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This research contributes to helping educational establishments across the world develop self-efficacy techniques to improve communication skills within an accounting course design and other disciplines. This paper asks the research question: Does self-efficacy enhance accounting students' communication ability? Previous research has identified the business community requiring accountants to display high levels of communication ability. However, despite many deliberate pedagogical interventions over the years, communication skills are lacking in graduating accounting students. This paper describes a new approach of deliberate self-efficacy interventions in one UK university's undergraduate accounting curriculum to improve accounting students' communication ability. In addition, a self-efficacy framework of Stone and Bailey [(2007). Team conflict self-efficacy and outcome expectancy of business students. "Journal of Education for Business," 82(5), 258-266. https://doi.org/10.3200/JOEB.82.5.258-266.] is developed to model communication self-efficacy, outcome expectancy and behavioral intentions of the students. The data consists of the results of 131 first-year accounting students, and this paper contributes by helping to pinpoint two self-efficacy techniques to improving students' communication skills: 'personal mastery' and 'mentor support'.

The execution of accounting activities in accordance with the understanding of social responsibility is directly related to the management of businesses based on the principles of sustainability, transparency and, accountability. In this context, notions of sustainable accounting and reporting emerge, which pertain to the public disclosure of accounting operations in transparency and accountability. This research investigated scientific studies on sustainability accounting and reporting by using bibliometric indices. In this regard, the scanned Scopus database articles were categorized with regarding to the topic headings and their contents defined in accordance with the relevant literature. The literature search yielded a total of 817 papers. After filtering, 378 articles were deemed suitable for the analysis. According to the analysis results, the most productive year for the publication of research papers on sustainable accounting was the year 2020, with 47 publications. Based upon the research findings, it can be asserted that the United Kingdom has the most publications, and the most effective journal is the "Accounting, Auditing and Accountability Journal". Finally, keyword analysis shows that "sustainable development", "environmental management" and "environmental impact" are the most frequent keywords. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper conducts a comprehensive sources‐of‐growth analysis for the UK market sector, 2000–19, using the latest ONS data, including new estimates of intangible investment, double deflated value‐added, and updated price indices, all constructed bottom‐up from data for 40 industries. The decomposition incorporates contributions from intangible assets, both capitalized and uncapitalized, in national accounts. Our main findings are that first, slowdowns in labour productivity are largest in more intangible‐, knowledge‐, technology‐ and digital‐intensive industries, using numerous definitions. Second, the labour productivity slowdown can be accounted for largely by a slowdown in 'innovation', where innovation is shorthand for contributions of intangible capital deepening and TFP growth. We show that: (a) the level of labour productivity in 2019 was 27 log points (31 percentage points) less than had it continued to grow at its 2000–7 rate; (b) reallocation of labour did not contribute to the slowdown; (c) capitalization of the full range of intangibles accounts for 5% of the slowdown; (d) 35% is accounted for by a slowdown in capital deepening (25% tangible, 10% intangible), and 78% by a slowdown in TFP growth; and (e) less than one‐tenth of the TFP slowdown can be accounted for by exceptionally fast growth pre‐crisis. This paper is part of the Economica 100 Series. Economica, the LSE "house journal" is now 100 years old. To commemorate this achievement, we are publishing 100 papers by former students, as well as current and former faculty. Jonathan Haskel graduated from the LSE with an MSc in Economics (1985) and a PhD in Economics (1990). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: This paper aims to explore problems facing the recruitment of accounting and finance staff in research-led universities. "University accounting and finance (A&F) departments are experiencing difficulty in attracting and retaining suitably qualified staff" (Duff and Monk, 2006, p. 194). The literature identifies a number of reasons for the shortage of A&F phenomenon (Duff and Monk, 2006; Smith and Urquhart, 2018), including, the wide salary gap between academe and industry profession, difficulty in achieving publications in highly rated journal, high workload in teaching and marking due the limited number of A&F staff. Design/methodology/approach: The paper provides new insights for the use of the grounded theory and how the theory has been generated from the semi-structured interviews. Findings: This study has resulted in eight main challenges emerged, and a final theory has been generated. Implications of this research on business schools are valuable in research-led universities, the A&F staff recruitment strategies and the A&F research strategies in research-led universities. Originality/value: The novelty of this research is based on the induction of the challenges that a business school faces, as a case study for a research-intensive teaching-led UK university, in recruiting new A and F appointees and retaining existing members of staff. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In contrast to the conventional focus on recruits and members, this paper examines identity construction in professional organisations. It explores authenticity work – identification activity directed at external audiences to assert distinctiveness. The focus is on commemorative celebrations of the Institute of Chartered Accountants of Scotland (ICAS) and the Institute of Chartered Accountants in England and Wales (ICAEW) during the twentieth century. Evidence from archival and published documents demonstrates that the chartered bodies in Britain were anxious to assert their uniqueness in an increasingly congested professional field. The analysis shows that ICAS made authenticity claims based on its unique position as the first accountancy body in the modern world and emphasised its status as the originator of the institutions of the accountancy profession. The ICAEW, by contrast, initially stressed its alignment to progress and modernity and later emphasised its standing as the leading professional body located at the centre of economic and political power. It is suggested that comprehending the authenticity claims of these organisations is potentially significant to understanding the fragmentation of the chartered accountancy profession in Britain. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates relations between audit committee expertise, auditors' disclosures of key audit matters (KAMs) and audit committees' disclosures of significant issues (SIs) in the United Kingdom. We find that audit committee accounting and industry expertise reduces both total KAMs and KAMs that are unmatched with SI disclosures. Further, changes in audit committee accounting and industry expertise significantly affect auditors' subsequent adoptions of previous SIs as new KAMs. This subsequent adoption of unmatched SIs is negatively related to prior abnormal audit fees but is not significantly related to prior abnormal accruals, suggesting that an auditor's initial omission of a subsequently adopted SI may be a consequence of lower audit effort but is not necessarily a signal of lower audit quality. The overall results are consistent with non‐alignment of KAMs or SIs being consequences of ineffective communications and that communication or AC persuasiveness improves when AC accounting expertise increases. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

How do accounting practices interact with processes of state transformation? Focusing on the privatisation of social housing in the UK, we clarify an important mechanism through which accounting practices served to constitute material incentives in favour of privatisation. Our archival research demonstrates that the UK government's atypical practice of including public corporations' liabilities in its own debt calculations shaped discussions and decisions over the transfer of public housing stock to non-state Housing Associations in the 1980s. By unpacking the constitutive relationship between accounting practices and material incentives, we advance and bring together scholarship on state transformation and the politics of accounting. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: Focusing on the quality of teaching and learning, this study aims to explore the perceptions of accountancy students in two emerging UK Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) of the quality of their learning experiences and the impact of these experiences on generic skills development. Design/methodology/approach: A questionnaire survey was used to collect the data. OLS regression was used to test the hypothesis regarding the impact of student learning experiences (lecturer ability, assessment and curriculum) on generic skills development. Findings: Students value the lecturer as the most important determinant of the quality of their experience. They rated their assessment programme very positively, and the curriculum suggests that students tend to experience a deep blended approach to learning. They also felt that they acquired a wide range of soft competency skills such as those associated with research, critical thinking and time management. Multivariate findings indicate that lecturer ability and curriculum contribute significantly and positively to generic skills development. Practical implications: The study provides a benchmark for international accounting and business educators in any efforts to assess the efficacy of HE delivery since the pandemic. By implication, it enables the identification of enhancements to the previous character of delivery and hence offers the means to direct improvements to the student experience. Such improvements can then be seen in the National Student Survey (NSS) scores, thereby positively contributing to the next Teaching Excellence Framework. Additionally, such tangible enhancements in NSS scores may be advantageous to HEIs, in the UK and other Western countries, in their efforts to recruit international students on whom they place great reliance for increased revenue, to their international business education programmes. Originality/value: This study addresses the research gap surrounding the link between teaching and learning approaches in accounting and the development of generic skills. Furthermore, acknowledging that the COVID-19 pandemic with its imposed structural change in the HE teaching and learning environment ushered in a new model of curriculum delivery, this study reflects on the pre-COVID-19 scenario and gathers student perceptions of their teaching and learning experiences before the changes necessitated by lockdowns. It therefore brings the opportunity to anchor future research exploring the post-COVID-19 environment and secure comparative analyses. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Corporate governance remains the focus of current research and a concept that continues to evolve to meet the needs of business managers. Faced with the need for companies to cope with a world characterized by perpetual change and successive economic crises (Prowse in Revue d'économie financière 31:119–158, 1994), the identification of the results of the implementation of good governance mechanisms in the structure of the management of companies on financial performance remains a necessity that helps managers and researchers specialized in management sciences and financial accounting to have a better visibility on the importance of corporate governance. It should be mentioned that the economic environment and the characteristics of the sectors of activity of the companies remain a relevant criterion in the study of the relation between the governance of the companies and their financial performance. In this sense, we have tried through this research work to study the impact of the implementation of effective corporate governance on the financial performance of 160 companies in the UK between 2005 and 2018 while taking into account the specificity of the business sectors. Through our study, we used multivariate regressions based on FGLS models while dividing our sample to several clusters. As a result, we found that the implementation of good corporate governance leads to the improvement of the financial performance of companies measured by the return on equity. As a motivation, it must be said that this study can be of major importance for future studies that want to make comparisons on the sectoral and temporal level. Indeed, this study gives the possibility for future research work to make comparative studies based on comparisons for different sectors of activity in the UK before and after the Brexit and also after the COVID 19 period. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The rising incidence, variety and severity of extreme events that threaten both business and society has increased interest in promoting resilience to such threats. However, relatively little research has explored the potential contributions of the accounting profession to resilience at multiple scales and levels of analysis. To address the need for additional research, in this study we explore the contributions of the accounting profession to resilience during COVID-19. Drawing on a unique database of over 26,000 social media posts by the two principal professional accounting bodies in the UK context (ICAEW, ACCA) and UK-based accounts of the 'Big 4' professional services firms (PwC, Deloitte, EY, and KPMG), as well as user-engagement with those posts, we highlight processes by which the accounting profession encouraged resilience among individuals, organisations, and wider society. Our findings illuminate how the accounting profession contributed to resilience by supporting more effective crisis responses (by sharing trusted advice and shaping policy responses), better crisis adaptation (by crafting post-crisis futures and empowering the profession), and improved future crisis anticipation (by challenging complacency and being good citizens). We build on our analysis to propose a new framework characterising pathways for professions contributing to resilience. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

"The Accounting Profession and its Mission Forgotten" is an unpublished manuscript by E. Joe DeMaris (1919–2010). It is reproduced here with an introductory note. DeMaris was one of the more prominent individuals among his generation of accounting academics, administrators, and observers of the accounting profession. The manuscript investigates the development of the accounting profession from the 17th century in Great Britain to the 20th century in the United States. The manuscript was written in 1997 and foreshadows several events of the 21st century, such as the tension arising from the cross-selling of consulting services to audit clients, the auditor capture that brought down Arthur Andersen, and the failure of "trickle-down economics" to bring about economic prosperity for the masses. Contemporary readers will find DeMaris' manuscript pertinent as we reflect on the 50th anniversary of the Academy of Accounting Historians and consider the role of accounting in the 21st century. JEL Classifications: M41; M42; M48. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We examine the relation between auditor size and audit quality for a sample of U.K. private firms. Private firms prioritize tax considerations over reducing information asymmetry in their financial reporting. We find that Big 4's private clients exhibit higher levels of discretionary accruals and lower precision of accrual estimates than non-Big 4's private clients. Although Big 4 auditors are less tolerant of income-increasing earnings management, they leave more room for downward earnings management and their private clients are able to engage in greater tax avoidance. These results are stronger for standalone firms than for business groups as the latter's greater demand for stakeholder communication motivates Big 4 auditors to increase audit quality. Collectively, our evidence suggests that Big 4 auditors adjust audit quality in a more competitive segment of the audit market where client firms generally perceive the benefit from tax minimization to outweigh the cost of reduced earnings informativeness. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The United Kingdom (UK) Financial Reporting Council (FRC) introduced expanded audit reports to improve audit report disclosures and render audits more transparent to financial statement users. This study examines audit materiality threshold disclosures, providing descriptive evidence of how auditors disclose materiality information in UK audit reports. This research uses manual content analysis (i) to assess auditors' benchmarks and the percentages auditors apply to those benchmarks. The analysis examines (ii) auditors' use of non‐GAAP benchmarks, including non‐recurring and recurring item exclusions and (iii) auditors' rationales for their benchmark choices. The research finds that auditors choose a wide variety of benchmarks and apply a wide range of percentages to the chosen benchmarks. Non‐GAAP adjustments are pervasive. Auditors' rationales for benchmark choices include that the benchmark is a financial statement performance measure, and the benchmark eliminates volatility. The authors question whether the FRC's expanded disclosures have met its transparency objectives and concludes that 'more (disclosure) is less'. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Drawing on historical data largely relating to Price Waterhouse Coopers (PwC), this article examines the early professionalisation of accountancy as a gendered process. Mobilising Acker's (1990) theory of the ideal worker, this article highlights articulations of an ideal professional accountant, coded as male and masculine in the gendering of professional skills and knowledge, image management, networking and social class. Additionally, social changes such as WW1 reshaped the masculine nature of the ideal professional accountant in PwC, emphasising a militaristic masculinity, to support the war effort. While women were temporarily employed in accountancy clerical jobs in wartime, this does not appear to have re-gendered PwC as an organisation inclusive of femininity and women. However, it is noted that some middle-class women challenged exclusionary professional practices within accountancy. The implications of the gendered aspects of the professionalisation of accountancy are discussed throughout the article. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We examine the implications of auditor education for audit quality and audit pricing. We exploit a novel institutional setting in the UK, where auditors major in many different degrees at university and signing auditors are identifiable. Using hand-collected data for a large sample of signing auditors, we establish two main findings. First, auditors whose degrees have a quantitative orientation are associated with higher accruals quality and higher audit fees than those with more qualitative degrees. Second, auditors with degrees directly relevant to accounting are also associated with higher accruals quality and increased audit fees relative to auditors with unrelated university degrees in qualitative subjects. Overall, our study provides evidence that heterogeneity in auditor education is associated with divergent audit outcomes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although previous studies have explored the disciplinary procedures and sanctions by PABs, the focus of these studies has often been generalized to all forms of infringements. This has prevented specific attention on the most severe ethical breaches by PAB members, that is, offences leading to exclusion. Consequently, we do not know their prevalence, the features of these behaviors or the motivating factors for their perpetration by members of the UK's PABs. Clarity on these issues is in the public interest given the centrality of the role of the accounting profession to the efficient functioning of the financial system. We used the fraud triangle theory to shed light on these issues. Our analysis is based on the entire population of 141 serious cases that led to members' exclusion. We developed an analytical framework that focused on the nature of the infringements, their prevalence amongst the PABs, and the variety of explanations provided by the culprits. Our analysis shows that criminal convictions and breach of ethical guidance are the two major causes of exclusion. Our findings have implications for the PABs in their attempts to ensure their members' ethical behavior and the adequacy of their disciplinary process. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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