Book Review. Anne Sigismund Huff (1999). Writing for Scholarly Publication. Sage, London, UK
Jeffrey Muldoon / Financial Reporting / 1-2024
Corporate social responsibility disclosure and cash holdings
Giovanni Coppola, Michele Fabrizi, Marco Ghitti / Financial Reporting / 1-2024
Purpose: the demand for firms to disclose their corporate social responsibility (CSR) activities has risen steeply over the last two decades, pushing many jurisdic-tions to implement mandatory non-financial reporting. We exploit the European non-financial reporting directive (NFRD) to study how companies change their cash management policies in response to additional mandatory CSR disclosure requirements. Methodology: we adopted a difference-in-differences (DID) approach, which is designed to estimate causality between the mandatory adoption of the NFRD and firms’ cash holdings. We implemented a two-way fixed effect model in the context of mandatory disclosure and staggered adoption of regulation, in order to study how firms changed their cash holdings following the introduction of the NFRD. Findings: we find that firms increased cash holdings following enactment of the NFRD, which is in line with the theory that cash is held for precautionary reasons. The growth in cash holdings is not equally distributed, as it is less pronounced in firms that are in a high-investment phase. Our findings reveal that mandatory non-financial disclosure can have real effects. Originality/value: This research shows that, in the short-term, mandatory CSR disclosure can have real effects on cash holding. Long-term effects should be con-sidered further by future research. Practical implications (optional): Policymakers should consider that additional CSR requirements are costly to firms, and thus find mechanisms that induce firms to adopt these requirements despite their costs.
Accounting and COVID-19: A systematic review of the literature
Giulia Leoni / Financial Reporting / 1-2024
Purpose: Since the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic, research on the phe-nomenon has exploded across every discipline, including accounting. This paper aims to provide a systematic literature review of the research that has examined the various impacts of COVID-19 within the accounting realm. Design/methodology/approach: Through a systematic selection, classification, and thematic analysis of 294 articles on COVID-19 in accounting, this paper of-fers an overview of the journals, methods, themes, and impacts of this emerging literature. Findings: The review organizes a massive body of research that has explored the effects of the pandemic on accounting from diverse perspectives and approaches. It provides insights into how this research stream has rapidly developed, the main themes covered, and the role played by special issues in prompting timely research on this urgent matter. Originality/value: This is the most comprehensive literature review on COVID-19 in accounting. It organizes the extensive and rapid knowledge production by iden-tifying themes and highlighting the driving force of special issues. In doing so, it also offers suggestions for potential avenues of future research.
Does audit quality affect the probability that a female auditor has chaired the audit team? Empirical evidence from Italian public HEIs
Alessandro Mechelli, Vincenzo Sforza, Riccardo Cimini / Financial Reporting / 1-2024
Purpose: Focusing on Italian public higher education institutions (HEIs), this study examines whether an increase in remarks in unqualified audit reports increases the likelihood that a female auditor has chaired the audit team issuing such reports. Design/methodology/approach: To answer its research question, the paper re-gresses the gender of the audit team chair with, among other factors, the number of remarks in the unqualified audit reports that are assumed to be a measure of audit quality. Findings: The results show that in Italian public HEIs, it is more probable that au-dit reports characterised by high audit quality (i.e., those with more remarks) are issued by audit teams chaired by female auditors. Originality/value: These findings contribute to existing knowledge and have im-plications for practice. They might be explained by the innate qualities of women as well as by environmental factors such as limited litigation risk characterising both the country and the sector investigated. So, they do not contradict either the Institutional Logic perspective or the Ethics of Care Theory, according to which the environment and the aptitude to manage conflict differ between men and women.
Institutional isomorphism and quality of gender disclosure. The Italian case
Paola Paoloni, Antonietta Cosentino, Marco Venuti / Financial Reporting / 1-2024
Purpose: Non-financial reporting (NFR), including gender disclosure (GD), is a tool companies use for institutional legitimisation and represents an organisational field that evolves due to regulatory and stakeholder pressure. This research uses the theoretical approach of institutional isomorphism in the context of neo-institutional theory to investigate GD’s degree of maturity (quality and homogenei-ty) in a homogeneous institutional context. Design/methodology/approach: This paper adopts a qualitative research meth-odology based on a content analysis of the GD resulting from the NFRs of listed Italian companies in 2016 and 2021. Findings: The results show the degree of institutionalisation achieved through GD after introducing the mandatory NFR. The analysis reveals companies’ conver-gence process in terms of isomorphic behaviour and changes in the quality of GD. The findings unfold the institutional pressure that has the most significant impact on the quality of GD, fostering a homogenisation of disclosure at the company level. Originality/value: This is the first study to assess isomorphism and its effects on the quality of GD. This research enriches the literature on institutional theory by analysing the impact of different isomorphic forces on GD. Practical implications: This paper assists policymakers, supervisors, and investors in evaluating the quality of GD and identifying the issues leading to the most critical matters and inefficient or non-transparent behaviours. The findings improve regulatory quality, information control, and assessment of the appropriateness and reliability of the NFR. The implications guide regulators in identifying stand-ards and tools that enhance strategies regarding gender diversity and performance disclosure..
Opinion piece: Discussion of “Rethinking the academic accounting research model”
Giorgio Gotti / Financial Reporting / 1-2024
Opinion piece: Rethinking the academic accounting research model
Mark C. Dawkins / Financial Reporting / 1-2024
Current academic incentive systems primarily reward accounting faculty for publishing research articles in elite journals. Faculty members decide what research questions to address and what research methods to use to investigate those re-search questions. Regulators, accounting service firms, and practicing accountants have little input about which research questions are investigated, how the research is conducted, and how and where the results are disseminated. This current ap-proach often results in financial accounting and auditing research that is not rele-vant to the practice of accounting. This commentary proposes a market-driven approach to the conduct of financial and auditing accounting research similar to that used in the medical sciences where pharmaceutical companies and govern-mental entities determine the most pressing medical issues. Besides university-sponsored research, faculty members in the medical sciences apply for grants to support research targeted at improving the treatment of these medical issues, and relevant research findings are quickly disseminated through highly-regarded peer-reviewed outlets such as The New England Journal of Medicine, The Journal of the American Medical Association, the British Medical Journal, and The Lancet so doctors and other medical professionals may quickly implement them into practice.
Book Review. Othmar M. Lehner and Carina Knoll (Eds), Artificial intelligence in accounting: organisational and ethical implications, Routledge Studies in Accounting (Taylor and Francis), 2022
Riccardo Camilli, Hira Salah ud din Khan / Financial Reporting / 2-2023
Dialogue with standard setters. The creation of the International Sustainability Standards Board: Evidence from the steps undertaken by the IFRS Foundation for Sustainability Reporting
Francesca Francioli, Alessandra Lardo, Raffaele Fiume / Financial Reporting / 2-2023