Suchergebnisse

Magnus Söderlund, Experiment med människor
Liber förlag, 2010. 328 sidor, häftad. ISBN: 9147090715. 332 SEK

AbstractBehavioral public administration research has provided empirical evidence of several perception biases when individuals process information. Building on these findings, we seek to advance the literature by analyzing politicians' financial perceptions of their own government. Drawing on the theory of motivated reasoning, we examine the context of Swedish municipalities and find financial perception gaps associated with politicians' party affiliation (establishment or anti‐establishment), parliamentary position (opposition or governing party), and formal hierarchical rank. Specifically, politicians representing anti‐establishment and opposition parties, as well as those occupying lower positions in the political hierarchy—and thus having less influence over and less responsibility for municipal affairs—tend to perceive the financial situation more negatively. These findings suggest the presence of a motivationally driven bias in politicians' perceptions of financial conditions; moreover, they illustrate that these perceptions are influenced by factors beyond the traditional financial, socioeconomic, and demographic ones examined in previous research.

This paper investigates popular financial reporting, to determine how contextual factors can favour or hinder its development. A balanced panel dataset from 289 Swedish municipalities spanning the period 2015–2021 is utilised for the empirical analysis, which is based on bivariate correlations and logistic regression models. The results are interpreted through the lens of legitimacy theory, integrated with innovation and diffusion models. The findings suggest that, while political factors play a certain role, it is primarily the local accounting networks, which enable the exchange of experiences among neighbouring municipalities within the same regional area, that are the most influential factor. These results may prove to be helpful in various contexts, contributing to the academic debate on the relevance of institutional and contextual factors in explaining the voluntary decision to prepare popular financial reports.

The selection of actuarial assumptions used to value state and local government pension liabilities is an important culprit of the looming state and local pension crisis in the U.S. Due to the impact these selection choices have on the value of pension liabilities and annual required contributions (ARC), pension plans are often said to make these choices opportunistically for purposes of freeing up budget resources and making pension funding look better. Using empirical data on 114 state-administered pension plans, this research shows that the likelihood of such opportunistic pension accounting choices (OPAC) increases when the plan is underfunded, organized as a cost-sharing plan, governed by a politically embedded fiduciary body, and when the sponsoring government is surrounded by a high degree of unionization, and is divided in terms of partisan control. The results also show that the likelihood of OPAC decreases when a pension plan is subjected to an audit by a Certified Public Accountant (CPA), suggesting that professional gatekeepers can play an important role in limiting the adverse effects of OPAC behavior, including insufficient ARC payments and reduced transparency of governmental financial reports.

Purpose – This paper focuses on the extent to which Swedish municipalities identified and communicatedrisks due to the COVID-19 outbreak early on. The purpose of this paper is to explore to what extent thesituational factors of the COVID-19 pandemic influenced the likelihood of municipalities disclosing COVID-19information as a subsequent event in the annual reports of 2019. Design/methodology/approach – Logistic regression models were used to estimate COVID-19 disclosure asa subsequent event. Data were handpicked from annual reports, audit reports and meeting minutes, or wereretrieved from publicly available sources. Findings – Regression results indicate that municipalities issuing their annual report in a later stage of thepandemic, in regions with a higher number of confirmed COVID-19 cases, were more likely to discloseCOVID-19 information as a subsequent event. However, the municipal factors used to capture the risk of asevere impact of the COVID-19 outbreak were not of major importance. In line with previous research, thisstudy shows that political and institutional factors have explanatory power in predicting and explainingaccounting disclosure choices. Originality/value – This paper contributes to research on accounting disclosures in urgent crises and on thespecific topic of subsequent events in the public sector. Few studies address subsequent events in a corporatesetting and, to the best of the authors' knowledge, none do so in the context of the public sector. This paper alsooffers insight into how explanatory factors, previously tested under normal conditions and circumstances,influence disclosure choices in an early stage of a health crisis characterized by uncertainty regarding bothoccurrence and consequences.

Les recherches antérieures sur le secteur privé indiquent que les auditeurs et les cabinets d'audit sont des acteurs importants pour garantir la qualité des rapports établis selon la comptabilité d'exercice. La présente étude a pour objectif de déterminer si les cabinets d'audit et les coûts/honoraires des audits ont une influence sur la probabilité des municipalités d'appliquer une gestion du résultat dans leurs comptes annuels. Les données empiriques, qui couvraient les exercices financiers 2011-2013, ont été extraites des rapports annuels ou d'autres sources. D'une manière générale, notre étude montre que la probabilité d'observer une gestion du résultat augmente lorsque les coûts/honoraires des audits augmentent. Des différences existent néanmoins quant à la probabilité d'observer une gestion du résultat selon le cabinet d'audit engagé. Cela veut dire que la qualité de l'audit est un facteur qui influe sur la probabilité d'observer une gestion du résultat dans les municipalités suédoises. L'étude indique également que les différents cabinets d'audit font des compromis différents entre la logique professionnelle et la logique commerciale, et que cela se retrouve dans la propension des clients à se lancer dans la gestion du résultat. Remarques à l'intention des praticiens Aujourd'hui, la majorité des pays développés ont adopté la comptabilité d'exercice pour les municipalités. Et qui dit comptabilité d'exercice dit risque de gestion du résultat. Compte tenu des problèmes liés à la qualité de la comptabilité, les audits financiers sont d'une grande importance. Cependant, notre étude montre qu'il n'existe pas de relation positive évidente entre les coûts/honoraires des audits et la qualité des audits. La capacité d'entraver la gestion du résultat semble varier d'un cabinet d'audit à l'autre. L'implication importante pour les praticiens est que les audits doivent s'appuyer sur des normes de qualité qui font l'objet d'un suivi et d'un contrôle, ce qui s'applique à la fois au niveau du système mais aussi lorsque les municipalités font appel à des cabinets d'audit pour des missions de vérification.