{"title":"Boreal First Nation: An Assurance and Financial Reporting Case on a Remote Indigenous Community*","authors":"Merridee Bujaki, Camillo Lento","doi":"10.1111/1911-3838.12408","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/1911-3838.12408","url":null,"abstract":"<p>Financial accounting and accountability requirements for many Indigenous communities in Canada can be complex, yet very few accounting programs and students cover these issues. This case introduces financial reporting and assurance issues pertaining to a remote First Nations community in a realistic, yet fictional, setting. Students assume the role of a senior manager planning for the initial audit engagement with Boreal First Nation. A detailed appendix to the case provides background information on the complex historical, social, regulatory, and practical nature of Indigenous assurance engagements. The case includes detailed financial statements for Boreal First Nation prepared in accordance with Public Sector Accounting Standards in addition to special reporting requirements based on the <i>First Nations Financial Transparency Act</i>. The case fosters students' professional judgment and intercultural competence in relation to audit planning considerations (e.g., overall financial statement–level risks, materiality, and approach) along with special reporting and financial reporting (e.g., investments and tangible capital assets) issues unique to a remote First Nation.</p>","PeriodicalId":43435,"journal":{"name":"Accounting Perspectives","volume":"24 4","pages":"947-963"},"PeriodicalIF":0.9,"publicationDate":"2025-06-30","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/1911-3838.12408","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145695607","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"What's the Holdup? Sustainability Reporting's Uneven Push into Areas of “Old Guard” Traditional Accounting: A Bibliometric Analysis*","authors":"Sanobar Anjum Siddiqui, S. Leanne Keddie","doi":"10.1111/1911-3838.12402","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/1911-3838.12402","url":null,"abstract":"<p>Sustainability accounting has encountered strong headwinds while advancing into “old guard” traditional accounting. To understand the status of sustainability accounting with regard to public interest, in this paper we examine the peer-reviewed accounting literature of the last 10 years using a robust bibliometric approach. Through co-citation analysis, bibliographic coupling, and co-word analysis, we find that despite the “old guard” headwinds, sustainability accounting has been progressing into traditional accounting. Disciplines that appear to intersect with sustainability accounting include assurance, taxation, marketing, and supply chain management; conversely, disciplines that lag behind include financial and management accounting. Compared to sustainability reporting and corporate social responsibility, environmental, social, and governance is less researched. The journal with the largest number of sustainability accounting articles is <i>Meditari Accountancy Research</i>, while <i>Critical Perspectives on Accounting</i> has garnered the most citations among the journals. Jan Bebbington is the author with the highest citation count. The findings of this bibliometric analysis reveal not only the status of sustainability accounting but also the “big picture” patterns in accounting research.</p>","PeriodicalId":43435,"journal":{"name":"Accounting Perspectives","volume":"24 3","pages":"695-733"},"PeriodicalIF":0.9,"publicationDate":"2025-06-19","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/1911-3838.12402","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145008004","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Overwork: A Review of the Literature and Importance to Management Accounting Research*","authors":"Ala Mokhtar","doi":"10.1111/1911-3838.12409","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/1911-3838.12409","url":null,"abstract":"<p>In this paper, I examine the literature on overwork, and I discuss its significance to the management accounting literature. Overwork, or working long hours, is a prevalent phenomenon, particularly among professional workers. Despite its pervasiveness, overwork has seldom been addressed in the accounting literature or studied as a distinct construct in managerial accounting research. Consequently, there is limited understanding of the management controls that contribute to overwork and the consequences of overwork in a management accounting context. This is despite overwork directly relating to an assumption in the management accounting literature that management controls are needed to motivate otherwise effort-averse employees. In this paper, the existing literature on employee overwork, primarily sourced from outside of accounting, is systematically reviewed and categorized into reasons for overwork and consequences of overwork. I discuss reasons at the economic, individual, job, and organization levels that are proposed as antecedents of overwork in the literature. I also find that there are negative consequences to overwork in the work domain as well as outside of work and to employee health, in addition to important macro-level consequences. Additionally, some relevant findings from the accounting literature are discussed. This paper also identifies significant gaps in the overwork literature from a management accounting perspective and discusses future research opportunities.</p>","PeriodicalId":43435,"journal":{"name":"Accounting Perspectives","volume":"24 3","pages":"813-840"},"PeriodicalIF":0.9,"publicationDate":"2025-06-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/1911-3838.12409","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145012713","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Determinants and Consequences of SEC Comment Letters: A Review*","authors":"Valerie Li, Yan Luo","doi":"10.1111/1911-3838.12405","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/1911-3838.12405","url":null,"abstract":"<p>This paper comprehensively reviews the determinants and consequences of SEC comment letters and provides an up-to-date synthesis of the research in this area. The review identifies the accounting standards, firm characteristics, and management attributes that influence the likelihood of receiving a comment letter and highlights significant gaps in the literature. The study reveals that SEC comment letters can lead to improved financial reporting and disclosure quality by reducing information asymmetry and enhancing stakeholders' decision-making. However, the review also identifies some unintended consequences, including increased insider trading and audit fees. The findings have significant implications for various stakeholders. Regulators can use the insights to conduct more effective and efficient reviews, while practitioners can develop best practices to navigate the SEC comment letter process. The paper identifies future research areas and emphasizes the importance of developing precise measurement instruments to better understand the effects of different types of SEC reviews.</p>","PeriodicalId":43435,"journal":{"name":"Accounting Perspectives","volume":"24 3","pages":"735-786"},"PeriodicalIF":0.9,"publicationDate":"2025-06-13","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145007967","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Carillion's Fall: Accounting for Construction Projects*","authors":"Mary Gillett, Darren Henderson, Pooja Krishen","doi":"10.1111/1911-3838.12407","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/1911-3838.12407","url":null,"abstract":"<p>This case describes the circumstances surrounding the fall of Carillion plc, a large UK construction company. Carillion issued a series of write-downs that hurt investor confidence and led to debt covenant violations. Students assume the role of a fictional investor, Holly Chapman, who has lost money investing in Carillion. Chapman is seeking to understand what went wrong with the company that led to its demise. To do so, she needs to analyze the company's risky contracts, governance structure, auditors, and accounting choices. The case allows students to explore a rich and complex scenario of business failure. It is set in the United Kingdom, but Carillion reports under IFRS and faces business and governance challenges that translate easily to the Canadian context and elsewhere. The case is best suited to MBA, Executive MBA, and upper-year undergraduate classes in accounting or governance. It provides an opportunity to explore (1) risk management, (2) governance, auditor, and regulator failures, and (3) accounting for construction projects, goodwill impairment, early payment facilities, and pensions.</p>","PeriodicalId":43435,"journal":{"name":"Accounting Perspectives","volume":"24 4","pages":"927-945"},"PeriodicalIF":0.9,"publicationDate":"2025-06-13","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/1911-3838.12407","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145695496","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Earnings Disclosures and Investor Judgments: The Joint Effect of Incidental Affect and Emotion-Understanding Ability*","authors":"Michael J. Wynes","doi":"10.1111/1911-3838.12406","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/1911-3838.12406","url":null,"abstract":"<p>This study uses an experiment to investigate the influence of investors' irrelevant feelings (e.g., positive vs. negative) on their financial judgments, with a specific focus on the role that emotion-understanding ability plays in mitigating their biases. The participants in the experiment were exposed to emotionally charged social media posts before a positive earnings announcement was made by a company in which they had invested. The results indicate that investors with lower emotion-understanding ability displayed biased judgments influenced by their feelings that were evoked by irrelevant content. Notably, the findings show that the negative and positive feelings elicited by irrelevant information led to lower investor judgments. Conversely, those with higher emotion-understanding ability were able to resist these biases, focusing on the relevant information. This research underscores the critical role of emotional intelligence in financial decision-making and highlights how investors' feelings can inadvertently distort their perceptions, particularly in environments saturated with irrelevant, emotionally charged information, such as social media.</p>","PeriodicalId":43435,"journal":{"name":"Accounting Perspectives","volume":"24 3","pages":"787-812"},"PeriodicalIF":0.9,"publicationDate":"2025-06-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/1911-3838.12406","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145007974","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The Effect of the Interaction of Peer Influence and Affect on Budgetary Slack*","authors":"Xin Geng, Arron Scott Fleming, Alyssa S. J. Ong","doi":"10.1111/1911-3838.12403","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/1911-3838.12403","url":null,"abstract":"<div>\u0000 \u0000 <p>Given the strong financial incentives embedded in participative budgeting, the creation of budgetary slack is prevalent and constant. Research has shown that peer influence is related to budgetary reporting. However, such an effect is likely to be moderated by other factors. We argue that the effect of peer influence on budgetary slack depends on budget-setters' affect. In an experiment where participants set budgets and work on production tasks, we find that positive affect leads to a greater decrease in budgetary slack under honest peer influence compared to negative affect—specifically, budget-setters create the least amount when they are in positive affect and peer influence is honest. We also find that participants' moral judgment and moral obligations are negatively associated with the amount of budgetary slack created.</p>\u0000 </div>","PeriodicalId":43435,"journal":{"name":"Accounting Perspectives","volume":"24 2","pages":"441-468"},"PeriodicalIF":1.6,"publicationDate":"2025-04-28","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144220321","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Investments for Carbon Footprint Reduction: An Instructional Case*","authors":"Marc Wouters, Niklas Letmathe","doi":"10.1111/1911-3838.12404","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/1911-3838.12404","url":null,"abstract":"<p>This instructional case explores strategic decision-making at CarCompany (CarCo), a large automaker that is transitioning to battery electric vehicles. CarCo aims to reduce the carbon dioxide (CO<sub>2</sub>) emissions at their own sites and at suppliers' sites. The challenge is to select a group of CO<sub>2</sub> reduction initiatives that achieves the objectives set by CarCo's management while staying within budgetary restrictions. Another challenge is renegotiating some CO<sub>2</sub> reduction initiatives with suppliers so that greater overall CO<sub>2</sub> reductions can be achieved. Finally, decentralization of objectives and budgets for CO<sub>2</sub> reductions needs to be considered. CarCo's Sustainability Manager, Julia Neumann, has been asked to select from the list of proposed projects and present her recommendations to CarCo's board. In this case, students need to apply rigorous analyses on the basis of cost-benefit analysis, justify their decisions, and think outside the box. They are asked to assess how existing evaluation techniques can be used and adapted to CO<sub>2</sub> emissions. The case delves into the complexities of the transition to cleaner production processes and the expanding network of suppliers, employees, and other stakeholders that need to be involved in the process.</p>","PeriodicalId":43435,"journal":{"name":"Accounting Perspectives","volume":"24 4","pages":"917-926"},"PeriodicalIF":0.9,"publicationDate":"2025-04-24","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/1911-3838.12404","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145695603","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Teaching Management Control Dysfunction Using Observations of CEO Leadership at Wells Fargo*","authors":"Joel Amernic, Russell Craig","doi":"10.1111/1911-3838.12399","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/1911-3838.12399","url":null,"abstract":"<p>The focus of this teaching case is an actual instance of management control (MC) dysfunction that was prompted by ongoing crises at Wells Fargo Bank. MC is an interdisciplinary field of learning that integrates a variety of management disciplines, such as leadership, accounting, performance measurement, governance, and ethics. The case uses the official transcript of questioning of the then-CEO of Wells Fargo, John Stumpf, by Senator Elizabeth Warren during a US Senate hearing entitled “An Examination of Wells Fargo's Unauthorized Accounts and the Regulatory Response.” Exposure of the “unauthorized accounts” was a forerunner to the highlighting of several Wells Fargo scandals in following years. At times, the questioning of Stumpf was adversarial, and it provides an opportunity to examine leadership-in-action from an MC (and related) perspective. By employing real company events, we demonstrate how to develop an understanding by students that MC is a multifaceted, interdisciplinary area of learning. The case enhances students' opportunities to critically evaluate MC-in-action.</p>","PeriodicalId":43435,"journal":{"name":"Accounting Perspectives","volume":"24 4","pages":"901-915"},"PeriodicalIF":0.9,"publicationDate":"2025-04-07","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/1911-3838.12399","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145695457","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}