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This paper aims to seek accounting graduates' perspectives on the demand for accounting in their workplaces, on the gaps in accounting education (AE), and on the future of the accounting profession, inspired by the new definition of accounting proposed by Carnegie et al. (2021, 2022, 2023a), to adopt a strong focus on sustainable development goals (SDGs) in AE to inculcate tertiary students with the skills that lead them to approach and apply accounting as a multidimensional technical, social and moral (TSM) practice.

The online qualitative survey was distributed to 100 randomly selected New Zealand accounting graduates in order to gather insights from their workplaces. All responses from the 30 graduates who completed the questionnaire underwent qualitative analysis using Leximancer software, which automatically identifies high-level concepts and insights and offers interactive visualizations without bias.

The graduates’ experiences underscore the ongoing significance of technical skills in the New Zealand workplace. They emphasized the lack of non-technical skills training, stressed the necessity of diverse business knowledge and highlighted the importance of automation and digital skills.

The implications for transforming AE involve adopting an activist approach to integrate a TSM perspective into teaching and learning and being open to an interdisciplinary approach to expose tertiary students to the impact of accounting on sustainable development, including collaboration with professional bodies for real-world experiences.

The importance of engaging with SDG-related narratives is stressed to stimulate further discussion, debate and research aimed at identifying practical solutions for AE as a facilitator for SDGs in realizing accounting as a TSM practice.

The purpose of this paper is to reflect teaching and learning practices, to highlight an educator’s new roles in the transformation when teaching online during the COVID-19 lockdown.

The paper takes a transformative reflection approach, based on competencies and activity system analysis to connect theory and practical experience in managing the students, the teaching delivery and the assessments.

The transition to online teaching and assessments requires various considerations of the curriculum and instructional approaches and necessitates the transformation of the role of the subject-matter expert to that of designer and co-learner. Empathy and understanding of students’ conditions enable this role transformation.

The paper highlights the importance of preparedness among faculty members and universities in dealing with uncertainties and the willingness to expand traditional roles and to upgrade the required skills, knowledge and attitudes to engender sustainable teaching and learning practices in response to future disruptions.

The paper reflects on the experience of a faculty who had adopted blended learning prior to the lockdown and how the teaching practice and roles transformed when fully transitioning to online delivery during the lockdown in New Zealand.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the causes and consequences of financial crimes perpetrated against New Zealand small businesses.

A random sample of 200 court cases was selected from 2010 to 2017. A total of 12 cases involving 14 small businesses were analysed.

The results reveal that financial crime is a systemic problem and involves people with diverse demographics, and the victims are not restricted to any specific type of small business. The offenders are mostly middle-level managers. The length of offence varied from 1 year to 12.5 years. Most of them funnelled the stolen money into their personal accounts. The common motive is “keeping up appearance”. The management placed immense trust in their employees and did not vet candidates before employment. The losses suffered by small entities ranged from $6,000 to $590,000 and liquidated one business. The severity of the actual court cases indicates the necessity of an employee screening as the first line of defence in these businesses.

The small sample of court cases is a limitation, but the study contributes to the fraud auditing literature by examining actual court cases involving small businesses. Small businesses as victims of employee fraud and their lack of internal controls are known but under-researched to promote thought about fraud risk severity in these businesses.

The C.R.I.M.E model has yet been tested on fraud cases involving small businesses.

This paper aims to provide a historical understanding of the unemployment context experienced by the New Zealand population during the Great Depression, which might have caused people to commit financial crimes, such as fraud, to survive.

The main source of information is narratives from newspaper articles published by 42 newspapers from 1931 to 1950 that explore New Zealanders’ experiences during declined economic conditions.

During the period studied, New Zealanders suffered because of various challenges, mainly unemployment. The government’s response was criticised by the people who used the newspapers as a medium to unleash their frustration about the fairness of unemployment relief for the unemployed and taxation of those who were employed. Some people who struggled in between jobs, as well as some who found themselves being disadvantaged, turned to deviant behaviour such as fraud. The fraudsters might be thought of as the victims of the day, committing a crime of survival, not a crime of choice.

This research promotes more historical studies to enrich fraud-auditing literature. The lack of detailed information reported in the newspapers during this period limits making specific links to individual circumstances.

Fraudsters have always been perceived as responsible for their destinies, but a wider social and political context is rarely examined in fraud cases. The period chosen for this paper represents the extreme condition in which the elements of motive, opportunity and rationalisation are all interwoven into one.

The purpose of this paper is to test the Porter hypothesis using the Structure–Conduct–Performance (SCP) framework for a panel data set of industries in New Zealand.

The authors developed a mutually exclusive classification of the process-led and product-led innovation strategies and examined their impact on SCP in the high (low) carbon emission industries.

The findings show that the high-level concentration provides more beneficial opportunities for product and geographical diversification that require a high level of R&D intensity. The authors find that in high-carbon emission industries, the product-led innovation strategies have a significant positive impact on the industry structure and performance which provide support for the Porter hypothesis.

The findings imply that competition effects firm-level investments, in particular, capital expenditure to address carbon emissions, as such investments give firms a head start over rivals, and increase their profit margin compared to other firms over time. Overall, the empirical results lend support to the Porter hypothesis and suggest that understanding of industries’ unique R&D attributes is critical to developing regulations to support industries in smaller economies.

It is the first study that examines the industry structure, R&D intensity and performance in a small developed economy of New Zealand.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the relationship between corporate social responsibility (CSR) performance communication and stocks’ performance using socially responsible investment (SRI) portfolio management approach.

The authors used the multi-factors models to examine the impact of CSR performance communication on the ex post monthly returns of three distinctly formed portfolios as well as their differential performance from 2001 to 2013 in a small economy of New Zealand.

The results show that SRS portfolio comprising of the stocks that demonstrate a relatively less proactive approach to the social and environmental concerns outperforms a stock portfolio that comprises of companies that have a relatively proactive approach to stakeholder engagement referred to as SVS portfolio. Furthermore, the authors’ findings show a positive relationship between social performance and market valuation. This indicates that the market values more stakeholder engagement in regard to social issues than environmental issues.

The authors’ findings imply that the SRI does make perfect financial sense in a small economy such as New Zealand. The perception of the CSR communication as an “insurance” for mitigation of social and environmental risks is one of the factors driving the valuation of SRI portfolios in New Zealand.

The authors collected CSR data from the publicly available sources such as the annual reports, the CSR reports and sustainability reports because a layman investor is more likely to rely on these sources in a small economy.

The purpose of this paper is to examine local councils’ response to the Environmental Reporting Act 2015(ERA), stakeholder identification and implications for the state of the environment management and monitoring of by local councils in New Zealand.

Informed by stakeholder salience theory, this study uses an interpretative approach in analysing survey data collected from all 78 local councils. Ninety-two key individuals responded to the survey which was administered a month before the Environmental Reporting Bill was passed as an Act.

The findings suggest that focus and priorities of the councils varied depending on the influential power of various group stakeholders. Legal requirements were a very significant factor for reporting environmental sustainability information and the availability of funding and resources posed a significant challenge. Environmental sustainability was considered as both a risk and an opportunity. Compliance with legislation was the utmost priority of the local councils.

The results suggest that stakeholders with power received more attention from the local councils. In addition, the tension between the central government, the elected representatives and the public became apparent.

This paper offers insight on how the local councils viewed risks, opportunities and potential implications of a new legislation, and whether the stakeholders were considered in these contexts.

This paper aims to provide insights into how the New Zealand Office of the Auditor-General (NZOAG) legitimised the selection of topics for performance audit in the New Zealand public health sector over a 10-year period, 2003-2013, by fulfilling the key actors’ “taken for granted beliefs” of the dual roles of the NZOAG: its independence and accountability.

This paper uses evidence gathered from interviews with representatives of the District Health Boards, the Ministry of Health (including Health Advisory Committee members) and NZOAG staff, along with publically available documentary evidence over a 10-year period. The authors draw on Suchman’s (1995) authority on institutional legitimacy to inform the research findings.

The New Zealand Auditors-General (NZAGs) get inputs from various sources such as their own audit teams, parliamentary deliberations, the Ministry of Health, the District Health Boards, media and public concerns and complaints. These sources initiate ideas for performance audits. Subsequently, the NZAGs use the recurring themes and risk assessment criteria while simultaneously consulting with the auditees (the MOH and the DHBs) and other actors, such as health advisory groups, to select topics for such audits. This signals to the key actors, such as the MOH and the DHBs, that the NZOAG is addressing the topics and concerns relevant to the former while discharging its public accountability role. Furthermore, the consultative approach acts as a catalyst, ensuring that the actors involved with public sector health service delivery, specifically the auditees, accept the selected topic. This leads to a lack of resistance to and criticism of the topic; the selection process, therefore, is legitimatised, and credibility is added to the audits. Because of the consultative approach taken by the NZAGs, the actors, including the performance auditors, continue to believe that the Office acts independently from third party influence in selecting their audit topics, elevating the NZAGs’ moral legitimacy with respect to their public accountability role.

The study’s focus group does not include parliamentary representatives, only representatives from the DHBs, the MOH and the NZOAG; therefore, the conclusions on effective discharge of the NZOAG’s accountability role and Parliamentary acceptance is not conclusive – the NZOAG acts on behalf of the Parliament in discharging its accountability role and the latter is also the formal recipient of the reports.

The implications for practitioners and policymakers are that the use of a consultative approach to select topics for performance audit in the absence of performance auditing standards ensures auditee readiness and acceptance of such audits. This also promotes mutual benefits and “trust” between the AG and auditees. Such audits can be used to bring about efficacy in health service delivery.

The selected topics for audits will have an impact on citizens’ lifestyles, with improved health services delivery.

There is a dearth of research on who initiates the ideas for performance auditing and how the Office of the Auditor-General selects topics for such audits. This study adds a new dimension to the existing performance auditing literature. The authors reveal how the NZOAG seeks to legitimise the selection of topics for such audits by consulting with the auditees and other actors associated with public sector health service delivery, while upholding its independent status and making transparent how it discharges its accountability role within the context of performance auditing.

The purpose of this paper is to provide an extension of the Corporate Governance Reporting Initiative (CGI) 2004, which reports on Malaysia's first corporate governance ratings. Characteristics of firms with high and low scores in the corporate governance ratings are analysed by comparing companies based on their corporate governance ranking as reported in the CGI.

Firms are classified into those at the top 50 percent and the bottom 50 percent of the corporate governance ratings list to examine whether there are any differences in the characteristics of firms in both classified samples. The characteristics of firms that are being examined are firms' profitability, leverage, growth, market valuation, size, age, ownership structure and countries of operation based on the Logit analysis.

The result shows that firm size has a strong influence with corporate governance ratings, but not so for other variables tested.

This study analyses only eight corporate characteristics. There are other measures that can represent firms' size such as market capitalization.

It is hoped that the traits found from the analysis will be able to provide additional information concerning corporate governance to interested parties. The characteristics revealed may probably be found to be essential elements in the development of effective and efficient corporate governance structure. The study could also help corporations in their short‐ and long‐term strategies.

This study bridges the gap of previous studies by using a complete set of governance standards on the analysis and directly identifies firms with certain scores of corporate governance and addresses issues related to these exceptional companies.