While it is generally maintained that earnings management can occur to inform as well as to mislead, evidence that earnings management informs has been scarce, and evidence that credibility increases with signal costliness inexistent. We provide evidence that firms use discretion over financial...

Planning and management control in France in 1998, the major changes in the management control systems.

This article aims at bridging two dimensions that have been often addressed separately by the sociology of professional groups: intra-professional divisions and the governance of professionals. Taking professional accountants as an example, the attempt by the Institute of Chartered Accountants...

The paper reports the results of a survey of the content and learning materials used in courses in financial statement analysis in Europe and the United States. Courses in Europe and undergraduate courses in the US exhibit similar characteristics with respect to course content (heavy emphasis on...

This paper analyses and compares the basic concepts founding ABC in the French literature. It shows that the main converging and diverging points are related to the definition of basic notions (task, activity, process) and to cost calculation. The authors diverge mainly on the definition of...

Information on the activity of Mary P. Follet, her theory on business management and her contribution to the understanding of control concept.

In a context of development of international capital markets, it seems to be interesting to question the adaptation of French groups to Anglo-American practices. The objective of the present paper is to illustrate the evolution towards the Anglo-American standards through the study of one aspect...

Historically, the development of budgetary control in French businesses took place within the ideological context of the debate on organisation of the economy following the economic and political crises of the 1930s and 1940s. Budgetary control, a management practice theorised as early as the...

This study analyzes determinants and effects of differences between Domestic Accounting Standards (DSA) and Internationake Accounting Standards (IAS).

Drawing on the concept of « trial », developed by French sociologists, this article analyzes the dynamics of employees’ performance evaluation systems, particularly those involving accounting performance measures. A case study is presented as an illustration of our proposal to consider these...