Russell Craig

Victoria University | VU · College of Business

Bureaucracy has co-existed with forms of management accounting [MA] from the time of ancient civilizations. In this paper, we review literature in a wide variety of scholarly journals and books to provide an overview of this co-existence. We trace the historical evolution of MA and how it was influenced by bureaucracy from 1700 to the present. We d...

Purpose This paper addresses leadership and strategy issues associated with the management of safety. The paper proposes that companies conduct an annual safety leadership audit involving collaboration between their external financial auditors and their internal operational safety experts. Design/methodology/approach Three possible questions audit...

Purpose This paper points to five features that CEO language should have to help enable a robust safety culture. Design/methodology/approach The paper draws empirical support mainly from the CEO-speak of the CEO of Norfolk Southern Railway in the year prior to the major derailment of a company train and subsequent toxic chemical spill in East Pale...

There is widespread perception that bureaucracy is omnipresent in Portuguese health care management. This is despite bureaucracy being heavily deprecated. This paper addresses this dissonance by studying the Portuguese Public Enterprise Entity Hospitals context. It seeks to understand how a bureaucratic approach prevails. The study is based on docu...

We explore the language used by the CEO of Wells Fargo, Timothy Sloan, to sustain claims that Wells Fargo and its staff would behave in an ethically appropriate way in the future. We focus on Sloan’s opening written statement to the Committee on Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs of the United States Senate on 3 October 2017. This statement was int...

We investigate factors that have influenced the professionalization of accounting in five Latin American countries (Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia and Mexico). Through comparative historical institutional analysis of corporatism in those countries, we explore the role of the organized labor movement and State-labor relations in the professional...

We highlight how complying with detailed professional accounting rules can lead to lies and undermine the overall objectives of financial reporting. We do so by conducting a retrospective analysis (using the argumentation concepts of premise, qualifier, data and conclusions) of the reasoning of the two expert accounting witnesses in the criminal tr...

Purpose This paper explores the rhetorical and strategic nature of the language political and business leaders used during the early stages of the COVID-19 pandemic – or what we refer to as their pandemic-speak. Design/methodology/approach This paper draws opportunistically on examples of communications that have appeared variously in letters to s...

Purpose: We explore the relationship between the balanced scorecard (BSC) and neo-bureaucracy by investigating whether the operationalization of the BSC incorporates "neo-bureaucratic" ideas and whether the BSC implemented in a Portuguese Local Health Unit (LHU) demonstrates a neo-bureaucratic approach. Design/methodology/approach: We conduct se...

The purpose of this paper is to highlight how Institutional Theory [IT] can render in-depth understanding of change processes associated with adoption of international accounting standards by organizations and countries. We review the literature dealing with fundamental concepts of IT and explore how those concepts are implicated in understanding t...

This paper highlights the capacity for Institutional Theory [IT] to render in-depth understanding of change processes associated with the adoption and implementation of international accounting standards by countries and organizations. Although the fact of requiring the adoption of IFRS could be characterized as a form of coercive power, recent dev...

This paper highlights the capacity for Institutional Theory [IT] to render in-depth understanding of change processes associated with the adoption and implementation of international accounting standards by countries and organizations. Although the fact of requiring the adoption of IFRS could be characterized as a form of coercive power, recent dev...

Purpose This paper explores the benefits and pitfalls of a CEO’s personal messaging on Twitter. Design/methodology/approach The paper draws on recent professional and scholarly literature that has explored Twitter use by executives. For empirical support, some personal tweets of Uber’s CEO Dara Khosrowshahi and Tesla’s CEO Elon Musk are cited. Fi...

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to examine autobiographical vignettes that are embedded in the annual report letters to shareholders of chief executive officers (CEOs). The aim is to reveal the capacity of this narrative to self-construct leader identity, show how they can help CEOs attain legitimacy and how they help CEOs to exert management...

This paper explores whether DICTION text analysis software reveals distinctive language markers of a verbal tone of hubris in annual letters to shareholders signed by CEOs of major companies. We analyze 193 letters to shareholders, comprising about 368,000 words, focusing initially on 23 letters signed by CEOs who are alleged to be hubristic: Brown...

This paper explores the relationship between leadership language and the safety culture at British Petroleum [BP] prior to the April 20, 2010 Deepwater Horizon explosion in the Gulf of Mexico. The discursive construction of important aspects of safety culture in a large, risky, global company such as BP is a central feature of the CEO’s role. Using...

This study combines Dillard et al.’s [(2004). The making and remaking of organization context: Duality and the institutionalization process. Accounting, Auditing & Accountability Journal, 17(4), 506–542] institutional change model with institutional entrepreneurship theory. The aim is to enhance understanding of institutional change processes when...

To enhance understanding of the status of the Financial Accounting Standards Board's Conceptual Framework for Financial Reporting, we analyse important rules of evidence in United States (US) courts regarding the presentation of expert accounting witness testimony. We draw on this analysis to recommend the relocation of the Conceptual Framework in...

We explore influences on unlisted companies when Portugal moved from a code law, rules-based accounting system, to a principles-based accounting system of adapted International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS). Institutionalisation of the new principles-based system was generally facilitated by a socio-economic and political context that increa...

The audit culture which has developed in public universities has led to counter-productive outcomes. Managerial oversight of academic work has reached a critical tipping point. Extensive auditing of research output by means of performance management assessment regimes motivated by a New Public Management mentality has damaged individual scholarship...

We explore the language of leadership of global media mogul Rupert Murdoch in 2010, the year before the phone-hacking scandal in the UK came to public attention. Subsequent public enquiries in the UK exposed unethical conduct by staff of News Corporation, a global corporation whose Chairman and CEO was Rupert Murdoch. We focus on the ethical climat...

Purpose – In most European code-law oriented Latin countries, the publication of a CEO's letter to shareholders in a company's annual report is a fairly recent phenomenon. In this paper, the authors seek to determine the characteristics that explain why companies in one such country, i.e. Portugal, published a CEO letter. Design/methodology/approa...

This study analyzes individual annual reports for 2006 to assess factors affecting the risk-related disclosures of 185 Portuguese credit institutions. Based on legitimacy theory and on resources-based perspectives, a new proxy for public visibility is proposed in order to explain the importance of monitoring by stakeholders in explaining risk-relat...

This paper explores the potential for systematic scrutiny of the language of top management to reveal signals of possible deceptive conduct. The language used in letters signed by Ramalinga Raju, Chair of the Indian multi-national company Satyam, are analysed using a multi-method quantitative approach. We explore the language in Raju’s annual repor...

This synopsis provides a concise historical contextualisation of current risk disclosure issues, highlights major factors influencing contemporary risk reporting practices, and engages in a reflective overview of four recently published papers on aspects of corporate risk-related disclosures in a code law country, Portugal. The breadth and depth of...

The Sistema de Normalização Contabilística [SNC] is the Portuguese title for the corpus of International Financial Reporting Standards [IFRS] that have been adapted for use in Portugal by unlisted companies. Based on an analytical framework that draws on aspects of new institutional theory, we surveyed 116 large unlisted Portuguese companies in Sep...

In Portugal, a concept of taxable income associated closely with reported accounting income is used to determine the tax liability of firms. Recently, the Portuguese government legislated to introduce a system of “special payment on account” (SPA). Firms were required to pay an amount of income tax in advance that varied between a promulgated minim...

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to explore the experience of a New Zealand (NZ) local council in changing from output‐based to outcome‐oriented performance measures, thereby, seeking to enhance understanding of how institutional pressures affect managers in a local government body. Design/methodology/approach – By means of semi‐structured i...

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to assess the risk‐related disclosure (RRD) practices in annual reports for 2005 Portuguese companies in the non‐finance sector. Design/methodology/approach The paper conducts a content analysis of a sample of 81 companies (42 listed and 39 unlisted). In considering corporate governance effects, the sample is r...

Purpose – This study aims to draw on the New Zealand context to provide extensions and comparative insights to prior research that has canvassed the reasons for sustainability reporting by local governments. A base is provided from which more extensive and theoretically grounded research can proceed. Design/methodology/approach – Semi‐structured e...

Purpose – This paper aims to explore the factors that affected the voluntary risk‐related disclosures (RRD) in the individual annual reports for 2006 of Portuguese banks. It also explores the extent to which those reports conformed to Basel II requirements in terms of the voluntary disclosure of operational risk and capital structure and adequacy m...

Destructive narcissism is recognized increasingly as a serious impairment to good corporate leadership and ethical conduct. The Chief Executive Officer’s letter to shareholders (an important formal corporate communications medium) has potential to provide linguistic traces of destructive narcissism and insight to aspects of corporate leadership and...

This study assesses the risk-related reporting practices of 190 Portuguese credit institutions based on a content analysis of their individual annual reports for 2006. Risk-related disclosures are found to lack comparability because of different maturity time bands that report exposures to credit, market and liquidity risks; different Value-at-Risk...

Este artigo inicia a investigação de uma reivindicação notável que tem muita sustentação na literatura portuguesa de Contabilidade (Corrêa 1930, Felismino 1960, Azevedo 1961, Santana 1989): que a Aula do Comércio, implementada em Lisboa em 1759, foi o primeiro estabelecimento de ensino oficial no mundo a ensinar a contabilidade de uma forma técnico...

This response to Alexander (2010) clarifies the approach taken in Smieliauskas et al. (2008). Here we elaborate further on the significance of the accounting risk concept for fairness of presentation in financial reporting. In the process we show how Alexander's potentially important concept of accounting policy risk can be made operational via the...

We assess the value relevance of the amounts for identifiable intangible assets and goodwill reported in the financial statements of all non-finance companies listed on the main market of the Portuguese Stock Exchange from 1998 to 2008. Additionally, we use panel data to explore the impact on value relevance of Portugal’s formal adoption of Interna...

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to analyse voluntary disclosures of intellectual capital (IC) items in the sustainability reports of Portuguese companies. The paper aims to highlight the level, pattern and determinants of IC disclosures in those sustainability reports; and the potential for sustainability reports to be a medium for IC disclosu...

We describe a successful, semester-length writing skills development programme conducted at the University of Toronto Mississauga (UTM) with intermediate level undergraduate financial accounting students. The programme focused on improving students' writing in five competency areas: organization, grammar, style, professional writing and case writin...

Neo-institutional theory can increase understanding of an organization's general response to social and environmental issues and social activism. More particularly, it can frame an organization's accounting responses. The analytical schema proposed by Lounsbury (1997) is deployed to explore social and environmental accounting issues that occurred i...

We critique transformational leadership education in university business schools based on a literature review, a study of the websites of 21 leading business schools, and an analysis of two presentations to business school students at Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Stanford University by the former CEO of General Electric, Jack Welch. Ou...

We conduct a close reading of a crisis response communication by Nortel Network's CEO in 2001, John Roth, in an "Open Letter to Shareholders" that was published in major newspapers. We provide a pedagogical resource for management educators who want an example to highlight the potential for close reading analysis of a CEO's public accountability co...

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to analyse company‐specific factors associated with adoption of risk‐based auditing. It seeks to explore the role of internal auditing in enterprise risk management (ERM). Design/methodology/approach Findings are drawn from a questionnaire survey, sent in 2006, to all 96 chief internal auditors who were members...

This paper extends the conversation about metaphors in accounting that were presented in this journal by McGoun et al. [McGoun EG, Bettner MS, Coyne MP. Pedagogic metaphors and the nature of accounting signification. Critical Perspectives on Accounting 2007a;18:213–30; McGoun EG, Bettner MS, Coyne MP. Money n’ motion—born to be wild. Critical Persp...

This paper draws upon Althusser [Althusser L, Ideology and ideological state apparatuses (notes towards an investigation). In: Althusser L, editor. Lenin and philosophy and other essays [Brewster B, Trans.]. London: New Left Books; 1971] to conceive two teachers of commercial subjects as apparatchiks serving an ideological state apparatus in order...

Major Australian wage fixation tribunal cases since 1900 have considered the significance and admissibility of accounting data. There is no evident juridical, employer or trade union perception that data drawn from conventionally prepared (historic cost-based) accounting reports are technically unserviceable for determining either capacity or incap...

The capacity of expert accounting witnesses to provide understandable evidence has been challenged by Australian judges. They have assessed expert accounting evidence as the most difficult evidence, from eight disciplinary areas, for them to evaluate adequately. This paper reports the responses of a sample of ten expert accounting witnesses to such...

Purpose This paper is the third in a trilogy of papers to explore the use of accounting as a fundamental element in senior management's narrative regarding the privatization of a major transportation enterprise, Canadian National Railway (CN). The paper aims to examine how two accounting performance benchmarks (the operating ratio, and free cash fl...

This paper uses ordinal regression, structural equation modelling, and multivariate analysis techniques to investigate the preparedness to adopt IFRS that was exhibited by listed Portuguese companies in August 2003. We find the level of preparedness was significantly associated with company size, commercial internationalization, audit by a ‘Big 4’...

This article examines argumentation factors which affect the truth of an audit opinion. We propose that the auditor's report be revised to replace the words true and fair view with acceptable risk of material misstatement. This would better align the communication of auditors with the characteristics of accounting information upon which they report...

Amid the losses of library and archival records that were sustained in the Lisbon earthquake of 1755, the director-general of the national archive of Portugal, Manoel da Maya, played an inspirational role in salvage and preservation efforts. Maya's determination, dedication, and resourcefulness in the aftermath of the earthquake were exemplary and...

We analyse the corpus of CEO letters to stockholders that were signed by a widely revered business leader, Jack Welch, during his tenure as CEO of the General Electric Company [GE], 1981—2000. Our discussion is located within theory pertaining to transformational leadership. We examine Welch's language from the standpoint of how transformational le...

This paper applies an innovative approach to explore the processes, effects and likely future progress of the convergence of national accounting standards with International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS). Particular use is made of the Hegelian dialectic concepts of thesis, antithesis and synthesis; notions of isomorphism and decoupling; and,...

Prior to the eighteenth century, commercial (including accounting) knowledge was acquired principally from on-the-job training and courses conducted in private schools. However, in eighteenth century Europe, the State began to participate directly in the provision of commercial (including accounting) education through the establishment of public sc...

Nothing is more likely to undermine the credibility of financial reporting than the suspicion that the results reported were predetermined and that the accounting methods used were selected to produce the results desired by the preparers of the report', Solomons (1983).

Purpose The paper sets out to examine the use of accounting as part of the privatization process of a national railway in Canada. The argument is that proponents of the privatization used accounting strategically to justify and sustain the privatization. Major societal events, such as the privatization of national assets, merit close scrutiny so th...

Purpose This paper seeks to identify factors that influence the voluntary disclosure of intangibles information in annual reports of Portuguese listed companies. Design/methodology/approach An index of the voluntary disclosure of intangibles is constructed based on analysis of the Management Report and Chairman's Letter of all 56 companies listed...

This paper analyses three methods for measuring the success achieved in effecting convergence between any two sets of accounting standards. We begin by reviewing a measurement method based on the concept of Euclidean distances. We then propose two better measures (involving Jaccard's coefficients and Spearman's coefficients) to assess the progress...

This paper draws upon agency theory, political cost theory, signalling theory, and legitimacy theory to construct an index of the voluntary disclosure of intangibles by companies listed on the Euronext market in Lisbon. We analyse the Management Report and Chairman's Letter of all 56 listed companies at 31 December 2003 (49 companies on the main ma...

This paper aims to enhance understanding of accounting concepts and practices in the industrial relations community by contrasting the alleged technical and non-technical roles of accounting. By non-technical roles, we mean the ideological, social and perception-fashioning roles of accounting procedures and processes. Our principal contention is th...

The Portuguese School of Commerce, founded in 1759, is promoted frequently as the world's first official, government-sponsored school to offer formal instruction in commerce. This paper contends that Sebastião Carvalho e Melo (1699–1782), the Marquis of Pombal, was responsible for the transfer, from England to Portugal, of the educational “know how...

This paper introduces to the English-language literature the Aula do Coméercio (School of Commerce) which was established in Lisbon in 1759. This school was a product of the Portuguese Enlightenment period and provided a model for development of similar government-sponsored schools across Europe. Our principal objective is to provide a comprehensiv...

This paper reflects on the involvement of four Irishmen in the commercial affairs of the fledgling British colony in Sydney, New South Wales (NSW), between 1788 and 1818. They are John Kenny, a felon transported from Carlow (allegedly the first teacher of double-entry accounting in Australia); Michael Hayes, a Wexford rebel (the first to advertise...

This paper addresses an issue of public policy regarding the Internet. It is motivated by the belief that the Internet is in danger of being controlled by a few megacorporations. We seek to understand the nature of such control by performing a textual analysis of the 'Internet Policy Statement' released by AOLTimeWarner in 2001. Our analysis reveal...

This paper addresses the discursive struggle surrounding the privatization of Canadian National Railway (CN). It analyses aspects of the way in which accounting language, concepts and information were deployed by Paul Tellier, CEO of CN in the two and a half years prior to the formal announcement, in February 1995, that the Canadian Government inte...

This article reflects critically on the general state of university‐based accounting education. It highlights the chiding of business school educators by the President of the U.S.A., George W. Bush, in his response to the collapse of Enron and subsequent corporate failures. It draws attention to Bush's plea for corporate accounting to be moved ‘out...

This paper provides biographical portraits of several of the teachers and entrepreneurs implicated in the introduction of accounting education to the convict-based British colonial settlement on Tasmania, 1803-1833. A tapestry of enigmatic and colourful characters is revealed: a convicted forger, a bankrupted 'classicist', and a cleric with a Bache...

This paper conducts a wide-ranging and critical interpretative review of the accountability of university accounting educators. The 'idea' of the university is reviewed briefly. Particular attention is given to analysing the implication of accounting and auditing in the ravaging of universities; and to the effect of the market model on what we teac...

This article analyses three sources of financial data recording details of bills of exchange and promissory note transactions in the New South Wales (NSW) colony, 1817-20. These sources are the minute books and the customer accounts ledger of the Bank of NSW, and the records of the Supreme Court of Civil Jurisdiction, Sydney. We show how documentar...

This paper describes a protocol by which to conduct a "close reading" critique of financial reporting on a corporate website. The proposed protocol helps identify the rhetorical and metaphorical features of websites and draws attention to their potential to influence social cognition. The paper complements and extends the "close reading" example pr...

This paper describes a protocol by which to conduct a "close reading" critique of financial reporting on a corporate website. The proposed protocol helps identify the rhetorical and metaphorical features of websites and draws attention to their potential to influence social cognition. The paper complements and extends the "close reading" example pr...

The public interest will be advanced if accounting data are evaluated properly and in an informed fashion in arbitration proceedings. This chapter focuses on arbitrators' perceptions of the relevance of accounting data in assessing ability to pay wage claims. Seven propositions indicative of perceptions are drawn from a selection of Canadian arbitr...

This paper discusses six television programme formats which were self-selected by Australian university students to facilitate their group-based presentations of accounting subject matter to fellow students in seminar and tutorial classes. This paper is a reflection upon the experiences of these formats (news and current affairs, game shows, tabloi...

This paper presents an alternative perspective of the pedagogical and other merits of the Internet in undergraduate management education. It highlights the importance of sensitising management students to the ideological character of the Internet and to the Internet's capacity for altering relationships, power structures and ways of 'managing' orga...

This paper proposes a framework to facilitate description of national financial accounting systems. Its first element, broad aims, identifies the fundamental purpose of national financial accounting systems as being to effect a macro-user or micro-user orientation. From this emerges the second element, institutional environment, which describes the...

This article analyses corporate annual report disclosure practices in five ASEAN countries: Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia, the Philippines and Thailand. The purpose is twofold. First, to ascertain the extent, pattern and nature of corporate disclosure in ASEAN. Second, to reveal whether existing disclosure requirements would be conducive to accoun...

This instructional case focuses on the interplay among accounting, governance, and financial accountability within the context of a publicly funded hospital. Accounting constructs such as ‘entity’, ‘users’, ‘revenue recognition’, and others, are examined as part of a crisis situation. The case has been used not only to illustrate the apparent impor...

This article analyses three current conjectures regarding Australian accounting history between 1788 and 1817. All relate to double entry bookkeeping. First, that it was practised in Australia before 1817: second, that it was introduced to Australia by Lieutenant John Palmer. RN. in 1788: and third, that its teaching in Australia can be traced to t...

An integrated accounting system existed in Muslim administrative offices of the tenth century. Evidence suggests that some modern-day-like bookkeeping and accounting control procedures may have been practised. It is reasonable to believe that Italian traders were educated in the use of sophisticated business methods by their Muslim counterparts. Im...

Discussion of the influence of culture on the international development and harmonization of accounting has focused primarily upon indigenous characteristics which are confined within national boundaries. But cultural inputs, such as religion, which transcend national boundaries, should not be overlooked. Islam is a particular case in point. Its pr...

Analyses the role of accounting data in collective bargaining in not-for-profit organizations in four Canadian cases. Develops a model upon the constructs of “employer equivocality” and “union heterogeneity” to provide useful insights. Where employer equivocality is low and union heterogeneity is high, the analysis reveals that accounting data are...

Australian trade union use of financial information in second-tier bargaining may lead to information-disclosure disputes with employers. United Kingdom experience with the Employment Protection Act, 1975 is reviewed to identify the type of financial information likely to be the focus of such disputes. Prospects for resolution and policy options fo...

Current cost accounting (CCA) recommendations have led to complex measurement problems. This paper aims to provoke discussion of the use of numerical analysis and the STAPOL technique as a method for measuring current cost depreciation expense. The measurement method analysed has a scientific foundation, is simple to apply, and yields accurate resu...

Chief Executive Officers (CEOs) have a strong influence on the tone at the top of companies. How they exercise this influence has the potential to affect the quality of financial reporting. Consequently, it is important that auditors and other users find a way of examining and evaluating the tone at the top and the resultant risks to which companie...