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This research provides accounting-ethics authors and administrators with a benchmark for accounting-ethics research. While Bernardi and Bean (2010) considered publications in business-ethics and accounting’s top-40 journals this study considers research in eight accounting-ethics and public-interest journals, as well as, 34 business-ethics journals. We analyzed the contents of our 42 journals for the 25-year period between 1991 through 2015. This research documents the continued growth (Bernardi & Bean, 2007) of accounting-ethics research in both accounting-ethics and business-ethics journals. We provide data on the top-10 ethics authors in each doctoral year group, the top-50 ethics authors over the most recent 10, 20, and 25 years, and a distribution among ethics scholars for these periods. For the 25-year timeframe, our data indicate that only 665 (274) of the 5,125 accounting PhDs/DBAs (13.0% and 5.4% respectively) in Canada and the United States had authored or co-authored one (more than one) ethics article.

This paper ranks university faculties, accounting doctoral programs, individual behavioral accounting researchers, and the most influential articles based on Google Scholar citations to publications in Advances in Accounting Behavioral Research (AABR). All articles published in AABR in its first 15 volumes are included and four citation metrics are used. The paper identifies the articles, authors, faculties, and doctoral programs that made the greatest contribution to the development of AABR. Such an analysis provides a useful basis for understanding the direction the journal has taken and how it has contributed to the literature (Meyer & Rigsby, 2001). The h-index and m-index for AABR indicates it compares favorably among its peers. Potential doctoral students with an interest in behavioral accounting research, “new” accounting faculty with an interest in behavioral accounting research, current behavioral accounting research faculty, department chairs, deans, and other administrators will find these results informative.

Recent research and policy reports indicate public sector organizations struggle to leverage information technology-based performance measurement systems and fail to effectively evaluate performance beyond financial metrics. This study aims to focus on organizational factors that influence the assimilation of business intelligence (BI) systems into integrated management control systems and the corollary impact on improving business process performance within public sector organizations.

The complete Australian client list was acquired from a leading BI vendor; and the authors surveyed all public sector organizations, receiving 226 individual responses representing 160 public sector organizations in Australia. Using latent construct measurement, structural equation modeling (SEM)-partial least squares is used to test the theoretical model.

When top management promotes knowledge creation among the organization’s operational level employees and support their activities with strong BI infrastructure, the same knowledge and infrastructure capabilities that are critical to assimilation in private sector hold in the public sector. However, public sector organizations generally have difficulty retaining staff with expertise in new technologies and attracting new innovative staff that can leverage smart systems to effect major change in performance measurement. When top management effectively manages knowledge importation from external entities to counteract deficiencies, public sector organizations effectively assimilate BI knowledge into performance measurement yielding strong process performance.

When top management promotes knowledge creation among the organization’s operational level employees and support their activities with strong BI infrastructure, the same knowledge and infrastructure capabilities critical to assimilation in the private sector hold in the public sector. However, public sector organizations generally have difficulty retaining staff with expertise in new technologies and attracting new innovative staff that can leverage smart systems to effect major change in performance measurement. The research extends the theory behind organizational absorptive capacity by highlighting how knowledge importation can be used as an external source facilitating internal knowledge creation. This collaborative knowledge creation leads to affective assimilation of BI technologies and associated performance gains.

The results provide guidance to public sector organizations that struggle to measure and validate service outcomes under New Public Management regulations and mandates.

The results reveal that consistent with the philosophies behind New Public Management strategies, private sector measures for increasing organizational absorptive capacity can be applied in the public sector. However, knowledge importation appears to be a major catalyst in the public sector where the resources to retain skilled professionals with an ability to leverage contemporary technologies into service performance are often very limited. Top management team knowledge and skills are critical to effectively leveraging these internal and external knowledge creation mechanisms.

Behavioral accounting research has flourished over the past 40 years and vastly improved our understanding of accounting judgment and decision-making, human behavior as it is affected by accounting information and processes, and influences on organizational and social structures. However, to increase the validity and reliability of the work, researchers have generally narrowed the area of study to exclude many of the environmental factors that can influence the resulting behaviors that are observed. One environmental factor that has largely been ignored by the broader accounting research community is the rapidly increasing impact of information technology (IT) on all aspects of accounting. The purpose of this chapter is to elaborate on the predominance of IT in all areas of accounting and to urge behavioral accounting researchers to integrate IT aspects into their research to enhance the value and relevance of our research. Each of the major areas of accounting disciplinary research is considered (i.e., financial accounting, managerial accounting, auditing, and tax). This disciplinary focus is not intended to exclude the area of accounting information systems as is often the case in commentaries on behavioral accounting research but rather to focus on how accounting information systems are fundamentally integrated across the decision environments of every aspect of the accounting discipline.

While the use of computerized decision aids in accounting is widespread, little is known about the effects of decision aids on accounting decision making. However, prior research has often noted the difficulty in getting users to accept and rely upon decision aids (Rose, 2002). A primary area of focus in the design of decision aids that will facilitate user acceptance and reliance has been the development of user-centered interfaces that increase the user's comfort with the aid. This study contributes to this body of research by extending the findings of Ryan, Mims, and Koestner (1983) on the use of informational versus controlling rewards to the context of a decision aid and the interface design. While Ryan et al. focused on the effects of verbal feedback on intrinsic motivation, this study focuses on the impact of text-based feedback from a decision aid on decision performance for a choice task. Additionally, this study examines the effect of task-contingent versus performance-contingent rewards on the impact of the decision aid feedback. The results indicate a differential effect from that of Ryan et al. (1983) when feedback is provided through a decision aid and the focus is on decision performance rather than the precursor condition of intrinsic motivation. Additional research is needed to help explain why the findings obtained by Ryan et al. do not hold in the context of computerized decision aid use when decision performance is measured directly. There are important implications of these findings both in terms of theory development and decision aid design in professional decision-making environments such as accounting.

Purpose – This article aims to focus on raising awareness of the limitations of traditional “enterprise‐centric” views of enterprise risk management that ignore the risks that are inherited from key business and supply chain partners. In essence, enterprise systems implementations have allowed organizations to couple their operations more tightly with other business partners, particularly in the area of supply chain management, and in the process enterprise systems applications are redefining the boundaries of the entity in terms of risk management concerns and the scope of financial audits. Design/methodology/approach – The prior literature that has begun to explore aspects of assessing key risk components in these relationships is reviewed with an eye to highlighting the limitations of what is understood about risk in interorganizational relationships. This analysis of the prior research establishes the basis for the logical formation of a framework for future enterprise risk management research in the area of e‐commerce relationships. Findings – Conclusions focus on the overall framework of risks that should be considered when interorganizational relationships are critical to an enterprise's operations and advocate an “extended‐enterprise” view of enterprise risk management. Research limitations/implications – The framework introduced in this paper provides guidance for future research in the area of interorganizational systems control and risk assessment. Practical implications – The framework further highlights areas of risk that auditors and corporate risk managers should consider in assessing the risk inherited through interorganizational relationships. Originality/value – The paper highlights the need to shift from an enterprise‐centric view of risk management to an extended‐enterprise risk management view.

Research has shown evidence of the use of impression management strategies in corporate disclosures as a means of presumably tempering and swaying investors’ perceptions. These impression management strategies include shifts in the tone used when providing disclosures. However, recent research also provides evidence that such techniques can have a contrary effect when the tone of the message appears to be “too good to be true.” This study explores how the use of optimism and certainty in the Management Discussion and Analysis (MD&A) portion of the annual report affects nonprofessional investors’ investment decisions – a class of investors known to heavily rely on the MD&A portion of annual reports. We theorize a bifurcated effect where optimism and certainty have a positive and direct effect on investor willingness to invest, but at the same time optimism and certainty have a negative indirect effect on willingness to invest that is mediated through decreased perceptions of disclosure credibility. The results provide evidence supporting such a bifurcated effect from the use of tone in management disclosures.

This paper proposes a framework for the future of behavioral accounting information systems (AIS) research. A broad definition of AIS research is adopted which provides for a breadth of contemporary research drawing heavily from both the accounting domain and the information systems domain. Further, arguments are made for why AIS research must become the primary stream of accounting research if the accounting domain's research is going to have an impact on practice and provide leadership in the accounting and auditing environment that is currently evolving. In essence, researching accounting as an information systems discipline is becoming imperative.