Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to propose that external reports may be assessed not only by their content but also by the affordances provided to assist the reader's understanding. To operationalise this idea, it is applied to statements of service performance issued by New Zealand...

Purpose – Interview data is often the cornerstone of qualitative field studies, yet problems with getting sufficient, rich, reliable data in a cost effective manner can inhibit the progress of field study research. The purpose of this paper is to describe the use of a novel interview method,...

This paper examines the positive (scientific) approach to accounting research, defined here as any research intended to understand objective causes of human behaviour in accounting settings. It presents a set of ontological and epistemological assumptions which are minimally required for...

This study investigates the impact of IFRS on income smoothing activities through loan lossprovisions of Australia and New Zealand banks for the period of 1995-2009. Prior to IFRSimplementation, bank loans provisioning is subject to managerial manipulation, possibly dueto the weakness in GAAP...

Building on Romano's recent analysis of the United States securities regulatory regime, we model competition between professional auditing associations. We show that such competition is an effective substitute for government regulation, providing an efficient means for auditors to signal their...