The accuracy of budgeting is important to fulfilling its various roles. The aim of this study is to examine perceptions of budgeting accuracy in UK universities and to identify and understand the factors that influence them.

A mixed methods research design comprising a questionnaire survey (84 responses, = 51.5%) and 42 semi-structured, qualitative interviews is employed.

The findings reveal that universities tend to be conservative in their budgeting, although previous financial difficulties, the attitude of the governing body and the need to convince lenders that finances are being managed competently might lead to a greater emphasis on a “realistic” rather than cautious budget. Stepwise multiple regression identified four significantly negative influences on perceived budgeting accuracy: the difficulty of forecasting student numbers; difficulties associated with allowing unspent balances to be carried forward; taking a relatively long time to prepare the budget; and the institution’s level of financial surplus. The interviews are drawn upon to both explain and elaborate on the statistical findings. Forecasting student numbers and associated fee income emerges as a particularly challenging and complex issue.

Our regression analysis is cross-sectional and therefore based on correlations. Furthermore, the research could be developed by investigating the views of other parties as well as repeating the study in both the UK and overseas.

Implications for university management follow from the four factors identified as significant influences upon budget accuracy. These include involving the finance department in estimating student numbers, removing or controlling the carry forward of unspent funds, and reducing the length of the budget cycle.

The first study to examine the factors that influence the perceived accuracy of universities’ budgeting, this paper also advances understanding of budgeting accuracy more generally.

This study examines the influence of corporate governance indicators (CGIs) on the textual tone of nonfinancial firms in a developing economy.

The data from 1,250 annual reports of listed nonfinancial firms in Pakistan are collected for 10 years. The narrative disclosure tone (NDT) is derived using the sentiment analysis of annual reports, resulting in six distinct NDT scores. The CGIs data are also extracted from the annual reports. The fixed effects model is used as the primary analytical tool, supplemented by machine learning-based linear regression. System GMM and two-stage least squares regressions are employed for robustness checks.

The findings reveal that most CGIs significantly influence all six NDTs. These results align with the existing theoretical literature, except those related to audit committee independence and gender diversity.

The study is limited to the use of annual reports as a source of narrative disclosures. Future research might employ other sources, such as earning press releases and social media.

Within the unique regulatory environment of Pakistan, the study offers insights for regulators to enhance the efficacy of independent directors, discourage concentrated ownership and promote the inclusion of women in board subcommittees to establish the authenticity of textual disclosures.

The study adds to the limited literature on the determinants of NDT. It underscores the importance of understanding textual tone for informed investor decision-making and restoring investor confidence. Moreover, it contributes by focusing on six NDTs and exploring the interplay between CGIs and textual tone.

The study delves into the impact of integrating reporting (IR) on three earnings management tools, namely classification shifting (CS), real-based earnings management (REM) and accrual-based earnings management (AEM) under the Indian institutional settings.

The data analysis involved the application of panel data regression models. Our dataset comprises 2,244 firm-years listed on the Bombay Stock Exchange spanning over financial years from March 2015 to 2021. To address endogeneity and self-selection bias concerns, a propensity score matching technique has been employed.

Our empirical results exhibit that IR-adopting firms are engaged in earnings management. Further, we find that IR-adopting firms have reduced their engagement in AEM and REM, however, their CS practices have been increased, indicating the substitution relationship between earnings management tools after the adoption of IR. It implies that firms shift their preference from more to less observable earnings management tools after the adoption of the IR, which aligns with the idea that firms adopt IR to gain legitimacy, however, their intention to deceive stakeholders through earnings management remains unchanged. The inclination of firms toward CS can be ascribed to its cost-effectiveness, as it leaves net profit unchanged, hence less likelihood of being detected by auditors. Overall, our results align with the principle of legitimacy theory.

The study focuses exclusively on three primary forms of accounting manipulation and assesses IR holistically, rather than investigating the influence of each capital individually within IR.

With a shift towards less detectable methods like CS, auditors must adapt their scrutiny and be mindful of their clients' IR adoption. Investors should scrutinize IR-adopting firms' financial disclosures, especially line items, as CS does not impact the net profits.

It is the pioneering research to thoroughly explore the impact of IR on different earnings management tools and strengthen the conceptual frameworks of legitimacy theory by documenting that firms adopt IR to gain legitimacy, however their intention to engage in earnings management remains intact.

This study examines how board characteristics influence air, water and renewable energy (AWR) disclosures in an emerging economy. It argues for the necessity of separating these disclosures to address unique environmental impacts and stakeholder concerns.

Using longitudinal data from environmentally sensitive firms (2014–2022), a disclosure index based on the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) framework was developed to quantify AWR separately. To address potential statistical issues such as endogeneity and selection bias, the analysis employed a set of robust regression models, including the industry fixed effects (FE) model, a lagged model and a two-stage least squares (2SLS) model.

Board size and audit committees positively influence all AWR disclosures, while foreign directors significantly impact air and renewable energy disclosures. Board meetings negatively affect water disclosures. Surprisingly, board independence shows no significant impact, and gender diversity has no notable relationship. Post-amendment, firms increased AWR disclosures, though participation remains limited.

Grounded in legitimacy theory, this study contributes to the literature by demonstrating how separating the unique characteristics of AWR disclosures offers stakeholders more precise insights into how firms manage specific environmental concerns. The findings are based on data from listed firms in Bangladesh and may not be generalisable to unlisted firms or other regions.

The study emphasises the importance of distinct AWR reporting, offering valuable insights for regulators and corporate boards to improve transparency and sustainability practices.

Separating AWR disclosures provides stakeholders with clearer assessments of firms' environmental performance, promoting accountability and informed decision-making.

This study uniquely emphasises the need for disaggregating air, water and renewable energy disclosures in emerging economies. By focussing on each environmental issue separately, the research highlights how distinct disclosures offer clearer insights into how firms address specific environmental challenges, such as air pollution, water management and the transition to renewable energy sources. This disaggregation is essential for stakeholders – particularly regulators, investors and policymakers – to assess and respond to firms' sustainability efforts accurately.

This article investigates the influence of marine ecological compensation policy on enterprises’ environmental investment and explores whether enterprise ownership could impact the said influence.

Using the data of China's A-share listed enterprises for the period 2007–2020, the paper develops a difference-in-differences model and a moderating effect model.

The outcomes corroborate that the marine ecological compensation policy positively influences enterprises' environmental investment, and the effect is nonlinear. Specifically, the marine ecological compensation policy significantly impacts enterprises with lower and higher environmental investment. The empirical evidence from the moderation model shows that the effect of the policy is more significant on the non-state-owned enterprises’ environmental investment.

The findings are based on a sample of 559 listed A-share enterprises in China. Additional studies could focus on data from other countries.

Based on the present scenario of Chinese enterprises' environmental investment, the results report that the marine compensation policy needs to be differentiated for firms having different ownership and different levels of environmental investment. The study provides valuable insights for the government to formulate marine ecological compensation policies.

Marine ecology increasingly affects the economic development of countries, and the study on the influence of relevant environmental policies is of practical significance. However, most scholars concentrate on the research of environmental regulation, and have little focus on the policy effect of marine environmental compensation. This paper studies how marine ecological compensation policy influences the environmental investment behavior of enterprises, and further analyzes the difference in the policy effect caused by the nature of enterprises’ ownership, which not only fills the gap in this field, but also provides a scientific basis for the formulation and adjustment of marine ecological compensation policy.

The aim of this paper is to develop an approach for identifying the optimal level of automation by maximizing the level of automation and accuracy while addressing problem areas of forecast quality.

We use a unique set of forecasts planned by six subsidiaries of a multinational corporation to train and test various models. We compare the accuracy of three levels of automation and how they address prevalent forecasting process quality problem areas.

The findings indicate that accuracy alone is not a sufficient dimension to consider when selecting the optimal level of automation but that forecast process quality areas need to be assessed as well.

The limitations of this work are the inability to study the effects of our tool’s recommendations, the sample originating from a single company, the use of simple statistical methods and the limited number of dimensions to evaluate forecasts.

Firms should apply the structure offered in this paper to target individual components of the cash flow forecasting process when automating it and use it to structure their discussion, planning and implementation of automation.

A novel approach for determining the optimal level of automation for cash flow forecasting combining the human information processing framework of Parasuraman et al. (2000) with the forecast quality problem areas by Fildes and Petropoulos (2015).

The growing interest in sustainability reporting by management scholars is leading to new research fields. Among the different actors involved in non-financial disclosures, recent research is paying attention to public–private hybrid organisations. This study explores the main focus and critique of current and past literature on public–private hybrids and sustainability reporting.

To explore the recent field of sustainability reporting in public–private hybrids, this study adopts a structured literature review on studies collected from the scientific platforms Scopus and Web of Science.

Findings revealed a young and growing field of research. Also, it emerged how more profound attention is being paid to the features and drivers of sustainability reporting in the public–private sector, along with a stimulus for further research on new reporting frameworks.

Considering the novelty of the research field, the collection of analysed studies was very limited. Moreover, grey literature was not incorporated into the research. In addition, only two sources of data were considered.

This study includes different implications regarding sustainability reporting in public–private hybrids, emphasizing transparency, accountability and the need for further research and adoption of external assurance.

Because of the novelty of the research field, this is the first study to focus on literature that addresses the relationship between sustainability reporting and public–private entities. Furthermore, using a structured literature review has provided a profound view of the published literature.

The study investigates the influence of managerial discretion over accruals on banks' financial reporting quality. Furthermore, it examines the role of ownership in shaping managerial incentives to manipulate banks’ reporting quality in a developing economy.

The sample includes 37 Indian public- and private-sector banks from the fiscal year 2001–2022. The discretionary LLP (DLLP) is used to examine various managerial incentives and accounting quality. The models are estimated using panel fixed-effect regression and the system generalized method of moments. The results survive several sensitivity checks.

The results exhibit a low quality of financial reporting in public-sector banks, which is evident through the higher use of DLLP for income smoothing and signaling. In contrast, the low-capitalized private-sector banks employ DLLP to manage capital.

The study’s sample size is relatively small and focuses on a single country. Future researchers can investigate other emerging economies to better generalize the findings of this study.

The study highlights the influential role of ownership in shaping managerial incentives in the banking industry. Moreover, the study is of utmost importance for governments, regulators and policymakers in devising policies that reduce agency conflicts and improve financial stability in emerging economies.

The study subscribes to the growing literature on the role of ownership in influencing the banks’ financial reporting quality. To the best of the author’s knowledge, this is one of the limited studies in the context of government-owned vs private-owned banks in an emerging economy.

This study investigates the impact of organizational culture on the governance transparency of audit firms operating in the emerging market of the United Arab Emirates. The study unpacks how organizational culture influences audit firms' perceptions and practices regarding transparency in leadership, operations and reporting.

The primary data for this study is collected through an online survey distributed to auditing firms in the UAE, with statistical analysis conducted using multiple regression models and robustness checks. The survey is designed to assess transparency practices in leadership, operations and reporting based on the Financial Reporting Council’s (UK) audit firm governance code. Then, the data is analyzed using SPSS software, representing a diverse sample of auditors from different firm types, ownership structures and sizes.

The study reveals that organizational culture significantly influences audit firms' perceptions of governance transparency practices. Specifically, cultural aspects such as public interest, improvements and consultation positively and significantly impact voluntary transparency in leadership, operations and reporting. Notably, reporting practices are particularly affected by organizational cultural norms and values. Furthermore, transparency practices vary based on audit firms' size, type and industry. These findings offer valuable guidance for audit firms, regulators and accounting standards setters in developing suitable governance mechanisms for global audit firms, including developed and developing countries.

Future studies may extend the scope by including additional transparency issues such as independent non-executives and dialogue practices. Further, it would be valuable to investigate the influence of organizational culture components, such as symbols and assumptions shared by employees, on governance transparency and to include an additional set of control variables, such as corporate governance. By incorporating these aspects into research, a more comprehensive understanding of transparency practices within organizations can be achieved.

This study offers directions for stakeholders in the audit industry, aiding them in developing effective governance strategies both locally and internationally. The study further highlights ways audit firms can foster a culture of transparency, regulators can establish relevant frameworks, and accounting standards setters can contribute to developing consistent and appropriate governance mechanisms across different countries.

This study explores the influence of organizational culture on governance transparency in UAE audit firms, emphasizing the role of cultural elements in shaping transparency practices. It provides insights for enhancing governance mechanisms in global audit firms. Previous studies dealt with different determinants of audit behavior and performance. This study extends this prior literature by focusing on organizational culture as a vital underlying informal mechanism for controlling agency relationships.

This study examines the effect that aggregated versus disaggregated financial statements has on a potential donor’s decision to donate to both large and small nonprofit organizations.

This study utilizes 147 participants in a 2 × 2 design in which participants are placed in the role of potential donors.

Results indicate that disaggregated financial statements increase the likelihood of donors donating. Findings suggest that trust serves as a mediating effect, as disaggregated information leads to increased organizational trust, which subsequently leads to an increased likelihood of donating.

Providing participants with a fictitious scenario may not reflect true donor behavior. Participants also have no personal risk in deciding to donate because they are not actually making a financial donation.

Our results provide insight into the decision process of donors as this study suggests that disaggregated information leads to higher donations. As disaggregated information leads to higher trust, organizations are incentivized to provide disaggregated information because it increases the appearance of trustworthiness.

Fundraising campaigns can benefit from our findings. Nonprofit organizations should evaluate the impact on trust when considering best practices related to disaggregated information.

There is currently a trust crisis in America’s nonprofits, and this study aims to understand how the level of aggregation of financial statement information can increase trust and subsequent donor giving.

The objective of this study is to determine the impact of GHG assurance on firms’ carbon emissions performance (CEP) regarding curbing carbon emissions and the effect on such by the GHG assurance provider’s affiliation and reputation. It also explores whether the affiliation and reputation of GHG assurance providers imply the relationship between GHG assurance and the firm’s CEP. Further, this study examines the moderating effect of the country’s development level on the relationship.

Based on a sample of international firms from 56 countries spanning the period from 2012 to 2020, this study utilizes the ordinary least squares (OLS) regression. We also run the OLS regression at times t+1 and t+2 to verify the baseline results. To address the endogeneity concerns arising from self-selection bias and the causality effect, this study applies the generalized method of moment (GMM) and the Heckman test.

This study finds that GHG assurance leads to better CEP by firms. We also find that engaging with accounting assurance providers leads firms to a better CEP than non-accounting assurance providers. Our results show that Big Four auditors can help firms decrease carbon emissions. We also find that the positive effect of GHG assurance is prevalent in firms operating in developed countries.

Our study only considers the influence of the assuror’s reputation and affiliation on CEP without examining other factors that may influence the quality of assurance services provided.

Our study provides a practical implication related to the influence of a GHG assurance provider’s affiliation and reputation globally by providing evidence that accounting and Big Four assurance providers do play a significant role in a firm’s carbon emission performance. This study offers great insights into the GHG assurance impact on CEP with the interplay between the assuror’s affiliation and reputation and the country’s development.

This paper enriches the limit evidence on GHG assurance and CEP by providing novel evidence on the relationship between GHG assurance and a firm’s CEP. Moreover, this study provides insights into the implication of a country’s development level on the role of GHG assurance in CEP.

This study aims to investigate the effects of unconditional conservatism on investment efficiency, focusing on both its direct and indirect effects.

We conduct multiple regression analyses on a sample of nonfinancial companies listed on the New York Stock Exchange from 2010 to 2018.

We provide evidence that conditional conservatism plays a central role in mediating the indirect effects of unconditional conservatism on investment efficiency. This is because a decrease in conditional conservatism, following an increase in unconditional conservatism, leads to reduced investment efficiency.

This study offers valuable insights for the growing body of literature on the relationship between accounting conservatism and investment efficiency while emphasizing the critical role of conditional conservatism in mediating the relationship between unconditional conservatism and investment efficiency.

This study has several implications. Practitioners can make informed decisions regarding accounting policies, predict the potential effects of these choices and mitigate the negative impact of unconditional conservatism on investment efficiency. Investors can make more informed decisions by understanding how unconditional and conditional conservatism affect investment efficiency. Standard setters can guide user behavior toward more efficient investment decisions.

Considering the lack of comprehensive understanding in prior literature regarding the underlying mechanisms through which unconditional conservatism influences investment efficiency, this study investigates the direct and indirect effects characterizing this relationship. We provide evidence supporting a new explanation for the relationship between unconditional conservatism and investment efficiency.

This study investigates the impact of tax planning, both independently and in conjunction with earnings management, on the persistence of earnings and its various components.

In this study, tax planning refers to corporate strategies aimed at minimizing taxes, while earnings management involves manipulating reported earnings through accounting accruals. The analysis uses a dataset of US companies from 1989 to 2016 and includes a series of regression tests.

The study finds that firms implementing aggressive tax strategies exhibit lower persistence in cash flows from operations and earnings. Furthermore, companies using both aggressive tax planning and earnings management techniques show the lowest persistence in total accruals, cash flows from operations and reported earnings.

Our sample of US firms limits generalizability. Future research could explore the international impacts of tax planning and earnings management on earnings quality and include post-2016 data for insights on the 2018 tax cuts and COVID-19. Investigating other earnings quality measures and their influence on investors and analysts could enhance performance assessment.

This research identifies key factors influencing the interpretation of financial statements, offering valuable insights for regulators, auditors, tax authorities, financial analysts and other users with significant practical and social implications.

This study contributes to prior research by highlighting the need to investigate the real effects of tax avoidance and extends prior research by examining the impact of high levels of tax planning, along with aggressive earnings management, on earnings persistence.

This paper examines the organizational resilience of audit firms during the early stages of COVID-19. The unexpected restrictions placed on travel and on-site working created unanticipated barriers for auditors in Hong Kong. The authors expect that auditors with greater organizational resilience can respond to unexpected situations and restore expected performance levels relatively quickly.

The authors utilize a sample of 1,008 companies listed on Hong Kong Stock Exchange (HKEX) with a financial year-end of December 31. The authors identify five proxies contributing to organizational resilience: auditor size, industry specialization, diversity, geographic proximity to the client and auditing a new client. The authors use audit report timeliness as this study's main dependent variable.

This study's full-sample results suggest that larger auditors, industry specialists and auditors with closer relationships to clients issued more timely audit reports during the pandemic. The analysis of a subsample of companies that initially published unaudited financial statements reveals that industry expertise and longer auditor-client relationships significantly reduced the need for year-end audit adjustments. Finally, the authors find that larger auditors were more likely to offload clients, whereas industry specialists were more likely to retain clients.

The results of the paper suggests that audit firm characteristics associated cognitive abilities, behavioral characteristics and contextual conditions are associated with audit firm organizational resilience and, consequently, helps auditors respond unexpected changes in the audit environment.

The findings of the paper are informative for those involved in audit firm management or auditor hiring and retention decisions.

This study is the first to link organizational resilience to the performance of audit firms in a time of unexpected events. The authors connect three auditor and two auditor-client dimensions to the organizational resilience of the audit firms.

This study examines how the strong emphasis placed on the purposes of budgeting, referring to a comprehensive focus on budgeting, is related to top managers' education and tenure while controlling for their functional positions in their respective firms and ages, as well as several company-specific predictors (information quality, firm size, information technology, importance of profit and strategy).

Survey data were collected from senior managers of large manufacturing firms in Finland and Sweden.

The results suggest that academic business education is positively associated with a comprehensive focus on budgeting, but tenure as well as functional position in the company (Chief Financial Officer (CFO) or not) and age are not. Overall, the company-specific control variables in general and information quality in particular are shown to have greater explanatory power than the top management characteristics analyzed.

This study identifies several empirically supported factors that seem to contribute to a comprehensive focus on budgeting. The effects of information quality, business education, the importance of profit and firm size could be considered in future research.

Academic business education matters more than the other top management characteristics analyzed. If organizations want to make comprehensive use of budgets, they should employ business graduates and be mindful of company-specific variables.

This study is the first to address a comprehensive focus on budgeting and some of its determinants. Future research could investigate a broader set of such determinants in different contexts.

This study aims to develop a model based on the financial variables for better accuracy of financial distress prediction on the sample of private French, Spanish and Italian firms. Thus, firms in financial difficulties could timely request for troubled debt restructuring (TDR) to continue business.

This study used a sample of 312 distressed and 312 non-distressed firms. It includes 60 French, 21 Spanish and 231 Italian firms in both distressed and non-distressed groups. The data are extracted from the ORBIS database. First, the authors develop a new model by replacing a ratio in the original Z”-Score model specifically for financial distress prediction and estimate its coefficients based on linear discriminant analysis (LDA). Second, using the modified Z”-Score model, the authors develop a firm TDR probability index for distressed and non-distressed firms based on the logistic regression model.

The new model (modified Z”-Score), specifically for financial distress prediction, represents higher prediction accuracy. Moreover, the firm TDR probability index accurately depicts the probabilities trend for both groups of distressed and non-distressed firms.

The findings of this study are conclusive. However, the sample size is small. Therefore, further studies could extend the application of the prediction model developed in this study to all the EU countries.

This study has important practical implications. This study responds to the EU directive call by developing the financial distress prediction model to allow debtors to do timely debt restructuring and thus continue their businesses. Therefore, this study could be useful for practitioners and firm stakeholders, such as banks and other creditors, and investors.

This study significantly contributes to the literature in several ways. First, this study develops a model for predicting financial distress based on the argument that corporate bankruptcy and financial distress are distinct events. However, the original Z”-Score model is intended for failure prediction. Moreover, the recent literature suggests modifying and extending the prediction models. Second, the new model is tested using a sample of firms from three countries that share similarities in their TDR laws.

Bootstrapping is a practitioner-based term adopted in entrepreneurship to describe the techniques employed in micro, small and medium-sized enterprises (MSMEs) to minimise the need for external funding by securing resources at little or no cost and applying strategies to effectively use resources. Working capital management (WCM) is a term used in financial management to define a set of practices used to manage business resources, including cash management. This paper explores the overlap and divergence between these two disciplinary distinct concepts.

A dual methodology is employed. First, the usage of the two terms in prior literature is analysed and synthesised. Second, the study uses factor analysis to explore how bootstrapping practices described by owners of 167 established MSMEs relate to the components of WCM in financial management.

The factor analysis identifies two main bootstrapping practices employed by MSMEs: (1) delaying payments and owner-related bootstrapping and (2) customer-related bootstrapping. Delaying payments is an integral practice in trade payables management and customer-related bootstrapping includes practices that are integral to trade receivables management. Therefore, links between bootstrapping practices and WCM practices are firmly established.

The study is not without limitations. Based on cross-sectional evidence for established firms in Ireland only, future studies could explore cross-country longitudinal panel data to fully examine life cycle and sectoral effects, as well as other external shocks (for example, COVID-19) on bootstrapping and WCM practices. This study does not explain why some factors (for example, joint utilisation and inventory management) are present in some bootstrapping studies and not in others; further case study research might help explain this. Finally, changes in the business environment facing start-ups and established enterprise, including increased digitalisation, online trading, self-employment, remote hub working and sustainability, offer new avenues for bootstrapping research.

This is the first study to comprehensively explore the conceptual and empirical links between bootstrapping and WCM. This study will enable researchers and practitioners in these two distinct disciplines to learn from each other. Accounting researchers and practitioners can broaden their understanding of how WCM “works” in MSME settings. Similarly, entrepreneurship researchers and practitioners can deepen their understanding of how bootstrapping can be adopted by businesses to manage resources effectively.

Companies must no longer just report on corporate sustainability (CS) performance but also demonstrate that they are aligning their strategies with sustainability. However, suitable management control systems (MCS) are required to implement a sustainability strategy. Thereby, sustainability reporting (SR) can also be employed for control purposes. On the other hand, existing MCS can be used to develop SR that goes beyond accountability. Accordingly, this paper explores how this interplay can be designed.

For the study, 20 semi-structured interviews were conducted with persons from ATX and DAX companies. Since the interplay should be examined from a holistic control perspective, the authors used the MCS package of Malmi and Brown as an analysis framework.

Nowadays, merely focusing on reporting is too narrow a view. It is therefore not surprising that the investigation was able to reveal various possible linkages between MCS and SR that span the full range of the MCS package of Malmi and Brown.

Future research should also consider non-listed companies to investigate potential differences and take a closer look at the proposed reciprocal nature of the interplay.

The findings expand the knowledge of how companies can use SR for control purposes and how existing MCS can help develop a reporting that goes beyond accountability.

The study contributes by highlighting the potential of SR to control CS performance from a holistic MCS perspective and likewise the impact of existing MCS on reporting. In addition, different theoretical perspectives are used to explain why the interplay can be designed differently in practice.

When financial statements are public, the choice between alternative reporting regimes constitutes a signal that addresses external stakeholders. Generally, the choice of more complex regimes acts as a complement of firms' transparency. However, in the absence of audits, opportunistic behaviors could be incentivized. This study aims to test whether SMEs' choice between alternative accounting regimes is associated with earnings quality.

Drawing on the literature about accounting choices and earnings quality, this study investigates whether the same conclusions are confirmed for SMEs. Using a sample of 4,054 Italian companies and 12,114 observations, it compared four earnings quality proxies of a group of companies that opted for the “Full” rules and those of a subsample of the population of companies that applied the Simplified rules.

The results suggest that the signaling power of accounting rules' choice could lead to wrong conclusions for SMEs. Indeed, a positive relationship emerged (H1) between the choice of the “Full” rules and income smoothing behaviors, while the same choice appears to reduce the probability to disclose SPOS. Moreover, the results suggest that opportunistic behaviors are more frequent for firms that have settled in a “non-cooperative” social environment (H2).

This study could foster research on financial reporting quality in private firms.

Comparing the quality of financial statements drawn up according to two alternative accounting regimes could provide useful suggestions for both users and regulators.

The results contribute to the limited literature on the implications of differential reporting. Finally, it enriches the literature about heterogeneity in accounting quality within private firms.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the industry-specific preferred valuation model utilised by analysts’ in determining a stock’s target price. By understanding analysts’ use of industry-specific valuation models, we can enhance our comprehension of important aspects of value creation in these sectors. Therefore, understanding the industry context is crucial for accurately assessing the value of companies within that industry and selecting the most suitable valuation model.

The method employed in this study is content analysis, examining the output of analysts’ valuation models within 25 Global Industry Classification Standard (GICS) industry groups. I hand-collected 806 equity reports from Capital IQ, selecting the four companies with the largest market capitalization from each of the 25 industry groups.

Price/Earnings (P/E) emerges as the preferred valuation model in 20 out of the 25 industry groups based on the GICS, with some exceptions. Notably, EV/EBITDA is favoured in the telecom, energy and materials sectors, while the capital goods industry primarily relies on Price/Cash flow (P/CF). In the Real Estate Investment Trusts (REITs) sector, P/AFFO (adjusted funds from operations) is the most commonly employed model. While earnings multiples remain the favoured valuation model for financial analysts, a noticeable shift away from multiperiod valuation models is evident after the first decade of the 21st century.

The findings can increase our comprehension of the interplay between valuation methodologies, industry characteristics and investment decision-making.

It establishes a foundation for future research in this field and is anticipated to be of interest to analysts, fund managers and investors. The findings can increase our comprehension of the interplay between valuation methodologies, industry characteristics and investment decision-making.

This paper represents the first systematic and comprehensive examination of analysts’ utilisation of industry-specific stock valuation methods across all 25 GICS industry groups.

Recent accounting literature claims that private firms’ heterogeneity influences the quality of earnings. Along with certain drivers of heterogeneity, private firms get involved in specific programs aimed at fostering their access to capital, competencies and networks (CCN programs). Such programs can enhance private firms’ exposure to stakeholders that demand higher reporting quality, affecting their financial reporting choices. Therefore, this study investigated whether membership in CCN programs affects private firms’ earnings quality.

Focusing on the ELITE program, an international platform that since 2012 aims to support the growth of the most promising SMEs, and employing different econometric specifications facing endogeneity concerns, this paper carries out a quantitative empirical analysis to test the effect of CCN programs on private firms’ earnings quality.

Employing different earnings quality measures, empirical evidence reveals that firms belonging to CCN programs experienced an improvement in their earnings quality.

Even though endogeneity concerns have been addressed, we are nevertheless aware that they might, at least partially, have affected our results.

Although the contributions of the study are mostly academic, the empirical evidence obtained also carries practical implications. CCN programs not only act, as one might assume, as catalysts for economic and dimensional growth but also contribute to better earnings quality, mitigating the information asymmetries between firms and their stakeholders.

By adding new evidence to the literature concerning the impact of private firms’ heterogeneity on earnings quality, this is the first study to analyze the impact of specific programs aimed at supporting the affiliated SMEs to foster their access to capital, competencies and networks.

This study investigates the influence of corporate culture on financial reporting transparency within Iranian firms.

Leveraging a dataset of 1,480 firm-year observations from the Tehran Stock Exchange spanning from 2013 to 2022, the study employs text mining to quantify linguistic features of corporate culture and transparency, specifically readability and tone, within annual financial statements and Management Discussion and Analysis (MD&A) reports.

Our results confirm a positive and significant relationship between corporate culture and financial reporting transparency. The distinct dimensions of corporate culture — Creativity, Competition, Control, and Collaboration — each uniquely enhance financial transparency. Robustness tests including firm fixed-effects, entropy balancing, Generalized Method of Moments (GMM), and Propensity Score Matching (PSM) validate the profound influence of corporate culture on transparency. Additionally, our analysis shows that corporate culture significantly affects the disclosure of business, operational, and financial risks, with varying impacts across risk categories. Cross-sectional analysis further reveals how the impact of corporate culture on transparency varies significantly across different industries and firm sizes.

The study’s scope, while focused on Iran, opens avenues for comparative research in different cultural and regulatory environments. Its reliance on text mining could be complemented by qualitative methods to capture more nuanced linguistic subtleties.

Findings underscore the strategic importance of cultivating a transparent corporate culture for enhancing financial reporting practices and stakeholder trust, particularly in emerging economies with similar dynamics to Iran.

This research is pioneering in its quantitative analysis of the textual features of corporate culture and its impact on transparency within Iranian corporate reports, integrating foundational theoretical perspectives with empirical evidence.

This research investigates the feasibility, benefits and challenges of environmental sustainability reporting by Small- and Medium-Sized Enterprises (SMEs).

The authors develop an abridged SME environmental sustainability reporting framework based on the environmental aspects of the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) Standards for Sustainability Reporting. The authors collect the views of 203 SME accounting practitioners on our proposed reporting framework using a survey questionnaire.

The authors find that the greatest perceived benefit for firms adopting environmental sustainability reporting is that it leads to an improvement in company image. Lack of knowledge, resources and data capturing tools impede implementation of environmental sustainability reporting for both SMEs and accounting practitioners. While SMEs are not yet required to implement environmental sustainability reporting, the research discusses implications for policy makers and practitioners for adopting environmental sustainability reporting in the SME context.

The main limitation of this study is that environmental sustainability reporting for SMEs is in its infancy. A longitudinal survey, or re-examining this survey over time, could be beneficial to assess the long-term benefits and costs of implementing sustainability reporting.

The findings of this study have practical implications for the future development of SME environmental sustainability reporting in the EU and for regulators considering sustainability reporting regulations with a specific focus on SMEs.

The study reconstructs the GRI environmental guidelines into a framework for SMEs and provides empirical evidence on the accountant’s sustainability reporting role.

This study aims to investigate the relationship between corporate sustainable development goals (SDGs) disclosure and analyst forecast quality.

The study focuses on a sample of 95 Italian-listed companies preparing the mandatory non-financial declaration (NFD) according to the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) standards over a five-year period (2017–2021), corresponding to an unbalanced sample of 438 observations. Analyst forecast quality was proxied by earnings forecast accuracy (FA) and earnings forecast dispersion (FD), built on data retrieved from the Refinitiv database. A manual content analysis was performed on NFDs to derive an SDG disclosure score (SDGD) for each sampled company.

This study provides empirical evidence suggesting that voluntary SDG disclosure matters to the capital market in that it helps enhance the information environment of companies, evidenced by improved analyst forecast quality. In particular, this study highlighted that SDG disclosure positively influences analyst FA while negatively affecting analyst FD.

This study focuses on the Italian context, which has idiosyncratic characteristics regarding the structure of the financial market, the composition of corporate ownership and experience in non-financial reporting practices.

This study indicates to corporate managers that following GRI standards may represent the right way to better integrate SDG disclosure in corporate non-financial reports and increase the relevance of such information for investors and other capital market participants.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first study that empirically examines the association between SDG disclosure and analyst forecast quality.

We examine the content of auditors’ going concern opinions (GCOs) to investigate how the market reacts to particular explanations and to the overall number of reasons presented by auditors. We investigate whether the market reacts differentially to explanatory paragraphs alluding to specific financial concerns emphasized in the finance literature: reductions in expected future cash flows, difficulties with short-term liquidity and violations of debt covenants. Finally, we examine whether GCOs that are ex-post accurate, as indicated by a subsequent bankruptcy, are accompanied by more negative reactions.

We regress cumulative abnormal returns on the number of reasons cited by auditors and indicator variables for whether auditors cited concerns pertaining to future cash flows, debt covenant violations or short-term cash holdings. We include an indicator for subsequent bankruptcy and control variables.

The market reaction to GCOs is significantly more negative when auditors offer more reasons or specifically cite a decrease in expected future cashflows or a violation of debt covenants and when GCOs are ex-post accurate.

The results indicate that auditors’ explanations for GCOs contain incremental information content that is useful to investors.

We find that more detailed GCO reports are more informative to investors, supporting the need for regulations requiring auditors to provide detailed justifications when issuing GCOs.

This study is the first to examine how the number of reasons given by auditors affects market reactions to GCOs and to specifically examine how investors react to GCOs that cite violations of debt covenants or reductions in future cash flows as justifications for the GCO.

The purpose of this study is to (1) investigate how IFRS 16 affects firms’ risk in Egypt and (2) examine the moderating role of managerial overconfidence on this relation.

This study uses data from the annual reports of 38 Egyptian firms from 2014 to 2022. This study employs the generalized method of moments (GMM) and the three-stage least squares (3SLS) as estimation techniques.

The results show that IFRS 16 positively affects Egyptian firm risk, while managerial overconfidence reduces this positive effect.

This study has some limitations. First, the sample size was relatively small. Second, our analysis did not incorporate other metrics of managerial overconfidence owing to the unavailability of relevant data in Egypt.

This study assists stakeholders and regulators in realising the implications of IFRS 16 on a firm’s risk, especially in emerging markets. Also, it enables managers to identify and assess lease-related risks more accurately to assist in developing appropriate risk mitigation strategies and optimizing lease-related decision-making processes. Furthermore, it aids in enhancing comprehension and knowledge of the interplay between managerial behaviour and firm outcomes.

Grounded in agency theory, this study reveals novel empirical insights into the impact of IFRS 16 on firm risk, especially in the context of emerging markets. Utilizing behavioural decision theory and upper echelons theory, it examines the previously unexplored influence of managerial overconfidence on this relationship.

This paper aims to investigate the influence of environmental, social and governance (ESG) on mergers and acquisitions (M&A) decisions/activities and organisational performance in UK – financial and non-financial firms over the period (2012–2022).

The theoretical lenses underpinning this study are rooted in stakeholder theory and resource-based theory. The empirical analysis is based on a sample of financial and non-financial firms selected from FTSE ALL-listed companies over the period (2012–2022).

Findings of this study reveal that ESG score has a statistically significant impact on both financial and non-financial firms. An increase in firm ESG performance significantly increases the likelihood of M&A. The results reveal that the impact of ESG on firm financial performance is negative and significant, but this is not the case for non-financial firms where the impact despite being positive is insignificant.

This research was conducted using data from firms within the UK context. Future research may adopt or adapt the research questions in different context and settings. Future studies may adopt a case study approach or survey-based questionnaires or employ various theoretical lenses.

Findings of this study have managerial and theoretical implications. Integrating ESG into operational and strategic organisational activities enhances attractiveness to potential bidders and contributes to sustainable financial performance because acquiring targets with high ESG performance can have a positive effect on the acquirer’s post-merger market value, thereby strongly confirming the use of ESG as a value-enhancing strategy to promote corporate external growth.

Our findings add to the extant literature, a recent empirical evidence that, to the best of our knowledge, our this study is among the first to examine the influence of ESG on M&A and firm performance through comparison between the financial and non-financial sectors.

Our study delves into the association between greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and the quality of financial reporting. Our investigation focuses on understanding how firms’ GHG emissions would impact discretionary accruals and real earnings management. We also test the moderating role of a large board size, and CEO as a board member. Finally, we conduct various robustness checks to ensure the robustness and validity of our findings.

We conducted a study on 476 European companies across 17 countries and various industries between 2005 and 2018. We use panel data estimations, and multiple methods to account for emissions and address endogeneity issues in our tests.

Our findings indicate that greenhouse gas emissions increase earnings management, as measured through discretionary accruals and real earnings management. This leads to lower quality financial reporting. We also find that a larger board size moderates the relationship between GHG emissions and financial reporting, resulting in greater financial transparency.

Our findings provide evidence that firms’ GHG emissions, despite stricter emission regulations in the European Union (EU), would be positively associated with real earnings management. This finding calls for more research in different regions to understand if this is a global trend.

Our results have important implications for financial reporting, corporate governance, and climate change mitigation. For example, high GHG emissions not only indicate polluting firms but might also serve as a signal for identifying firms engaged in earnings management.

Although previous research has examined the relationship between greenhouse gas emissions and the financial performance of firms, to the best of our knowledge, no prior study has investigated whether firms’ GHG tends to manipulate their financial reporting. We also contribute to the literature regarding the determinants of the quality of financial reporting through earnings management literature. Lastly, we provide novel evidence from the EU area, where strict EU climate policy should have affected financial reporting.

This paper scrutinizes the nexus between firms’ board characteristics; environmental, social and governance (ESG) performance and industry sensitivity, with the aim of examining how the impact of board diversity on ESG performance would vary among sensitive versus non-sensitive industries and identify which board characteristics are more influential on ESG performance in these industries.

A large sample of 31,255 firm-year observations in 5,471 companies listed in the G-7 countries from 2010 to 2022 is examined using a Heckman two-stage least squares (2SLS) approach to address the potential endogeneity concerns within our proposed relationships.

The findings show that the positive influence of diverse boards on a firm’s ESG performance is particularly amplified in sensitive industries and may be attributed to the greater need of these industries to address stakeholder concerns (as posited by the stakeholder and resource-dependence theories) and mitigate agency conflicts (supporting agency theory). Interestingly, the impact of diversity in board gender and education qualifications appears to be particularly influential and remains robust across a series of regression analyses.

This study has important implications for policymakers and legislators as it provides guidelines pertaining to the composition of boards operating in sensitive industries. For practitioners and firms, the results allow for better understanding of firms’ tendency towards sustainability practices, particularly in the context of sensitive industries.

This study has important implications for policymakers and legislators as it provides guidelines pertaining to the composition of boards operating in sensitive industries.

This study contributes to the increasingly growing literature that investigates the nexus between industry sensitivity, board characteristics and ESG performance.

The aim of this paper is to investigate if and how conditional conservatism influences capital management practices in the context of European listed banks.

We use multiple fixed effects regression models with robust standard errors to test the research hypotheses on a sample of 2,883 bank-year observations for EU-listed banks from 2010 to 2020.

The study provides evidence that the adoption of conditional conservatism policies constrains upward capital management. In addition, this study shows that such influence is mediated by two channels: earnings management and loan portfolio quality. Regarding the first channel, this study shows that the adoption of conditional conservatism hinders upward earning management which, in turn, negatively impacts upward capital management, all else being equal. For the second channel, this study shows that the adoption of conditional conservatism improves the quality of the loan portfolio, which hinders upward capital management because of less risky assets in the portfolio.

This study contributes to banking literature by shedding light on the factors that may favor or obstruct capital management.

This study can be useful for bank regulators and standard setters to define new regulatory policies and standards that can hinder the use of manipulative accounting practices.

This is the first study exploring the association between bank accounting conservatism and capital management, thus asking whether some factors like earnings management and loan portfolio quality may act as mediating channels in this relationship.

This study examines the effect of the social cognitive career theory (SCCT) factors (job stress, accounting stereotypes, job satisfaction and job prestige) on accounting students’ intentions to pursue a career in auditing and the moderating role of ethical codes of conduct.

The study employed a survey design with a quantitative approach to data analysis. Data was gathered from a sample of 277 accounting students by adapting a closed-ended questionnaire. To test the hypotheses, the data were analysed using partial least square structural equation modelling.

The results indicate a significant negative relationship between accounting students’ aspirations to pursue a profession in auditing and their self-efficacy expectations. However, there was a significant positive correlation between their intention to pursue a career in auditing and their outcome expectations. Furthermore, a moderation test was conducted, which demonstrated that ethical codes of conduct strengthen the relationships between self-efficacy and outcome expectation factors and students’ intention to pursue career in auditing.

Most participants lacked auditing job experience. Peers, relatives, educators and cultural norms may have influenced them to withhold honest and precise survey responses, undermining the results.

Educators can utilise the research findings on self-efficacy to direct accounting students in developing positive self-efficacy attitudes towards a career in auditing, rather than perceiving the auditing profession as stressful and characterised by stereotypes.

Utilising an extended version of the SCCT, this study provides empirical and theoretically grounded contributions to the existing body of knowledge regarding the factors that influence accounting students’ intentions to pursue a career in auditing.

This study examines how financial distress affects the capital structure of Egyptian firms following the 2016 currency flotation, examining the moderating roles of board characteristics and ownership structure.

Utilizing data from non-financial companies listed on the Egyptian Stock Exchange from 2017 to 2022, we apply two-stage least squares (2SLS) and propensity score matching (PSM) to address endogeneity and selection bias.

Our findings indicate that financially distressed firms tend to increase their debt burden, but robust governance mechanisms, such as higher board independence, larger boards and strong blockholder and institutional ownership, significantly mitigate this effect. Managerial ownership shows a stabilizing influence during distress, while chief executive officer duality does not significantly impact leverage decisions. These findings underscore how robust corporate governance promotes more conservative capital structure decisions during economic volatility.

Our study focus, country and period could limit the generalizability of our findings to other regions or sectors.

Investors and policymakers are advised to focus on firms with effective governance structures to mitigate distress-induced leverage increases. Governance reforms that enhance board effectiveness and ownership structure, e.g. increasing board independence requirements and promoting greater institutional investor participation, can further stabilize capital structure during downturns. Managers, in turn, should diversify financing and adopt prudent debt strategies to reduce overreliance on leverage.

In contrast to most studies, this research reverses the lens by exploring how financial distress shapes capital structure decisions in an emerging market context, specifically post-Egypt’s 2016 currency flotation. Employing both 2SLS and PSM to address endogeneity and selection bias, the study highlights the mitigating role of governance mechanisms, which can buffer firms against heightened debt reliance under economic volatility.

This paper examines the influence of accounting practices on financial performance with an application to farms. In response to the yield, price and weather risks they face, farms have strong incentives to manipulate their earnings.

We measure earnings management and performance using data from the Farm Accountancy Data Network (FADN), which is representative of French professional farms over the period 2000–2022.

Our results show that, on average, regardless of year and specialisation, farms use two competing strategies to manage their earnings and deal with uncertainty. In the short run, timely reporting of bad news can help them to access public support. In the long run, farms also smooth their earnings, which is justified by the need to maintain their access to credit and to cope with climatic and economic shocks.

Further research could provide more precise evidence of the impact of climatic, geopolitical or market events on farm accounting practices. In addition, the analysis could be extended to other industries that are also exposed to risks.

The results shed new light on the observed volatility in farm profitability and their ability to manage risk. Accounting practices play an important role in helping farmers to cope with risky production and volatile market conditions. While farmers may appear to be in a difficult situation due to reduced and low-quality earnings, we believe that they are in fact resilient in ensuring the sustainability of their operations and financing.

This work highlights the key role of earnings management in risk management. Farms are a relevant example of small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) exposed to natural and economic risks.

This study aims to evaluate the applicability of Ferreira and Otley’s (2009) framework in describing and explaining the structure and components of performance management systems (PMSs).

Data are gathered through semi-structured interviews and by analyzing the company’s annual reports, electronic records and printed documents. To enhance the understanding of the observed performance management (PM) practices, the study utilizes Burns and Scapens’ (2000) institutional framework.

The findings reveal that the selected case company operates a relatively advanced PMS with objectives, techniques and procedures that transcend the conventional boundaries of performance measurement. While the analysis of the case materials shows certain alignments with the chosen theoretical framework, the PM practices observed within the company and its strategic business units also highlight certain gaps in the conceptualization of the framework.

The results and interpretations in this study are derived from a single case company, which restricts the ability to generalize the findings across a broader range of organizations. However, the study’s findings are expected to contribute to the theory-building of PM frameworks.

The study’s findings may help bridge the gap between PM theories and real-world business practices, providing feedback on how PMSs are applied in practice and their usefulness and relevance to practitioners.

This study’s insights may inspire researchers in the field of management accounting (MA) to continue developing more integrated theoretical frameworks and to delve further into the study of PM and management control (MC) practices.

Existing research on stock price manipulation driven by equity incentives has mainly focused on earnings management, without considering other potential manipulation methods. Therefore, we examine whether management engages in tone management during earnings communication conference following equity incentives.

Using Chinese A-share listed companies from 2006 to June 2023 as the sample, we explore the impact mechanism of equity incentives on the tone of earnings communication conference.

Equity incentives are found to increase abnormal tone in earnings communication conferences. The characteristics of equity incentives themselves affect tone management. For instance, equity incentives based on stock options, as well as those within the exercise feasibility year, have a more pronounced effect on facilitating tone management. The mechanisms through which equity incentives affect different tones vary: the increase in positive tone is associated with improved financial performance, while the increase in abnormal tone is linked to executives reducing their holdings to obtain cash. Further discussions reveal that the impact of equity incentives on abnormal tone is weaker when there is a higher degree of real or accrual-based earnings management, suggesting a possible substitution relationship between earnings management and abnormal tone. Additionally, when a company experiences low investment efficiency, high executive compensation and a lower proportion of negative news coverage in the external information environment, the impact of equity incentives on abnormal tone becomes more pronounced.

Our study primarily focuses on conducting exploratory research into the mechanism, purpose, timing and alternative selection of tone management in the year following the grant of equity incentives. We have not provided a detailed theoretical explanation regarding the transmission channels or mechanisms through which tone management affects investor sentiment and trading behavior.

We provide valuable insights for identifying the quality of information disclosure in earnings communication conference.

We clarify the mechanism of equity incentives on management’s tone, reveals the timing preferences of tone management during the earnings communication conference.

This research explores the influence of stakeholders and public attention through the media on disclosures related to climate change in the industry most sensitive to climate change, namely the mining industry.

This study employs panel data obtained from the financial and sustainability reports of 142 mining companies over the period 2017–2021. The analysis was conducted using the STATA software.

The findings of this study indicate that government ownership, creditor power and public attention through the internet had a significant positive impact on climate change disclosures among mining companies in the ASEAN region. In contrast, institutional ownership exhibited a negative effect on these disclosures. These results suggest that companies’ disclosures are primarily driven by external pressures from government authorities, creditors and heightened public scrutiny via online media platforms. Furthermore, the statistical analysis indicates that the overall level of climate change disclosure by mining companies in the ASEAN region remains relatively low.

The limitations of this research. This research manually inputted data from sustainability reports and annual reports, so there were companies whose reports could not be found, and there were language barriers in several countries.

The implications of this research investigated climate change disclosure by companies considered sensitive to climate change, namely companies in the mining industry. This research suggests that company managers disclose climate change. It happens because the government, as the guarantor of the sustainability and welfare of the community, has encouraged disclosures responsible for climate change.

This study investigates the role of public attention, as measured by Google Trends, in influencing climate change disclosures within industrial sectors that are particularly sensitive to climate change.

The study investigated the effect of female leadership on financial reporting timeliness and further ascertained how the presence of women on boards impacts the relationship.

Secondary data from the audited annual reports of 29 firms listed on the Ghana Stock Exchange (GSE) for the period 2000–2022 was used to achieve the study’s objectives. For empirical results, the fixed effect estimator was employed.

Under female leadership (female CEO and female board chairperson), a longer audit report lag is observed. However, in the presence of gender-inclusive boards, shorter audit report lag is observed as female leadership is inversely associated with audit report lag.

The study focused on gendered leadership and audit report lag in Ghana, with analysis focusing on data of 29 firms listed on the GSE.

The study reemphasizes the need for corporate entities to ensure their boards are more gender-diversified since it can produce desirable outcomes such as shorter audit report lags for the firms.

This study, for the first time from a developing economy context, Ghana, provides empirical evidence that although there is a positive effect of female leadership on audit report lag, a more gender-inclusive board can ensure shorter audit report lag (timely reporting of financial results) in the presence of woman leadership.

This study explores the impact of corporate governance structures and managerial attributes on the accuracy of expected pension contributions mandated by Statement of Financial Accounting Standards (SFAS) 132R.

The authors use regression analysis to examine whether governance structures quality and managerial attributes affect the accuracy of expected contributions. Their sample includes 5,596 firm-year observations over the period 2004–2018.

Results document that expected contributions are consistently lower than actual contributions across the sample period. Findings consistently show that expected pension contributions’ accuracy is positively related to board independence and gender diversity at the board and audit committee level, while being negatively associated with CEO-Chairman duality.

Paper does not control for CFO attributes.

These findings highlight the need for revisiting the disclosure requirements related to expected pension contributions, and the importance of governance structures in safeguarding the integrity of corporate disclosures.

The analysis adds to the scant literature investigating the disclosure requirements related to defined benefit pension plans and post-retirement benefits under SFAS 132R.