The New Zealand External Reporting Board (XRB) issued for public comment a standard on Assurance Engagements over GHG Emissions Disclosure. The Auditing and Assurance Standards Committee of AFAANZ prepared a submission, based on the findings reported in published research, responding to a number of the questions asked by the XRB. This technical note presents the formal submission made to the XRB.
Using multiple indicators of interdisciplinarity (variety, balance, and disparity), this study examines 1613 references cited in articles published between 1976 and 2018 in six highly regarded accounting research journals (Accounting, Auditing and Accountability Journal (AAAJ), Accounting, Organisations and Society (AOS), Management Accounting Research (MAR), Journal of Accounting and Economics (JAE), Journal of Accounting Research (JAR), and The Accounting Review (TAR)). The findings are threefold: the interdisciplinarity of cited references is low compared with the reported findings in the non-accounting disciplines; there is no discernible change in the level of diversity during the sample period; and the level of citations is negatively related with the dimensions of diversity.
Using a manually collected dataset, we examine the effects of venture capitalists with foreign experience on firms' corporate social responsibility (CSR) engagement. By analysing firm-, deal- and venture capitalist-level samples, we find that venture capitalists with foreign experience significantly improve their portfolio firms' CSR; this finding holds across extensive robustness tests. Venture capitalists with foreign experience promote CSR more significantly if they join the board of directors or invest in the firm's early stages. Our results suggest that venture capitalists with foreign experience transplant the client demands, management practices and social norms they have experienced abroad to their firms.
This study investigates the effect of labour marketisation level on corporate labour investment efficiency. Using a sample of Chinese listed firms, we provide evidence that higher labour marketisation level is associated with higher corporate labour investment efficiency. Firms with higher labour marketisation level reduce over-investment and under-investment in labour. In the cross-sectional tests, we discover that this effect is more prominent for private enterprises and firms with stronger product market competition, more financing constraints, and higher labour adjustment costs. We eliminate the impact of other non-labour investments and ensure that our results are not driven by these investments.
We take the mandatory establishment of the Inclusive Finance Division in large state-owned banks as a quasi-experiment to explore the impact of inclusive finance policy on operating performance and risk-taking behaviours of small regional banks. Using financial information for Chinese banks from 2013 to 2019, we find that small regional banks' performance deteriorated, and they engaged in more risk-taking activities after the policy shock. Moreover, there are even much sharper performance declines in subsets of city commercial banks, and banks face high competition from large state-owned banks.
Using meaning-oriented content analysis, we show how impact investing firms use various reference frameworks (e.g., International Finance Corporation (IFC) Performance Standards, Impact Management Project framework, UN Sustainable Development Goals) to manage their impact performance throughout the investment lifecycle. Our study provides an industry-level picture of the various roles that different reference frameworks play to help impact investors attain their impact goals. We also discuss the potential industry effects on management accounting practice, that is, how reference frameworks used in performance management in the impact investing industry differ from those used in some other industries.
Australian metals and mining companies are the focus of this study because mining activities are a significant source of waste products on a global scale, and to date, there has been no systematic review or comparison of how these companies report their waste management practices. Recognising that waste management is an important issue with future implications, this study is guided by one primary research question: What is the nature and extent of waste management disclosures by the top metals and mining companies in Australia?
The International Auditing and Assurance Standards Board (IAASB) issued for public comment Proposed International Standard on Auditing 500 (Revised) Audit Evidence. The Australian Auditing and Assurance Standards Board (AUASB) and New Zealand Auditing and Assurance Standards Board (NZAuASB) also called for comments. The Auditing and Assurance Standards Committee of AFAANZ prepared a submission, based on the findings reported in extant research, responding to a number of the questions asked by the IAASB (and AUASB/NZAuASB). This technical note presents the formal submission made to the IAASB.
This study investigates the effect of decentralisation of SOEs on stock price crash risk. In so doing, we test two competing hypotheses. Under the Political Influence Hypothesis, decentralisation aggravates local government's expropriation of minority shareholders (type II agency conflict), and thus increases crash risk. Under the Local Information Hypothesis, decentralisation decreases monitoring distance (type I agency conflict), strengthens external monitoring and thus decreases crash risk. We find robust evidence supporting the Political Influence Hypothesis. Cross-sectional analyses show that our baseline results are more pronounced when firms are decentralised to the provincial level and politicians have greater incentives to pursue their political objectives. We further show that bad news hoarding and risk-taking are two potential channels through which SOE decentralisation increases crash risk. Taken together, our results imply that the decentralisation exacerbates the type II agency conflict rather than ameliorates the type I agency conflict in SOEs.