The major functions of company accounting identified by the IASB and the FASB are (1) reporting on ‘the custody and safekeeping’ of the company’s resources and (2) reporting on ‘their efficient and profitable use’. The joint IASB/FASB project for improving the conceptual framework for financial reporting is directed towards better performance of both functions within the conventional ‘accrual’ ...

We examine the association between employee quality and financial reporting outcomes. Using the average workforce education level in MSA(s) where the firm operates as a proxy for employee quality, we find that firms with a high-quality workforce exhibit higher accruals quality, fewer internal control violations, and fewer restatements. These firms also issue superior management forecasts, in te...

Financial Reporting, Regulation and Information Asymmetry

Financial markets worldwide have been experiencing dramatic changes since the mid-1990s. It has been claimed that XBRL, an XML vocabulary for business reporting, is capable of introducing greater integration and transparency into financial information systems, and thus addressing some of the challenges presented by these changes. This paper presents an exploratory case study of the cooperative ...

This paper examines the current trends of corporations that have completed a Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) sustainability report. To gain an overview of the rapid growth in sustainability reporting the issues and trends that are analyzed are geographic locations of main headquarters, size by number of employees, size by market capitalization, sector breakdown and financial performance. The ...

New management techniques such as ‘just-in-time’, ‘lean manufacturing’ and ‘Six Sigma’ allow management accountants to shift their focus from the management and control of production processes to the management of strategic issues. This paradigm shift resulted from shorter product life cycles, due to technological advances and a more competitive business environment. Recent revisions to the Int...

This paper investigates the economic consequences of a financial institution’s reporting discretion in the context of bank runs. A fundamental-based run imposes market discipline on insolvent institutions, but a panic-based run shuts down institutions that could have survived with better coordination among investors. We augment a bank-run model with the financial institution’s discretion over r...