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This study aims to identify factors influencing corporate social responsibility reporting (CSRR) practices of international oil companies (IOCs) in Nigeria. It aims at distinguishing CSRR levels by examining both the quantity and quality of reporting.

The paper analyses annual reports through content analysis. CSRR extent and type are measured by the number of sentences. CSRR are further classified into three subcategories according to whether they are negative, neutral or positive reports and then their proportions compared through descriptive analysis.

For the extent and quality of CSRR, community was the most reported category. The majority of the total CSRR in the IOCs is positive with little evidence of negative news. None of the IOCs in the sample reported on the environment in their annual reports.

The measurement of CSRR focuses only on annual reports, without consideration of other reporting media such as standalone reports and corporate websites. CSRR are assumed to be voluntary for the companies and they may choose not to report any information in annual reports, as there are no regulations or reporting guidelines in Nigeria to be followed.

The results reveal the absence of environmental reporting in the CSRR of IOCs in Nigeria suggests that they are less concerned with meeting local demands for accountability. The study recommends the need for regulatory intervention on the part of the Nigerian Government.

The findings of study indicate that predominant existence of positive CSRR news among all the IOCs suggests there’s an attempt to encourage stakeholders and the public to believe that they are conscious of society and the environment.

The main contribution of this study lies in identifying the factors that have led to diversity and uniqueness in CSRR in IOCs. As such, this study seeks to contribute to the development of understanding multiple factors that could give rise to changing patterns of CSRR.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the prospects of Belfast as a Tourism City with a special focus on dark (troubles) tourism.

This paper uses two surveys – one for overseas-based potential tourists and one for Northern Ireland residents; one focus group with potential tourists; and three interviews, one with a Belfast MP and two with tour-guide operators, one from each side of the Northern Ireland divide. This paper is less theoretical than exploratory.

Generally, there is strong and widespread support for the concept of troubles tourism. Stakeholders must ensure that troubles tourism is intelligently and sensitively handled and builds up communities.

This is a relatively new and under-researched area. Belfast has been rarely looked at in urban-tourism studies. Findings have applicability for other post-conflict and divided countries, such as the countries of the former Yugoslavia.

The purpose of this paper is to review the cancellation of Australia's National Soccer League (NSL) competition and its replacement in 2004 with the corporatist A‐League which is based on the North American model of “one team one city”, no promotion and relegation, and private‐equity clubs. The authors believe that one of the aims of the A‐League and its “ground‐zero” ideology was to institute exclusion of the ethnic clubs that had formed the backbone of the NSL for 30 years.

Extensive literature search, participant‐observation, one personal interview and two group interviews were employed. People interviewed were the President of the Croatian community's Melbourne Knights Football Club, the Club Secretary of Melbourne Knights, and three leaders of Melbourne Knights’ MCF hooligan firm.

The authors observe the Football Federation Australia hiding behind the perceived scientific nature and technical veracity of budgeted accounting numbers to set the financial bar too high for the ethnic clubs to find a place in the brave new world that has been called “Modern Football”. However, capitalism creates its own discontents. Online forums and homemade fence banners are the new vehicles for dissent for the supporters of “Old Soccer”.

There is still only a small academic literature on Australian football and most of this has been written by humanities lecturers. The paper offers a business school perspective.

The objective of this paper is to examine the incremental effects of overseas listing on earnings conservatism. In particular, it investigates whether mainland Chinese companies listed “overseas” in Hong Kong exhibit a higher degree of earnings conservatism than companies without overseas‐listing.

The paper employs the concept of “conditional conservatism” and adopts Basu’s (1997) conservatism model, examining data for Chinese companies overseas listed on the Stock Exchange of Hong Kong as H‐shares, to test hypothesis concerned with the difference in the speed with which economic gains and losses are captured in accounting earnings.

The empirical findings indicate that both overseas‐listed and China‐only‐listed Chinese companies demonstrate a minimal degree of earnings conservatism in the earlier sample sub‐period. However, companies listed overseas provide a higher degree of earnings conservatism overall. Furthermore, this conservatism becomes statistically significant in the 2006 to 2008 sub‐period.

The evidence in this study shows that differences in earnings conservatism arise from differential information demands and differential regulations. Hence the findings have direct policy implications for the regulatory agencies in China and Vietnam and in the ex‐communist countries further afield such as Russia, the former Soviet Union, and Eastern Europe.

The purpose of this paper is to synthesize relevant theoretical and empirical literature to develop propositions and suggest a research agenda on the antecedents and organisational performance implications of internal audit effectiveness.

The paper employs institutional theory and Karl Marx's theory of the “circuit of industrial capital” to synthesize relevant internal audit literature to develop theoretically justifiable propositions and highlight an operational research agenda.

Propositions and a research agenda are provided on potential antecedents of internal audit effectiveness and its possible association with company performance measured as rate of return on capital employed. Also, key variables are identified and operationalisation issues discussed.

As the extant literature does not provide a canon of internal audit effectiveness, the paper's originality is its argument that a positive association between compliance with standards for the professional practice of internal auditors and organisational goal achievement could serve as an approach to assess internal audit effectiveness. Furthermore, the use of the two theories in combination provides additional insights into identifying the antecedents of internal audit effectiveness and its measurement.

The purpose of this paper is to discuss the impact that Japanese culture has on the budgeting process, using insights gained from the literature and from a single company small‐sample pilot study. It provides a research agenda which links specific aspects of Japanese culture to predictions about Japanese groups' budgetary, performance evaluation and variance investigation practices.

The approach takes the form of a detailed literature review of the relevant literature in accounting, education and sociology, which considers how Japanese culture systematically differs from Western culture, and a small‐sample pilot study.

It was found that the Singaporean subsidiary of the Japanese MNC studied uses common Japanese budgeting practices, as previously documented by Ueno and Sekaran. Line managers are rewarded based on overall actual company‐wide profit, consistent with the Japanese collectivist group‐orientation which is itself a product of Confucianism. Although variances are used to rectify operational problems on a timely basis, line managers are not rewarded for outperforming the budget – the budget is a stick, but there is no offsetting carrot. An interviewed line manager (Chinese Singaporean, Purchasing) expressed mixed feelings about the current reward system and a preference for rewards based on outperforming his own budgetary target. This observation is consistent with some research in the educational literature suggesting that the Chinese tend to be less collectivist than the Japanese.

As a literature review the paper provides a synthesis of a diverse variety of sources. The literature review and pilot study findings add to the accounting literature by studying in greater detail than prior studies exactly how and why Japanese culture characteristics will and should affect budgetary practice. The paper should be of special value and interest to higher‐degree and early‐career researchers.

The purpose of this paper is to document key elements of union strategy at Sydney (Lidcombe) branch of Australia's Construction Forestry Mining and Energy Union (CFMEU) in an attempt to document and critique its branch level strategy in the year immediately after the removal of the Howard‐Costello Government.

A case study approach is used in analysing data obtained from internal CFMEU documents and correspondence; interviews with the New South Wales State Secretary of the CFMEU Andrew Ferguson, union organisers, one former organiser who worked for a number of years at Western Sydney but is now with a white‐collar union in the education sector, and construction workers; CFMEU official publications; news media stories and a series of building site visits. The authors use a theory framework of Roman Catholic social teaching to frame the discussions and analyze the case study findings.

In focus groups with construction workers, the authors find one challenging external constraint for the CFMEU: reaching out to and meeting effectively the needs of younger workers especially those from families hostile to unionism. However, younger workers seem to hold a mix of individualistic and collectivist philosophies. The final case shows the CFMEU organiser Tulloch to be adaptable and flexible in the heat of industrial disputation. Finally, the fact that building workers brought the asbestos issue to CFMEU's attention in the final case study shows union willingness to pursue issues not initiated by the union.

The paper documents the fact that the CFMEU has the ability and potential to rebuild its influence on building sites in Sydney and win further favourable outcomes for exploited and vulnerable workers within its sphere of influence. Through the theoretical framework, the authors point that as it does so it will assist in bringing to fruition the Roman Catholic social teaching that presents strong trade unions as a valid form of collective voice for workers and a way for collective and individual labour to retain in practice the dignity that God has already clothed them with.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the extent to which institutional norms determine attributes of internal audit practices and how institutional changes explain the development of these practices.

The authors employed a qualitative research approach based on archival analysis and interview evidence.

Findings indicate that regulation‐based institutional norms explain the adoption of internal audit and the function's characteristics in Ethiopian organizations. Furthermore, innovative introduction of internal audit practices originate within individual organizations and eventually get institutionalized through diffusion. Such innovations are associated with organizational size, top management characteristics, internal audit advancement in technology, and exogenous input from the external environment. Widely accepted internal audit practices, as institutional norms, are not always taken‐for‐granted at the level of individual organizations. The institutional change perspective enables explaining how new internal audit approaches are introduced to supplant old ones.

This study theorizes the development of internal audit practices from an institutional change perspective. Being the first study to do so, it contributes to the understanding of key drivers of institutional change that initiate new institutional norms that foster the development of internal audit through introduction and diffusion of new audit practices as old ones are deinstitutionalized.

The aim of the research is to use variations in measured accounting conservatism to gain a deeper understanding about the reporting incentives created by a country's institutional structure.

Geographic proximity, cultural affinity and integrated economic relations provide Greater China with a unique setting for studying cross‐country differences in institutional characteristics which affect the demand for accounting conservatism. Ball and Shivakumar contend that the economic role of conditional conservatism is an important attribute of financial reporting quality because it improves the efficiency of contracting, reduces information asymmetry and improves corporate governance.

The empirical results indicate that Hong Kong is the most conservative economy, followed by Taiwan and China, implying that the legal/judicial system, regulatory environment and political economy of different countries are the pivotal forces which drive accounting conservatism. Overall, the evidence suggests that a country's institutional structures interact strongly with reporting incentives in determining accounting conservatism.

This research examines cross‐country differences in financial reporting quality by contrasting the influence of country‐specific institutional factors on financial reporting incentives for conservative accounting practices. It is expected that this research will have important policy implication.

This study aims to examine accounting professionalization in Ethiopia focusing on how the state, occupational group struggle and transnational accountancy bodies influence the realization of closure.

A qualitative research approach is employed. Data were collected using document review and oral history approaches.

Accounting professionalization in Ethiopia was initiated by the state to strengthen the country's financial system. Owing to a change of state ideology to communism in 1974, a strategy of developing accounting professionals as government‐employed experts was pursued. The return to a market‐oriented economy in 1991 has seen a trend towards a more autonomous accountancy profession. Inflow of UK capital in the early twentieth century and activities of the UK‐based Association of Chartered Certified Accountants (ACCA) in recent decades have influenced Ethiopia's accountancy. Its professional and financial power has enabled ACCA to make arrangements with Ethiopian Professional Association of Accountants and Auditors (EPAAA) and consolidate its position in Ethiopia's accountancy by controlling EPAAA's member training and certification.

The literature on accounting professional projects in developing countries has focused on imperialistic influence in former British colonies. The present study extends this literature by illustrating how British influence has continued to extend beyond Britain's former colonial possessions. This enables an understanding of the dynamics of accounting professional projects in the developing world with analytical dimensions building on the hitherto dominant lens of “formal” colonial connection.