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Under a gradual long-term plan of the Saudi Stock Market (TADWUAL) from 2016, Saudi Arabia decided to work with International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) board to fully adopt its accounting standards. Saudi Arabia has undergone several reforms in governance and standards of internal controls are changing rapidly. This study aims to assess whether IFRS adoption has any moderator role in the relationship between disclosure quality and firm-specific characteristics in the Saudi Stock Market.

This study assesses whether IFRS adoption has any moderator role in the relationship between disclosure quality and firm-specific characteristics in the Saudi Stock Market. The key research hypotheses postulate that compared to IFRS status, after adoption, several independent variables influence the disclosure level. The analysis covers a local sample of 184 Saudi listed firms over the period 2016 to 2020. Using an in-depth content analysis technique, the voluntary disclosure and number of annual report pages are measured manually and year by year to capture levels and unique characteristics. The authors apply cross-sectional regression, first difference method, Pooled OLS and feasible general least square estimations. The mean of disclosure level increases from 33.03% in 2016 to 56.14% in 2020.

The results reveal that the vast majority of firm-specific characteristics were significant in pre-IFRS adoption period. First difference analysis shows a significant impact of firm size and non-executive composition on the disclosure level. The authors confirm that IFRS adoption plays a critical role in the quality of firms’ financial reports and supports to create a conducive economic environment in Saudi Arabia.

First, the implementation of IFRS adoption should impact the Saudi accounting information and disclosure quality in Saudi context markedly. Second, firm-specific characteristics align with corporate governance are the main determinants of accounting information and transparency; therefore, focusing on this angle enables regulators and policymakers to mitigate uncertainty and asymmetric information. Third, the findings of this research state that there is a negative relationship between disclosure quality and board meetings. This encourages policymakers to reconsider the number of board meetings in firms that was not as high as in the developed markets. Notwithstanding all previous implications, it is recommended that future research undertake a various quasi-experimental design such as a difference-in-difference approach to estimate the causal effect of corporate governance mechanisms on IFRS 7 mandatory disclosure requirements on in Saudi Arabia context.

There is a lack of studies on this realm and such as these studies will enrich the understanding of aspects of IFRS adoption and contribute to the prior empirical literature. Importantly, the extend of this sample into other Gulf Cooperation Council countries and exhibition the difference effect can be very useful to enrich the knowledge of IFRS adoption aspects in corporate disclosure and accounting information quality.

Saudi Arabia has undergone several reforms in governance, and their standards of internal controls are changing rapidly. This has been attributed to the importance of providing guidelines, practices and regulations for listed companies. One of the major turning points of financial reporting quality in Saudi listed firms was adoption of IFRSs. This adoption deems to be necessity in ensuring the highest level of transparency and information reliability. Based on the findings of this research, the present investigations set up a platform and furnish many implications for policymakers, companies’ board of directors, financial analysts and other related authorities. The results should provide policymakers with greater insight of the relationship between disclosure quality and corporate-specific characteristics throughout the IFRS adoption periods. Thus, the results derived from this study can be effective and useful for the IFRS adoption committee in the Saudi Organization for Certified Public Accountants (SOCPA). According to the best of the authors’ knowledge and based on official secondary information sourced from the SOCPA website, there are several standards that are subject to difficulties in measurement and are modified from time to time, such as: IFRS1, IFRS8, IFRS12, IFRS16 and IFRS18.

The purpose of this paper is to analyze whether internal audit (IA) influences the successful implementation of the International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS). From January 2017, listed companies in Saudi Arabia have been mandated to adopt the IFRS. Conducted in the 2014–2016 years before this deadline, the study investigates the readiness of IA departments in the Kingdom to adopt the IFRS in their totality, as required, by January 2017.

Data were collected for the period 2014 and 2016, two years after the announcement of the intended adoption of the standards, and hence, two years into the five-year preparation period. Data obtained from 78 chief internal auditors from listed companies in Saudi Arabia, and the extraction of information from companies’ annual reports.

Results of regression analysis show a significant association between the readiness for IFRS adoption and IA size and IA staff training. In firms that adopted the IFRS in the period before the mandatory implementation, IA is weak in the role of monitoring. In this connection, it is demonstrated that the adoption and implementation of the IFRS are likely to be more effective when IA reports directly to the audit committee rather than to management. Further, the results reveal that the Hausman test is not significant for the IA characteristics. Hence, there is implication that the measurement instruments used in the study are exogenous and do not associate with the error term.

The new insights into the impact of IA on IFRS adoption, gained from studying this issue within the oil-based Saudi Arabian economy, represent a contribution to the IA literature. The results of this study provide new insights to several stakeholders. First, to academia, which can benefit from new IA knowledge and understanding in the specific context of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA), which can be representative of the Gulf region and the wider Arab World. Second, to policy-makers and practitioners in the KSA and other Middle-Eastern, Asian and developing countries that share similar cultural predispositions, socio-economic institutions and/or general socio-economic environments. Additionally, it offers insights for small- to medium-sized companies that have not thus far, adopted the IFRS.

The purpose of this study is to empirically examine the influence of International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) adoption by Russian public companies on the value relevance of financial reporting in Russia.

We selected 67 Russian public companies that reported both under Russian Accounting Standards (RAS) and IFRS for four consecutive years (2006–2009).

The main limitation of the chapter is the sample, but this can be explained by the fact that only 67 companies in Russia report under the two standards (RAS and IFRS). So the sample could not be increased as there were no other companies that fulfilled the characteristics of the sample.

The results obtained show that on the Russian market there is no evidence of increased value relevance of financial reporting to external users of financial information after adopting IFRS when comparing and evaluating the two regimes (RAS and IFRS) unconditionally. Such results can be explained by the notion of mock compliance which originated due to the institutional differences between the RAS and IFRS development environments.

Adoption of IFRS by companies in emerging markets has been a subject of interest for lots of researchers, but this is the first research of its kind in the field of value relevance of adoption of IFRS on the Russian market.

This paper aims to offer new insights on how the adoption of contemporary international accounting standards can affect the financial performance of a hotel. It provides significant input for strategic decision making in property management, especially in countries where hotels properties are given a choice between different accounting standards.

Data was collected from 3-, 4- and 5- star hotels in Greece, through primary research with questionnaires, filled by hotel financial managers. Greece was selected because hotels can choose between national and international accounting standards; therefore, the research could focus on actual factors beyond mandatory adoption.

Microeconomic factors such as category or legal form of the hotel in combination with other factors can affect the perceived benefits of the selected accounting standards. Macroeconomic factors such as the overall tourism development of the destination also affect the perceived impact.

The research was targeted at hotel executives with knowledge and participation in decision making regarding accounting standards. This requirement limited the sample since all hotels do not have a financial manager position.

The new knowledge can be utilized in property management as an element of hospitality strategic planning for improved assessment of anticipated effects resulting from the adoption of specific accounting standards.

The research fills a gap in existing knowledge by introducing elements not previously examined; additionally, it expands previous knowledge from other sectors to hospitality and tourism, while verifying or rejecting past findings.

The purpose of this paper is to identify drivers and barriers for adopting Social Accountability 8000 (SA8000), a leading global social management standard.

The approach involves combining insights from Institutional Theory with a focus on economic performance to study SA8000 adoption by suppliers operating in a developing economy (i.e. India). Data collection involves interviews with adopters and non-adopters, social standard experts and auditors, and archival data on local working conditions.

This study confirms that customer requests are the major reason for adopting SA8000 in order to avoid loss of business. It is noteworthy, however, that those customer requests to adopt SA8000 are often symbolic in nature, which, in combination with the lack of a positive business case, hinders effective implementation.

The findings imply that symbolic customer requests for SA8000 adoption induce symbolic implementation by suppliers, a “supply chain effect” in the symbolic approach. Substantive requests in contrast lead to more substantive implementation and require customer investment in the form of active support and an interest in the standard’s implementation, context and effects.

This study is original in that it addresses social sustainability from a supplier’s perspective, using the lens of Institutional Theory. The value lies in demonstrating the “supply chain effects” that arise from the “quality” of customer requests: a purely symbolic approach by customers leading to symbolic implementation vs the merits of substantive customer requests which stimulate substantive implementation.

The paper aims to build a greater understanding of countries transitioning from local generally accepted accounting principles (GAAP) to International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS). Second, the study assembles prior literature and examines the issues raised during the convergence. Finally, the paper recognises the implications of successful convergence practices that may be useful to other emerging markets and particular reference to India which is transitioning from local GAAP to IFRS-based principles.

The present study is a qualitative analysis that explores the Cost-benefit outcome carried by developed nations. The paper segregates the literature into three segments: developed nations, East Asian countries and the Brazil, Russia, India and China (BRIC) nations.

There are numerous issues and implications divulged from studies pertaining to the adoption of IFRS, i.e. corporate governance, fair value accounting and other environmental concerns. The paper further illustrates instances of dissimilarity of the Indian Accounting Standards to the IFRS.

It is evident from the literature that limited studies have been carried out in the context of East Asian countries and BRIC nations in comparison to the developed nations. Further research should provide more comprehensive empirical evidence on the outcome of mandatory adoption of IFRS on firms in emerging countries.

The paradigm practice of mandatory adoption of IFRS by developed nations can be an insight for emerging countries that participate in the capital markets and for companies in compliance with the IFRS.

The purpose of this study is to provide an overview of the adoption status of International Public Sector Accounting Standards (IPSAS) within Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) member states at the country level and highlight the main factors impeding the process of accounting harmonisation.

This study uses factor analysis (FA) to assess the status of IPSAS adoption as the weighted average of the adoption levels of three categories: central government, sub-national governments, and country-level consolidation. Based on this assessment, the sample is classified into three levels of IPSAS adoption: high, medium, and low.

The findings suggest a slow trend towards accounting harmonisation and an increasing influence of IPSAS. However, evidence also suggests significant limitations in the adoption of the standards, mainly attributed to national adaptations, which undermine the ongoing efforts for standardisation.

This study provides an integrated view of IPSAS adoption at the country level and sheds light on a different aspect of the international harmonisation process, which is missing from the literature.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate how the adoption of IFRS 10 and IFRS 11 affected consolidated financial statements. Specifically, the paper explores whether entities adopted mandatorily or voluntarily both IFRS, whether expressly declared effects, whether considered those effects as material and whether those effects had impacts on selected items of financial statements and on selected financial ratios.

The research is an exploratory study using public entities from Germany, France and the UK. The majority of the data is manually collected from financial statements.

The results suggest that the adoption of the new IFRS 10 affected the composition of a large number of entity groups but that their financial information and economic-financial indicators do not present material changes. There is also evidence of a large and material impact on the changes in the classification and accounting for interests in arrangements under joint control through the new IFRS 11. The evidence thus suggests unequal effects of the adoption of IFRS 10 and IFRS 11 on the proportion of entities declaring materiality of effects, on the quantitative effects on selected items of financial statements, and on financial ratios. A comparison between the pre-adoption and post-adoption periods reveals that the majority of the effects are driven by the adoption of IFRS 11.

As far as is known this exploratory paper is the first presenting the effectiveness of adopting the most important standards under the “consolidation package” and opens an avenue for future research by academics, for future post-implementation reviews by IASB, and for analysis of peer reviews between accounting practitioners.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the effects of perceived implications of International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) adoption on the willingness to adopt IFRS.

The study analysed the causal relationships between perceptions and the willingness of the accountants to adopt IFRS.

The findings revealed that perceived benefits drove the willingness to adopt IFRS whereas the perceived disadvantages and challenges diminished the willingness. Knowledge of IFRS enhanced the willingness towards IFRS adoption. Also, legitimacy desire enhanced the association between the perceived implications and the willingness to adopt IFRS.

The study contributes significantly to theory and practice as Vietnamese policy makers recently announced their strategic planning to full IFRS adoption by 2025.

Neo-institutional theory (NIT) has strengthened its position as one of the theories and frameworks used to investigate accounting as organizational, legislative, social and policymaking phenomena. This study aims to review how aspects of NIT are used and understood by accounting researchers. As a growing body of accounting and auditing articles in recent years has used NIT as a theoretical framework, this paper reviews and analyzes articles using NIT.

This study develops a comprehensive synthesis of current academic knowledge about NIT in accounting and auditing regulation literature. Further, it reveals areas requiring further examination.

The findings of this study indicate that prior studies have found evidence that accounting and auditing regulation is associated with all forms of isomorphism (coercive, mimetic and normative). For instance, institutional pressures influence the accounting and auditing standards adoption in different environments. Therefore, the synthesis of the literature suggests that coercive, mimetic and normative pressures have played a significant role in the harmonization of accounting and auditing practices worldwide. To conclude, NIT has become one of the relevant alternative approaches used to explore accounting and auditing regulation as a complex phenomenon.

Accounting has often been referred to as a “narrow” and “technical” topic. In a way, NIT broadens the research field by extending, for instance, the approach of which external and internal pressures are associated with accounting standards adoption and why different accounting practices are adopted.

This study informs accounting scholars as to how NIT has been applied, and can be applied, in the accounting and auditing regulation literature. This benefits accounting researchers if they are considering whether to use NIT in their research. This study evaluates the contribution of NIT within this research field. It can be suggested that accounting researchers need to become more aware of the debates within the NIT literature, particularly as the theory is seen as conceptually ambiguous. To conclude, the synthesis highlights that NIT has offered a range of important contributions and has drawn attention to the link between accounting and auditing regulation research and the institutional environment.