Legitimacy theory may explain the failure of global adoption of IFRS: the case of Europe and the U.S.

We investigate the reasons why “adoption” of one set of globally accepted accounting standards is presently unachievable. By “adoption” we mean that a jurisdiction incorporates IFRS instantly as its national accounting as issued by the IASB. We state that the IASB has used a Legitimacy Theory strategy to gain acceptance of its standards by more than 120 countries across the globe but it has only gained pseudo-“adoption” (not as published by the IASB) of its standards by many countries. We contend that achieving policing and enforcement of its standards globally has proven to be empirically illusive. This legitimacy deficit may explain why convergence between the IASB and FASB is currently idle. We offer a possible solution to bridging the legitimacy gap of global adoption of IFRS. We propose an internationally respected regulator and suggest the IOSCO for this role through its participation in the IFRS Foundation Monitoring Board for policing and enforcement of IFRS for cross-listed firms reporting in compliance with IFRS so that the IASB’s output legitimacy may be achieved globally.     

Organizational change and rigidity during crisis: A review of the paradox

When and how do existential crises, threatening business continuity, stimulate organizational change or cause the opposite—rigid preservation of established business practices? This question remains unresolved, despite three decades of deliberations in the academic literature, which still yields contradicting theoretical arguments and empirical results. One view argues and finds support for the hypothesis that posits an amplified propensity to change within threatened organizations. The other view supports the threat-rigidity thesis, implying reinforcing habitual practices. In this paper, we provide a novel holistic typology of organizational crises and then review the literature on the topic, summarizing existing insights within a theoretical framework comprising three interrelated sequential processes: organizational cognition, decision-making, and implementation. We analyze the gaps in the field's knowledge within each process and propose a research agenda to address these voids.     

Industry-Dominated Science Advisory Boards Are Perceived To Be Legitimate…But Only When They Recommend More Stringent Risk Management Policies

In 2017, the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) was criticized for two controversial directives that restricted the eligibility of academic scientists to serve on the agency's key science advisory boards (SABs). The EPA portrayed these directives as necessary to ensure the integrity of the SAB. Critics portrayed them as a tactic by the agency to advance a more industry-friendly deregulatory agenda. With this backdrop, this research examined board composition and its effect on the perceived legitimacy of risk management recommendations by the SAB. In an experiment, we presented participants with hypothetical EPA SABs composed of different proportions of academic and industry scientists. We then asked participants to rate their satisfaction with, and the legitimacy of, these boards in light of their decisions in scenarios based on actual EPA SAB deliberations. Participants perceived higher levels of satisfaction and legitimacy when SABs made more stringent risk management recommendations. While SABs dominated by industry scientists were perceived to be more strongly motivated to protect business interests, we found no effect of board composition on perceptions of satisfaction and legitimacy. These results are consistent with prior research on decision quality that suggests people use normative outcomes as a heuristic for assessing the quality of deliberations. Moreover, these results suggest that members of the public are supportive of federal SABs regardless of their composition, but only if they take actions that are consistent with normative expectations.     

Product innovation input and outcome: moderating effects of the innovation process

In this research, we propose and examine the proposition that product innovation process is a moderator in the “innovation input–outcome” relationship. Innovation input involves R&D spending in relation to sales or R&D intensity. Innovation outcome involves innovation frequency or the number of new products developed and marketed. Innovation process involves the level of integration in organizational mechanisms: functional coordination, tool arrangement, and external relationship. Data from 45 medical and surgical device makers suggest that functional integration is a significant moderator in the innovation input–outcome relationship. External integration has only main effects whereas tool integration has neither main nor interaction effects on innovation frequency. Results could, however, be industry and sample specific. We discuss the implications of these findings for product innovation theory and research.     

Impairment or amortization of goodwill? An analysis of CFO perceptions of goodwill accounting

Given the ongoing controversy around the accounting treatment of goodwill and the search by the International Accounting Standards Board (IASB) and Financial Accounting Standards Board (FASB) for improvements to goodwill accounting, this study surveys a global sample of 352 chief financial officers (CFOs) to understand their perceptions of adopting a goodwill impairment-only approach compared to an amortization model. More than half of the respondents agree that alternative accounting treatments of impairment testing might provide more useful information. However, almost two thirds still prefer goodwill impairment testing to the amortization process. Theoretically, the study shows that the impairment-only model preference is associated with characteristics on an individual, firm and country level. The results indicate that more expert CFOs and overall CFO perceptions of firms’ economic conditions and the role of external auditors affect preference for the goodwill accounting model. Further, there is evidence that dominant ownership structures and accounting culture affect CFO preferences. The study investigates several areas in which regulators and standard setters can intervene, thereby contributing to the debate on whether to reintroduce the amortization of goodwill.     

Business and Management Studies in the 2014 Research Excellence Framework

The Research Excellence Framework 2014 (REF 2014) was the 7th formal assessment of research in UK universities and other institutions of higher education. Participation in these assessments is voluntary, and institutions can decide which staff to include and under which discipline to include them. A hundred and one institutions chose to submit research in Business and Management Studies, and this work was assessed by a panel of academic researchers and research users nominated by a wide range of academic constituencies. The previous assessment exercise was conducted in 2008, and REF 2014 shows that the quality of UK research in Business and Management Studies, already high in 2008, has improved since then. The operation of the Business and Management Studies sub‐panel is described, the results are summarized, and a few caveats are discussed so as to aid the Business and Management Studies community in its endeavours to understand and evaluate the process and the results.     

Stigma Happens: Social Problems in the Siting of Nuclear Waste Facilities

The paper by Metz challenges the view that stigma associated with a nuclear waste repository might lead to significant economic losses to the host region. We have been invited to comment on the general issues raised by this paper. We find that much of the evidence presented in the paper consists of factual and conceptual errors and misrepresentations of the research literature. Based on our review of evidence documenting the social and economic impacts of perceived risk, we conclude that stigma is an important phenomenon that is symptomatic of fundamental problems with the way in which nuclear waste facilities are sited.     

在线评论回报的动态声誉机制研究

当前学界研究主要集中于网络评论的声誉机制或虚假评论的识别策略,好评返现可以看作是声誉的交易(消费者给予好评,商家报以返现),而对此类带有一定贿赂性质的、诱导性的评论的声誉机制研究不多。本文以某网络购物平台2016和2017年两次追踪调查数据为样本,实证研究了好评返现是如何作用于最终声誉评价的。实证结果发现,好评返现对店铺声誉累积的实际影响并不是完全正向的,而是以店铺初始声誉等级为阈值,对于信誉等级较高的店铺(品牌商家)不敏感,对于信誉等级较低的店铺(新进卖家)比较敏感;商家是否参与好评返现并非内生于店铺的初始信誉评价,而更多的是提升信誉评分或对冲部分负面评论;消费者是否参与好评返现与其行为意愿和态度不存在显著关联,匿名环境往往使消费者更易做出内心并不认同却能获益的行为。     

Modeling the Role of Inventories and Heterogeneity in the Assessment of the Economic Costs of Natural Disasters

Estimates of the cost of potential disasters, including indirect economic consequences, are an important input in the design of risk management strategies. The adaptive regional input‐output (ARIO) inventory model is a tool to assess indirect disaster losses and to analyze their drivers. It is based on an input‐output structure, but it also (i) explicitly represents production bottlenecks and input scarcity and (ii) introduces inventories as an additional flexibility in the production system. This modeling strategy distinguishes between (i) essential supplies that cannot be stocked (e.g., electricity, water) and whose scarcity can paralyze all economic activity; (ii) essential supplies that can be stocked at least temporarily (e.g., steel, chemicals), whose scarcity creates problems only over the medium term; and (iii) supplies that are not essential in the production process, whose scarcity is problematic only over the long run and are therefore easy to replace with imports. The model is applied to the landfall of Hurricane Katrina in Louisiana and identifies two periods in the disaster aftermath: (1) the first year, during which production bottlenecks are responsible for large output losses; (2) the rest of the reconstruction period, during which bottlenecks are inexistent and output losses lower. This analysis also suggests important research questions and policy options to mitigate disaster‐related output losses.     

Struktur und Entwicklung der Rechnungslegungsforschung in deutschen wissenschaftlichen Zeitschriften

Against the dynamic background of the convergence of German financial accounting standards to its international counterparts as well as an increasingly internationally oriented accounting research, the authors of this article seek to present a contribution to improve our understanding of the structure and development of German financial accounting research. To this end, they analyse the co-citation patterns of 681 research articles on financial accounting topics published between 1970 and 2007 in four leading German academic journals. The study’s findings show that while the structure of German financial accounting research has experienced profound change over time it is still different from that in international accounting research.     

会计准则国际趋同度量方法拓展——模糊聚类分析法初探

一般认为,会计国际协调/趋同①包括形式协调(准则协调)和实质协调(实务协调)两个方面.形式趋同是实质趋同的基础和前提,是当前国内外会计领域研究的热点问题,也是会计职业发展的重点领域.形式趋同程度的检验无论对会计理论的发展,还是对会计实务的改进都至关重要.由于会计国际趋同程度的量化研究方法存在多例证现象,以致研究结论相互矛盾或难以解释.本文以会计形式趋同度量为研究内容,在对国内外有关文献回顾的基础上,针对现有度量方法的不足和会计准则本身的特性,提出了会计形式趋同度量的新方法---模糊聚类分析法,并以我国会计准则为例,在对比点、度量方法的选择、度量的内容等方面对该领域方法论和方法创新进行了初步尝试.     

制造系统生产单元碳排放核算模型

制造业是我国国民经济的支柱产业，但也是环境污染物排放的主要来源、能源消耗主体和温室气体排放大户。制造系统高能耗、高物耗、高碳排放的加工过程是造成制造业碳排放量大的重要原因。生产单元作为制造系统的加工的主体，其碳排放量的核算是确定整个制造系统乃至制造业碳排放总量的关键。本文首先对生产单元的原材料、电能、辅助物料及废屑处理所引起的碳排放进行分析，确定生产单元的碳排放源；其次，产品合格率的不同会造成生产单元输入及输出的成品/半成品数量的差异，进而影响生产单元单位产品的碳排放量，在此基础上，综合考虑了原材料、电能、辅助物料及废屑处理的碳排放情况，构建了给定工艺流程下生产单元碳排放核算模型。最后，结合一汽车排气装置加工实例，分别核算加工过程中九个生产单元的碳排放量，验证了模型的可行性。     

Acting globally but thinking locally? The enduring influence of local communities on organizations

We develop an institutionally oriented theory of how and why local communities continue to matter for organizations in a global age. Since globalization has taken center stage in both practitioner and academic circles, research has shifted away from understanding effects of local factors. Our approach runs counter to the idea that globalization is a homogeneity-producing process, and to the view that society is moving from particularism to universalism. We argue that with globalization, not only has the local remained important, but in many ways local particularities have become more visible and salient. We unpack the market, regulative, social, and cultural mechanisms that result in this enduring community influence while reviewing classic and contemporary research from organizational theory, sociology, and economics that have focused on geographic influences on organizations. In this paper, our aim is to redirect theoretical and empirical attention back to understanding the determinants and importance of local influences. We suggest that because organizations are simultaneously embedded in geographic communities and organizational fields, by accounting for both of these areas, researchers will better understand isomorphism and change dynamics.     

A process for hierarchical decision making with multiple objectives

This research was motivated by a recurring management problem of a large service organization in Philadelphia. The problem concerns the contraction of service facilities. Typically, management decisions of this type and magnitude affect the entire management hierarchy. Each manager in the hierarchy may have several objectives with respect to the problem. The perspective of each manager can contribute to the decision-making process by providing additional insight into both (a) what should be done and (b) the resistance to implementation which may result. Thus the output of this research is not a solution to a particular problem but rather a process for providing critical information for decisions of this type. This paper generalizes the information gathering process and presents the results of eliciting objectives from managers, formalizing objectives into measurable attributes, and interacting with the decision makers to use their implicit preference relationships over the set of Pareto-optimal alternatives. Intuitively, the procedure is appealing as it is flexible enough to allow formal input from all pertinent decision makers in the organization, it is hierarchically consistent, it is politically acceptable, and it is not cumbersome to apply.     

Looking Inside Glitch Mitigation Capability: The Effect of Intraorganizational Communication Channels

Manufacturers can reduce the occurrence of glitches in their operations by building capabilities to prevent them, yet mitigation capabilities are also needed to contain the effects of the glitches that will still inevitably occur every now and then. We examine the glitch mitigation capability of a production process from an information‐processing perspective and propose that (i) the impact of operational glitches on delivery performance is contingent on the formalization of intrafirm communication channels and (ii) this effect is stronger when formal communication channels are complemented with informal channels. We test our model in a sample of 163 make‐to‐order production processes and find support for the first hypothesis and partial support for the second hypothesis. The statistical analyses also reveal nonhypothesized empirical regularities, which we explore through an additional qualitative study based on 34 site visits and 30 interviews with production planners. The results have practical implications for the design of intraorganizational communication channels, and they also contribute to the research on organizational resilience and communications by showing that when coping with disruptions, the formal communication channels have advantages that are seldom discussed in the literature or recognized by practitioners.     

Zur Zeitwertbilanzierung latenter Steuern in der internationalen Rechnungslegung

The significance of deferred taxes was increased by the introduction of international financial reporting standards. However, the usefulness of the information provided by interperiod tax allocation is regarded with skepticism by researchers and practitioners alike. This is largely due to the overestimation of the book value of non-current deferred tax liabilities and deferred tax assets as the present value of these items is disregarded. The IASB refuses to discount deferred taxes even though this would comply with the underlying asset-liability-concept. The IASB justifies the ban on discounting deferred taxes by the ??supposed?? high complexity; hence, cost-benefit considerations. The paper at hand analyses critical issues regarding the determination of the present value of deferred taxes. An approach for determining the maturity of deferred taxes, a risk-adequate discount rate and an approach for the derivation of a feasible net present value calculation are proposed. It is shown that discounting of deferred taxes is generally possible without resulting in more complex estimations than in those of other accounting areas. Despite the inevitable discretion management has in estimating the present value, it is still possible to represent such information faithfully so that the relevant information is useful to external users.     

The Conventions of Management Research and their Relevance to Management Practice

This paper recognizes the failure of management research to communicate with practitioners, and speculates over the reasons why this may be the case. It is possible that the researchers’ interests may not always coincide with management practitioners’; however, even when such interests are congruent, it seems that relatively little management research is published in practitioner journals. We suggest that this is because academic research is written in a style that tends to alienate most practitioners. This paper isolates the stylistic conventions associated with research targeted to academics (typically published in academic journals) and research targeted to practitioners (typically published in practitioner‐oriented journals). Such stylistic differences are illustrated through a study of organizational change whose findings have been published in both academic and practitioner format, namely in the Administrative Science Quarterly and the Harvard Business Review. We suggest that the gap between these two types of research could be narrowed through processes of translation (i.e. academic jargon could be translated in practitioner language). In addition we might consider greater use of Mode 2 research over Mode 1 research (academic). Mode 2 research presupposes that teams of academics and practitioners assemble to define the research problem and methodology in terms appropriate to a particular context and in a way that accounts for all existing interests so that translation processes are seamless. However, Mode 2 creates its own gap in that the knowledge is more contextual and may not reach a wide audience.     

The State of Accounting and the State of the State

The purpose of this paper is to present a study of the evolution of accounting regulation within one country in the context of that country's historical development, the origins and motivations of the legal system and the state, and the subsequent outcomes in terms of accounting rules and regulations. The case in point is Greece. However, the paper neither describes specific regulatory practices in a systematic manner nor rules that exist for the preparation of the financial statements. It is concerned instead with the relationship between the state and corporate accountability.In the context of accounting regulation, Greece has recently attracted attention in the research literature. Papas (1993) and Ballas (1994) were among the first to describe to an international academic audience various institutional aspects of corporate accounting in Greece while Neal (1997) has attempted to describe the social and economic forces that have shaped its development. However, this study offers new insights into the institutional framework of accounting and in particular the relationship of the state to accounting regulation.     

Accounting for the formation of scientific fields in organization studies

There are few qualitative organizational accounts that explore the constitution of scientific fields in management. We developed a methodology for understanding the academic modes of scientific knowledge production in management research from the perspective of the sociology of scientific knowledge (SSK) and actor-network theory (ANT). SSK and ANT offer a way to account for how scientific fields in organization studies are enacted. Key to this process are splitting and inversion of statements; credibility and network formation; and the concepts of credit, trajectory, and position. Specific statements making key knowledge claims (e.g., handbooks, special editions) are situated in academic practices that obscure those rhetorical strategies that enable the production of a network of knowledge that can act, organizationally, as a more or less unified sub-field. We take as a starting point a collection of texts, dated 2011, which sought to systematize the main currents of a disciplinary sub-field during the last decade, focusing on how statements are transformed into scientific certainty and how the question of credibility is established. The sub-field is that of organizational learning (OL). The particular language of OL relies on approaches that make its epistemic assumptions intelligible within a network. It is a language that tends to reify and naturalize specific practices that become accredited as organization learning. The material/textual artifacts that sustain these practices, instead of being reified, can be reframed as enacting a scientific field whose resignification acts upon the network that enabled its existence.     

羊群行为激励作用的实验研究

通过博弈模型发现,在信息完全的条件下,由于个体的自利将导致创新投入行为的事前效率低下,而在信息不完全的条件下产生的羊群行为会使得搭便车的企图落空,因而具有改善这种低效困境的作用。接下来将模型参数化,通过实验室实验的方法,以高年级本科生为被试对象,对理论的预测进行实际验证。最终的实验结果表明:①完全信息条件下行动的事前效率是一个逐渐降低的过程,趋于理论的均衡但又不稳定于其上;②羊群行为确实具有积极的激励作用,但也有很大的局限性。