Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to explore the role of accounting discretion in a principal-agent setting, wherein accounting information is used in performance evaluation. The agent may choose one from among several allowable accounting methods. However, limited audit resources allow...

Purpose: This paper aims to describe two scenarios where the problem of information search interacts with the firm’s investment decisions. Investment decisions cannot be made separately from the need to acquire information. Design/methodology/approach: The scenarios are illustrated with...

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to explore the role of accounting discretion in a principal-agent setting, wherein accounting information is used in performance evaluation. The agent may choose one from among several allowable accounting methods. However, limited audit resources allow...

Purpose The purpose of this note is to expose accounting students and others to recent findings in management control, specifically to the relationship between the informativeness of a performance measure and its usefulness in performance evaluation. Design/methodology/approach Numerical...