Accounting choice has been explained mainly by two separate theories, positive accounting theory (PAT) and institutional theory (IT). The two theories are used in conjunction in this paper in order to derive an eclectic explanation of accounting choice. We term the effort an “eclectic accounting theory” (EAT). The theory is tested by deriving hypotheses about the choices for determining impairments according to IAS 36 (Impairment of Assets). The hypotheses are evaluated on a sample of 608 company-years of listed Swedish corporations during the years 2002–2004. Our model of general factors influencing accounting choice was able to predict 10% of the variance, indicating that the choice of impairments is induced by general business factors, institutional factors, and agency.

In this paper I will discuss some issues concerning cooperation between academia and society in the context of the establishment of a cooperative research platform at Kristianstad University in Sweden. The platform aims at developing scientific knowledge and practical utility through cooperation between the university‟s resources, mainly its faculty, and practise in society, be it individuals or organizations, be it private, public or voluntary organisations.

With the purpose of explaining professional audit costs in Swedish municipalities, we hypothesised that audit costs are partly driven by various signalling and monitoring incentives in order to manage stakeholder relationships. Our model of the determinants of audit costs was tested on data from Swedish municipalities, thus extending the study of audit costs to political organisations in a Scandinavian institutional context. The test supported to some extent the traditional propositions of organisational complexity, risk and market determinants, as well as the proposition of the political environment. Our results indicate that audit costs are used to signal accountability, thereby suggesting that audit as a signal could be managed without managing professional auditors.

The accounting and auditing business has been claimed to be a gendered industry. Even though as many women as men enter the business, high positions as partnerships appear as a privilege for men. Earlier research has indicated that this selection process starts early on the career ladder. In this paper we investigate the gendered character of the early phase of qualification to become certified auditor. We offer a set of hypotheses that predict certification time, with special emphasis on the gendered character of the factors. We test the hypotheses on the population of newly certified auditors in Sweden. The results indicate that there are differences between the sexes, but that the factor even out each other, implying no important difference in certification time. We conclude that there is a slight gendered career rein. A rather depressing result is that our model could explain more of male than female certification time, thus implying that even the theory offered is gendered.

Positive  accounting  theory  (PAT)  tries  to  explain  corporations’  choices  of accounting standards. Empirical research in this field has been focused on the choices  made by large, listed corporations. We challenge this grounding through extending the empirical domain by testing PAT on Swedish municipal corporations. In  order to be able to explain the choice of accounting standards in municipal corporations, PAT has to be complemented by institutional factors that can consider the   forces  of  coercive,  mimetic  and  normative  pressures  presented  by  the environment. The sample of municipal corporations showed that the choice of standards was significantly explained by both PAT factors and institutional factors. The  conclusion is that municipal corporations tend to be subject to institutional influence  by  accepting the practice of their auditing firm and by using specific standards order  to legitimise themselves when they have reached a certain size. Additionally,  they  tend  to  act  according  to  PAT  predictions  by  using  those standards that are able to reduce the profit to levels that society deems acceptable for municipal corporations. Accordingly, through extending the empirical domain to municipal corporations, this paper’s contribution is to show that PAT needs the complementary institutional factors in order to be capable of explaining choice of accounting standards in firms.

Applicants for habilitation to Associate and Full professor in Economia Aziendale has during two years been evaluated by a commission, containing four Italian professors and one international professor. Me, being the international evaluator, present here some of my observations and impressions from the evaluation and present some reflections about the evolution of the Italian academic system and the subject, Economia Aziendale. My main conclusion, that the tradition of the subject is, at least in the short run, at threat due to the push towards internationalisation, could be regarded as rather pessimistic. But it is also a call for governed development, which should benefit all of us in the area, the whole international community.

Få belägg finns för att CSR ger vinst och ur ett strikt marknadsliberalt perspektiv är det oansvarigt att dela ut ägarnas pengar till filantropi. Det skriver professor Sven-Olof Yrjö Collin. Själv hoppas han dock på ett uppsving för den företagsform som ser samhällsbidrag som en självklarhet.

Purpose - The purpose of this paper is to develop and test a concept of auditor as consigliere in family firms, that captures additional functions to monitoring, those of advice, mediating, and conveying. Design/methodology/approach - The concept is tested through a survey conducted on 309 Swedish auditors. Findings - The data indicate that the consigliere role is generally not emphasized, indicating that auditors primarily perform the monitoring role of the audit. However, the authors do find indications of the auditor performing the consigliere role, through performing the advisory and mediating functions and, to a smaller degree, the conveying function. Research limitations/implications - The survey is limited in response rate and in separating governance situations from consigliere functions. Practical implications - With reservation for professional independence, the auditor as consigliere could be part of the governance of the family firm, but should be trained for this activity. Social implications - Regulators should pay attention to the consigliere role when, for example, stipulating compulsory rotation of auditors. Originality/value - The paper shows that the auditor is more than a monitor in family firms. The consigliere role, even if not at all dominating, has to be considered, at least in family firms.

Kravet på byrårotation kommer att leda till ökat inslag av strategisk prissättning av revision. Det skriver Sven-Olof Yrjö Collin och hans studenter Frida Edlund och Matilda Jönsson som undersökt frågan i ett examensarbete för civilekonomexamen.

Bolagsstyrningens pris. Samhällets upptagenhet vid individers egoism har lett till ökade kontroller av företagen och ett ökat engagemang hos bolagens styrelser. Tron har varit att mer övervakning är bättre än mindre. Men detta starka fokus på kontroll har ett pris som inte nödvändigtvis gagnar bolagen, skriver fyra forskare.

Shareholders are not identical, but differ in their objectives and actions. One difference is the level of delegation of the principal functions to the board, which we suggest can be observed through the level of directors’ compensation. We analyze the difference in board compensation through the concept of governance strategy and suggest two distinct categories of shareholder strategies: the company governance strategy and the financial governance strategy. These strategies create different distributions of governance costs, which we separate into principal costs and agency costs. We claim that the financial governance strategy adopts a higher level of delegation, which implies that the principal costs are assumed by the corporation and that agency costs are higher. This in turn can explain the higher compensation for the directors of the board compared to compensation under the company governance strategy. We test our hypothesis using a three-year panel of Swedish listed corporations and find that shareholders pursuing a financial governance strategy are associated with higher levels of board compensation. These findings suggest the existence of differences in governance strategies, reflected in governance costs through board compensation, among different types of shareholders in a corporation.

Det är inte en bra väg att försämra revisorernas kunskaper i ekonomi. Kvaliteten i revisionen får inte bli lidande, skriver Sven-Olof Yrjö Collin och Timurs Umans i en replik.

We present a model of supervising bachelor and master theses that we have developed at Kristianstad University in Sweden. It emphasizes 1.) engagement, in that the research engaged supervisor becomes engaged in both the subject of the thesis and the students writing it; 2.) the Humboldt principle, in that teachers and students collaborate for mutual benefit; 3.) the Socratic method, in that the supervisor drives students´ learning through posing questions. The model implies intense and frequent supervision, seminars with students as opponents and respondents, and finally, popular presentation, where the results are presented for an educated public. The examination of the theses have the double function of securing high standard examination and to develop the staff in their supervisory and examinatory skills. The direction of the supervisory team is mainly made through common norms, such as a thesis have to be driven by theory, methodological pragmatism implying that the problem, not the authors preferences, determine which analytical method to use and empirical orientation that theories needs to be tested or evaluated. The model described has shown good results, both in national evaluations and through number of scientific publications.

Det finns anledning att ifrågasätta det instinktiva motståndet mot marknadsföring av revisionstjänster. Det skriver studenterna Daniel Hermansson och Rikard Hjalmarsson samt deras handledare Sven-Olof Yrjö Collin, vid Linnéuniversitetet. Affärsmannaskap är i sig inte ett avgörande hot mot revisionskvaliteten, menar de.

In today’s society, products and services are offered in a number of different organizational forms: leisure activities are offered by not-for-profit associations or privately held firms, waste disposal services by local government corporations or administrations, manufactured products and services by listed corporations or state-owned corporations. Independent of organizational form and type of products and services offered, the long-term survival and success of the organization should benefit from a governance system that supports the exploration of novel opportunities that are in line with the purpose of the organization. As such, an intertwinement between a governance system of an organization and the exploration of novel opportunities for the advancement of the organization is suggested. Aspects of governance can be found in the literature of corporate governance (e.g., Shleifer and Vishny, 1997) and tend to have a disciplining emphasis. Aspects of the exploration of novel opportunities can be found in the literature of entrepreneurship (Covin and Lumpkin, 2011; Zahra et al., 2000) and tend to have an enabling emphasis. The starting point for an intertwinement between governance and entrepreneurship is that organizations are present to serve the interests of the holders of property rights (sometimes diffusedly termed owners, members or, in agency theory, principals) and as such, entrepreneurship should be in accordance with and aligned to these interests. Corporate governance mechanisms serve as a way to align the interests of property rights holders, for example, as in agency theory, to align the interests of the principals and the agents (Schleifer and Vischny, 1997). Therefore, corporate governance mechanisms appear to be a relevant starting point for considering the influence on entrepreneurship at the organizational level, hereafter termed corporate entrepreneurship. Such an intertwinement is moreover in line with researchers’ identification of interesting and insufficiently explored topics (e.g., Caruana et al., 2002; Corbett et al., 2013; Lacetera, 2001; Phan et al., 2009).

A code of corporate governance was introduced in Sweden in 2005. Although the code is mandatory, a company is allowed to override specific rules if it openly discloses the deviation and explains why it does not comply. The aim of this study is to explain how the governance structure, operationalized as the ownership structure, the board and the auditor, affects companies’ propensity to deviate from the Swedish Code. The empirical data in this study are based on the 2010 annual reports from 193 companies listed on the Stockholm Stock Exchange and data from the Swedish Corporate Governance Board. The findings show that concentrated ownership, smaller boards with directors with long tenure and audit firms with a high proportion of employees compared with partners increase the likelihood of deviance.

Auditor independence is considered a key factor when ensuring high audit quality. Advocates for auditor rotation argue that rotation improves audit quality due to its positive influence on auditor independence. Opponents argue that rotation does not lead to improved audit quality, since the independence is gained at the expense of the auditors’ knowledge of business structure and routines. The aim of our study is to investigate the relationship between rotation and audit quality. We use agency theory to derive the advocate view and stewardship theory to derive the opponents’ hypothesis. These hypotheses were tested on Swedish data. The results indicate only weak support for the hypothesis that rotation influence audit quality. The weakness is partly due to measurement problems. The proxies used in the literature appear to measure different facets of audit quality. Through an interpretation of a factor analysis, we suggest two main facets, perceived audit quality, which is significantly influenced by auditor rotation, and actual audit quality, which is not influenced by rotation.

In the corporate governance landscape there are several different groups of so-called gatekeepers who act as intermediary between the company and investors. Financial analysts represent one of these groups that have been especially tied to the question of how corporate laws affect the overall efficiency of corporate governance. It has, for example, been proposed that their performance, that is, predicting earnings per share (EPS), is influenced by the strength of the legal system in terms of investor protection. In this study we analyze this relationship in four European countries using a newly developed index for investor protection. This allows us to conduct analysis both cross-sectionally and over time, which is an opportunity for a more refined analysis of the impact of strengthened investor protection than prior studies. Our main conclusion is that there is overall support for the proposition that there is a relation between financial analysts’ performance and the strength of legal protection based on both analyses of changes over time and between countries. Their performance is better with a higher degree of investor protection. But we also claim that the analysts’ role and investor protection can be seen as a substitution for each other when working as mechanisms in the corporate governance landscape, as there is a more extensive market for analysts when there is less investor protection. The results provide an in-depth analysis of the effect of strengthened legalization and also how different corporate governance mechanisms can affect each other. This is especially of value for policy makers and academics interested in the impact and consequences of legal reforms.