Accountants in public practice are the main advisors to small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). SMEs use external accountants primarily to help fulfil regulatory requirements or satisfy contractual constraints (e.g., taxation, compilation and audit), but there is evidence that SMEs also rely...

Purpose – This study aims to investigate whether “small- and medium-sized enterprises” (SMEs) benefit from their external accountants’ business advice through enhanced firm performance. Most SMEs draw on external support, and their main advisors are external accountants (Bennett and...

The accounting profession has actively adopted a broader service focus which includes business advice, but the scant extant research in the SME environment identifies only ex-ante demand determinants. Using in-depth interviews with SME owner-managers and external accountants, this study confirms...

Purpose – Business advisory services are an emerging service category for external accountants in the small and medium-sized enterprise (SME) environment. The purpose of this study is to investigate determinants of SME demand for business advice, drawing on the agency theory, relational...