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By drawing on a detailed case study of the work of tax consultants, the purpose of this paper is to develop a more detailed understanding of the role of ambiguity in professional work, and its relationship to the division of labour in professional service firms (PSFs).

The paper is based on a three-year, longitudinal interpretive case study comprising 42 interviews, supplemented by observations and document data.

The research determines that processes of “obfuscation” and “privatisation” separate client work from case work. This maintains a division of labour between junior and senior professionals, which in turn facilitates financial leverage. The findings indicate that a more nuanced view on the role and origins of ambiguity is needed; particularly the role ambiguity plays in the division of labour. While inherent in professional work, ambiguity is also an effect of the way work processes are organised in order to obtain leverage.

The research is based on a case study. Therefore, the paper explores its topic in empirical detail, but at the same time calls for exploring the topic in different contexts. The paper encourages further research on the role ambiguity plays being constituted by structural arrangements, and on the way the core of professionalism is inverted by the division of labour. The paper highlights the value of detailed empirical approaches for understanding professional work.

The paper draws attention to the way ambiguity becomes a part in sustaining a division of labour among professional workers, and to the importance of this in maintaining financial leverage as well as in creating a precarious work situation for junior professionals.

The paper raises concerns about the way professional work is legitimated in society as opposed to how it is constructed in PSFs.

The paper challenges prevalent notions of professional work as ambiguous, offering instead a way of engaging with professional work processes in detail, theoretically and methodologically. Traditional assumptions about the division of labour and the “core” of professional work are problematized, and traditional assumptions about ambiguity as a cause of specific structural arrangements are questioned.

The purpose of this paper is to explore how system dynamics (SD) modelling can provide a methodological support to business model (BM) design with the intent to better communicate business strategy and manage performance.

After a literature review of the field and an analysis of the strengths and limitations of conventional BM frameworks, the paper illustrates and discusses an approach that combines such a framework with SD modelling. A single-case study design was selected to explore the implications and limitations of using this combined approach to business modelling.

The methodological support provided by SD to BM design may effectively improve business strategy communication and performance management through both the adoption of a systemic and flexible perspective able to identify and analyse the main cause-and-effect relationships between the key-elements of the business strategy, and the use of a simulation technique that contributes in understanding how a firm operates, and its prospective performance over time.

Growing interest for BMs appears in the recent strategic management literature with research highlighting strengths and shortcomings. However, few attempts have been produced to overcome such limitations, while the adoption of SD is relatively new in supporting BM design.

Concomitant with the trend towards specialisation in UK accountancy and the rise of relatively separate formal spheres of professional work along formal specialisms such as tax, audit and management consultancy, women entered the profession in unprecedented numbers, but not evenly distributed across those specialisms. This paper aims to draw on the sociology of accountancy and feminist studies of the professions to show that specialisms have emerged through and, in turn, have been shaped and recreated by gender as well as other processes.

The paper's research approach combines the sociology of professions with critical gender studies. It draws on interviews, brochures, web pages, and results from a questionnaire survey to investigate professional identities within UK accountancy.

Accountants' self-articulated notions of professionalism in the different specialisms are gendered and ordered hierarchically. Gender is an encompassing conceptual frame for ordering discursive attributes of the different specialisms. Working long and unpredictable hours was central to accountants' understandings of their professional life. Socialising with clients was seen as functional in bringing new opportunities to the firm. Socialising with peers also was deemed important, especially in solving internal frictions and in controlling new entrants' behaviour in firms. The more “public” the ideology of a specialism, the more masculine it was perceived to be.

This study challenges the uniform representations of professional identities offered by previous studies. It suggests that gender offers a discursive and ideological frame of reference for accountancy whose relevance extends beyond the working practices of men and women to the very constitution of the profession. It does so with reference to an original mix of qualitative and quantitative data.

The purpose of this paper is to shed light upon the reasons why knowledge workers are offered considerable autonomy, and the extent to which they are given the freedom to determine how and when they work.

In order to examine the level of flexibility available to knowledge workers, a large consultancy firm was investigated using a case‐study approach.

The results obtained from the case‐study firm demonstrate the reasons why consultants are afforded temporal and locational flexibility and the degree of flexibility available to them. Contrary to the claims of “futurists”, many knowledge workers are not able to exercise greater control over their working arrangements than traditional employees, as their temporal/locational flexibility is restricted by the needs of their employer(s), client demands and expectations, “professionalism”, network relations and personal career ambitions.

The role played by knowledge workers in the new knowledge economy and the extent to which they are able to extract concessions from their employers have become key areas of interest for organisations, academics and policy makers. Consultancy characterises many of the changes that are being elicited with the emergence of a knowledge‐based economy, and an analysis of the working arrangements available to consultants provides an insight into the degree to which they are given freedom to determine how and when they work and the extent to which they may be defined as “free workers”.

The purpose of this study is to examine the contribution of tax morale, compliance costs and tax compliance of financial services firms in Uganda.

This study is cross-sectional and correlational and adopts firm-level data collected using a questionnaire survey of 210 financial services firms in Uganda from which usable questionnaires were received from 152 financial services firms.

Tax morale and compliance costs contribute up to 20.6 per cent of the variance in tax compliance of the financial services firms. Tax morale and tax compliance are positively and significantly associated. Results further indicate that compliance costs and tax compliance are positively and significantly associated. National pride and trust in government and its legal systems as dimensions of tax morale independently are significantly associated with tax compliance. Results also indicate that administration costs and specialist costs as dimensions of compliance costs individually are significantly associated with tax compliance.

This study results should be generalized with caution, as they are limited to the financial services firms in Uganda.

Whereas there has been a number of studies on tax compliance in both developed and developing countries, this is the first study on the African scene to examine the contribution of tax morale and compliance costs on tax compliance of financial services firms in a single suite. It is unbelievable that the financial services firms, especially commercial banks which are highly regulated by the central bank in many developing countries, can afford to report tax payables year after year.

In his 2006 State of the Nation Address, President Thabo Mbeki indicated that the regulatory environment for small businesses would be improved, as this sector plays an important role in the national strategy for accelerated and shared growth. The aim of this study is to determine whether the size of an enterprise and the sector in which the enterprise operates has an impact on how the enterprise’s tax responsibilities are administered and managed. A survey was conducted amongst small and medium enterprises in the manufacturing, retail and business services sectors in Gauteng. The study focused on Gauteng because the majority of small, medium and microenterprises (SMMEs) are located in this province. The study found that most small and medium enterprises (SMEs) in the business services sector outsource their tax responsibilities because they lack the time needed to manage these functions. It was also found that the size and type of organisation affects the role taxation inputs play in business decisions. The SMEs included in the survey preferred a reduction in interest and penalties charged as a taxation relief measure.

In his 2006 State of the Nation Address, President Thabo Mbeki indicated that the regulatory environment for small businesses would be improved, as this sector plays an important role in the national strategy for accelerated and shared growth. The aim of this study is to determine whether the size of an enterprise and the sector in which the enterprise operates has an impact on how the enterprise’s tax responsibilities are administered and managed. A survey was conducted amongst small and medium enterprises in the manufacturing, retail and business services sectors in Gauteng. The study focused on Gauteng because the majority of small, medium and microenterprises (SMMEs) are located in this province. The study found that most small and medium enterprises (SMEs) in the business services sector outsource their tax responsibilities because they lack the time needed to manage these functions. It was also found that the size and type of organisation affects the role taxation inputs play in business decisions. The SMEs included in the survey preferred a reduction in interest and penalties charged as a taxation relief measure.

This paper employs a qualitative approach to assess the impact which the “liberalisation” of the Greek auditing profession in 1992 may have had on auditor behaviour. The “liberalisation” was introduced by legislation and was the result of a long and intense intra‐professional conflict between a group of indigenous auditors and international accounting firms. Overall, the paper illuminates the deeply political and self‐interested nature of the Greek auditing profession and its socially constructed and contextually dependent character. The results also indicate that following the “liberalisation”, auditors gave significantly less emphasis to functions relating to: being independent; publicly communicating audit findings; protecting the interests of external stakeholders, and presenting “true and fair” financial statements. In contrast, auditors placed significantly more emphasis on providing management advisory services to audit clients. The significant changes in auditor behaviour are linked to the economic dependence of auditors on audited companies which resulted from the audit reform. These findings appear to question the received wisdom underpinning the internationally prevalent move towards privatisation and deregulation of statutory audit services. Finally, the paper has important methodological implications as it demonstrates the limitations of quantitative techniques vis‐à‐vis qualitative approaches to accounting research in politically charged contexts.

Due to the rapid growth of electronic commerce worldwide, the traditional approach of taxing business profits in Hong Kong, a source‐based common law jurisdiction, warrants a close review as to its compatibility with such a modern way of doing business. Although the Inland Revenue Department of Hong Kong has issued its views on the taxation of electronic commerce profits as Departmental Interpretation and Practice Note 39, much of the treatment of such profits follow the conventional wisdom of taxing business profits as set in the source‐based rules. This paper reviews the present situation of taxing profits arising from electronic commerce transactions in Hong Kong and compares it with the cases of the UK and the USA. Problems in formulating water‐tight tax law, accounting standards for intangible assets, and coping with cross‐border fraud, indicate that progress may not be straightforward. Issues as to fairness, and the difficulty of taxing such receipts are raised, followed by recommendations.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate stakeholders’ salience on accounting and in particular to assess the magnitude of state influence in Romania, an emerging context.

This research integrates stakeholders’ theory and an empirical approach based on a survey administrated to professional accountants as preparers of accounts on the financial reporting market.

The findings confirm the hypothesis of Mitchell et al. (1997) that the importance of stakeholders is high if attributes like power, legitimacy and claims urgency are perceived as current. In the Romanian emergent context, for the period 1991-2010, a relatively strong tax-accounting linkage is still identified according to Lamb et al.’s (1998) hierarchy. However, as compared to the absolute dominance observed for the early post-communist stage, the state holds the second position in terms of values of stakeholder attributes, after the shareholders.

An increased influence of the accounting bodies, academics and business representatives, who should communicate effectively and constructively with the public structures with respect to enforcement of accounting regulations and the type of organizations involved. The higher focus on IFRS in the EU and in Romania and the evolution of Romanian economic and legal structures lead to the reassessment of the usefulness of IFRS, at least in the case of certain types of organizations. This is also due to the fact that the new IASB framework takes into consideration other types of stakeholders than (actual) shareholders along with the providers of finance from the entity and stewardship perspective.

This paper argues that one of the factors of state influence in accounting is the tax-accounting linkage who is still occurs in this context in present. Also, refers to another factor that caused the watering down of the state’ position, namely, the growing impact of IFRS on Romanian financial reporting.