1,721,001 research outputs found
A worldwide empirical analysis of the accounting behaviour in the waste management sector
No full textDrawing on stakeholder theory, the premise in this manuscript is that moral and ethical behavior in terms of correct financial information contribute to higher sustainable performance that satisfies the wide range of stakeholders who are interested in the economic feasibility and environmental viability of waste management firms. On the basis of a scientific literature review and by using a balanced panel data set of 416 waste management firms worldwide over the period 2013–2016, the empirical evidence shows that ownership structures (e.g. governmental, institutional, corporate group, family, and concentrated) as well as corporate governance characteristics (e.g. size of the board, directors’ gender, nationality, and expertise) diversely affect waste management firms’ accounting behavior in terms of both discretionary accruals and earnings smoothness. The findings bring into focus the “black boxes” of ownership structures and corporate governance encouraging the policy makers to shape up laws that can constrain accounting misbehavior in waste management firms
Financial accounting evaluations and goodwill. An accounting history perspective
No full textWithin the wide theme of financial evaluations, this conceptual study carefully scrutinises the past accounting literature on goodwill-related topics. It retains a constructive and historical method, which enables a better development of an individual construal and analysis. In this sense, it opens up new avenues within the Italian accounting tradition, which might also be considered as blazing a trail for modern accounting standards. Therefore, it studies the main trends, which theoretically proved to be a prodromal period for preparing the current financial statements pervaded by the fair value logic. It reviews the historical studies on goodwill in detail, it focusses on how Italian academic literature defined and measured goodwill through the years and it makes a few suggestions for historical International studies. The analysis proves how in almost all of the Italian and international accounting literature there is a deliberate intention to define the goodwill concept, to limit the boundaries for its recognition and to regularly control its value through ad hoc evaluation practices. Since the first definitions, there are a few common features that might be organised according to the schools that influenced the ideas of the authors
Do Ownership Structures Affect Intellectual Capital? Empirical Evidence from European Companies
No full textPurpose: This paper aims at investigating whether different ownership types (i.e. block holders, family, state and institutional shareholders) affect the measures of intellectual capital (IC).
Design/methodology/approach: Using a balanced panel data of 2,598 European industrial Firm-year observations in the span period from 2006 to 2015 I explore the influence of
ownership types on three proxies of IC: VAIC, intangible assets and R&D expenses.
Findings: Consistently with predictions from agency and resource-based theories I find that family and state ownerships are negatively associated with the level of IC, while large institutional investors’ long-term perspective positively affects the firm’s IC performance. On the contrary, block holders are not significantly associated with none of the IC measures.
Research contributions/limitations/implications: Theoretically this study contributes to both the corporate governance and IC literature, highlighting some important interrelations between
the development and advancement of IC value and ownership types. The main limitation consists in the exclusive use of accounting-based measure to proxy for IC, however, the results
may be of interest to managers in order to maximise the development of IC even in context where the shareholders constrain investments in e.g. intangibles and R&D expenses. In broad
terms, the findings may interest investors in order to better allocate their resources
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