Saying more with less? Disclosure conciseness, completeness and balance in Integrated Reports

The Integrated Reporting Framework of 2013 represents the latest international attempt to connect a firm’s financial and sustainability (i.e., environmental, social and governance) performance in one company report. An Integrated Report (IR) should communicate “concisely” about how a firm’s strategy, governance, performance and prospects, in the context of its external environment, lead to the creation of sustainable value. At the same time, an IR needs to be “complete and balanced”, i.e., broadly including all material matters, both positive and negative, in a balanced way. Drawing on impression management studies, we examine a selection of performance determinants to gain insights into the factors associated with conciseness, completeness and balance in IR. The results from a sample of IR early adopters show that in the presence of a firm’s weak financial performance, the IR tends to be significantly longer and less readable (i.e., less concise), and more optimistic (i.e., less balanced). We additionally find that firms with worse social performance provide reports that are foggier (i.e., less concise) and with less information on their sustainability performance (i.e., less complete). Our evidence implies that IR early adopters employ quantity and syntactical reading ease manipulation as well as thematic content and verbal tone manipulation as impression management strategies. The results also suggest that such strategies depend not only on the level of firms’ performance but also on the type of performance (financial versus nonfinancial/sustainability). This paper adds to the limited literature on IR in sustainability accounting as well as to the research in mainstream financial accounting that examines disclosure quality using textual analysis

Internet technologies and interactivity of management control systems: some empirical evidence

The article seeks to address the question whether or not the dynamic environment characterized by the organizational and competitive patterns of the information economy influences the interactivity of management control systems. Particularly, the research presented in the article aims at comparing and contrasting the degree of interactivity featuring the management control systems of “traditional” versus “internet-based” or “internet-related” companies. The study is exploratory and descriptive, and it is based both on a questionnaire analysis and on some interviews. The questionnaire was sub-ministered to Italian companies listed in the FTSE MIB 40 (the industrial index, except for banks and insurance companies) and in the FTSE Star (once TechStar). The article develops along three sections. In the first part, the aims and motivations of the article are clarified. In the second part, the contingency theory is revisited in the context of information economy and propositions are drafted to frame the factors that may influence the degree of interactivity of management control systems. In the third part, the research design and the empirical evidence are described as a premise to our final discussion of the results. Concluding remarks essentially suggest that companies leveraging on internet technologies will not necessarily leverage upon the same technologies to foster interactivity of their management control systems

Has financial fair play changed European football?

In 2011 UEFA, the governing body of European football, introduced the Financial Fair Play Regulation (FFPR), consisting of a set of financial restraints to be met by clubs as a prerequisite for participation to its competitions. The aim of the FFPR was to introduce financial discipline into the clubs' decision-making processes, and ultimately protect the long-term viability of the European football industry. The reform was criticized because of possible unintended detrimental consequences. In particular, Peeters and Szymanski 2014 provided a model-based ex-ante simulation analysis showing that the reform would increase the profitability of clubs, but also tilt the competitive balance in favor of the top teams, thus reducing the interest of fans and investors as one of the main attractions in sports is precisely that the best team does not always win. Exploiting an original dataset between the seasons 2007-2008 and 2019-2020, we provide an ex-post econometric evaluation of the effects of the introduction of the FFPR revealing causal evidence that largely vindicates those ex-ante predictions

Enterprise Resource Planning systems and accountants: towards hybridization?

This paper aims to examine how the adoption of a new Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) system challenges the definition of the expertise and roles of accountants within organizations, leading to new, hybrid positions. By drawing on structuration theory, we propose to conceptualize the potential change in accountants' practices and positions as a structuration process, and ERP systems as modalities of structuration, providing new interpretive schemes, norms and co-ordination and control facilities, which influence the direction of hybridization between accountants and other professional groups. Since the results of this process are neither predictable a priori, nor generalizable, we are convinced that detailed interpretive case studies of ERP implementations are needed to understand their complex impacts on accountants. Hence, we provide one such study in order to explore the 'ambiguous' and often inconsistent consequences for accountants deriving from the adoption of an ERP system.

Information Technology and the Science of Complexity: A New Perspective on Management Control

In this contribution it is argued that a fruitful approach for analysing the effects of technological innovation on organizations can be provided by the science of complexity. Following this line of reasoning, the validity of the principles beloning to the prevailing orthodoxy in management control are questioned and the notion of "chaotic control" is proposed

To disclose or not to disclose? An investigation of the antecedents and effects of open book accounting

Open book accounting (OBA) is the regular disclosure of management accounting information beyond corporate borders. Prior contributions have mainly concentrated on identifying its antecedents in individual or small numbers of organizations with exploratory cases. My paper responds to the call to investigate OBA on a wider empirical basis and focuses simultaneously on the explanatory variables of OBA and its influence on both financial and non-financial performance. I thus also explore the mediating role of OBA in linking key antecedents and performance within a unified theoretical framework. I empirically test my model using survey data from a sample of European companies, which are then analyzed through structural equation modeling. My findings indicate that the extent of OBA use is explained by a firm’s willingness to work together with its counterparts in the long run, that is, a relational factor, and the presence of sophisticated cost accounting systems, that is, a technical prerequisite. My evidence also suggests a positive association between OBA and firm performance. Additionally, I find that OBA is a partial mediator that explains how a firm’s long-term commitment to its external partners and the sophistication of its cost accounting system may become associated with performance

Gli intangibles come leva strategica

Che siano guru del management o grandi CEO, ricerche accademiche o contributi di practitioner, da più parti sentiamo dire che il vantaggio competitivo nasce e si mantiene proprio attraverso il possesso e l’utilizzo degli intangible, più difficilmente imitabili e decisamente meno accessibili rispetto alle risorse tangibili. Di qui il titolo della parte monografica di questo numero, e di qui la domanda che più o meno esplicitamente si sono posti gli autori dei quattro contributi: “intangibles come leva strategica”, chiaramente sì, ma siamo di fronte a uno slogan vuoto di reale contenuto gestionale? La risposta è chiara: la gestione e la valorizzazione strategica degli intangibles passano attraverso la loro misurazione

A review and discussion of management control in inter-firm relationships: Achievements and future directions

The paper provides a review of the theoretical and empirical literature on management control in inter-firm contexts. The objective is not only to present the state of the art in this field, but also to evaluate critically the corresponding achievements to assist in developing new research questions