Philip O'Regan

• BA PhD FCCA
• Head of Faculty at University of Limerick

As professionals, accountants hold a public interest mandate based in part on ethical claims. However, individual professionals, particularly in tax, commonly see their work as more technical than relating to the common good. Rising public concern about tax avoidance focuses attention on how ethical values are brought to bear on tax work. In these...

The received narrative about accounting organisation largely originates from within the walls of the profession, assuming closure, and is not sufficiently informed by an understanding of the actions, experiences and perspectives of those who did not engage in the professional project. Our data offer another perspective, that of the majority of acco...

This chapter explores the situations in which tax experts are most likely to take an innovative or aggressive tax position, focusing on the self-perception of the experts themselves of the factors that may influence them in taking such a position. The results highlight the micro-influences on tax experts that may move them along the spectrum of tax...

International tax governance is significant societally as it impacts both inequality and the capacity of governments to deliver on their social contracts. Tax experts forma key, under-researched, heterogeneous element of the tax ecosystem, subject to a range of hard and soft governance influences. While problematic tax regimes are appropriately ide...

The purpose of the KBS Research Bulletin series is to make the School's research more readily accessible to a wide range of interested stakeholders, and so to allow the work to have a useful impact on society. Each Bulletin highlights work published in a peer-reviewed journal, making the material accessible and inviting readers to engage in the ful...

At a global level, we face significant challenges which can best be addressed by working together in a communal approach characterised by mutuality and a focus on common goals which are intended to benefit society at large. This realisation has revitalized interest in notions of the ‘common good’. Subordinated in recent centuries to more utilitaria...

The primary purpose here is to briefly outline and illustrate how one particular relationist/realist ontological approach to performative research, with a focus on professionals’ subjective interpretations of intangibles/intellectual capital, may be capable of generating reasonably substantive findings. Methodologically the paper illustrates, if in...

When governments use tax policy to motivate activities of social value, incentives are commonly targeted at non-profits or charities. For-profit businesses meanwhile are primarily seen by policy-makers as generators of tax revenue. Social enterprise, characterized by innovation and hybridity, can combine for-profit and social impact aims in a singl...

This paper examines the field of Responsible Management Education (RME) in the context of Agenda 2030 and the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), situating the United Nations Principles for Responsible Management Education (UN PRME) in relation to a range of associated initiatives and organisations using a light, Bourdieusian theoretical framing....

Value is increasingly found in human subjects and in particular within their minds. This places the individual at the centre of economic life and therefore the inner life of individual merits more attention. A key element of humanity is memory and it drives such phenomena as trust and goodwill, essential in modern business. Bergson’s philosophy exa...

Professional service firms (PSFs) play an important role in the knowledge-based economy. Their success is highly dependent on their people, the knowledge resources they possess and how they use these resources. However, how to systematically manage human resources to attain high performance is not fully understood. This study addresses this issue b...

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to examine how a system of human resource management (HRM) practices, labelled high-performance work systems (HPWS), influences organizational innovation in professional service firms (PSFs). In this study, innovation in PSFs is seen as an indicator of firm performance and is calculated as the revenue per pers...

This longitudinal study of professional service firms (PSFs) examines the linkage mechanisms through which high performance work systems (HPWS) influence firm performance. Two intervening mechanisms are theorized and examined. They are: (1) the resources that HPWS create, and (2) the uses to which both HPWS and these resources can be put. The resou...

Using data from the 1911 Irish Census, and adopting a Weberian focus, this paper investigates the separate explanatory power of class and status in the stratification of outcomes. We find that both class and status have independent explanatory power in terms of the geographical residential patterns of various occupations, including accountants, in...

In 1901, a group of accountants in Ireland, some of whom were prominent members of the Institute of Chartered Accountants in Ireland, formed an Irish Branch of the Society of Incorporated Accountants and Auditors. Adopting Weber's model of social closure, and Witz’ notion of ‘usurpationary closure’, this paper looks at the origins and development o...

Value is increasingly found in human subjects and in particular within their minds. This places the individual at the centre of economic life and therefore the inner life of individual merits more attention. A key element of humanity is memory and it drives such phenomena as trust and goodwill, essential in modern business. Bergson’s philosophy exa...

Purpose – The aim of this study is to better understand service supply chain management by analysing the professional service supply chain in professional service firms (PSFs) and exploring how the high performance work systems (HPWS) influence professional service supply chain performance. In addition, this study seeks to examine the relationship...

Drawing primarily on data from the 1911 Irish Census, and adopting a specifically Weberian focus, this paper investigates the separate explanatory power of class and status in the stratification of outcomes. Specifically we find that both class and status do have independent explanatory power in terms of the geographical residential patterns of var...

The accounting/auditing profession in Ireland has maintained a form of self-regulation since the era of professional formation in the late-nineteenth century. In general, the view taken was that the public interest was best served by allowing the profession to monitor and regulate its own members. This reflected a general confidence in the workings...

One response of the imperial government in London to the Irish Famine (1845-1849) was to initiate a scheme of public works underpinned by relief payments based on task work. This policy was informed by a determination to improve the 'moral habits' of the native Irish in relation to work. To support the data collection and control systems necessary...

In the present study we develop and test a causal model of the influence of organizational governance mechanisms on firm innovation. We hypothesize that firm incentive provisions and self-regulation behaviors affect the creative capabilities of firms. Further, we hypothesize that creative capabilities affect the social climate for innovation and co...

The Institute of Chartered Accountants in Ireland was formed in 1888 on an all-island basis by a group of prominent public accountants who envisaged it as a means of appropriating the social and economic benefits that accompanied professional status. Employing Weber's notion of 'social closure' in the context of a professional project, this paper e...

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to investigate the emergence and endurance of the Institute of Chartered Accountants in Ireland (ICAI) as an all-Ireland body formed in the context of political and religious upheaval. It seeks to explore the motives for the north-south accounting alliance and the strategies adopted by the institute to negotia...

This paper presents a conceptual framework that situates, integrates and tests, using a structural equation model, the possible contribution of management accounting systems to the management of intellectual capital (IC). Drawing on perceptual data from Chief Financial Officers (CFOs) in an ICT sector the findings are mixed. They show positive path...

Earlier versions of this paper have been presented at McMaster World Congress 2004, Financial Reporting and Business Communication Conference 2004 (Cardiff Business School), Irish Accounting and Finance Association Conference 2005. The authors appreciate the helpful comments on various versions of this paper by James Guthrie, Vivien Beattie (discus...

Research on boards of directors is dominated by a largely context free methodological tradition that seeks to relate various structural and demographic characteristics of boards to firm performance. An alternative research agenda stresses the centrality of context and the necessity of gaining access to the real world of board processes, dynamics an...

Employee stock option schemes have become increasingly prevalent over the past decade or so. This situation may, or may not, change due to recent accounting regulation that demands that stock options be expensed - quite simply because expensing reduces earnings. This must impact on the incentive for employers to grant such options in the future. Up...

Recent market volatility has provided a fundamental challenge to those arguing for the central role of intellectual capital as a source of organisational value. Using perceptual data relevant to the importance of intellectual capital as a source of enterprise value gathered in two studies conducted before and after the recent maket 'downturn' respe...

Intellectual capital creation is theorised in this conceptual paper as a dynamic process of situated collective knowing that is capable of being leveraged into market value. The tacit, intangible and socially unconscious nature of substantive parts of this dynamic process presents some daunting theoretical challenges. Adopting a broadly social cons...

Purpose – The emergence of the information and communications technology (ICT) sector in Ireland over the course of the past decade has paralleled a period of exceptional national economic growth. This has raised questions regarding wealth distribution, power and governance. This paper seeks to identify some of the characteristics of the governance...

In this paper we present some preliminary evidence in support of an emergent base-line structural intellectual capital model. This is based on interviews with the chief executive officers of Irish software companies. The overall Irish software and telecommunications sector has established itself as the largest software exporter in the world in an e...

Intellectual capital (IC), which has yet to be adequately conceptualised, is viewed here as a complex dynamic process of situated collective knowing that is capable of being leveraged into economic and social value. Knowledge creation and sharing mechanisms are generally perceived to be central to understanding this complex form of intangible value...

Purpose Following Marx and Engels' identification of the “essential condition of capital”, the purpose of this paper is to begin an initial critical exploration of the essential condition of intellectual capital, particularly the ownership rights of labour. Design/methodology/approach Adopting a critically modernist stance on unitarist HR and OB d...

This working paper presents a conceptual framework that situates and tests, using a structural model, the contribution of communicative action (CAN) to the process of intellectual capital (IC) creation. Drawing on perceptual data from senior financial executives in the ICT sector the preliminary findings are encouraging. Positive and statistically...

Both the role of the CFO (chief financial officer) and the discipline of accounting can be viewed as being in transition due to developments in the e-Business world. One perspective suggests that CFOs are becoming ‘e-process architects’—an alternative suggests that the CFO role is becoming commoditized to ‘foot-soldier’ status with other roles such...

The decades immediately following the Glorious Revolution in 1688 witnessed a variety of political, social and structural responses to this cataclysmic event. In Ireland, religious conflict and economic under-development, as well as the devastation of war from 1689 to 1691, combined to ensure that the Anglo-Irish body politic found it difficult to...

In this theoretical, empirical and occasionally speculative paper we argue that human interaction is the critical source of intangible value in the intellectual age. This argument is supported with some perceptual evidence on the dimensions of intellectual capital (IC) from the Irish ICT sector. Key findings are that almost two thirds of organizati...

Intangible intellectual resources, arising from changes in the nature of economic forces, have now joined the more traditional tangible triad of land, labour and capital. One of the keys to commercial success, therefore, will be the capacity of a firm to identify, manage, foster and invest in these intellectual resources, and, in particular, in the...

A consensus is emerging that the key to competitive success is becoming the ability to create, leverage, maintain and develop specialised knowledge, competencies and intellectual resources. However, little is actually known about the creation, management, utilisation and valuation of such resources. Although a concept such as intellectual capital c...

The key to competitive success is likely tobe the ability to create, leverage, anddevelop specialised knowledge andintellectual resources. This new realitypresents both challenges and opportunitiesfor accounting, a discipline which hastraditionally found it difficult to deal withthe recognition and measurement issuessurrounding intangible assets. T...

Pioneering, the capactiy of the firm to develop new products ahead of rivals, is an important attribute in high velocity environments. In this paper we advance a four stage process model of pioneering behaviour in top management teams. These stages include opportunity recognition, decision making, product innovation and market launch. We link vario...