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Certified public accountants (CPAs), internal auditors, management accountants and other accounting and non‐accounting professionals rely heavily on the concept of due professional care to help assure the public that they prudently exercise their responsibilities. In turn, accountants failing to use adequate due professional care face legal actions when “problems” arise. Based on an analysis of several legal databases, ascertains how the courts view professionals’ use of due professional care and how accountants can minimize such legal liabilities. Then analyses how the CPA profession can better comply with this important auditing standard.

This case study aims to investigate the role of actors in the implementation of fair value standards in an emerging country, Indonesia.

This study uses semi-structured interviews with important actors within the local accounting profession, standard setting and regulatory environment, to analyse fair value accounting implementation. This study also incorporates information from press releases and newspapers, to provide a more comprehensive picture of fair value implementation.

First, professionals undertake routine actions, cultivate interests and strategically navigate their environment during the process of fair value standard implementation. Second, the role of appraisers becomes more prominent during this process. Third, government involvement is significant in ensuring the successful implementation of global accounting standards.

First, differing localised contexts, including communities and actors, may shape how an emerging country undertakes the diffusion and implementation of global standards, which in turn can also lead to institutional change. Second, government involvement is crucial in supporting the implementation of global accounting standards within emerging economies. Third, implementing market-based measurements within emerging economies characterised by a lack of an active and liquid market may present challenges.

Third, implementing market-based measurements within emerging economies characterised by a lack of an active and liquid market may present challenges.

This study applies the concept of Institutional Work within Institutional Theory to explain how fair value standards are implemented within a localised emerging economy characterised by unique actor roles and goal-directed action.

The purpose of this paper is to contribute to recent work that interrogates the affective conditions in standardizing processes taking place in schools by asking: what are the relations between affect and biopower, when standardizing processes take place in schools, and how can we better understand the constitution of affective spaces and atmospheres that enable some transformative potentials while preventing others?

The main argument is that professional standards for teachers and school leaders create ambivalent (i.e. both positive and negative) affective spaces and atmospheres in schools that require one to look for the ways in which biopower works affectively through specific technologies. This ambivalence produces not only governable and self-managed teachers and school leaders who simply implement professional standards, but also affective spaces and atmospheres that might subvert the normalizing effects (and affects) of standards.

While attention has been directed to the involvement of affectivity in standardizing processes, what has been theorized less in the field of professional capital is the entanglement of affect and biopower in the spread of professional standards. Engaging with recent work surrounding the affective turn in the social sciences and humanities, the encounter between affect and biopower opens methodological, ethical and political possibilities to examine the affective impact of standards on the professional capital of teachers and school leaders. The analysis displaces emotions from their dominant positionality in discourses about professional standards, reinvigorating theoretical explorations of the affective spaces and atmospheres that co-constitute subjectivities, organizations, governance and social practices in standardizing processes.

The spatiotemporal and organizational arrangements of schools while undergoing standardizing processes constitute crucial constellations for ethical and political reproduction of affective relations. Thus, the destabilizing and inventive potentials of affects, spaces and atmospheres – to name a few conceptual resources – are extremely important in exposing the normalizing as well as resisting aspects of standardizing processes.

In 2016, the National Standards for School-based Initial Teacher Training (ITT) Mentors were published in England. The purpose of this paper is to critique these standards through a comparison of how others have framed and defined the role of the mentor, drawing on equivalent standards already published in nursing (2008) and social work (2012).

An analysis of three sets of professional standards was conducted by adapting the “constant comparison” approach in which the researchers sought to combine a form of inductive coding with comparison across the texts. This enabled the identification of a number of common themes and omissions across the three sets of standards.

The analysis revealed the ITT mentor standards provide a comparatively limited account of the role of the mentor, particularly in relation to the process of assessment, the power dynamics between mentors and student teachers, and the school as an institutional site for professional learning.

The study’s originality lies in the inter-professional comparative analysis, which revealed a number of potentially contentious issues not immediately apparent from a close textual analysis of the ITT mentor standards.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the perceptions of professional accountants from three countries from the Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN) in order to evaluate their perceived benefits associated with the adoption of International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) in their respective nations as well as the implications of these standards for the accounting and auditing professions in their country of practice. It also explores the extent to which the adoption of IAS/IFRS accounting standards have been supported by the state, media and local professional accounting bodies.

The study uses survey approach to seek perceptions of professional accountants in these three countries with a view to understanding their perceptions regarding the socio-economic issues related to the adoption of the IFRS and role of social institutions. The study also uses appropriate statistical tests for interpretation of the data.

The analysis of the data shows that accounting professionals in Singapore, Malaysia and Indonesia strongly supported IFRS adoption; their opinions did not differ significantly by place of training, experience or professional qualifications. Respondents agreed that their countries benefited economically from harmonisation with global accounting standards. The surveyed accountants believed that pressure from international agencies was instrumental in the adoption of IFRS in the region. The findings also show that governments, the media and professional accounting bodies have supported the adoption, communication and application of IFRS.

This is the first study examining the role of social and professional institutions in the adoption of the IFRS and one which also provides an inter-country comparison of accountant’s perspectives on adoption of the IFRS among three ASEAN countries.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the professionalism and professionalization of sustainability assurance providers based on the experiences and perceptions of auditors involved in this activity.

The empirical study was based on 38 semi-directed interviews conducted with assurance providers from accounting and consulting firms.

The findings highlight the division of this professional activity between accounting and consulting firms, each of which question the professionalism of the other. The main standards in this area tend to be used as legitimizing tools to enhance the credibility of the assurance process rather than effective guidelines to improve the quality of the verification process. Finally, the complex and multifaceted skills required to conduct sound sustainability assurance and the virtual absence of recognized and substantial training programs in this area undermine the professionalization of assurance providers.

This work has important practical implications for standardization bodies, assurance providers and stakeholders concerned by the quality and the reliability of sustainability disclosure.

This study shows how practitioners in this area construct and legitimize their professional activity in terms of identity, standardization and competences. The work contributes to the literatures on the assurance of sustainability reports, self-regulation through standardization and professionalization.

This study aims to investigates the influence of proactive personality on employee radical creativity through transformational leadership, professional ethical standards and creative self-efficacy.

The data were collected from 343 superior–subordinate dyads in China. A confirmatory factor analysis was performed to measure the validity of the variables. A regression analysis was performed to assess the relationship between model assumptions.

The results showed that: (1) Proactive personality was positively related to employee radical creativity. (2) Transformational leadership and professional ethical standards moderated the relationship between proactive personality and radical creativity. Specifically, the relationship between proactive personality and employee radical creativity was strong, as expected. It was the strongest in the presence of high transformational leadership and high professional ethical standards. (3) Creative self-efficacy acted as a mediator in this interaction.

This study is a pioneering investigation in the Chinese context. It empirically examines the interactive relationship between proactive personality and radical creativity through transformational leadership and professional ethical standards. Additionally, it substantiates creative self-efficacy as the psychological mechanism behind this interaction. Consequently, this study offers a comprehensive framework with potential implications for personality assessments in the workplace, leadership training, criteria formulation and enhancement of radical creativity.

The purpose of this paper is to examine whether the idea of competence in its various forms provides a sufficient basis for developing standards of professional practice.

Three existing studies of professional standards and qualifying processes are drawn upon, carried out by the author in 2007, 2009 and 2012.

Professional standards frameworks are informed by several different approaches to competence, although an external or activity-based approach – similar in principle to that used in UK occupational standards – predominates. However, there are limits to the extent to which a competence-based approach can adequately represent complex professional work, and there is scope to improve the relevance and robustness of frameworks through introducing the idea of capability. Evidence is presented to show that this is beginning to occur in some of the better-designed recent frameworks.

Using the idea of capability in professional standards is likely to have two implications. One is that standards focus at a high level on the work of the profession rather than on specific job roles, and the other is that pervasive themes such as ethics, judgement and professionalism are written into the standards in a way that ensures they apply across the breadth of practice rather than become treated as separate topics or areas of competence.

Professional standards frameworks have generally been considered purely in terms of competence. The idea of capability introduces approaches that make them more able to respond to factors such as emergent contexts, evolving and contested practices and the need for intelligent judgement and lived ethical practice.

Examines the role of professional associations, governmental agencies, and international accounting and auditing bodies in promulgating standards to foster auditor independence domestically and abroad. Focuses specifically on the role played by the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants, the Institute of Internal Auditors (IIA), the Securities and Exchange Commission and the US Government Accounting Office. Also looks at other professional associations in banking, industry, and manufacturing sectors dealing with sensitive issues of auditors′ involvement in such matters as management advisory services, operating responsibilities, outsourcing, opinion shopping, auditor rotation, and other conflicts of interest which may impair auditor independence.

Recognising the growing importance of professional judgement within professional accounting, this paper examines how it relates to Aristotelian practical wisdom, with reference to the ethical failure at Carillion plc in 2018. This includes an examination of how these concepts are similar and how they differ and a reconceptualisation of professional judgement in Aristotelian terms.

The conventional understanding of professional judgement is articulated with reference to accounting standards, professional accounting institutions and academic research. This is compared to Aristotelian practical wisdom, as presented in the Nicomachean Ethics. Both of these conceptualisations are analysed with reference to the failure of Carillion plc.

Some similarities as well as significant differences between the conventional conceptualisation of professional judgement and Aristotelian practical wisdom are identified. Application to the accounting failure of Carillion plc shows how an Aristotelian reconceptualisation of professional judgement, as an ethical concept, provides a more adequate understanding of unethical accounting behaviour.

The analysis identifies aspects of professional judgement in accounting that have not previously been explored empirically, but which nevertheless have empirical support in other domains.

Professional judgement is reconceptualised in ethical terms, which informs how professional bodies and firms should conceive and apply this concept.

Although there has been research on judgement informed by psychology, there has been little research linking judgement and wisdom in an accounting context. This paper utilises a philosophically informed perspective on wisdom to reconceptualise professional judgement in a way that provides a more adequate understanding of ethical failures.