Accounting Insight - January/March 2009

Human capital measures, strategy, and performance: HR managers' perceptions

The purpose of this paper is to report the results of a survey and interviews with human resource (HR) professionals to identify and better understand their perceptions and expectations of human capital measures’ (HCM) content, links to strategy, and impact on performance.

When do firms revalue their assets upwards? Evidence from the UK

Countries such as Australia and the UK allow managers to write up fixed assets if their current values are greater than the carrying values.

Economic freedom, equity performance and market volatility

Economic freedom is the extent to which one can pursue economic activity with limited interference from government.

Accruals' persistence, accruals mispricing and operating cycle: evidence from the US
Earnings better gauge corporate financial performance than operating cash flows, because accruals address timing and mismatching problems underlying the contemporaneous operating cash flows.

Characteristics of institutional investors and discretionary accruals

The relationship between institutional investors (INSTs)/blockholders and earnings management behavior has been investigated by many studies.

The design and implementation of activity-based costing: A case study of a Taiwanese textile company

This paper discusses the background, process, and results of implementing an activity-based costing (ABC) system in a textile company.

The impact of Sarbanes-Oxley on internal control remediation

In reaction to the many flaws that the Enron/Anderson scandal revealed in the workings of corporate governance and auditing in the USA, the US government passed the Sarbanes-Oxley (SOX) Act of 2002.

The pervasive nature of IT controls: An examination of material weaknesses in IT controls and audit fees

Information technology (IT) security and related IT risks have long been anomalies in the audit of organizations. Gordon et al. (2003) highlight the key role that IT and information security play in an overall system of internal controls.

Business ethics in Islam: the glaring gap in practice

There are literally hundreds of papers written on business ethics. However, as far as I know, few papers have been written on business ethics in Islam.

Customer perception on service quality in retail banking in Middle East: the case of Qatar
In service industries, globally, the subject of service quality remains a critical one as businesses strive to maintain a comparative advantage in the marketplace.

Reflecting on the production of intellectual capital visualisations

The provocative opening to Tufte (1997), as quoted above, embodies the raison d’eˆ tre for this paper. The domain we seek to investigate is that of intellectual capital (IC).

Shifting NPM agendas and management accountants' occupational identities

The nature of modern organisational control invites employees to develop occupational roles congruent with managerial discourses (Alvesson and Willmott, 2002).