efficiency of Indian insurance companies. The current study appropriately fills the gap by not only calculating the revenue efficiency scores of insurance companies in India but also provides insights into the causes of revenue inefficiencies. It also gives implications for efficient and effective management of insurance companies.

This paper aims to explain the weaknesses and inconsistencies inherent in the Dodd-Frank Act of 2010 (USA).

The approach is entirely theoretical and multi-disciplinary (and relies on some third-party empirical research), and it consists of a literature review, critique and the development of theories which are applicable across countries.

The Dodd-Frank Act is inefficient and inadequate as a response to the global financial crisis. The Dodd-Frank Act has not resulted in significant economic growth and has increased transaction costs and compliance costs for both government agencies and financial services companies.

The author developed the theories introduced in the paper.

The purpose of this paper is to improve Kingdon’s (1984, 2011) concept of policy entrepreneurs (PE) with regard to the theoretical development of the definition and identification and level of agency by supplementing it with elements of Schmidt’s (2008, 2010, 2011, 2012) sentient agents. The improved concept of discursive policy entrepreneurs (DPEs) is then applied in an in-depth case study about the agenda setting process of micro and macro whole-of-government accounting in Australia in the late 1990s and early 2000s.

Based on the concept of DPEs, a series of operationalised characteristics and proxies are developed to identify them and describe their behaviour. These are then applied in the case study. The two main data sources are semi-structured in-depth interviews and archival documents.

The findings show that the focus on DPEs’ discursive and coordination activities is critical for identifying and investigating the key actors of the Generally Accepted Accounting Principles (GAAP)/Government Finance Statistics (GFS) harmonisation agenda setting process. The study also finds that the two relevant decision-making bodies, the Financial Reporting Council and the Australian Accounting Standards Board, lost control over their agendas due to the actions of DPEs.

The improved concepts of DPEs will allow researchers to better identify the main agents of policy change and differentiate them from other supporters of policy ideas. Due to the qualitative nature of the study, the findings are not necessarily generalisable.

The findings from this study can help participants of agenda setting processes to gain a better understanding of the actions and behaviours of DPEs. This might allow standard setting bodies to mitigate against undue influences by DPEs.

This study is the first study that uses Schmidt’s concept of the sentient agent to address the limitations of Kingdon’s concept of PE and develops and applies characteristics to identify PEs and their actions. It is also the only study to date that investigates the GAAP/GFS harmonisation agenda setting process.

The purpose of this paper is to facilitate understanding of enterprise resource planning (ERP) system and data quality interdependency by presenting ERP systems’ use within data quality management.

The authors apply task technology fit (TTF) in an explorative study, conducting semi-structured expert interviews with participants in information technology strategic decision making. The authors analyzed the interviews with iterative descriptive and subsequent interpretive coding.

Although considered sustainable, continuously increasing regulations challenge ERP systems. However, compliance with regulations may serve as a bridge for organizations to engage in data analysis. Organizations are embedded into evolving task environments with the need to continuously adapt their systems or the organization and the need for contextual understanding of data quality.

With ERP systems being used for administrative functions, future research might draw on extant ERP systems research from the manufacturing sector. However, for insurance-specific tasks, ERP systems and their data need to be considered in a sector-specific context with the need for further research.

ERP systems are considered sustainable. High initial fit is desirable, but the sector's relevance for ERP system vendors might be more important for sustainability. Ensuring TTF will be an increasing challenge with increasing task non-routineness.

Applying TTF provides guidance for fit research, while the qualitative approach accounts for a deeper understanding, especially when exploring data quality issues since deficiencies might have several root causes. The authors show that ERP systems have an impact on data quality beyond its typically examined functionality.

Artificial intelligence (AI) has become a pivotal technology in both marketing and daily life. Despite extensive research on the benefits of AI, its adverse effects on customers have received limited attention.

We employed meta-analysis to synthesise effect sizes from 45 studies encompassing 50 independent samples (N = 19,503) to illuminate the negative facets of AI's impact on customer responses.

Adverse effects of AI, including privacy concern, perceived risks, customer alienation, and uniqueness neglect, have a negative and significant effect on customers' cognitive (perceived benefit, trust), affective (attitude and satisfaction) and behavioural responses (purchase, loyalty, well-being). Additionally, moderators in AI (online versus offline), customer (age, male vs. female), product (hedonic vs. utilitarian, high vs. low involvement), and firm level (service vs. manufacturing) and national level (individualism, power distance, masculinity, uncertainty avoidance, long-term orientation) moderate these relationships.

Our findings inform marketing managers about the drawbacks of utilising AI as part of their value proposition and provide recommendations on how to minimise these effects in different contexts. Additionally, policymakers need to consider the dark side of AI, especially among the vulnerable groups.

This paper is among the first research studies that synthesise previous research on the dark side of AI, providing a comprehensive view of its diminishing impact on customer responses.

The purpose of this paper is to provide an evaluation of public sector research in the 1998–2018 period.

The paper uses the extant literature of this era to study the theorisation of, and the findings of, public sector research.

This is a vibrant field of a study in a wide range of study settings and with many interdisciplinary studies. The influence of new public management is pervasive over this period. There are numerous instances of innovations in study settings, in key findings and the approach taken by investigators.

This is not a comprehensive review of all literature in this period.

This study also explored the relevance of academic research of this era to policymaking by governments.

This paper offers a distinctive critique of theorisation of public sector accounting research. It reveals the dominant theoretical reference points in use during this period and observes the increasing tendency for theoretical pluralism to investigate complex study settings.