Knowledge that Transforms

Motivated by the importance of effective oversight in mitigating the risks of employee external whistleblowing, this study investigates the effect of audit committee financial expertise and equity compensation on employee external whistleblowing. Drawing on theories of motivated reasoning and overconfidence, I propose that while audit committee financial expertise could enhance oversight, higher equity compensation can trigger cognitive biases that lead audit committee members to overestimate their monitoring effectiveness and discount or overlook the risks in internal reports of wrongdoing, increasing employee external whistleblowing. Using a sample of U.S. listed firms involved in misconduct, I find that greater audit committee financial expertise is associated with lower levels of employee external whistleblowing when audit committee equity compensation is low, but with higher levels of employee external whistleblowing when equity compensation is high. These findings suggest that audit committee equity compensation may undermine the benefits of financial expertise, offering new insights into the unintended consequences of governance and compensation practices.

While prior work in management accounting has mainly focused on results controls, this study investigates how action accountability as an action control and job autonomy are jointly used by supervisors in a setting in which results controls at the individual employee level are of little relevance. We analyze our research question by collecting survey data among nurses from Swiss public hospitals. We predict and find that when task complexity is high, job autonomy and action accountability are used as substitutes by the supervisor. When task complexity is low, job autonomy and action accountability have a less substitutive relation than when task complexity is high. In supplemental analyses, we also find that action accountability and job autonomy act as substitutes with respect to employee loyalty and effort when task complexity is high and less so when it is low, consistent with supervisors’ control choices. We also collect additional archival and experimental data to provide supplemental evidence for our underlying theory. Our study enhances the understanding of the use and effects of action controls in settings in which results controls at the individual employee level are of little relevance.

This paper is concerned with the understanding of resistance in accounting research. Using the case of a Southern Non-Governmental Organization (NGO) and its relationships with donors within the international development assemblage, I discuss how the organization, in experiencing mixed feelings towards its donors' managerial discourses and accounting practices, engages in a process of resistance. Such resistance operates amidst a processual interplay of attraction and repulsion towards the colonial opposite. Using Homi Bhabha's Postcolonial Theory (PCT) and its emphasis on the affective dimension in colonial encounters, I find that the NGO's actions are nestled within hybridity and ambivalence, which drive the NGO towards balancing opposing forces to move forward in the assemblage. I contribute to accounting literature by offering an affective understanding of the ambivalence produced by postcolonial relations mediated by accounting, and by reconceptualizing resistance in accounting research as a flux of affects with political implications in shifting relationships.

Consumers are increasingly conscientious of societal and environmental impacts of their purchases, prompting companies to make environmental, social, and governance (ESG) claims and engage in voluntary ESG assurance. However, prior literature lacks insight into whether consumers consider negative accounting news events (e.g., error/irregularity restatements) and their effects on purchasing intentions. Using real world consumers of sustainable goods, we investigate how varying levels of negative accounting news events (i.e., error or irregularity restatements), the presence of ESG product-quality assurance (e.g., cage free egg certification), and the type of assurance provider (e.g., an accounting firm that also audits the financial statements, an accounting firm that does not audit the financial statements, government agency) influence purchasing intentions and organizational legitimacy perceptions. We find that consumers surrogate negative accounting news events as indicators of ESG claim reliability, negatively impacting purchasing intentions, especially for more severe events (e.g., irregularity). However, ESG product-quality assurance partially mitigates these negative effects. Moreover, we find that when an error restatement occurs, the mitigating effect is less pronounced when the same firm provides both financial statement and ESG product-quality assurance compared to a governmental agency or non-financial statement auditor. Finally, when irregularities occur, though product-quality assurance partially mitigates the detrimental effects, there is no difference between assurance providers, likely because management's willingness to deceive auditors decreases the perceived reliability of assurance in general. Our results suggest boards should obtain ESG product-quality assurance and carefully select their assurance providers.

As part of their professionalisation project, independent private standard setters have developed conceptual frameworks to guide their standard setting. Adopting the perspective of legal pluralism, we regard these soft law documents as creating a new living law for the community of standard setters. In this paper, we study how the FASB and the IASB have created this new living law through the discourse on the (re)development of conceptual frameworks. More specifically, we analyse the discourse on the objective of financial reporting from the 1970s to the 2010s. Our material stems from the Boards' due process and includes their proposals, along with about 1300 comment letters submitted by constituents. We find that the FASB and the IASB have used conceptual frameworks to establish their identity as independent experts, distinguishing themselves from the accounting profession with its traditional living law of stewardship, and instead introducing the new living law of decision usefulness. This step met resistance as constituents did not readily accept the standard setters' independence and sought to constrain their future activities. We also find that constituents’ views were influenced by the anticipated role of the conceptual frameworks for standard setters and preparers. Overall, our study shows how standard setters strategically align conceptual frameworks with the due process, while constituents simultaneously use the due process and conceptual frameworks as tools to discipline the standard setters. Our findings extend our understanding of private standard setters, conceptual frameworks, and different legal forms.

This qualitative inquiry investigates how tax professionals understand aggressiveness in tax planning and how they position themselves on the spectrum of aggressiveness. Based on semi-structured interviews with 33 experienced Canadian tax professionals from top-10 accounting and law firms, we find that tax professionals understand aggressiveness through a web of inter-related considerations. These include creativity, complexity, legal ambiguity, and lucrativeness, associated with risks of tax audits , technical errors, disputes with tax authorities over legal interpretations, and reputational damage for the client, the tax professional, and their firm. These considerations and related risks are often a source of anxiety for tax professionals. Drawing on contemporary philosopher Charlie Kurth's distinction between “punishment anxiety” and “practical anxiety,” we identify an intricate interplay between these two forms of anxiety and a collective deliberation process involving clients and colleagues, each bringing their own risk-reward preferences, which shapes professionals' decisions of how aggressive they should be. The socio-affective conceptualization of aggressiveness that we propose in this study contributes to the tax literature by deepening our understanding of the elusive concept of tax aggressiveness. It also enriches the broader literature on accounting and finance professionals' emotions at work by documenting the analytical value of a nuanced understanding of anxiety. Furthermore, it advances the professional ethics literature by highlighting the moral significance of practical anxiety in professional judgment about risky, ethically sensitive issues.

Extreme work hours in professional service firms (PSFs) are often attributed to organizational control mechanisms such as time sheets, utilization targets, and performance evaluations. This paper introduces the concept of the entrainment cycle to explore how these controls foster professionals' compliance with extreme work patterns. The entrainment cycle explains how individuals become continuously synchronized with the collective rhythm of the organization. Drawing on 159 interviews with 81 professionals across two PSFs, the study explores how formal and normative controls synchronize individuals with the fast-paced organizational tempo. The findings reveal how bureaucratic and cultural entrainment mechanisms contribute to synchronization. Moreover, emotions and bodily responses play a critical role in making professionals internalize the organization's rhythms. Periods of synchronization trigger positive feedback loops in which heightened emotions and bodily responses reinforce individuals' attachment to work. These synchronized periods contrast with moments of desynchronization in which professionals experience negative feedback loops characterized by guilt, anxiety, and physical withdrawal symptoms. The bodily and emotional mechanisms this study reveals reinforce professionals' synchronization with collective rhythms, locking them into an entrainment cycle that perpetuates long hours and ever-intensifying work. This study offers new insights into how controls affect individuals and organizations in significant, far-reaching, and often unobtrusive ways.

In 2021, a social movement rallying retail investors unexpectedly shocked Wall Street, forcing a prominent multi-billion-dollar hedge fund to shut down one year later, after incurring massive financial losses. Social movements in financial markets have significantly developed in the wake of the 2007–09 financial crisis, resulting in the emergence of various collective actions. We analyze one recent example of such action undertaken by the r/WallStreetBets (WSB) community on Reddit, which disrupted the stock prices of several “meme stocks” (e.g., GameStop) by disseminating influential investment narratives. We analyze the 150 most upvoted Due Diligence posts on WSB and interview eight members of its community. We find that a popular expertise in investment narratives emerged, developed, and was propagated on this digital platform. WSB authors' claim to popular expertise is made in a hybrid language combining traditional financial expertise with an accessible and entertaining writing style, complemented by references to pop culture. Our analysis brings out a growing resentment among retail investors about the unfairness of financial markets, and its role in mobilizing them for collective action that challenged the existing order of things. Yet this widespread resentment did not spontaneously translate into a meaningful, sustainable collective action initiative. Our thesis is that the development of popular expertise played an instrumental role in the formation of WSB's collective action initiative targeting several perceived investment opportunities.