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Audit firms have a strong historical tradition of professionalism, but they are also commercial entities. This study aims to investigate the relationship between auditor cash compensation and office-level financial performance.

This study uses proprietary compensation expense and financial performance data from audit offices in China. Using the ordinary least squares regressions, this study tests the association between per capita compensation and office-level financial outcomes.

This study provides evidence that audit offices offering higher compensation achieve more profitable performance, as reflected in increased market share, higher return on assets and greater operating profit margins. Mechanism tests suggest that reductions in auditor turnover, driven by compensation incentives, partially account for this performance improvement. Additional tests show that the benefits of compensation incentives are particularly pronounced in audit firms licensed to conduct listed firm audits or when accompanied by staff training and technical development. Furthermore, both partner-level and staff auditor compensation significantly enhance office-level financial performance. The results might be of interest to both practitioners and regulatory bodies.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this study is the first to examine the relationship between auditor cash compensation and audit-office profitability. The findings highlight important policy implications for audit firms seeking to retain high-caliber auditors and maximize their economic benefits through human capital investments, including compensation, education, training and technical development.

This study critically examines research done in the accounting field to uncover the determinants of unethical conduct by professional accountants. It seeks to determine the current state of knowledge of the factors driving the unethical decision-making process of professional accountants.

This study adopted a qualitative narrative approach using non-probability sampling in the form of non-purposive sampling to select the relevant articles to use. These articles were analysed using a thematic approach to determine what conclusions were arrived at.

Many studies have examined factors that influence unethical behaviour. However, many studies do not use a holistic approach in analysing the relative influence of each of the factors, and hence there are conflicting conclusions. Within the African context, political, social and legislative factors that appear to have a significant influence have not been thoroughly explored.

This study contributes a more precise understanding of the current state of knowledge determinants of unethical behaviour by professional accountants while identifying potential areas for future research and policy development.

This study explores how auditors' emotions, specifically negative moods triggered by flight delays, impact auditing quality.

Utilizing flight delays during audit assignments as a mood indicator, weather conditions at departure airports serve as an instrumental variable to provide a robustness check between flight delays and audit outcomes, employing a two-stage least squares model.

The findings suggest that such negative moods improve auditing effort and quality, as evidenced by reduced future accounting restatements and increased audit fees. The positive effect of flight delays on auditing quality is consistent across different tests and measures.

This study highlights the significance of auditors' emotional states on their professional performance, indicating a unique angle on auditing quality research by focusing on the emotional well-being of auditors as influenced by external factors such as flight delays.

People with intellectual disabilities are high users of acute hospital care. Given their varied and often complex health-care needs, they often experience health inequalities and inequities, contributing to poorer health outcomes. As nurses are the largest health-care workforce with a patient-facing role, they have an important responsibility in meeting this populations health needs. The purpose of this paper is to explore key issues relating to the role nurses play in providing equitable health care for people with intellectual disabilities.

This service feature draws upon relevant literature to examine key contextual issues highlighting the importance of nurses in providing equitable health care for people with intellectual disabilities.

The findings from this service feature highlight the importance of nurses taking a leadership role in advocating for, and actively supporting the health needs of people with intellectual disabilities. Nurses’ leadership role, along with implementing reasonable adjustments, should be underpinned by education and training relating to the bespoke health needs of people with intellectual disabilities. This should help nurses promote the health and well-being of this population.

Addressing this populations health needs is a collective responsibility of all nurses. There are many examples of how nurses can be supported through policy, education, training and advocacy and this needs to be considered by key stakeholders and addressed as a matter of priority.

This study aims to understand the mechanisms through which workplace spirituality affects employees’ entrepreneurial behavior. It proposes and tests a mediation model in which psychological ownership (PO), a feeling of ownership regardless of legal ownership, mediates the relationship between workplace spirituality and employees’ entrepreneurial behavior.

An empirical analysis was conducted with survey data collected from 351 postgraduate students who were also currently working. Structural equation modeling was applied to test the study hypotheses using Mplus software.

Workplace spirituality is associated with employees’ entrepreneurial behavior, and PO fully mediates this relationship. The findings highlight that PO is the missing link that connects workplace spirituality and employees’ entrepreneurial behavior.

This study offers organizations a new insight by showing that PO plays a key role in contributing to the entrepreneurial behavior of employees who consider themselves spiritual.

The mechanism for the relationship between workplace spirituality and employees’ entrepreneurial behavior is explained.

This paper aims to examine the influence of the International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) adoption on corporate tax avoidance (CTA). In addition, this study aims to explore whether family ownership moderates the impact of IFRS adoption on CTA.

The authors used a sample of 1,856 firms from various countries around the world, covering the period between 2010 and 2022. To estimate the proposed econometric models, the authors applied both fixed and random effects regression methods.

The present findings show that IFRS adoption has a negative impact on CTA, as measured by the effective tax rate and book-tax differences. This negative impact is more pronounced in “common law” countries than in “civil law countries.” Additionally, the authors found that family ownership plays a moderating role by positively affecting the impact of IFRS adoption on CTA.

The findings have practical, regulatory and academic implications for fostering accountability and fairness in taxation. This study suggests that implementing IFRS reduces tax avoidance and emphasizes the need for firms to evaluate the implications of IFRS adoption on their tax-planning strategies. It highlights the importance of aligning financial reporting practices with international standards to enhance transparency and minimize tax avoidance opportunities. The differential impact of IFRS adoption between “common law” and “civil law” countries underscores the role of legal and regulatory frameworks. In addition, family ownership plays a significant role in shaping tax-planning strategies. From an academic perspective, this research provides a foundation for further exploration into the relationship between IFRS adoption and tax avoidance.

The existing literature has predominantly concentrated on examining the effect of IFRS adoption on CTA, and the empirical findings have been inconsistent. This study introduces a novel perspective by considering the moderating influence of family ownership in determining the impact of IFRS adoption on CTA.

This study aims to investigate the impact of auditor industry specialization (AIS) on clients’ tax planning at the audit firm level and individual auditor level, respectively.

The study’s sample consists of 44,637 firm-year observations of Chinese firms listed on the Shenzhen and Shanghai Stock Exchanges during the period from 2002–2020. The data are collected from the Taiwan Economic Journal. Panel regression is used to test hypotheses. Additionally, a two-stage least squares model is used to address concerns about possible endogeneity.

The relationship between tax planning and AIS is significantly positive at the audit firm level, while it is significantly negative at the individual auditor level.

The authors use manually collected data to investigate the distinct impacts of two AIS metrics on tax planning: the number of clients and the scale of clients.

This paper examines the organizational resilience of audit firms during the early stages of COVID-19. The unexpected restrictions placed on travel and on-site working created unanticipated barriers for auditors in Hong Kong. The authors expect that auditors with greater organizational resilience can respond to unexpected situations and restore expected performance levels relatively quickly.

The authors utilize a sample of 1,008 companies listed on Hong Kong Stock Exchange (HKEX) with a financial year-end of December 31. The authors identify five proxies contributing to organizational resilience: auditor size, industry specialization, diversity, geographic proximity to the client and auditing a new client. The authors use audit report timeliness as this study's main dependent variable.

This study's full-sample results suggest that larger auditors, industry specialists and auditors with closer relationships to clients issued more timely audit reports during the pandemic. The analysis of a subsample of companies that initially published unaudited financial statements reveals that industry expertise and longer auditor-client relationships significantly reduced the need for year-end audit adjustments. Finally, the authors find that larger auditors were more likely to offload clients, whereas industry specialists were more likely to retain clients.

The results of the paper suggests that audit firm characteristics associated cognitive abilities, behavioral characteristics and contextual conditions are associated with audit firm organizational resilience and, consequently, helps auditors respond unexpected changes in the audit environment.

The findings of the paper are informative for those involved in audit firm management or auditor hiring and retention decisions.

This study is the first to link organizational resilience to the performance of audit firms in a time of unexpected events. The authors connect three auditor and two auditor-client dimensions to the organizational resilience of the audit firms.

This study explores the diversity and compatibility of leadership in a local context. It aims to understand the interface between traditional and democratic leadership in local governance.

Following a qualitative approach, the researchers collected data through unstructured interviews and utilised thematic analysis for data interpretation.

The study demonstrated that the emergence of democratic local leadership has not supplanted traditional leaders but rather gained legitimacy and effectiveness by collaborating with them. This study illustrated how traditional and modern democratic leadership can coexist and effectively manage community affairs.

The study emphasises the potential for traditional leaders to take part in local governance activities, offering a practical tool to improve the effectiveness of local governance. Its findings also underscore the need for collaborative governance to deal with local issues.

This research study contributes to the literature on collaborative governance at the local level. It helps us understand the different types of leaders and their collective efforts in meeting local challenges. It is the first study of its kind in South Asia.

This paper aims to examine whether the audit committee moderates the relationship between audit quality and market reactions.

Using fixed effects and the GMM model for robustness, the study used 472 publicly listed firms on South Africa’s Johannesburg stock exchange spanning a period of six years from 2014 to 2019.

Results obtained show that audit quality impacts market reactions through share price and adjusted market returns. And, that the audit committee moderates the relationship between audit quality and market reactions in South Africa’s publicly listed firms. An effective audit committee is expected to play a crucial role in overseeing the audit process, ensuring the independence of auditors and promoting transparency and accountability which in turn impacts asset prices.

The study implies that governments and regulatory bodies in other developing economies could strengthen regulations about companies’ Acts, how firms regulate themselves and more so audit committees. Firms can also strive to make sure that audit committees are staffed with experts to promote higher audit quality and investor attention to get access to the much-alluded capital.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, the study adds value by being the first to explore the subject matter of the importance of audit committees in defining audit quality and market reactions in publicly listed firms. The research adds to the body of knowledge on corporate governance and audit quality. It provides a case study specific to the South African context, contributing to the global literature on these topics.