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The roles and responsibilities of the chief financial officer (hereafter CFO) have evolved dramatically over the past 10 years. This article explores this evolution from a South African perspective by, firstly, presenting an extensive literature review on the matter. Secondly, a unique South African model of the key focus areas for CFOs is proposed. Lastly, the results of a questionnaire administered to the CFOs of FTSE/JSE Top 40 companies are reported. The results revealed significant findings relating to the CFO’s most important current and future role ‐ that of planner and strategist. In addition, CFOs at the top of the corporate ladder expect to focus more on their role as a growth and innovation catalyst. This article also identifies three key areas for future research that will make an important contribution to the continued development of the educational framework for chartered accountants.

This study aims to develop a conceptual framework for the role of chief financial officer (CFO) in an ever-changing environment. As previous research focused on responding to specific crises, there have been theoretical and practical gaps in the role of CFO. The study's goal is to fill a critical gap by developing a comprehensive and integrated set of roles to assist the CFO in a constantly changing environment.

Using a grounded theory approach, semi-structured interviews and observations were conducted with 21 CFOs from various industries in Thailand, including foreign multinational corporations and domestic companies with international operations. CFOs were asked how they frame their roles in the face of an ever-changing environment and how they prepare for the future.

The iCFO model is developed, which identifies the critical “core” roles of the CFO in securing the business foundation, as well as the “future opportunities” roles that function as growth engines for long-term business strength. The research delves into the importance of integrity, ethical mindset and corporate governance in the role of the CFO. The iCFO model is designed to help guide future research and provide practical applications for CFOs in both domestic and international contexts. The term “core” refers to the CFO’s primary responsibilities, which include driving profitability, managing risks and optimizing business performance. The “future opportunities” component focuses on the roles that CFOs can play in strengthening the future of business by optimizing investment efficiency, driving digital transformation and being the CEO’s business partner. The findings also emphasized “integrity,” which must encompass all decisions, actions or recommendations made by the CFO.

The study offers unique perspectives on an emerging economy, providing new insights. Through interviews with 21 CFOs, it contributes empirical evidence on the development of roles in accounting and finance, emphasizing good governance practices. The findings highlight the integrated role of the CFO and their self-reflection on their value within the company. Significantly, the study's implications are relevant and applicable to a global audience, particularly in developing economies that prioritize growth. Future studies could incorporate integrated thinking into the iCFO model to address social, environmental and economic factors, making it more universally relevant. Additionally, exploring the adoption of the chief value officer context in developing markets could enable CFOs to expand their focus beyond financial metrics, embracing a comprehensive approach to value creation. By integrating these concepts into the iCFO model, CFOs can effectively drive sustainable and impactful business outcomes on a global scale.

This study focuses on a survey of chief financial officers (CFOs) in public firms in Japan concerning the following six points: the importance of the definition earnings quality; higher quality earnings; the determinants of earnings quality; prevalence, magnitude, and motivation of earnings management; accounting that influences earnings quality; and misrepresenting of earnings. The results are following: first, Japanese CFOs define earnings quality as earnings accurately reflecting economic reality, earnings accurately reflecting the results of operations, and earnings backed by cash flows, earnings sustainability, recurring, and consistent, and earnings reflecting long-term trend importance. Second, Japanese firms consider earnings that reflect consistent reporting choices over time as higher quality. They do not consider that earnings having accruals that are eventually realized as cash flow as higher earnings quality. Third, Japanese CFOs indicate that 30% of earnings quality is impacted by firm characteristics such as firm’s business model, industry, and macroeconomic conditions. Surprisingly, the influence of the board of directors is greater than the impact of their internal controls. Fourth, as for the determinants of earnings quality, CFOs consider that more than 70% of Japanese CFOs do not allow the discretion and that accounting standards limit their ability to report higher earning quality. Fifth, Japanese CFOs consider that higher earnings are influenced by accounting principles such as policies that match expenses with revenues and policies that rely on fair value accounting as much as possible. Sixth, CFOs themselves predict that 50% of Japanese firms use discretions and that they use 20% of earnings per share (EPS). Since there is inside and outside pressure to hit earnings benchmarks, Japanese firms possess the motivation to use earnings to misrepresent economic performance, Japanese managers see a red flag when generally accepted accounting principle’s earnings do not correlate with cash flow from operations.

This paper examines how “strategic” chief financial officers (CFOs) with an elite MBA (i.e. elite CFOs) influence (1) stock market reaction to CFO hiring announcements (ex ante measure) and (2) post-hiring firm performance (ex-post measure).

This paper utilizes a comprehensive, proprietary database with information about the educational qualifications and prior professional experience of 1,340 CFOs hired during the period 1994–2014. For each CFO, the authors hand-collected data on the CFO's prior experience as well as CFO's educational profile. The authors also identified the date of CFO hiring from financial press articles. To evaluate performance, the authors consider two different, yet complementary performance measures: (1) the stock market reaction, a priori measure and (2) a traditional measure of performance, which is a post-facto metric related to firm performance.

The results show that hiring CFOs with scarce and strategic human capital elicits a positive market response and leads to significant improvement in firm performance. Further, firms with greater managerial discretion benefit more from hiring elite CFOs. The results hold after controlling for chief executive officer (CEO), CFO, top managment team (TMT), and board characteristics.

This study shows converging and mutually consistent results about what specific types of CFO human capital create firm value and, more importantly, show that such value-creation is only in the case of small firms and high growth firms. The study also advances the stream of literature that contrasts the relative benefits of specialist versus generalist qualifications.

This paper aims to examine the relationship between characteristics of chief financial officers (CFOs) and enterprise resource planning (ERP) system adoption. Following upper echelons theory, the authors theorize that CFO age, education, tenure and recruitment influence ERP system adoption, and that this relationship is moderated by the CFO being responsible for firm-wide information technology (IT) functions.

The empirical analysis is based on a survey of 296 large and medium-sized Austrian firms. Logistic regression analyses were used to test the association between CFO characteristics and ERP system adoption.

The authors find that firms with externally recruited CFOs have adopted ERP systems significantly more often than firms with internally promoted CFOs. Surprisingly, the results indicate that firms with less educated CFOs more often adopted an ERP system, and that the relationship between CFO characteristics and ERP system adoption is not moderated by the CFO being responsible for IT.

This paper adds to the literature by corroborating case-based evidence that CFOs and their characteristics influence ERP system adoption. Extending previous research which indicates that CFO characteristics influence accounting practices, the authors show that CFO characteristics also influence technological innovation such as the adoption of ERP systems. Future research on technological innovation may therefore pay closer attention to the influence of CFOs.

This paper is the first to quantitatively test the influence of CFO characteristics on ERP system adoption.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the managerial views on the corporate financing practices of firms in the emerging market of Sri Lanka.

A survey approach was employed using chief financial officers (CFOs) from the top non-financial firms listed on the Colombo Stock Exchange.

CFOs’ views on corporate financing practices are not fully consistent with the theory: financial hierarchy appears to be more important and firms are less leveraged. Most Sri Lankan CFOs perceive some policy factors as important and theoretically support: volatility of earnings and cash flows, tax advantages of interest deductibility, transaction costs, timing of interest rates, low foreign interest rates and debt equity targets. These factors are high priority in emerging markets but either not important at all or less important in developed markets. Matching debt maturity with the life of assets is equally important in both markets. Most CFOs adhere their financing to the local debt market, while a few firms use foreign debt. CFOs are concerned about earnings per share (EPS) dilution, providing a natural hedge in foreign debt issues, credit ratings, under/overvaluation of stocks and corporate control, whereas they are significantly important in developed markets. Age and education mostly explain the differences.

The study is restricted to large companies in a relatively smaller market. Hence, sample size is relatively small, even though it shows a higher response rate.

The study offers insights for corporate financing decision-makers that could impact on firm value through a shift in emphasis toward capital structure theories.

The paper focuses on corporate financing practices in Sri Lanka in search of emerging market features that could mitigate the gap in the emerging market literature through survey evidence.

In recent years, numerous studies have investigated whether individual executives and their characteristics relate to financial reporting choices. In this article, we review archival, experimental and survey research on the influence of individual executives on corporate financial reporting and use upper echelons theory as our organizing framework. Our review of 60 studies shows that research consistently finds that top management executives exert significant influence on financial reporting decisions, particularly on disclosure quality. Empirical research has developed promising approaches to investigate executives' psychological attributes and character traits. The results of studies examining the influence of demographic characteristics of individual executives are, however, sometimes contradictory and ambiguous. Nevertheless, the overall empirical results we review are supportive of upper echelons predictions. Additional research in this field is needed to clarify the influence of unexamined upper echelon characteristics, important moderator variables, and adverse selection effects. We also suggest that future research more closely investigates the magnitudes of managerial influence and adopts a more holistic perspective on financial reporting outcomes.

This paper aims to examine whether the cooperation between female chief financial officers (CFO) and the proportion of female directors would impact investment efficiency. The investigation is grounded in the increasing number of female top managers globally and the notion that female tends to cooperate more with other female than with male.

This study uses publicly listed firms in Bursa Malaysia from 2016 to 2020, which yielded a sample of 2,022 firm-year observations. The authors used multivariate ordinary least square regression to test the relationship, and to correct for the selection bias, the Heckman selection and PSM test were used.

The authors find a positive relationship between female CFOs and investment efficiency. A higher proportion of female directors accentuates this result. The findings support the homophily argument that similar characteristics (gender) promote cooperation. This shows that cooperation between female CFOs and directors improves investment efficiency. The results suggest that the improvement in investment efficiency could relate to higher managerial discretion for female CFOs and their ability to collaborate with female directors. These results are robust to a series of additional endogeneity tests. The findings have important implications for policymakers and firms to encourage more appointments of females in top management positions.

By highlighting the cooperation between female CFOs and female directors, this study contributes to the understanding that cooperation among females improves investment efficiency.

The purpose of this study is to examine whether female chief financial officers (CFOs) are associated with the occurrences of financial reporting fraud. This study offers new theoretical and empirical evidence on whether firms with more female CFOs are more (less) likely to engage in financial reporting fraud.

This study is based on a sample of US-listed firms from 2011 to 2021. The authors speculate that female CFOs play a weaker role in the occurrences of financial reporting fraud. So, firms with a proportional number of female CFOs should be less likely to commit financial reporting fraud.

The data provide support for the predictions of this study. This study suggests a negative and significant association between the dummy variables for female CFOs and the occurrences of financial reporting fraud. The authors find that this association is contingent on governance mechanisms [e.g. ownership structure, politically connected CEOs and firms' conditions that do (or do not) invest in a gender-diverse board].

This study offers different perspectives on the impact of female CFOs on the occurrences of financial reporting fraud. The results of this study are distinguishable from prior studies. This study moves the analytical focus from the macro level (gender diversity or female corporate leaders) to the micro level (female CFOs) to understand firms' propensity to commit financial reporting fraud. Additionally, this study is based on factual financial reporting fraud cases, considering the US firms' fraud characteristics.

The purpose of this research is to evaluate and better understand the Chief Financial Officers' (CFOs) role in sustainability reporting of New Zealand's (NZ) publicly listed companies.

The research uses a questionnaire sent to the CFOs of 88 of New Zealand's largest listed companies; the CFOs were telephoned beforehand and introduced to the nature of the research and asked if they would participate. A total of 33 fully completed responses were returned.

CFOs expressed their agreement with the adoption of sustainable development as they believed there were benefits to be made for their firms; the survey identified reputation enhancement and good corporate governance as the two main benefits. However they were reluctant to have their firms' information scrutinised by stakeholders. They believed that stakeholders are largely unaware of the difficulties of adopting sustainable development practices, and furthermore, stakeholders have unrealistic expectations of what their firms could achieve by adopting sustainable development. CFOs did not believe that sustainable development would cut costs and improve their profits – rather they believed that sustainable development adoption was very inconvenient as it is costly. Thus the influence for firms to adopt sustainable development practices is driven largely by non‐financial factors rather than any economic gains. This corroborates earlier findings.

The research utilises primary data collected in 2008. A useable response rate of 38 per cent was achieved. The research is restricted to New Zealand listed companies.

In gaining a deeper appreciation of where CFOs gain their understanding of sustainable development issues, and how they participate in the discourse around sustainable development, we are potentially better able to provide information to this key group of people.

Very little research has been undertaken into how CFOs gain their knowledge about sustainability reporting nor about their views on the subject. This research attempts to fill this gap and opens the way for similar work to be undertaken overseas.