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The purpose of our study is to examine the influence of three external corporate governance mechanisms (continuous disclosure regulatory reform, analyst following and ownership concentration) and one internal corporate governance mechanism (board structure) on the likelihood, frequency, horizon, precision and accuracy of management earnings forecasts in the low private litigation environment of New Zealand.

The authors use a sample of 1,082 management earnings forecasts issued by 125 firms listed on the New Zealand Exchange during the 1998-2007 financial reporting periods. The authors effectively control the self-selection bias problem inherent in management earnings forecasts.

The findings provide strong evidence that corporate governance significantly influences management earnings forecast behaviour. Firms with effective corporate governance tend to forecast earnings and provide these earnings forecasts more frequently and precisely. Earnings forecasts issued by firms with more non-executive directors on the board are less optimistically biased. A possible interpretation of the findings is that effective corporate governance mechanisms are able to substitute for a private enforcement alternative.

The findings have value in informing governance choices in the absence of external disciplinary mechanisms such as private litigation.

The statement of service performance is a mandatory report provided by local governments in New Zealand. Despite 20 years' reporting experience, the Office of the Auditor-General (2008) criticised the poor quality of these reports. Past theoretical literature has attempted to develop a framework for the accountability expectations of documents provided by public-sector entities (Stewart, 1984). The purpose of this paper is to measure the consistency of the statements of service performance about wastewater services made by New Zealand local governments with the accountability expectations, using an accountability disclosure index. The paper reveals a moderately high level of consistency. “Probity” and “legality” accountability disclosures are high while “process/efficiency” and “performance programme-effectiveness” accountability are less emphasised. The results suggest that accountability expectations provide a useful tool for evaluating statements of service performance.

This study examines the relationship between board composition and firm value, and the extent to which this relationship may be affected by a company’s investment opportunity set. There is little research that examines this issue, particularly for the New Zealand market. Of the research that exists, and generally for the research that examines how board composition affects firm performance, the findings have been mixed. Using a randomly chosen sample, which improves the external validity of results from prior studies, we find that board composition of high growth option firms is positively related to firm value, and this relationship is maintained when more refined measures that proxy the characteristics of outside directors (such as tenure of outside directors, the level of outside director equity ownership, the number of other board positions held by outside directors, and the total proportion of non‐executive directors, including grey directors) are recognised.

During the 1990s the value to an intending professional accountant of undertaking a period of liberal (general) studies was promoted internationally by a number of individuals and organisations, including the International Federation of Accountants (IFAC) and the New Zealand Institute of Chartered Accountants (the “Institute”). The Institute significantly changed its admissions policy for Chartered Accountants in 1996 and one change was to require four years of degree level study with a compulsory liberal studies component. This study surveys the perceptions of New Zealand accounting practitioners on the impact of this compulsory liberal component. The results of this study demonstrate that there is little support from accounting practitioners for IFAC’s claim that liberal education “can contribute significantly to the acquisition of professional skills”, including intellectual, personal and communication skills. In addition, the majority of respondents did not perceive any improvements in the professional skills of the staff that had qualified under the Institute’s current admissions policy. However, any perceived improvements were mainly attributed to the Institute’s admissions policy change. Notwithstanding the lack of support for the assertion that liberal education develops professional skills, there is a strong belief by respondents in the value of liberal education for intending professional accountants.

Within the new public management (NPM) context, this paper aims to examine the inclusion of equity issues in pricing policy development and implementation in the water industry in Australia.

A review of literature relevant to the pricing of water shows equity issues have four dimensions which tend to be, at best, only implicitly considered. An empirical illustration employing a transaction cost framework is provided of a case in which change in pricing mechanisms was strongly suggested.

An equity paradox emerges as an explanation of why 63.7 per cent of Queensland urban water entities chose not to adopt the user-pays pricing mechanism for water. This suggests that the balance between “equity” and “efficiency” continues to be required in policy development for water pricing. Equity of access and that of distribution continue to be significant factors. As well, equity of interest and of return must be considered, especially under a user-pays pricing mechanism.

In respect of NPM considerations, it is argued that consideration of the four dimensions of equity in the implementation of a water pricing policy will resolve contradictions with, and paradoxes met in dealing with efficiency.

The argument used in the paper is interdisciplinary. References and terms used include those which are social, economic, and environmental from an accounting and management perspective.

The purpose of this paper is to propose that external reports may be assessed not only by their content but also by the affordances provided to assist the reader's understanding. To operationalise this idea, it is applied to statements of service performance issued by New Zealand universities in 2000.

Using concepts drawn from information systems design, the authors develop an index which is applied to archival reports.

The index is negatively correlated with existing disclosure indices applied to the same set of reports, implying that it captures a distinct dimension of performance reporting. A tradeoff is demonstrated between providing more disclosure and more cognitive affordances. The index is fairly robust to certain arbitrary choices in its construction.

The concept of assessing the quality of external reports by their cognitive affordances is shown to be feasible by applying it to one kind of report in a particular setting. Further research will be needed to establish how it could be operationalised in other settings, such as social and environmental accounting.

With further development, the index may provide a way of assessing the presentation of external reports, and hence of improving accounting standards. It may also be helpful to preparers by providing a second dimension (besides content) on which they can evaluate and improve the quality of their reporting.

External reports have previously been assessed in terms of content and of the sentence structure employed. This paper suggests a way of assessing how the structure and presentation of reports affects their usability.

This study aims to investigate the differences in earnings quality of Malaysian companies after the adoption of IFRS‐based accounting standards named FRS.

It is hypothesize that under the new set of accounting standards, the quality of earnings reported by these companies is relatively higher. Specifically, the study tests whether the level of earnings management is significantly lower after the adoption of IFRS, and reported earnings is more value relevant during the IFRS period. This study uses a large sample of 4,010 observations over a three‐year period before and a three‐year period after the adoption of the new set of accounting standards.

The results show that IFRS adoption is associated with higher quality of reported earnings. It is found that earnings reported during the period after the adoption of IFRS is associated with lower earnings management and higher value relevant.

The results of this study contribute additional evidence to the literature on earnings quality and the impact of IFRS adoption. As most of the existing studies on earnings quality and IFRS have been conducted on data from the U.S and European countries, this study fills a gap in the existing literature by studying the effect of adoption of IFRS on earnings quality in an emerging market.

The purpose of this paper is to provide an understanding of the influential factors that may affect disclosures in the statements of service performance (SSPs) on wastewater services by New Zealand local authorities.

Drawing on neo-institutional sociology theory, coercive power from the authoritative requirements, the authors investigate the impact of this primary pressure on SSP reporting. A disclosure index is used to measure the level of correspondence of SSPs with the authoritative requirements. Based on prior research, influential factors were quantified to examine their association with the disclosures, using regression analysis.

The results indicate that the coercive pressure alone, without the support of mimetic and normative pressures, has had little influence on disclosure practice, with the majority of local authorities not adhering to the authoritative requirements. Political competition, size of constituency, constituency sophistication, political visibility, staff availability, personal attributes of accounting staff and financial resource availability are identified as likely influential factors for the SSPs. Size, proxied by total assets, proves to be significantly associated with the SSP reporting correspondence.

The results from the analysis of wastewater disclosures may have limited generalizability to other activities’ disclosures. Nevertheless, wastewater services are considered a critical activity and are expected to be prepared with expertise. Therefore, it is likely that the reporting capability of wastewater services will extend to other activities’ disclosures.

The findings reported provide evidence that the authoritative requirements for SSP reporting need further development, smaller local authorities and outsourcing local authorities need more assistance in preparing SSPs and audit reports can be more informative in identifying non-compliance with the authoritative requirements for SSPs.

The paper investigates a range of factors that influence the SSP reporting by the New Zealand Government and opens new research opportunities for other influential factors. Such findings may provide further help to regulators and reporting entities in improving the SSP reporting practice.

The purpose of this paper is to test whether dominant shareholder(s) of a firm enhance performance in Bangladesh and thus examines the arbitrary moves by the regulatory bodies, in the name of promoting “good corporate governance”, to restrict ownership concentration.

Building on the established literature, a simultaneous equations approach is applied to model the relationship between ownership concentration and performance and is tested on a sample of 567 observations on firms listed on the Dhaka Stock Exchange over a seven‐year period. The two equations model consists of firm performance and ownership concentration as endogenous variables along with other governance variable.

The results suggest a significant positive co‐deterministic relationship between ownership concentration and firm performance indicating that ownership concentration and firm performance simultaneously impact each other. It suggests that the ownership restriction imposed by the Securities and Exchange Commission is unjustified and detrimental to firm performance/growth in emerging countries such as Bangladesh.

This new evidence from an emerging market enhances our understanding of corporate governance in Asian countries. The study has implications for stakeholders, regulators and policy makers to revisit their attempt to limit founder‐family ownership holdings. Instead, their aim should be to balance the home‐grown unique features, such as a Top‐1 dominant shareholder, with Western governance mechanisms.

The paper is the first to consider Top 1 shareholder's ownership as the measure of ownership concentration, which is an important feature of the corporate sector in emerging markets. In emerging markets, founder‐family ownership concentration acts as an alternative governance mechanism substituting for strong and effective legal backing and other market‐driven monitoring mechanisms.