Nieves Carrera

We adopt a historical perspective to understand the current landscape of accountability and governance mechanisms. In adopting assurance as the umbrella concept for audit and internal control, we explore how the notion of accountability ("accountability for what") and the beneficiaries of corporate accountability ("accountability to whom") have changed over time, leading to the re-definition of "old" mechanisms of accountability and governance and the development of new mechanisms ("accountability through"). We then provide an overview of recent studies examining how these mechanisms contribute to accountability and governance. We show that the recent trend of combining traditional financial reporting with other reporting activities in an integrated report is questioning the traditional boundaries among the three mechanisms, challenging the attempts to compartmentalize them ("combined assurance"). The chapter concludes by proposing a taxonomy as a tool to help conceptually organize the recent debates on assurance, audit, and internal control practices.

This study examines whether social and human capital influence the compensation of individual auditors in the small audit firm market. We employ a sample of Italian auditors and use measures from the network and auditing literatures to capture their professional connections, representing social capital, and their industry expertise, representing human capital. Our findings show a positive and economically meaningful association between these individual attributes and auditor compensation. We run several tests to address potential endogeneity issues in our research design. Our results suggest that, in the small audit market, clients perceive as valuable those auditors with higher social and human capital, and as a result, are willing to pay a premium for these specific auditor attributes.

Originating in a panel presentation at the eighth Accounting History International Conference, this study offers a reflection on the issues, opportunities and obstacles which may arise when accounting historians engage with other accounting scholars and scholars outside of accounting. Supporting the view that accounting scholars need and should make an effort to engage with other scholars inside and outside accounting, various aspects are considered as enhancing the interdisciplinarity of accounting history research. Then, issues such as researchers and the community, research problems, theories, methods and data are addressed. The opportunities arising from interdisciplinary interactions with a wide range of scholars are then developed. Finally, the potential obstacles are addressed. These obstacles can be overcome by the development of robust communication and the invention of a new genre of discourse and research focus and by working with those outside our discipline and embracing the challenge of the new and the different.

We draw on social capital theory to examine the relationship between audit committee (AC) members’ social capital and financial reporting quality. Using US data for the period 2001–2010, our results suggest that non-AC directors’ social capital does not appear to be relevant to financial reporting quality. As far as AC members are concerned, our findings show a negative relationship between their social capital and financial reporting quality, suggesting a ‘dark side’ to social capital. Specifically, we find that sitting in multiple ACs (centrality) has a negative impact on reporting quality only for those AC members designated as financial experts. When other proxies for social capital are considered (connectedness, brokerage position and strong ties), our results show that the quality of financial reporting significantly decreases with the social capital of non-financial experts sitting in the AC. We contribute to prior research by: (i) relying on social capital theory, which is widely neglected in accounting research, (ii) using multiple metrics to capture the complex dimensions of social capital, and (iii) discriminating between the effects of financial and non-financial experts’ social capital on reporting quality. Our results suggest policy-makers might wish to limit financial experts’ multiple directorships as well as assess the actual contribution of non-financial experts to AC effectiveness.

What Do We Know about Accounting in Family Firms?

ResumenEste trabajo tiene como objetivo analizar el entramado institucional de la reforma contable española de 2007. Adoptando como marco teórico la teoría institucional, hemos identificado los grupos de presión que han tenido un peso significativo en el proceso de reforma y las implicaciones directas de su influencia sobre el Libro Blanco de 2002 y sobre el Plan General Contable de 2007. Para realizar el análisis, siguiendo el concepto de isomorfismo de DiMaggio y Powell, hemos clasificado los distintos grupos de interés en función de su capacidad para influir en el proceso. La evidencia empírica que soporta nuestra investigación se obtuvo a partir de las entrevistas realizadas a varios participantes en el proceso. Esta información se complementó con el análisis de documentos oficiales y de las opiniones publicadas en prensa y en revistas especializadas por distintos actores del proceso o personas afectadas por el mismo. Nuestras conclusiones sugieren el dominio del isomorfismo coercitivo en la reforma, a nivel tanto nacional (el papel del ejecutivo, a través del Instituto de Contabilidad y Auditoría de Cuentas) como supranacional (fundamentalmente de la Comisión Europea). También observamos la influencia de otros reguladores, como la Comisión Nacional del Mercado de Valores y el Banco de España, que, con su experiencia en sus ámbitos de actuación, desempeñaron un papel de «líderes» en el proceso en un ejemplo de isomorfismo mimético. Apreciamos además la influencia de presiones normativas con la participación de distintos grupos de expertos (e.g., académicos). Por último, es importante destacar el carácter cambiante y dinámico de dichas influencias a lo largo del proceso de reforma contable.AbstractThe aim of this study is to analyze the institutional framework of the reform of the Spanish accounting standards in 2007. Using the insights of the institutional theory, we identify the interest groups that had a significant influence in the process and the consequences of such influences on the White Book of 2002 and on the 2007 Spanish GAAP. Following DiMaggio and Powell, we use the concept of isomorphism to identify the pressures that different interest groups exert on the accounting reform. We collect empirical evidence from different sources, including interviews to key participants in the process, official documents and opinions published in the press and specialized journals. Our analysis suggests that coercive pressures dominated the process, both at a national level (the role of the government through the Instituto de Contabilidad y Auditoría de Cuentas, the Spanish accounting regulator) and at a supranational level (the European Commission). We also find evidence of the influence of other regulators such as the stock market regulator (Comisión Nacional del Mercado de Valores) and the Spanish Central Bank (Banco de España). Their influence is an example of mimetic isomorphism: these regulators took the lead of the accounting reforms in their range of influence (listed companies and financial institutions, respectively). Different groups of experts (e.g., academics) also influenced the process through normative isomorphism. Finally, we highlight the dynamic and changing nature of such influences