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This study aims to investigate contextual factors affecting the deployment of strategy-driven manufacturing accounting techniques (SMAT), as well as the impact of SMAT usage on organisational competitiveness. Seven major SMAT were investigated, namely, benchmarking, integrated performance measurement, environmental management accounting, strategic costing, strategic pricing, strategic investment and life cycle costing.

By using multi-informant strategy, structured questionnaire was used to gather survey data from 129 senior accounting, finance and production personnel of publicly quoted manufacturing companies in Nigeria. Data was analysed using structural equation modelling and propensity score matching.

Result shows that the usage rate of the SMAT is generally moderate. Market orientation and deliberate strategy formulation are notable determinants of SMAT usage. The inability of competition intensity and perceived environmental uncertainty to notably affect SMAT usage suggests that external environmental pressure to use SMAT is weak.

Although the impact of SMAT usage on organisational competitiveness is positive and statistically significant, it is conceivable that the impact of SMAT could have been more assuming SMAT recorded extensive usage. Thus, the lack of competitiveness of manufacturing companies in Nigeria may not be unconnected to the superficial usage of SMAT.

The study contributes to knowledge in three ways. First, it extends studies on the contingency theory that contextual factors influence the adoption of management accounting innovations. Second, it exposes the contextual factors affecting the adoption of SMAT in a developing country. Third, it provides evidence on the value relevance of management accounting innovation in enhancing organisational competitiveness.

This study examines how circular economy (CE) performance indicators are constructed in an urban context characterised by a multitude of conflicting interests and visions of urban development. It explores the process of constructing a shared consensus about the performance indicators in conditions of low contractibility, where intervention objectives and outcomes are not easily quantifiable because the object is ambiguous and cannot be fully specified in advance.

The construction of performance indicators at the urban level is examined through the lens of an action net. Using group interviews, observations and documentary analysis, this study investigates the case of a CE initiative in the city of Milan.

The study demonstrates that in cases of low contractibility, the development of CE solutions requires actions that span across organisational boundaries, organised in an action net. As the action net unfolds, it is closely knotted with the construction of performance indicators, indicating a co-constitutive relationship between the two processes.

This interdisciplinary study contributes to the public sector accounting literature by exploring the complexity of performance indicator construction at the urban level. It further recognises performance measurement in cities as a dynamic and flexible process, in which the interconnected actions and involvement of multiple actants shape the composition of the indicators.

The study aims to analyse the role of digitisation in accounting in enhancing the overall effectiveness of accounting functions. To achieve this, the study provides empirical evidence from the stakeholder’s perspective of digitisation of accounting, auditing, reporting and regulatory compliance procedures.

The study has applied a quantitative approach to identify the thoughts of auditors, accountants and academicians on the impact of digitalised accounting applications on accounting functions. The data was collected by administering an empirical study and a sample of 482 professionals from the accounting, auditing and academic sectors. To analyse and interpret data descriptive statistics, structured equation modelling and mediation analysis has been used.

The finding of the study signifies the relevance of digitalised accounting applications in accounting functions and reveals that there is a significant impact of digitalisation on accounting, auditing, reporting and regulatory compliance aspects of accounting functions. The outcome of the study explores that a digitalised accounting system reduces possible errors and improves the accuracy and transparency of the system.

The study highlighted the importance of developing new methods and techniques that can be used in practice. This indirectly advocates the inclusion of such concepts in accounting curricula to emphasise the need to understand the challenges and opportunities created by digitisation. Furthermore, the study will become a motivation to scholars who intend to explore different areas through which new technologies can be adopted to transform traditional accounting systems.

The contributions of the current study have implications that the adoption of digitised accounting enhances economic efficiency through a reduction in accounting costs, and enhanced accuracy that leads to the elimination of penalties and litigations for non-compliance with regulatory authorities. This indirectly impacts positively on the financial health of the business organisations and economies at large. This implication becomes greater evidential support to the organisations which are yet to plan the adoption and implementation of digital tools in their organisation for accounting functions.

Digitalisation is a relevant part of the accounting function to improve efficiency and accuracy. Since accounting and auditing practitioners struggle to control the accuracy and efficiency of transactions. Furthermore, the outcome of the study assists organisations in gaining real-time access to financial data, transforms workflows and empowers management to make timely informed sound decisions, optimise resource allocation, efficient regulatory compliance and so on.

The purpose of this paper is to explore how variations in management’s tone within management’s discussion and analysis (MD&A) sections of 10-K reports can serve as an indicator of tax avoidance and highlight the complex relationship between such linguistic shifts and the tax avoidance decisions within firms.

The paper uses a textual analysis approach to identify linguistic cues in MD&A sections of 10-K filings related to tax avoidance, going beyond traditional quantitative measures. The study uses differences in negative word occurrences in MD&A to measure management’s tone change and examines various measures of tax avoidance. The sample covers the period from 1993 to 2017 and comprises all firms with 10-K filings available on EDGAR, totaling over 30,000 firm-year observations.

The findings indicate a complementary relationship between tax avoidance and other drivers of firm performance. When firms have more negative management’s tone, they are less willing to engage in tax avoidance and vice versa. The study’s approach with management’s tone change provides a different and statistically significant improvement in model fit for detecting tax avoidance.

This paper provides actionable insights for detecting tax avoidance through the analysis of management’s tone in corporate disclosures, offering a new tool for researchers, investors and tax authorities. It highlights the importance of linguistic cues as indicators of tax avoidance behavior, complementing traditional financial metrics.

The paper contributes to the literature by using management’s tone change as a time-varying factor to explain tax avoidance behavior. It uncovers a larger set of linguistic cues in MD&A that can be used to detect tax avoidance. This research provides a complementary approach to traditional quantitative tax avoidance measures and offers insights into the overall relationship between tax avoidance and firm performance, going beyond one-dimensional measures typically used in prior literature.

This study aims to investigate the effect of income and asset diversification on earnings management using discretionary loan loss provisions (LLP) in banks, and the role of risk level in mediating this effect.

A sample of banks operating in Middle East and North Africa countries was used to test the mediation model of Baron and Kenny (1986) with different measures of diversification and risk.

The results show that bank income and asset diversification have unique and combined effects on earnings management. The results also support the idea that a risk-mediating effect contributes to explaining this relationship among banks. Specifically, bank diversification strategies positively affect LLP-based earnings management by increasing bank risk. This result is relevant for conventional banks. However, only a direct and positive effect of diversification strategies on LLP-based earnings management can be observed in Islamic banks, and the indirect effect is not supported.

This study extends previous research by examining the unique and combined effects of income and asset diversification strategies on earnings management in the banking sector. Specifically, it provides new evidence that diversification strategies increase LLP-based earnings management, both directly and indirectly, through bank risk.

This study aims to focus on the five most relevant and discursive emerging technologies in accounting (cloud computing, big data and data analytics, blockchain, artificial intelligence (AI) and robotics process automation [RPA]). It investigates the adoption and use of these technologies based on data collected from accounting professionals in a technology-developed country – Canada, through a survey.

The study investigates the adoption and use of emerging technologies based on data collected from accounting professionals in a technology-developed country – Canada, through a survey. This study considers the said nature and characteristics of emerging technologies and proposes a model using the factors that have been found to be significant and most commonly investigated by existing prior technology-organization-environment (TOE)-related technology adoption studies. This survey applies the TOE framework and examines the influence of significant and most commonly known factors on Canadian firms’ intention to adopt the said emerging technologies.

Study results indicate that Canadian accounting professionals’ self-assessed knowledge (about these emerging technologies) is more theoretical than operational. Cloud computing is highly used by Canadian firms, while the use of other technologies, particularly blockchain and RPA, is reportedly low. However, firms’ intention about the future adoption of these technologies seems positive. Study results reveal that only the relative advantage and top management commitment are found to be significant considerations influencing the adoption intention.

Study findings confirm some results presented in earlier studies but provide additional insights from a new perspective, that of accounting professionals in Canada. The first limitation relates to the respondents. Although accounting professionals provided valuable insights, their responses are personal views and do not necessarily represent the views of other professionals within the same firm or the official position of their accounting departments or firms. Therefore, the exclusion of diverse viewpoints from the same firm might have negatively impacted the results of this study. Second, this study sample is limited to Canada-based firms, which means that the study reflects only the situation in that country. Third, considering the research method and the limit on the number of questions the authors could ask, respondents were only asked to rate the impact of these five technologies on the accounting field and to clarify which technologies are used.

This study’s findings confirm that the organizational intention to adopt new technology is not primarily based on the characteristics of the technology. In the case of emerging technology adoption, the decision also depends upon other factors related to the internal organization. Furthermore, although this study found no support for the effect of environmental factors, it fills a gap in the literature by including the factor of vendor support, which has received little attention in prior information technology (IT)/ information system (IS) adoption research. Moreover, in contrast to most prior adoption studies, this study elaborates on accounting professionals’ experience and perceptions in investigating the organizational adoption and use of emerging technologies. Thus, the findings of this study are valuable, providing insights from a new perspective, that of professional accountants.

The study findings may serve as a guide for researchers, practitioners, firms and other stakeholders, particularly technology providers, interested in learning about emerging technologies’ adoption and use in Canada and/or in a relevant context. Contrary to most prior adoption studies, this study elaborates on accounting professionals’ experience and perceptions in investigating the organizational adoption and use of emerging technologies. Thus, the findings of this study are valuable, providing insights from a new perspective, that of professional accountants.

The study provides insights into the said technologies’ actual adoption and improves the awareness of firms and stakeholders to the effect of some constructs that influence the adoption of these emerging technologies in accounting.

This paper explores the way in which industrial pollution has been expressed in the narrative accounts of nature, landscape and industry by William Gilpin in his 18th-century picturesque travel writings. A positive description of pollution is generally outdated and unacceptable in the current society. The authors contrast his “picturesque” view with the contemporary perception of industrial pollution, reflect on these early accounts of industrial impacts as representing the roots of impression management and use the analysis to inform current accounting.

The research uses an interpretive content analysis of the text to draw out themes and features of impression management. Goffman's impression management is the theoretical lens through which Gilpin's travel accounts are interpreted, considering this microhistory through a thematic research approach. The picturesque accounts are explored with reference to the context of impression management.

Gilpin's travel writings and the “Picturesque” aesthetic movement, it appears, constructed a social reality around negative industrial externalities such as air pollution and indeed around humans' impact on nature, through a lens which described pollution as adding aesthetically to the natural landscape. The lens through which the picturesque tourist viewed and expressed negative externalities involved quite literally the tourists' tricks of the trade, Claude glass, called also Gray's glass, a tinted lens to frame the view.

The paper adds to the wealth of literature in accounting and business pertaining to the ways in which companies socially construct reality through their accounts and links closely to the impression management literature in accounting. There is also a body of literature relating to the use of images and photographs in published corporate reports, which again is linked to impression management as well as to a growing literature exploring the potential for the aesthetic influence in accounting and corporate communication. Further, this paper contributes to the growing body of research into the historical roots of environmental reporting.

Chinese firms are winning market share from foreign multinational enterprises in domestic markets. The international business literature suggests that this is happening because these firms are developing non-traditional firm-specific advantages (FSAs). Strategic factor market (SFM) theory provides a good basis for explaining how this is happening. However, it is underdeveloped in terms of analysing unique resources and unique access to those resources by Chinese firms in their domestic markets. This paper aims to develop a framework to understand how Chinese firms have developed non-traditional FSAs.

The case study method is adopted to explore how Chinese firms develop non-traditional FSAs. Specifically, the authors compare paired case studies of a Chinese firm and a foreign multinational in each of two industries.

The authors find that Chinese firms have developed non-traditional FSAs because of more relevant experience, better adapted strategies and privileged relationships. This has enabled Chinese firms to develop non-traditional FSAs.

The authors propose a framework that conceptualises non-traditional FSA development in Chinese firms as a product of superior access to unique and valuable resources in their domestic SFMs.

This study aims to objectively synthesize the volume of accounting literature on financial statement fraud (FSF) using a systematic literature review research method (SLRRM). This paper analyzes the vast FSF literature based on inclusion and exclusion criteria. These criteria filter articles that are present in the accounting fraud domain and are published in peer-reviewed quality journals based on Australian Business Deans Council (ABDC) journal ranking. Lastly, a reverse search, analyzing the articles' abstracts, further narrows the search to 88 peer-reviewed articles. After examining these 88 articles, the results imply that the current literature is shifting from traditional statistical approaches towards computational methods, specifically machine learning (ML), for predicting and detecting FSF. This evolution of the literature is influenced by the impact of micro and macro variables on FSF and the inadequacy of audit procedures to detect red flags of fraud. The findings also concluded that A* peer-reviewed journals accepted articles that showed a complete picture of performance measures of computational techniques in their results. Therefore, this paper contributes to the literature by providing insights to researchers about why ML articles on fraud do not make it to top accounting journals and which computational techniques are the best algorithms for predicting and detecting FSF.

This paper chronicles the cluster of narratives surrounding the inadequacy of current accounting and auditing practices in preventing and detecting Financial Statement Fraud. The primary objective of this study is to objectively synthesize the volume of accounting literature on financial statement fraud. More specifically, this study will conduct a systematic literature review (SLR) to examine the evolution of financial statement fraud research and the emergence of new computational techniques to detect fraud in the accounting and finance literature.

The storyline of this study illustrates how the literature has evolved from conventional fraud detection mechanisms to computational techniques such as artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML). The findings also concluded that A* peer-reviewed journals accepted articles that showed a complete picture of performance measures of computational techniques in their results. Therefore, this paper contributes to the literature by providing insights to researchers about why ML articles on fraud do not make it to top accounting journals and which computational techniques are the best algorithms for predicting and detecting FSF.

This paper contributes to the literature by providing insights to researchers about why the evolution of accounting fraud literature from traditional statistical methods to machine learning algorithms in fraud detection and prediction.

This paper aims to investigate the influence of sustainable enterprise resource planning (S-ERPs) systems implementation on sustainability performance.

A 1 × 2 experiment was conducted, involving a sample of 72 professional accountants enrolled in MPA, MBA and DBA programs at two prominent Egyptian universities. Simple linear regression was used to analyze the data.

The results reveal positive relationships between the implementation of S-ERPs and economic, environmental and social sustainability performance.

Considering the research methodology used, which relies on a laboratory experiment design; nevertheless, empirical data derived from a quasi-experiment conducted in a real-world context would offer valuable insights into the existing literature.

For manufacturing sector managers, the results offer value as organizations can benefit from S-ERP adoption in the internal and external integration of sustainability functions. The findings also provide decision-makers in the manufacturing context, particularly in emerging countries, with tangible reasons to consider S-ERP adoption for holistic sustainability benefits including waste management, resource consumption reduction and management of sustainable supply chain complexities. Further, the findings provide valuable insights for ERP vendors on how they can develop their ERP packages to align with software sustainability criteria.

This study is among the few that experimentally investigates the influence of S-ERPs implementation on sustainability performance within the manufacturing sector, especially in an emerging context such as Egypt. This unique contribution provides valuable insights into the complex connection between technology adoption and sustainability outcomes.