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This study aims to examine whether the financial market rewards the sustainable companies by investigating the impact of sustainability assurance levels on market capitalization of the CAC 40 firms. This analysis is complemented by examining the role of company characteristics to investors, providing a clearer picture of the functioning of the capital market.

To analyze the effect of sustainability assurance levels on market capitalization for the period 2011–2021, this study used a simplified version of the linear information model which is based on Ohlson model (1995) and Crouse (2007). This model is a multiple linear regression model which will be applied to panel data.

The study found that sustainability assurance levels negatively impact market capitalization. Higher investment decisions occur when sustainability reports have limited assurance, likely due to resource waste and costs exceeding income. In addition, net income, corporate social responsibility (CSR) indexes, leverage and performance significantly influence market capitalization.

This study offers valuable insights for both companies and investors, providing guidance on making investment decisions based on varying levels of sustainability assurance.

The current study sheds light on a relatively unexplored area regarding the connection between sustainability assurance and market reaction. Hence, this research focuses on a novel aspect of sustainability assurance by investigating how firm visibility in terms of sustainability practices impacts market capitalization.

The aim of this study is to analyse the factors that contribute to the disclosure of relational liabilities (RLs) of the US companies.

The study uses content analysis to examine the disclosure of RLs in annual reports of the US companies listed on the Nasdaq-100 index from 2013 to 2015.

The study finds a positive correlation between the disclosure of RLs and gender diversity of the board of directors as well as the education level of the CEO. By contrast, the disclosure of RLs is negatively associated with the age of the CEO. Companies in knowledge-intensive industries also tend to disclose more information about their RLs than those in other industries.

This study focuses on the determinants of RLs, whereas previous research has mainly examined the positive impact of voluntary disclosure of intellectual capital on financial performance. The main objective of this study is to shed light on the factors that influence the disclosure of RLs.

The purpose of this study is to investigate R&D investments in family firms.

The socio-emotional wealth (SEW) perspective, considered as a dominant paradigm in the family business field, is the theoretical framework used to report different behaviors ascertained within family firms. This paper focuses on two dimensions of the SEW, namely, family control and influence and family identity. A suspected moderating role played by the firm’s life cycle stage on the dimensions is also investigated using panel data. To analyze the results, this paper uses the Smart PLS software on secondary data collected for 76 German family firms.

The empirical results reveal a negative influence of SEW on R&D investments. The prominent effect of the family control and influence dimension on R&D is higher in the first part of a firm life cycle.

The analysis of this study is subject to several caveats. First, to measure the R&D investment, this paper used R&D intensity computed as the total annual R&D expenses by total sales. Except for the fact that the use of proxies received several criticizes from scholars (Berrone et al., 2012) claiming how they do not directly relate to the essence of the dimensions measured. Second, this paper used two out of five FIBER dimensions only in the study. This paper took the right direction, but still, the complexity of SEW may not be fully captured following this approach (Berrone et al., 2012).

This study could be considered as an important extension of prior research investigating R&D in family firms. The authors provide a valid empirical construct, the FIBER scale, to capture non-monotonic behaviors in family firms and an enlargement of the family firms and innovation management field of research.

This study aims to explain why some countries have quickly embraced IFRS standards while others have partially adopted IFRS and others have been resisting using a model borrowed from social psychology that appeals to cultural differences.

After selecting a sample of 30 countries, the data were analyzed through hierarchical cluster analysis. The results indicate that the sampled countries are classified into seven categories according to the degree of application of international standards. The ordinal regression is used to identify cultural and institutional factors that influence the adoption of IFRS.

The findings show that interpersonal communication promotes the application of international standards while open-mindedness, ethnocentrism and knowledge of the host culture prevent the transition to a strategy of adoption. The authors have also found out an empirical support for the two institutional isomorphic pressures (coercive and mimetic) on the adoption of IFRS at the national level. While the opening to the international economy encourages countries to set a strategy of adoption, civil liberties and political rights, taxation and innovation impede such adoption.

The study contributes to a better understanding of the factors influencing the implementation of IFRS. It provides to institutional theorists, accounting scholars and policymakers a cultural and institutional model for effective IFRS adoption conditions: promote intercultural interactions; master IFRS does not automatically mean applying them; encourage openness to the global economy; review the taxation system and accounting education programs and especially; and allow some flexibility for standard setters. This study can also assist regulators to verify their policies for the enforcement of IFRS. This paper will also be useful for future research studying the links between human behavior and the choice of new accounting standards through acculturation theory.

Through the acculturation theory, five new cultural dimensions developed by Ben Salem et al. (2019) are used for the first time to define the choice of accounting systems developed to international standards. This study empirically verified the predictive validity of these dimensions on the adoption of IFRS. Previous research have been based on the relationship between culture and disclosure using mainly the Hofstede dimensions. There is, therefore, a shortage of studies analyzing the culture and adoption of IFRS in individual countries. This study provides a cultural and institutional model of IFRS implementation conditions. Similarly, the research included taxation, which is not addressed by previous research, and their relevance in explaining the recourse to IFRS standards is confirmed.

This study aims to examine the relationship between corporate social responsibility (CSR) award and sustainability assurance levels for the French CAC 40 companies.

A sample of 57 French companies in the CAC 40 index corresponding to 448 observations was analyzed between 2008 and 2020 using an ordinal regression.

The main results conclude that the inclusion in the Dow Jones Sustainability Index World, the CSR award and the introduction of the Grenelle 2 law have a significant influence on sustainability assurance levels. However, incentive compensation does not appear to be relevant to explain sustainability assurance levels.

The present study focuses on a sample, limited to companies belonging to the CAC 40 index. To enhance the understanding of sustainability assurance levels, this research may include other global sustainability indices, such as the MSCI World and the FTSE4Good World, in the CSR awards.

This study could be useful for audit practitioners, leading them to reconsider their evaluation methods and take into account CSR incentives for a more objective analysis. Regulators should investigate the current CSR issues to improve CSR disclosure standards. Finally, these findings could motivate other researchers to expand the scope of the research to diverse contexts.

This study helps fill the gap existing in sustainability assurance literature by highlighting the relationship between CSR rewards and sustainability assurance levels.

In addition to financial reporting, more and more companies report environmental, social and governance (ESG) information in emerging countries. This practice is intended to fulfill the information needs of all the company’s stakeholders, and more specifically the investors. The purpose of this paper is twofold. First, to analyze whether investors include ESG information into their investment allocation decisions in Tunisian capital market. Second, to identify the information dimension having the more effect on their investment allocation decisions.

A field experiment was conducted in an emerging country (Tunisia) among 245 novices and experienced financial stakeholders to analyze how ESG information is taken into account in their investment allocation decisions.

The results of the factorial mixed analysis of variance show that ESG information influenced the investment allocation decisions in Tunisia. In addition, the results of the post-hoc test indicate that governance and social information had more influence than environmental information.

This paper is limited to the analysis of the influence of ESG information only on the decisions of financial stakeholders in Tunisia. In future research works, it will be relevant to study the decisions of other stakeholders and to carry out comparative studies between several countries.

The results can only strengthen and motivate companies to pay more attention to their ESG information disclosure practices. They are also likely to attract the attention of the accounting standard setters on the need to standardize these practices.

The original contribution of this paper lies not only in the analysis of three dimensions of extra-financial information: E, S and G through an experiment carried out in an emerging country, but also especially in the comparison of the influence of each dimension on investment allocation decisions.

The effect of culture, through the accounting values of conservatism and secrecy, on accounting judgments is an area of research extensively studied in developed countries. However, little research has focused on this issue in developing countries, specifically Arab countries. Thus, this study aims to fill this gap by investigating the impact of the combined effect of the culture/accounting dimensions on the interpretation of the probability expressions used in the international accounting standards/international financial reporting standards (IFRSs) in two North African/Arab countries: Tunisia and Egypt.

In the first place, this study determines Hofstede’s cultural index scores for Tunisia, ignored in his original model and updates those related to Egypt, which provides a more relevant understanding of the cultural effect. Then, the study relies on the Hofstede/Gray cultural accounting model to examine the extent to which the accounting values of conservatism and secrecy may affect the recognition of the increase and the decrease of income and the disclosure of this information in the financial statements by postgraduate accounting student in both countries.

The results provide evidence of the generalizability of Gray’s conservatism hypothesis in the North African/Arab countries (i.e. Tunisia and Egypt), at least in the context of income recognition. Moreover, the findings demonstrate that culture, through its influence on the accounting value of secrecy, affects the interpretation of probability expressions used in the IFRSs to establish disclosures.

This study calls for more attention from the standard setters to provide further guidance related to the consistent and accurate numerical value that needs to be assigned to the probability expressions to reduce the ambiguity related to their interpretation. The international accounting standards board (IASB) should pay greater attention to the use of vague probability expressions in developing the IFRSs to promote the true comparability of financial reporting worldwide. Like with any research, this study implies certain limitations specifically related to the sample selection, a sample size, which may affect the generalizability of the results. Thus, future research may rely on a larger sample combining and cover other cultural areas.

The results of this study may give insights into the practical issues faced by the accounting practitioners and which are related to the interpretation and the application of the IFRS including probability expressions. This may trigger their attention toward this issue to reduce the occurrence of these expressions in the revised and newly released standards to guarantee homogeneous financial reporting practices across countries and enhance the IASB’s objective of international accounting harmonization.

This study might be the first one that investigates the issue of the IFRS interpretation in two North African and Arab countries: Tunisia and Egypt. It also provides an original investigation of the cultural effect on accounting judgments based on the actualized Hofstede’s cultural indexes, especially for Tunisia which is ignored in the original country classification.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the potential influence of corporate governance mechanisms on risk disclosure quality in Tunisia.

The authors examine 152 annual reports of Tunisian non-financial-listed firms during 2008–2013, and use the manual content analysis method to measure the risk disclosure quality.

The authors find that the quality of risk disclosure in Tunisian companies is relatively low, and also find that the quality of risk disclosure is positively associated with institutional ownership, board independence, the presence of women on the board, the presence of family members on the board and the independence of audit committee. Managerial ownership has a negative effect on risk disclosure quality. Finally, the authors find that the revolution decreases the influence of concentration ownership, government ownership, family ownership and audit committee size on risk disclosure quality.

Using a comprehensive set of corporate governance mechanisms and a new measure for risk disclosure quality in Tunisia, the authors provide the first empirical evidence on the impact of corporate governance mechanisms on risk disclosure quality in a developing country. The study has theoretical and practical implications for both developed and developing countries.

This study aims to investigate the effect of mandatory international financial reporting standards (IFRS) adoption on the risk disclosure quality by listed European insurers.

The study used a content analysis of the annual reports and consolidated accounts of 13 insurance companies listed in the European market between 2002 and 2007 based on two regulatory frameworks, Solvency and IFRS.

The results showed a significant effect of the mandatory adoption of IFRS and a clear improvement in the quality of risk disclosure. Moreover, risk disclosure is positively associated with the size of the company.

The authors can consider the relatively limited size of the sample as a limitation of this study. Moreover, the manual content analysis used to be considered subjective.

The findings of this study provide useful insights to professional and regulatory bodies about the consequences of IFRS adoption to enhance transparency and particularly risk disclosure.

The research contributes to the existing literature. First, the authors have shown that companies are improving in the quality of risk disclosure even before 2005. Second, the authors have shown that the year 2005 is distinguished by a marked improvement in disclosure trends, with companies aligning themselves with coercive and mimetic regulatory forces. Third, the authors highlight the significant effect of mandatory IFRS adoption even in highly regulated industries, such as the insurance industry.