Purpose: Managers of defined-benefit (DB) firms have considerable discretion in deriving pension costs and flexibility in cash contributions to pension plans. Pension accruals occur when cash contributions differ from pension costs. The manipulable nature of pension costs and cash contributions...

Purpose: The authors examine the association between internal control quality (ICQ) and voluntary disclosure and test whether chief executive officer (CEO) duality, as a proxy for CEO structural power, moderates such a relationship in an emerging market (Egypt). Design/methodology/approach: ICQ...

Purpose: This study examines whether manipulation in attributes of corporate narrative disclosures and the use of graphical representations can bias non-professional investors' judgment towards firms' future performance, in an emerging market context. Design/methodology/approach: The authors...

Purpose: The purpose of this research is to examine the impact of external assurance on the level of voluntary corporate climate change disclosures by Finnish firms. Design/methodology/approach: The sample of this study includes 228 firm-year observations over the period 2008–2015 for listed...

Purpose: This paper examines the impact of audit quality on the managerial preferences between real and accrual earnings management (REM and AEM, respectively) in oil and gas firms operating in the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) member countries. Design/methodology/approach: The study relies on...

Purpose: This paper develops novel proxies for labour tax avoidance (LTAV) and tests their validity within a sample of 189 labour tax-avoidant offending firms (LTAOFs) accused of evading social security contributions (SOCs) by public authorities. Design/methodology/approach: LTAV proxies are...

Purpose: This paper examines the roles of the balanced scorecard (BSC) in a long-term perspective and with a large deployment along numerous hierarchical levels. For this purpose, we use a longitudinal analysis of an implementation in a mutual insurance company. Design/methodology/approach: We...

Purpose: This paper aims to enrich our understanding of whether mandatory IR adoption lures firm into misreporting or forces them to reduce it. Design/methodology/approach: The empirical analysis is carried out based on the sample containing all publicly listed firms in South Africa. Many...

Purpose: The authors examine the impact of corporate investment efficiency on corporate voluntary disclosure for a sample of UK non-financial companies. Design/methodology/approach: The authors use a sample of FTSE All-Share firms for the period of 2007–2014. Disclosure scores are collected...

Purpose: This study explores the role played by audit committees (ACs) in illuminating the effectiveness of internal audit (IA) as a facilitator of the achievement of organisational goals, specifically examining whether the AC mediates the relationship between IA and firm performance (FP)....