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This paper examines the environmental disclosure decisions of New Zealand firms in response to political costs arising from the enactment of the Resource Management Act (RMA) in 1991. Unlike prior disclosure studies, this study provides a more rigorous test of the political cost hypothesis by identifying firms that were directly affected by RMA and by measuring the change in environmental disclosures over the pre‐ to post‐RMA period. We hypothesise that the increase in environmental disclosures will be a positive function of the firm's political visibility. Using six different measures of political visibility and three composite measures derived from a factor analysis of the individual measures, the evidence indicates that, in general, politically visible firms were more likely to increase their environmental disclosures after RMA whether the change was measured on a dichotomous or continuous basis. Overall these results provide support for the political cost hypothesis.

Board faultlines, which reflect intrinsic divisions of board members into relatively homogeneous subgroups, are associated with poor firm performance. This paper aims to extend the existing board faultline research by examining how acquisition deal size moderates the negative implications of board faultlines.

This paper uses a sample of acquisitions and a quantitative research approach to conduct statistical analysis.

Using a sample of acquisitions announced between 2007 and 2016, this paper finds evidence suggesting that strong faultlines are associated with poorer acquisition outcomes in the long-term, but not in the short term. Further, this paper finds that the effect of faultline strength on long-term acquisition outcomes is weaker for larger acquisition deals than smaller acquisition deals. The findings are consistent with deal size moderating the relation between faultlines and acquisition outcomes.

This paper addresses possible endogeneity through firm fixed effects and instrumental variable analysis. Although this paper provides evidence on the moderating role of deal size in the context of faultlines, future research could examine the role of additional moderators, such as pro-diversity, trust, board leadership and board and task characteristics.

The findings suggest that boards need to be aware of situations where the negative effects of faultlines are more likely to come to the fore. For example, faultlines are more likely to play a role in more routine, obscure monitoring than for high-profile strategic decisions.

The study is multidisciplinary as it draws on the management, organizational behaviour and psychology and finance literature. It contributes to the developing literature on faultlines in several important ways. First, this paper supports their view that faultlines have adverse effects on board performance by showing that faultlines negatively impact discrete strategic investment decisions. Second, this paper provides evidence that deals size moderates the faultline-acquisition performance relation, indicating that the role of faultlines is contextual. Third, this paper finds evidence that suggests investors do not factor in board faultlines when responding to acquisition announcements.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the economic determinants of compensation committee quality.

Sample firms were selected from the IRRC Directors' database. Compensation committee quality is measured as the factor score from a principal component analysis of six compensation committee characteristics. Regression analyses are conducted to test the hypotheses.

It was found that firms with lower CEO influence, less institutional shareholders, fewer growth opportunities, and that are smaller in size are more likely to have high quality compensation committees.

The results imply that even in the presence of a requirement to have only independent directors on the compensation committee, the quality of compensation committees can vary cross‐sectionally depending on the firm's economic circumstances. Thus, a one‐size fits all solution for compensation committee quality might not be optimal as different firms have different incentives in composing their compensation committees.

This paper adds to the limited literature on compensation committees by using a new measure of compensation committee quality to examine the economic factors that affect the governance quality of independent compensation committees. This paper also complements the board and audit committee research by examining whether the same factors that affect board and audit committee quality might also affect compensation committee quality.

This study aims to examine the literature from the Web of Science database published on board committees between 2002 and 2023 and outline the quantitative summary, journey of board committees’ research and suggest future research directions.

This study examines bibliometric-content analysis combined with a systematic literature review of articles on board committees to document the summary of the field. The authors used co-citation, co-occurrence and cluster analysis under bibliometric-content analysis to present the field summary.

Board committee composition, such as their gender, independence and expertise, as well as factors affecting corporate governance, such as reporting quality, earnings management and board monitoring, all have a significant impact on board committee literature. The field is getting growing attention from authors, journals and countries. Nevertheless, there is a need for further exploration in areas like expertise, member age and tenure, the economic crisis and the nomination and remuneration committee, which have not yet received sufficient attention.

This paper has both theoretical and practical contributions. From a theoretical perspective, this study substantiates the prevalence of agency theory within board committee literature, reinforcing the foundational role of agency theory in shaping discussions about board committees. On practical ground, the comprehensive overview of board committee literature offers scholars a road map for navigating this field and directing their future research journey. The identification of research gaps in certain areas serves as a catalyst for scholars to explore untapped dimensions, enabling them to strengthen the essence of the committees’ performance.

This study examines how bilateral international trade among mandatory International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) adopter countries moderates the relation between IFRS adoption and firms’ financial reporting quality.

The authors use data from 2007 to 2015 and focus on publicly listed firms from non-European Union countries that adopted IFRS on a mandatory basis.

The authors find that the interaction between mandatory IFRS adoption and a country’s bilateral trade with other countries using IFRS is negatively and significantly related to accruals-based earnings management, which is an inverse measure of financial reporting quality. This result is driven by firms in less developed countries. The improvement in accounting quality is for firms located in countries that both fully and partially adopt IFRS. The authors also find a significant and negative coefficient for the relation between real earnings management and the interaction between mandatory IFRS adoption and a country’s bilateral trade with other IFRS countries in the post-global financial crisis period.

Overall, the authors’ results are consistent with the notion that the mandatory adoption of IFRS creates a positive externality where firms improve their accounting quality because increased financial statement comparability means that foreign customers and suppliers can monitor the quality of earnings more easily.

This paper reviews Pacific Accounting Review, 1988–96. Against the background of an historical overview of the journal's development, the paper includes analyses of publications and citations in the journal. The paper looks forward to the future progress of Pacific Accounting Review.

This study aims to examine whether the disclosure tone in earnings announcements is related to a firm’s corporate social responsibility (CSR) performance.

Considering the lower likelihood of earnings management conducted by CSR-conscious firms, and the significant market impact of the tone of disclosure in the earnings announcements, the study investigates whether firms with good CSR performance attempt to influence investors’ judgements through “soft information” and, thus, produce earnings announcements with more positive tone. Specifically, it examines whether CSR performance is positively related to the optimistic disclosure tone in earnings announcements.

The study finds that more socially responsible firms exhibit a more optimistic tone in earnings announcements. The findings are robust to a variety of sensitivity tests and data from different years. Furthermore, the study finds that the positive association between CSR performance and disclosure tone in the earnings announcement is particularly apparent in the manufacturing industry.

This study contributes to the literature in multiple ways.

These findings should assist regulators in better understanding the verbal components in earnings announcements.

It is possible that firms might opportunistically engage in CSR activities to enhance their social image to exaggerate financial performance and influence investors’ 2019 decisions.

These results show that CSR performance is positively associated with the optimistic tone in earnings announcements. The findings are consistent with two alternative interpretations. First, even though CSR-conscious firms are unlikely to engage in earnings management, they may engage a more subtle form of impressions/tone management. Second, firms with better CSR performance may have better financial performance, and thus are more confident and optimistic, resulting in a more positive tone in their earnings announcements. As the study controls for financial performance and find a positive relation between CSR concerns and optimism in earnings announcements, it favors the previous explanation.

The purpose of this study is threefold: to examine the impact of a remuneration committee (RC) on the level of chief executive officer (CEO) remuneration; whether firms with a RC, pay a premium to CEOs with different skill sets (general or specific); and whether a pay premium mitigates the potential for CEO turnover.

This study uses a sample of 5,305 firm-year observations on a data set drawn from companies listed on the Australian Securities Exchange for the period 2007 to 2014. The authors use ordinary least squares as well as logit regression techniques to test the formulated hypotheses. Difference in difference and propensity score matching techniques were undertaken to address the endogeneity concerns.

The findings show that firms with a RC pay a higher total remuneration to CEOs compared to firms without a RC. Furthermore, firms with a RC, value and reward CEOs with general skills by paying a premium not offered to CEOs with industry-specific skills. Paying a premium, in turn, mitigates CEO turnover by strengthening the CEO’s commitment to the organisation.

The study helps us to understand the critical role played by the RC in the remuneration of CEOs. The findings show that RCs act as an effective governance mechanism to deal with issues of executive remuneration and to retain skilled CEOs. Additionally, CEOs who acquire and develop general managerial skills will be able to extract higher pay from improved bargaining power. The findings will be of relevance to shareholders, regulators and company management who have an interest in executive pay and performance.

This study aims to explore corporate earnings management practices in Australia and New Zealand before and after the regulatory changes and corporate governance reforms. The study argues that the effectiveness of regulatory reforms has to be reflected in constraining earnings management in post-reform period as compared to pre-reform period.

Using a sample of 3,966 firm-year observations, including all ASX and NZX listed firms for the period 2001-2006, the study examines earnings management practices in both countries in pre- and post-reform periods with appropriate statistical methods.

The results indicate some interesting phenomenon: the magnitude of earnings management did not decline after the governance reform as a positive time trend is observed in the entire sample as well as in Australian and New Zealand sub-samples, suggesting that earnings management has been growing over time. Additional test indicates no structural change has occurred before and after the new regulations. The shifting from decreasing earnings management to increasing earnings management can be interpreted as an evidence that earnings become more ‘informative’ in a more transparent disclosure regime to capture short-run benefits from regulator reforms.

The shifting of earnings management behaviour from decreasing to increasing income can be interpreted as the outcome of more “informative”, rather than “deliberate”, earnings management in a more transparent disclosure regime to capture short-run benefits of regulatory reforms, which is worth further investigation. The findings of the study can lead regulatory authorities taking appropriate measures to promote earnings quality in corporate financial reporting from a long-run decision usefulness context. Any future reforms should be directed to protecting the interest of stakeholders as well as ensuring benefits outweighing costs for them.

The findings of the study can lead regulatory authorities in taking appropriate measures to promote earnings quality in corporate financial reporting from a long-run decision usefulness context.

The study adds value to the existing earnings management literature as well as effectiveness of regulations for the benefit of wider stakeholder groups.