Search results

As the management discussion and analysis (MD&A) section contains discretionary narrative disclosures regarding a government's yearly financial changes and status, the authors investigate several municipal debt market consequences of linguistic tone within these disclosures.

The authors textually analyze municipal MD&As with Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count (LIWC) software and develop narrative tone measures based on existing financial-specific dictionaries. Using a final sample of 446 municipal bond issuances from 2012 to 2016, the authors modify the current bond regression models to examine the association between MD&A disclosure tone and future bond interest costs or rating disagreements.

This study’s empirical analysis suggests that more negative MD&A tone is associated with higher future debt costs and greater future disagreements among bond rating agencies.

Overall, the evidence implies that municipal bond stakeholders use the information in narrative disclosures when evaluating risk, but that the qualitative nature can introduce differences in interpretation between users. Furthermore, additional training in MD&A writing and further standard guidance in MD&A disclosures could improve the MD&A's informativeness for bond market decision-making and state-level monitoring.

This study is first to incorporate narrative tone measures into bond models in a governmental context.

The purpose of this paper is to identify factors associated with the presence and use of internal audit functions (IAFs) at US colleges and universities, as well as their relationship with financial reporting quality and federal grant outcomes.

Using a combination of publicly available and manually collected data, this paper uses a two-stage model to examine both the factors associated with the use of IAFs within US institutions of higher education and the consequences therein.

Results indicate that institutions with larger enrollments and endowments, those that receive public funding and those that have an audit committee are more likely to maintain an IAF. Findings also suggest that the presence of an IAF is negatively associated with reported material weaknesses for major programs at significant levels. Finally, the presence of an IAF is found to have a positive and significant association with federal grants received by the institution, with an even stronger association for IAFs that perform grant-specific procedures.

The study’s findings provide the first large-sample quantitative insights on IAF work within US colleges and universities. Results should be of interest to college/university leadership as they attempt to improve financial reporting quality and grant outcomes, as well as external stakeholders looking to evaluate whether institutions are acting as good stewards over resources. Additionally, the Institute of Internal Auditors may find the results helpful when promoting the profession.

This paper reports on one segment of a research project which investigates what faculty members perceive to be acting as barriers in their attempts to integrate [information and communication] technology into their teaching at a laptop university. A web-based questionnaire was used to collect information from 69/288 (24%) faculty members from a small U.A.E. university. From the data gathered, patterns and associations emerged from which the researcher is able provide recommendations as to what type of interventions and programs could be provided to increase current levels of teaching with technology.

We investigate whether council audit committees relate to municipal fiscal policies. We find that municipalities with audit committees are associated with greater levels of own-source revenue, in that they finance municipal operations with locally raised revenues driven by charges and fees compared to municipalities without audit committees. Furthermore, municipalities with audit committees are associated with less new debt than those without audit committees, indicating more conservative use of external financing. Overall, our results are consistent with municipal audit committees, in addition to monitoring the financial reporting function, playing an advisory role in fiscal decisions, especially when the cost of local government to citizens is high.

We investigate whether municipal financial manager turnover is associated with accounting restatements. This analysis is motivated by the notion that suspect financial reporting could limit the ability of stakeholders to assess the use of public resources (GASB, 2006). The evidence suggests that municipalities disclosing accounting restatements are more likely to see changes in the top financial manager position than a control sample of non-restatement municipalities. Overall, our findings are consistent with associations between financial reporting quality and the labor market for municipal financial managers, and imply that governments should consider adding the prevalence of accounting failures as an input in the evaluation of top financial managers.

We investigate whether auditor size is associated with the disclosure of internal control exceptions among Circular A-133 audits of nonprofit healthcare organizations. Our analysis is motivated by recent growth and transparency concerns within the sector. Using a sample of 1,180 audit reports from 2004 to 2008, we find evidence that audits performed by Big 4 firms are less likely to disclose internal control weaknesses than those performed by smaller firms. Additional analyses indicate this relation only remains statistically significant for a subsample of small organizations, possibly due to greater selectivity or lower efforts by the Big 4 auditors. We discuss the implications of these findings from an audit quality, market dominance, and client size perspective. The results are relevant to hospital financial managers seeking high quality audits at low cost.

In this paper, we describe our approach to incorporating the basics of International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) into introductory financial accounting courses. Prior survey evidence suggests that IFRS receives little coverage in such courses, with two primary reasons being a lack of available time and insufficient IFRS teaching materials tailored for introductory financial accounting (Zhu, Rich, Michenzi, & Cherubini, 2011). The objectives for our IFRS procedures were to provide all business students with a basic knowledge of IFRS and an understanding of the similarities and differences between U.S. GAAP and IFRS. We utilized an integrated, comparison-based methodology, and developed teaching materials that were incorporated into each chapter discussion through short vignettes, brief examples, and a comprehensive exercise. Evidence from a student survey suggests that a strong majority believe that IFRS coverage is important, and that our procedures contributed to their learning on the topic. Furthermore, the student survey suggested that the comparative nature of our IFRS procedures enhanced understanding of U.S. GAAP. As a result, our procedures provide guidance to accounting instructors looking to introduce students to the basics of IFRS or other complex topics within the time constraints of a crowded course.

I present a background on the use and effectiveness of podcasting in higher education, and provide guidance on developing supplementary video podcasts for use in introductory financial accounting courses. Specifically, I discuss how to create, produce, and distribute exercise-based video podcasts that walk students through problems based on material covered during traditional lectures. I distributed a series of 10 exercise-based video podcasts to introductory financial accounting students at my institution during Fall 2011, and documented high levels of student satisfaction in terms of impact on exam performance. Overall, I contribute to the accounting education literature by illustrating how to use a technology in a way that considers the unique characteristics of introductory accounting courses.

During the mid 1990s, it was predicted that the library as physical place was doomed. A dualism emerged – the virtual library vs library as place – and it was assumed that the virtual library would prove to be the most popular. In 1995, the State Library of New South Wales in Sydney, Australia, produced four scenarios presenting alternative library futures in the twenty‐first century, specifically the year 2010. Only one of these scenarios predicted a reinterpretation and corresponding revitalisation of “library as place”. The author initiated and led this process in 1995 and revisited these scenarios in 2010 with a view to comparing current practices in library design with the attributes described in this lone scenario; the aim of this paper is to focus on this scenario.

Library leaders in Australia, many of whom participated in the 1995 scenario development process, are interviewed, along with a number of architects specialising in contemporary library design. This qualitative process is complemented by an international literature search. Three library sectors are surveyed – collecting institutions, academic and public libraries.

Fifteen years on the dualism between virtual and physical is less stark; a convergence has occurred that would have been unthinkable then. A hybrid has emerged with digital and place‐based notions of a library holding equal currency. Interviewees confirm that “library as place” has never been so popular. This trend is international and emerges from the inter‐weaving of the digital, social and aesthetic that has generated new loci for solitary and collective learning and interaction.

The paper asks questions about what has happened to unsettle predictions conceived in the mid 1990s; what is happening now in terms of new modes of learning and knowledge exchange; and what kind of library spaces and uses can be expected in the future.

The concept of a knowledge interface for library users is developed as an extension of intelligent knowledge‐base system (IKBS) concepts. Contemporary directions in intelligent decision support, particularly in the role of search intermediaries, are then examined to identify the significance of intelligent intermediaries as a solution to unstructured decision support requirements of library users. A DISCOURSE SCRIPT is given to illustrate one form of intelligent intermediary.