We analyze managerial discourse in corporate communication (‘CEO-speak') during a six month period following a legitimacy-threatening event in the form of an incident in a German nuclear power plant. As discourses express specific stances expressed by a group of people who share particular...

Purpose – Prior accounting research views impression management predominantly though the lens of economics. Drawing on social psychology research we provide an alternative perspective on corporate annual narrative reporting as characterised by conditions of ‘ex post accountability' (Aerts,...

Prior research assumes that discretionary disclosures either (a) contribute to useful decision making by overcoming information asymmetries between managers and firm outsiders (informational perspective); or (b) constitute opportunistic behavior whereby managers exploit information asymmetries...

The purpose of this paper is to review and synthesize the literature on discretionary narrative disclosures. We explore why, how, and whether preparers of corporate narrative reports use discretionary disclosures in corporate narrative documents and why, how, and whether users react thereto. To...

This paper maps the network of interlocking directorships formed by the boards of the top 50 financial and 200 non-financial companies in Ireland. The Irish network is compared with those in ten countries, based on the same sample size and selection criteria as used in this paper, using the...

Purpose – This paper reviews prior definitions of the umbrella term ‘clinical governance’. The research question is: do clinical governance definitions adequately distinguish between governance, management and practice functions? Three definitions are introduced to replace that umbrella...

Purpose – Can personality traits of Chief Executive Officers (CEOs) be detected at-a-distance? Following newspaper speculation that the banking crisis of 2008 was partly caused by CEO hubris, this paper analyses the CEO letters to shareholders of a single bank over ten years for evidence of...

Purpose – This paper reviews and critiques prior research on audit committees using a practice-theory lens. Research on audit committees has followed the same trajectory as early research on boards of directors, which has been criticised for its singular theoretical perspectives and...

This paper examines the role of experts from both a United Kingdom and North America perspective. The paper starts by pointing out the important role of expert evidence in assisting the tier of fact. The distinction between accountants as fact witnesses and as expert witnesses is identified. The...