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The purpose of this paper is a reflective account in which one person who has been around long enough to see a good bit considers how COVID-19 might change the general contours of the world.

This paper follows a broadly based and relatively unstructured approach, based on personal understandings and whatever rigor might have been gained by a life spent thinking about research design and the limits of methodology.

The opposite of what many others believe will happen is argued for. Things will change more than we wish. Most will change for the worse.

Accounting research will have a role to play, but to have impact, this study will require that researchers adopt a much more critical perspective about capitalism and its consequences than before.

Everyone must do the best they can. Everyone must learn to accept the new and not rage to restore that which existed in before times.

Harsher climate of interpersonal relations will be realized.

This paper is more about change than about accounting. A 30,000-foot level analysis that does not try to provide many examples. An effort to rise above the specifics that vary across the world.

This paper aims to provide an analysis of the choices Arthur Andersen faced in dealing with the crisis that ultimately let to its downfall in 2001-2002.

The paper is built around institutional theory. Specifically, it applies the propositions provided by Oliver (1990, 1991) to the historical record.

The failure to develop a coherent response, combined with a failure to anticipate the specific role of the state led to Andersen’s inability to navigate the institutional field.

The usual limitations of institutional theory are acknowledged. These pertain to the lack of a micro-level analysis, the additional impact of pure economic rationality and the chance that every crisis of faith is unique.

The article adds to our appreciation of what not to do in the face of crisis by the government and those in charge of large accounting organizations.

The article adds to the recently in the news “too big to fail” problem with successful economic agents.

The article adds to institutional theory by providing a different story than the usual, where everything is cleverly managed and the crisis is overcome.

This paper argues that performance evaluation is a major element of preserving the status quo of gender differences in public accounting organizations. Performance evaluation is problematized as part of several broader themes in order to more fully appreciate its importance within careers and the gender patterning of organizations. Results of a study involving reactions to a hypothetical staff auditor in charge of an over‐budget audit engagement reveal significant gender differences. Implications for the gender neutrality of career management by large public accounting firms are drawn.

Albeit gradual and uneven, the emergence of social and environmental reporting by publicly held corporations has been a major development in the last few decades. This paper aims to explore patterns of the emergence of these disclosures. Using an institutional theory lens, this paper considers mimetic, normative and coercive possibilities.

US publicly traded company data from 2013 to 2019 is used to test the hypotheses. Mimetic forces are proxied with corporate board interlock frequency. Normative ones use the extent of gender diversity on corporate boards. Measures of business climate and industry regulatory sensitivity proxy coercive potentiality.

Studied in isolation, each of the three forces through which organizations pursue the heightened legitimacy of enhanced environmental and social disclosures has credibility. The strongest support exists for mimetic and normative mechanisms, perhaps because the US government has been reluctant to make these expanded disclosures mandatory.

In the world of voluntary action, more attention to diffusion is needed. For these purposes, better proxies will be needed to study change. Social and environmental information should be separated for individual analysis.

At least in the USA, companies are attentive to what other companies are doing. There is something to be said for the ethical dimension of corporate transparency.

Governmental action in this area has not been effective, at current levels. Corporate leadership is essential. Critical information is shared about disclosure by board members.

Although institutional theory makes several appearances in this area, to the best of the authors’ knowledge, the current study is the first empirical archival study to examine the three forces simultaneously, providing evidence as to the relative magnitude of each institutional force on environmental and social disclosures. Should these disclosures not be mandated by government, this study shows pathways for enhanced disclosures to continue to spread.

Based on exchange theory and the generalized norm of reciprocity, psychological contracts perceived by employees are believed to have dysfunctional consequences for organizations if breached. This paper aims to study the willingness of employees to report fraud, as such is an important aspect of internal control for organizations.

A 2 × 2 between-subjects experiment was conducted in which 99 participants with diverse accounting backgrounds were first asked questions about their preconceived beliefs (psychological contract) regarding how reports of unethical conduct would be managed, and their reaction if these beliefs were broken (psychological contract violation). Participants were given a hypothetical situation of fraud and then asked to indicate their likelihood of reporting fraud to a supervisor.

The main hypotheses are that employees will be less likely to report fraud when the organization fails to signal the presence of a positive ethical environment or when management reacts weakly to previous reports of unethical activity. The data and findings support these hypotheses. Additional testing also reveals that a psychological contract violation mediates the relationship between the outcome of previous reports and the intention to report fraud.

As with any experimental study, this study’s results come with limitations. Reading an overly simplistic scenario that omits real world details and providing intention to report is very different from actually reporting fraud in one’s own place of employment. Therefore, reporting intentions may vary from actual reporting behavior. Further, reporting motivation (self-defense, altruism, etc.) and concern over retaliation are not measured.

Employees have expectations surrounding ethical corporate environments. Psychological contract violations occur as a result of broken expectations and are common in the workforce. In this study, a breakdown in the internal control environment because of a poor ethical culture, caused an even greater breakdown in internal controls because of employees’ decreased reporting intentions.

Psychological contract violations impact employees’ intention to report fraud. These violations need to be understood so that additional measures and safeguards can be instituted when employees are not acting as a fraud defense or detection mechanism. During such times when there is a breakdown in this type of internal control (that is, when employees might be hesitant to report fraud), extra safeguards against fraud, additional procedures to detect fraud, and enhanced employee training encouraging reporting of suspected unethical conduct, become even more important.

Strong experimental methods provide a rigorous way to evaluate a problem of our day: job insecurity caused by rampant organizational turbulence. The hidden cost is expressed in terms of how less can be expected of employees as a first line of defense against fraud.

Much in accounting research depends upon equity valuation. Too often, what the stock of publicly traded companies trade at is taken at its face value. Knowing that valuation is a function of performance relative to consensus security analyst expectations, more needs to be known about how these expectations are created and changed. The paper aims to assert that the guidance provided by top-level company management is important to the work product of analysts. The paper develops information from managers involved in these interactions.

Semi-structured interviews were conducted with 31 high-level executives employed by large USA companies in several industries. What those companies provided was interpreted through the theoretical lens of institutional theory and amounts to a qualitative content analysis approach to the subject.

The authors find that institutional theory well describes the important features of analyst guidance. Participants are aware of the broad societal interest that exists in the outcome of the guidance process. The participants accept the need for independent analyst opinions about their companies and their future prospects. In many ways, executives provide analysts more than just raw information and employ strategic structuring for analysts to produce expectations that will allow their companies a favorable pathway to future success as such is judged by the markets. The result is understood as being in the best interests of all market participants, even if it disproportionately benefits current corporate leadership.

Results are dependent upon the interview process, needing the correct questions to be asked and the willingness of interviewees to speak their lived truth. The paper calls into question traditional capital markets studies that evaluate quantitative relationships between projected accounting balances and subsequent stock market prices as a literal truth or as the result of scientific calculation.

Market participants should be somewhat more skeptical about companies that are routinely able to meet analyst expectations. To a large extent, such displays do not just happen but instead are manufactured to take place by virtual of a careful dance that is mindful of excesses on several sides.

The antagonistic interests of two important groups in the stock market is actually an unrecognized symbiotic dependency that prioritizes continued permission.

The accounting literature is very dependent on the work product of analysts. This is a rare opportunity to peak behind the curtain of their expertise in a critical fashion. The paper breaks ranks with the literature by trying to understand the thinking behind the narratives of capital market participants.

A survey of 455 internal auditors in 13 organizations asked respondents to evaluate their performance. A similar request was made for performance evaluation from the immediate supervisor of these individuals. Comparisons indicated that audit staff systematically rate their performances higher than supervisors. Staff self‐ratings and supervisor ratings prove significantly different in several ways. These differences include the relationship of individual items to the construct of overall performance and their relationship to other important employee outcomes such as job satisfaction, commitment, and turnover intentions. Implications of these differences and recommendations for improvement in the evaluation of performance are provided.

The concept of professionalism of internal auditors is examined. A survey of a large sample of internal auditors revealed that internal auditors generally conform to a model of professionalism previously applied to other occupations. Especially notable, internal auditors strongly believe in the importance of internal auditing. The relationship between the dimensions of professionalism and levels of education, certification, and rank are also explored. Implications for professionalism in internal auditing are discussed.

The purpose of this paper is to set out to examine and critique the current state and future trajectory of interdisciplinary accounting research in the USA.

The analysis is based on the author's involvement in and research into accounting research and publication contexts, drivers and patterns in the accounting discipline.

In all likelihood, research will continue established traditions that prevent the explorations of economics and finance from material broadening. This paper identifies how that which everyone believes to be such a good idea cannot bear fruit.

Conventional economics-based accounting research has proliferated in volume but has largely exhausted its potential for significant contributions to knowledge. Failure to embrace broadened interdisciplinary perspectives risks a crisis of accounting research contribution to policy, practice, and society.

This critique reveals the serious weaknesses and serious risks to international accounting scholarship of the continuance and global mimicking of the North American pursuit of an exclusively economic accounting research perspective.

Discussion about the actual nature of political action is unusual in the literature about the Financial Accounting Standards Board (FASB). Examines the treatment of politics in the US standard setting context and this analysis results in the conclusion that despite widespread recognition that standard setting is political, what this means is greatly underappreciated. Moving knowledge about financial accounting policy towards a more adequate realization of its political nature is furthered by a discussion of the roles of power, ideology and rhetoric.