Audit fees and IFRS accounting - Is information costly?

Since 2005 companies with equity instruments traded on regulated markets in the European Economic Area have prepared their financial reports in accordance with accounting standards issued by the IASB. A survey conducted in 2007 indicated that most of the EU companies that changed from local to IFRS rules incurred additional costs in connection with the transition. Also, companies expected additional future costs from using IFRS. Although the main part of these stemmed from the companies’ internal work on IFRS statements, additional costs for external auditing and other external services were identified as substantial but independent of company size. We analyze whether the application of IFRS standards has increased Danish companies’ cost of auditing. Our study is based on a sample of financial reports from large Danish companies from 2002 to 2008. Controlling for a number of general audit fee driving aspects, we find that overall, audit fees have not increased significantly for companies using IFRS rules. However, when combining IFRS with company size and complexity, we find that large and complex companies using IFRS pay a heavy audit fee premium compared to small and less complex companies that also use IFRS. Our results for nonaudit fees are less conclusive.Audit fees; non audit fees; IFRS; transition of accounting regime; empirical study

Strategy discourses in public sector organizations. A qualitative focus group study.

Strategic concerns have spread into public management and fueled the growth of strategic practices. The purpose of this study is to examine strategy discourses in public sector organizations. It describes how strategy is articulated and conceptualized with reference to dominant strategy discourses and identifies the structural tension between these discourses.Based on a deconstructive analysis of focus group interviews, the article identifies four strategy discourses: “rationalist” discourse, “structuralist” discourse, “idealist” discourse and “constructivist” discourse. Strategy makers draw on several or all of the discourses in public sector organizations and the body of literature on strategic management related to them. The discourses are different but not incompatible in practice. Rather, they complement each other in strategic practices. Thus, the article suggests a more nuanced way of strategic discourses in public sector organizations and provides inspiration to other sectors as well. The article concludes by suggesting directions for further research

Gut bacteria and necrotizing enterocolitis: cause or effect?

Development of necrotising enterocolitis (NEC) is considered to be dependent on the bacterial colonisation of the gut. With little concordance between published data and a recent study failing to detect a common strain in infants with NEC, more questions than answers are arising about our understanding of this complex disease

Why do we need strategy in public management? Institutional logics as strategic resources in public management

Strategy has become an essential of public management. Research shows that there are many different approaches to this; however, research has not explored the strategic resources that different approaches provide. This paper contributes to this field of research by applying neo-institutional theory and paradox theory to strategy in public management.Institutional logics form socially constructed patterns of cultural and material practices by which managers define interests and asks and provide meaning to their daily activity. Institutional logics thus accommodate strategic behaviour when managers – and other strategic actors – respond to institutional pressures and expectations.We show that Public administration, Professional Leadership, New Public Management and New Public Governance offer different configurations of strategy in the public sector, i.e. different reasons and resources for doing strategy, which provide public management with different strategic foci, goals and practices. To explore strategy in public management, the institutional logics should be analysed together with an emphasis on the dynamic interaction between them in order to understand how the strategic resources of a particular institutional logic are applied and legitimized as responses to the flaws of other institutional logics