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This study aims to examine the impact of culture on earnings management after changing to International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS).

The study’s sample selection comprises all publicly listed firms in 25 countries between 2000 and 2017 from DataStream database with cultural dimensions ratings from Hofstede et al. (2010). The initial sample contained 2,451 firms.

This study provides evidence that the interaction between national culture and IFRS adoption remains influential in explaining differences in the magnitude of earnings management behavior across countries.

This study higlights how IFRS and the cultural values interact with each other and affect earnings quality. In particular, the authors provide evidence on the relationship between individualism, uncertainty avoidance, power distance and masculinity of national culture and earnings management and, primarily, find that national culture significantly influences the decisions of managers after adopting IFRS.

This study aims to examine the impact of extensible business reporting language (XBRL) technology and its functionality on various aspects of financial reporting and its overall quality.

To conduct this study, data was collected from a variety of professionals, including accountants, auditors, tax advisors and others. A structured research instrument was developed, and the collected data were analysed using structural equation modelling and mediation analysis techniques.

The study’s results showed that XBRL technology and its functionality have a noteworthy impact on different aspects of financial reporting. Moreover, the various aspects of financial reporting positively affect the overall quality of financial reporting.

This study solely relied on the opinions of various professionals regarding the current issue under investigation and did not empirically assess the reporting practices of companies by examining their XBRL-based reports. Additionally, it concentrated solely on financial reporting aspects and did not account for non-financial aspects. The main theoretical contributions of this paper to technology in financial reporting, XBRL and accounting literature are that it sheds light on the influence of the use of technologies in the business reporting process and their influence on various aspects of business reporting, which has only received confined focus from earlier studies so far.

This study’s findings could provide valuable insights to the managerial teams of organizations seeking to digitize their business reporting practices, specifically in areas such as regulatory compliance, integrated reporting and timely dissemination of reports in a sustainable way. Furthermore, it could help these teams reap the benefits of technology for various regulatory compliance matters.

This study could assist business organizations and regulatory authorities in adopting and implementing technology such as XBRL for accounting and business reporting. Furthermore, the study’s findings can aid in enhancing financial reporting practices by considering emerging aspects such as ESG and sustainability aspects.

In 2000, Cañibano et al. published a literature review entitled “Accounting for Intangibles: A Literature Review”. This paper revisits the conclusions drawn in that paper. We also discuss the intervening developments in scholarly research, standard setting and practice over the past 20+ years to outline the future challenges for research into accounting for intangibles.

We conducted a literature review to identify past developments and link the findings to current accounting standard-setting developments to inform our view of the future.

Current intangibles accounting practices are conservative and unlikely to change. Accounting standard setters are more interested in how companies report and disclose the value of intangibles rather than changing how they are determined. Standard setters are also interested in accounting for new forms of digital assets and reporting economic, social, governance and sustainability issues and how these link to financial outcomes. The IFRS has released complementary sustainability accounting standards for disclosing value creation in response to the latter. Therefore, the topic of intangibles stretches beyond merely how intangibles create value but how they are also part of a firm’s overall risk and value creation profile.

There is much room academically, practically, and from a social perspective to influence the future of accounting for intangibles. Accounting standard setters and alternative standards, such as the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) and European Union non-financial and sustainability reporting directives, are competing complementary initiatives.

Our results reveal a window of opportunity for accounting scholars to research and influence how intangibles and other non-financial and sustainability accounting will progress based on current developments.

This study aims to examine the effects of the entry of foreign direct investments (FDIs) on the audit markets in developing countries (i.e. Egypt). There is a long-standing debate on the impact of FDIs on developing markets, but little is still known about the effect of FDI on national suppliers, such as audit firms.

This paper reports the results of a study that used qualitative research methods. It involves interviews with senior management teams of the Big 4 audit firms, to find out how these firms deal simultaneously with conflicting global and local influences. The interviews were complemented by the publicly available data on the firms’ websites as well as published reports related to the Egyptian economy and current investment regulations.

Drawing on the institutional theory, the findings suggest that an increased litigious environment, compliance with developed markets’ regulations, auditor regulatory sanctions and improved local accounting and auditing standards are highly significant consequences of foreign investment inflows. The findings indicate that more emphasis has been given to the quality of audit and auditors’ independence when auditing FDIs. Both audit regulators and audit firms in the domestic market pay higher attention to improving the quality of financial reports when FDIs have entered the market. More inspections and reviews for audit firms have been conducted, and local auditing and accounting standards have been revised to be in compliance with international standards.

Our results have important implications for investors, regulatory authorities and governments in relation to the development, implementation and enforcement of international financial reporting and auditing standards.

Policymakers and regulators in Egypt have responded to international pressure by revitalizing their local accounting and auditing standards and adopting international financial reporting and auditing standards. The authors identify strategies that have been adopted by audit firms to face the FDIs’ challenges.

The purpose of this paper is to describe and analyze the impacts that the recent proliferation of private and overlapping standards is having in the trade of agricultural products from developing countries.

In a first stage industry experts in the Chilean fresh fruit trading industry were interviewed to understand the perceived impact that private standards are imposing in the industry. These interviews allowed to identify the market case study, table grapes, the landscape of private standards and their prevalence in different countries. In a second stage, a gravity trade model for trade in table grapes was estimated, with a focus on the more stringent countries identified by experts in the first stage.

We show evidence that the proliferation of private standards required by large European retailers has diverted trade away from more stringent countries that require more certifications (and into less stringent European markets). We also show that the costs of these additional certifications have been shared by trading partners, via an increase in direct sales, as opposed to consignment (the traditional marketing mode), which is associated with higher prices.

The impacts of the recent proliferation of private and overlapping standards in international trade needs to be better understood both by the legal and economic literature. While the use of private standards has been growing since the 1990s, there is a recent trend of large European retailers imposing their own and overlapping standards that needs to be better understood to inform policy.

While there is a thin literature on the impact of private standards on trade, most of this has studied the effects of the now de facto mandatory GlobalGAP certification. However, there is a recent trend by large European retailers of demanding their own private certifications, together with other already existing overlapping private standards. This study describes and analyzes the impacts of this rather new trend.

This study explores a hegemonic alliance and the role of relational forms of accounting and accountablity in the making of contemporary capitalism.

We use the WikiLeaks “Cablegate” documents to provide an account of the detailed machinations between interest groups (corporations and the state) that are constitutive of hegemonic activity.

Our analysis of the “Cablegate” documents shows that the US and Chevron were crafting a central role for Turkmenistan and its president on the global political stage as early as 2007, despite offical reporting beginning only in 2009. The documents exemplify how “accountability gaps” occlude the understanding of interdependence between capital and the state.

The study contributes to a growing idea that official accounts offer a fictionalized narrative of corporations as existing independently, and thus expands the boundaries associated with studying multinational corporate activities to include their interdependencies with the modern state.

The study traces how global capitalism extends into new territories through diplomatic channels, as a strategic initiative between powerful state and capital interests, arguing that the outcome is the empowerment of authoritarian states at the cost of democracy.

The study argues that previous accounting and accountability research has overlooked the larger picture of how capital and the state work together to secure a mutual hegemonic interest. We advocate for a more complete account of these activities that circumvents official, often restricted, views of global capitalism.

This paper aims to investigate whether the two dominant financial reporting regimes, US Generally Accepted Accounting Principles (US GAAP) and International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS), are associated with audit pricing and audit report lags.

In 2007, the US SEC eliminated the requirement for foreign registrants to reconcile their financial statements to US GAAP from IFRS. In this post-reconciliation setting in the USA, the authors use panel ordinary least square regressions to examine a sample of foreign firms cross-listed in the USA reporting under IFRS and US domestic firms reporting under US GAAP during the fiscal year 2007–2019.

The authors find that the firms reporting under IFRS have longer audit report lags than firms reporting under US GAAP. In addition, the authors find that firms reporting under IFRS pay higher audit fees than their US GAAP counterparts. The results are robust after controlling for the firm- and country-specific characteristics as well as using propensity-score matching.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this study is the first to provide empirical evidence that the differences between the two reporting regimes are associated with auditor behavior, possibly through additional audit efforts and audit complexity associated with auditing the principle-based IFRS relative to the rule-based US GAAP.

The purpose of this research is twofold; firstly, to propose and test a measuring instrument for the efficient and effective integration of management systems (MSs), identifying the particular aspects that may distinguish the substantive (internalized) from the superficial (ceremonial) integration; and secondly, to propose and test a scale for corporate sustainability performance (CSP).

A literature review has identified pertinent variables and yielded relevant measuring items. A field survey has been conducted. The survey instrument has been administered to Greek organizations certified to two or more MS standards. Collected data from 280 respondents has been processed using exploratory factor analysis.

Internalization has been identified as the main construct to interpret substantial MS integration in terms of resources and the extent of integration. The extracted internalization factors are human resources, strategic resources, information systems, integration tools, outsourcing, internal processes integration level and audits' integration level. CSP has been operationalized in terms of the company's relationships with its stakeholders. The extracted CSP factors are customer–supplier relationship, the employees, investors/shareholders, financial institutions, the environment, state and society.

This research findings can be used by management professionals, certification bodies and governmental authorities in order to foster the implementation of multiple MSs and highlight the critical issues for their successful integration and internalization, which is imperative for their prosperity and contribution toward CSP. Practitioners are also provided with an instrument to monitor CSP through the company's relationships with its stakeholders toward satisfaction of their needs.

To the best of the authors' knowledge, this is the first empirical study on the internalization of integrated MSs. In addition, the development of a CSP scale intends to bring together corporate sustainability management with CSP.

Relying on institutional theory and Oliver’s (1991) strategic responses framework, the purpose of this paper is to investigate the different strategies adopted by Spanish public universities to respond to institutional pressures for sustainability reporting.

Data were collected from a variety of sources, such as a series of email-structured interviews with key personnel from universities, a qualitative analysis of sustainability reports and a consultation of the website of each Spanish public university.

The findings reveal that Spanish public universities have responded to institutional pressures for sustainability reporting by adopting acquiescence, compromise, avoidance and defiance strategies. The variety of strategic responses adopted by Spanish public universities suggests that these organizations have not fully adhered to institutional pressures.

The results of this paper would be useful for practitioners since it tries to demonstrate whether universities, which are facing increasing institutional pressures and demands from stakeholders, have been developing sustainability reporting practices.

Universities have a remarkable social impact that could be used to promote sustainability practices. This paper investigates how these organizations can contribute to sustainability reporting as they should reproduce social norms.

The sustainability reporting context is in a phase of change. This paper tries to contribute to the accounting research by analyzing the extent to which universities are engaged in sustainability reporting. Relying on these premises, Oliver’s (1991) framework might be an insightful theoretical perspective to examine the responses provided by universities to institutional pressures.

This paper aims to develop a conceptual framework informed by a literature review. This framework aims to deepen and broaden the understanding of the relationship between corporate governance mechanisms and non-financial reporting (NFR) through qualitative research approaches.

A review of corporate governance and NFR literature and existing research frameworks leads to the development of a conceptual framework to encourage future qualitative accounting research on the corporate governance mechanisms for NFR.

Few studies consider the complex interrelationships between NFR and corporate governance mechanisms. Quantitative studies using secondary data sources dominate accounting research on the topic. Of the small number of qualitative studies, many are theoretical and offer little new knowledge about the effectiveness of corporate governance mechanisms in practice. The research framework, developed from a literature review and consideration of multiple qualitative approaches, proposes numerous avenues for future research.

This paper is based on a scoping review of the literature using peer-reviewed journal papers. Other researchers may have identified additional literature for inclusion, including grey literature.

More qualitative research into NFR and corporate governance mechanisms may help to guide practitioners seeking to incorporate sustainability into their governance practices.

The critical relationship between NRF and corporate governance is under-explored in research yet has significant consequences for organisations pursuing sustainability.

The authors develop a conceptual framework for qualitative accounting research on NFR and corporate governance, addressing key outstanding questions in this area and considering different theoretical perspectives when approaching this critical topic. Although there is scope for further research in general in this promising area, including quantitative reviews and discursive studies, qualitative research would be of particular value. The authors also outline multiple directions for nurturing academic debate.