2012 Awards for Excellence

Citation

(2013), "2012 Awards for Excellence", Pacific Accounting Review, Vol. 25 No. 1. https://doi.org/10.1108/par.2013.34225aaa.001

2012 Awards for Excellence

Article Type: 2012 Awards for Excellence From: Pacific Accounting Review, Volume 25, Issue 1

The following article was selected for this year’s Outstanding Paper Award for Pacific Accounting Review

“Accounting choice, market failure, and regulation: consolidated accounting adoption in New Zealand, 1946-1957”

Michael G. KeenanDepartment of Accounting and Finance, University of Auckland, Auckland, New Zealand

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to explain the adoption of consolidated accounting for New Zealand holding companies during the period 1946-1957.

Design/methodology/approach – An explanatory, multiple-case, holistic case study is used to explain the relative increase in consolidated accounting adoption in New Zealand following passage of the Companies Act 1955, in spite of that accounting choice remaining voluntary under the legislation.

Findings – The explanation is subjected to replication tests for explanatory case studies, and is supported by the data from all 25 cases satisfying the criterion for inclusion in the study.

Originality/value – The explanation differs from the micro-economic explanations of accounting choice in terms of firm characteristics which are generated within the positive accounting research paradigm. It utilizes findings from research in the economics of standardization which show that mechanisms for co-ordinating the behaviour of market participants enable them to capture benefits of market externalities which would otherwise be unavailable because of market failure. The explanation is that: the low rate of pre-legislation consolidated accounting adoption was due to a market failure around the accounting information which rendered unilateral adoption generally uneconomic; and the post-legislation surge in adoption was due to passage of the Act resolving the market failure by overcoming a co-ordination problem for potential adopters, enabling them to realise positive network effects and, therewith, net benefits of adoption.

Keywords: Accounting choice, Accounting history, Accounting regulation, Consolidated accounting, Market failure, New Zealand

www.emeraldinsight.com/10.1108/01140581111163953

This article originally appeared in Volume 23 Number 2, 2011, pp. 101-21 Pacific Accounting Review

The following articles were selected for this year’s Highly Commended Award

“Do resource consent announcements provide valuable information? Evidence from New Zealand”

Carolyn Wirth, Jing Chi and Martin Young

This article originally appeared in Volume 23 Number 3, 2011, Pacific Accounting Review

“The impact of New Zealand’s disclosure reform on differential managerial disclosure behaviour for good news versus bad news firms”

Alastair Marsden, Russell Poskitt and Yinjian Wang

This article originally appeared in Volume 23 Number 3, 2011, Pacific Accounting Review

Outstanding reviewers

Dr Humayun Kabir,AUT University, New Zealand

Dr David Upton,The University of North Carolina at Greensboro, USA