In this paper, we use the investment fraud of Bernard Madoff to inquire into the production of trust in the context of financial markets. Drawing upon empirical data related to U.S. individual investors (interviews and letters) as well as documentary material, we investigate the mechanisms...

this paper analyses the transformations induced since 1970 in the French accountancy profession by the globalisation of France's economy.

The position of an internal audit function as a “servant of two masters” (i.e. management and the audit committee) may lead to a conflict of priorities. In this setting, the tone at the top set by the Chief Audit Executive (CAE) plays a critical role in balancing the potentially competing...

Amongst professional activities, audit has increasingly departed from what the sociology of professions traditionally considered to be lying at the heart of the identity of the members of a professional body : the autonomy to judge the nature and amount of work that is necessary to treat the...

The purpose of this article is to explore the role of instruments in the transformation of institutional logics and their associated practices at the micro level. Based on an ethnographic study, this article compares two working groups — one responsible for equity and the other for...

Recent techniques and shifts in the environment are often foreseen as leading management accountants to adopt a business orientation. However, empirical evidence pointing to fundamental shifts in the roles played by management accountants remains relatively scarce. The authors explore this...

Drawing on a framework of deinstitutionalization, this study explores the abandonment of budgeting through a multiple-case study of four companies. The findings illustrate how a number of antecedents to deinstitutionalization acted in each setting and show that abandonment was only achieved...

We examine how mark-to-market accounting affects investment decisions in an agency model with reputation concerns. Reporting the current market value of a firm's assets in the financial statements can serve as a disciplining device because the information contained in the market price provides a...

It is often stressed that the process of IASC standard setting and its output are very much influenced by the Anglo-American accounting approach. This is considered to be one of the major reasons for the obvious reluctance of countries to adopt the international accounting standards. The...

Accounts manipulations have been a matter of research, discussion and, even, controversy in several countries such as the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, Australia and France. The objective of this paper is to elaborate a general framework for classifying accounts manipulations...