This paper examines the ‘modernising government' initiative in the UK, and the ‘flexibilities' – lead commissioning, integrated provision, and pooled budgets – introduced in the Health Act 1999. This policy reform, and the associated tools to operationalise it, placed ideas of...

This study examines whether mandatory adoption of International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) leads to capital market benefits through enhanced financial statement comparability. UK domestic standards are considered very similar to IFRS (Bae et al. 2008), suggesting any capital market...

This paper compares technical aspects of accrual-based budgeting and accounting reforms of the national governments of France, Germany, the UK and the US. It shows that there is no consensus among the four countries about the complete package of technical reform possibilities that is most...

The abolition of the Audit Commission in England and Wales removes the ‘protector of the public purse'. The oversight body and its audit practice are largely replaced by the private sector regime and audit firms. We analyse the audit market for health service foundation trusts, an area of...

This paper reports the results of an empirical investigation into the intellectual capital reporting (ICR) practices of UK companies in four distinct sectors. It differs from prior ICR studies in that it analyses a wide range of external corporate reporting media for their IC content. It finds...

Civil Society Organisations (CSOs) comprise a diverse range of associations, including NGOs, community groups, political parties and social networks. Nevertheless, despite heterogeneity, regulators, funders and donors often treat CSOs as homogeneous when demanding accountability. This paper...

Consistent with the implications of conditional conservatism, we show that the differential persistence of cash flows relative to that of accruals is higher across loss firms than profit firms. Further, we find that the positive relation of cash flows with future returns is more severe in loss...

Although excessive transparency and accountability demands can have a counterproductive effect on organisational performance (Bovens 2005), longstanding hierarchical accountability structures to ensure financial conformance in English local government continue to endure. Interestingly however,...

Motivated by the requirements of the UK Companies Act 2006 and the subsequent Directive 2014/95/EU of the European Parliament and of the Council, we investigate the relationship between environmental and social disclosures (analyst following) and analyst following (environmental and social...

This study draws upon institutional theory to examine the extent to which the political interests of New Labour influenced the application of NHS performance measurements devised for accountability purposes between 1997 and 2007. This study adopts an interpretative perspective and emphasises the...