Advancements in information technology and graphics software mean that colour graphics are an increasingly important part of the communication of business operations and corporate reporting. Unfortunately, the research literature on the effects of colour graphics on decision performance is...

Accounting information is essentially multivariate and the relationships among variables may be difficult to establish. Differing multivariate information presentation methods may impact on the quality of the decisions made by users. Existing studies in this area have given scant attention to...

Explores whether the firm’s discretionary narrative disclosures measure its financial risk of bankruptcy. Specifically examines the existence of an association between the content of the chairman’s statement and firm failure. Show that these statements are closely associated with financial...

Adopts an empirical approach to demonstrate that a marked difference exists between the terms “readability” and “understandability”, suggesting that “reading ease”, as measured by formulae like FLESCH and LIX based on word and sentence complexity, conveys data which may be different...

There has been limited study to date of the effectiveness of alternative methods of presenting accounting information for financial decision purposes. Explores the relative usefulness of the schematic face, compared with conventional presentation formats, for communicating the multivariate...

Purpose – The study aims to explore the use of alternative measures of “understandability” on accounting texts. This includes the meaning identification test (MIT) and the sentence verification technique (SVT), which have not previously been used by accounting researchers, as well as...

Purpose – The obfuscation hypothesis suggests that under‐performing firms will tend to obscure the meaning of their corporate narratives by deliberately adopting a textual complexity, most readily apparent through poor readability and the use of unnecessarily difficult language. This paper...

Purpose – The purpose of this study is to examine undergraduate accounting students' perceptions of factors contributing to plagiarism activities. Design/methodology/approach – Survey methods were used to investigate the prominence of different factors, and any differences associated with...

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to examine the extent to which the environmental disclosures in annual reports of companies listed on the Kuala Lumpur Stock Exchange are associated with corporate characteristics. Design/methodology/approach – A rating system for environmental...

Purpose – As one of the main purposes of financial statements is to provide relevant information for investors, relationships between share prices and accounting variables have been widely researched. Early studies focus mainly on earnings, but attention has turned in recent years to valuation...