This thesis reviews the evolution of interim reporting in New Zealand. The attempts to regulate interim reporting by the stock Exchange Association of New Zealand and the lobbying behaviour of affected parties are documented. The regulation of interim reporting is interpreted as a series of self-interest actions by the affected parties. In 1973 semiannual reports were mandated for all firms listed on the New Zealand stock Exchange. However, the content of these reports, was not specified until 1976. The extent of voluntary reporting practice prior to 1973 is recorded. The major empirical analysis of the thesis examines the association between corporate characteristics and the voluntary disclosure of semiannual earnings during the period 1973 to 1976. The analysis shows that firms with high semiannual earnings disclosures have more shares issued, have paid an interim dividend, carry relatively less inventory, are in a more seasonal industry and have a greater earnings forecast error. Assets in place, political costs of disclosure and competitive costs of disclosure are not found to be associated with the level of semiannual earnings disclosure. Sensitivity analysis indicates that the significance of the explanatory variables depends on firm size and upon the threshold level of disclosure.

This is a study of earnings quality, examining whether components of earnings based on New Zealand (N.Z.) accounting classification systems have different information parameters. The N.Z. environment provides a unique opportunity to examine a period with no legislative backing of accounting standards and a flexible accounting standard. Combined, this gave mangers the ability to clearly identify earnings components they considered to be differentially informative. Informativeness is assessed by the ability of current period earnings to predict next period earnings and the contemporaneous relation between returns and earnings. The results indicate that disaggregated reported earnings are more informative than aggregated earnings in a non-trivial way. In one of the sample periods disaggregated earnings explained 29% of the variance in returns, more than twice the explanatory power of aggregated earnings. N.Z. accounting standard setters replaced SSAP7 with FRS7 in 1994 contending that the discretion available to mangers reduced the informativeness of earnings. Not only do the results not support that contention but earnings informativeness has fallen since FRS7 came into effect, suggesting that standard setters should revisit that decision. The results also have implications for the content and form of the N.Z. Stock Exchange (NZSE) preliminary announcement. "Unusual earnings" reported to the NZSE by companies are shown to be differentially informative to investors yet the NZSE does not always identify these components when the preliminary announcement is summarised and disseminated to market participants. To summarise, the effective codification of earnings brought about by FRS7 has reduced the informativeness of earnings – locking differences between components into total earnings. The N.Z. results beg the question as to whether similar economic events are locked into the COMPUSTAT summary earnings variables for U.S. data.

This thesis investigates the impact of certain identifiable subsets of accounting information on users’ decisions by examining share price revisions that occurred at the same time as the accounting information was released. The subsets examined are the announcements of new share issues, the release of contemporaneous earnings and dividend announcements, and the release of information about asset revaluations. Assuming that an adequate methodology can be designed, a significant share price revision is consistent with the notion that the accounting information cue has "information content". The distinction between accounting research and research in the basic disciplines of economics and mathematics/statistics is the emphasis in accounting on the institutional domain; that is research in accounting requires a "mapping" into the institutional domain in which accounting information is produced and used. This, in turn, provides a justification for the type of announcement effect studies described in the previous paragraph. Clearly the study of share price revisions requires a substantial data base of share prices. Part of this thesis is devoted to a description of the procedures used to establish this data base. The three major announcement effect studies use what is popularly described as the market model residual method of analysis. In the application of this model, some attention has been paid to problems of "thin" trading in the New Zealand environment in providing unbiased estimators of the market model parameters. The results of the application of this methodology are that share prices seem to react rapidly and (generally) unbiasedly to the announcement of bonus issues and contemporaneous earnings and dividend announcements. The size of the reaction in the week that the announcement is made is typically large. The larger is the unexpected component in the announcement of earnings, the larger is the share price revision. With regard to rights issues, no abnormal share price performance was found in the week that the rights issue was announced, although it was clear that companies announcing rights issues had been performing abnormally well over the year up to the announcement. Share price revisions did not appear to accompany the release of information about the current values of assets (usually land and buildings). However it is conceded that this subset of the overall research exercise is more difficult to undertake as there are difficulties in determining an appropriate announcement date, and in determining what the market’s expectations are with regard to the revaluation.

This thesis reviews the evolution of interim reporting in New Zealand. The attempts to regulate interim reporting by the stock Exchange Association of New Zealand and the lobbying behaviour of affected parties are documented. The regulation of interim reporting is interpreted as a series of self-interest actions by the affected parties. In 1973 semiannual reports were mandated for all firms listed on the New Zealand stock Exchange. However, the content of these reports, was not specified until 1976. The extent of voluntary reporting practice prior to 1973 is recorded. The major empirical analysis of the thesis examines the association between corporate characteristics and the voluntary disclosure of semiannual earnings during the period 1973 to 1976. The analysis shows that firms with high semiannual earnings disclosures have more shares issued, have paid an interim dividend, carry relatively less inventory, are in a more seasonal industry and have a greater earnings forecast error. Assets in place, political costs of disclosure and competitive costs of disclosure are not found to be associated with the level of semiannual earnings disclosure. Sensitivity analysis indicates that the significance of the explanatory variables depends on firm size and upon the threshold level of disclosure.

This is a study of earnings quality, examining whether components of earnings based on New Zealand (N.Z.) accounting classification systems have different information parameters. The N.Z. environment provides a unique opportunity to examine a period with no legislative backing of accounting standards and a flexible accounting standard. Combined, this gave mangers the ability to clearly identify earnings components they considered to be differentially informative. Informativeness is assessed by the ability of current period earnings to predict next period earnings and the contemporaneous relation between returns and earnings. The results indicate that disaggregated reported earnings are more informative than aggregated earnings in a non-trivial way. In one of the sample periods disaggregated earnings explained 29% of the variance in returns, more than twice the explanatory power of aggregated earnings. N.Z. accounting standard setters replaced SSAP7 with FRS7 in 1994 contending that the discretion available to mangers reduced the informativeness of earnings. Not only do the results not support that contention but earnings informativeness has fallen since FRS7 came into effect, suggesting that standard setters should revisit that decision. The results also have implications for the content and form of the N.Z. Stock Exchange (NZSE) preliminary announcement. "Unusual earnings" reported to the NZSE by companies are shown to be differentially informative to investors yet the NZSE does not always identify these components when the preliminary announcement is summarised and disseminated to market participants. To summarise, the effective codification of earnings brought about by FRS7 has reduced the informativeness of earnings – locking differences between components into total earnings. The N.Z. results beg the question as to whether similar economic events are locked into the COMPUSTAT summary earnings variables for U.S. data.

This thesis investigates the impact of certain identifiable subsets of accounting information on users’ decisions by examining share price revisions that occurred at the same time as the accounting information was released. The subsets examined are the announcements of new share issues, the release of contemporaneous earnings and dividend announcements, and the release of information about asset revaluations. Assuming that an adequate methodology can be designed, a significant share price revision is consistent with the notion that the accounting information cue has "information content". The distinction between accounting research and research in the basic disciplines of economics and mathematics/statistics is the emphasis in accounting on the institutional domain; that is research in accounting requires a "mapping" into the institutional domain in which accounting information is produced and used. This, in turn, provides a justification for the type of announcement effect studies described in the previous paragraph. Clearly the study of share price revisions requires a substantial data base of share prices. Part of this thesis is devoted to a description of the procedures used to establish this data base. The three major announcement effect studies use what is popularly described as the market model residual method of analysis. In the application of this model, some attention has been paid to problems of "thin" trading in the New Zealand environment in providing unbiased estimators of the market model parameters. The results of the application of this methodology are that share prices seem to react rapidly and (generally) unbiasedly to the announcement of bonus issues and contemporaneous earnings and dividend announcements. The size of the reaction in the week that the announcement is made is typically large. The larger is the unexpected component in the announcement of earnings, the larger is the share price revision. With regard to rights issues, no abnormal share price performance was found in the week that the rights issue was announced, although it was clear that companies announcing rights issues had been performing abnormally well over the year up to the announcement. Share price revisions did not appear to accompany the release of information about the current values of assets (usually land and buildings). However it is conceded that this subset of the overall research exercise is more difficult to undertake as there are difficulties in determining an appropriate announcement date, and in determining what the market’s expectations are with regard to the revaluation.

This study seeks to illuminate how markets and private sector managerial practices, especially strategic performance measurement systems (SPMS) have come to be a central part of the government of the local domain and with what effects, following far-reaching reforms to the New Zealand public sector commencing in the mid 1980s. The study uses Michel Foucault's concept of governmentality to interpret the way people are governed through regimes of practice that present certain ways of being as true and others as false, utilising traditional devices of sovereignty and discipline, as well as technologies of the self. Parliamentary bills to reform New Zealand local government were analysed as was the literature on local government reform. These illuminated the rationalities and technologies underpinning the reforms. Literature on strategic planning and management in the public sector were analysed to provide insights into the discursive formation of SPMS as a technology of government. The researcher also interviewed the city manager, managers of all the units, some non-managerial staff, The Mayor and one councillor of Future City Council The pseudonym has been adopted for purposes of confidentiality.(FCC), a New Zealand local authority. He also collected and analysed numerous internal documents from the case study. The analysis involved a transcription of all interviews and then identification of common themes from among the interviewees. The individual interviewee's response to a theme were analysed against that of other interviewees and the internal documents so as compare their interpretation of the introduction and effects of markets and SPMS. The results of this analysis were then interpreted employing the concept of governmentality. The aim was to establish the extent to which this concept could explain the changes to local government and their effects. The reforms to local government in New Zealand were driven by the same rationalities as those of the larger New Zealand public sector, namely, efficiency, effectiveness and accountability. The study found that these rationalities were associated with regimes of practice that sought to constitute citizen and staff as autonomous entities that could govern themselves, while at the same time gazing over each other. These practices included the separation of policy making from management, commercial operations from non-commercial ones, business from non-business departments and the introduction of competition through internal markets. These changes were associated with discourses that promoted citizens as active participants in their communities but who were at the same time autonomous individuals who could take care of themselves and who had the rights of consumers. These dividing practices sought to change the nature of the relationship between staff and citizens, supplanting trust with technologies of mistrust, enabling government without obvious intrusion hence overcoming the dialectic between control and freedom that is the hallmark of advanced liberal societies. These rationalities were also associated with SPMS programmes and technologies that sought to reconfigure local spaces into communities bounded by local authorities. Since annual planning and the long-term financial strategy required consultation with their communities, citizens were interpellated into their own government. Consultation and citizen participation enabled the needs and aspirations of these communities to be known to staff of the FCC who would be expected to work towards their fulfilment. These needs and aspirations in turn became the basis for programmes of governing the conduct of the staff and elected representatives of the FCC. SPMS incited citizens to evaluate the FCC and various facets of their lives on the basis of the logic of the economic, which became the vehicle and basis for far- reaching changes to the FCC. These practices enabled FCC individual staff's work to be delineated into objectives, to which they were assigned. This in turn enabled the individual performance of staff to be calculable, measurable and visible hence tying their daily working lives with the rationalities of government. The dreams of reformers however, do not always accord with practice, as was evident at the FCC. The changes while embraced by some were resisted by others, who though subsequently defining the organisation in terms of strategy and markets, do not appear to have been overwhelmed by it. This study hopefully contributes to accounting research in a number of ways. While the bulk of Foucaultian studies are historical, this study combines both historical and contemporary analysis of the evolution and instantiation of a discourse of markets and private sector managerialism. The study is able to show how the subject constitutes and is constituted by a discourse of community, customer and enterprise, contrary to previous studies that have relied on the study of discourse as an intermediary to the subject. The study extended previous by show how the subject is not a mere pawn of discourse, but is able to appropriate and resist discourses that contradict his or her prior identities. The study also shows the potentially rich insights, which can be gleaned from looking at accounting as part of the larger modalities for governing organisational and social life. It shows how accounting data and personnel are appropriated by staff in various units to develop and interpret strategy and measure its progress within the organisation. Importantly, accounting logic is used to link individual work with the political rationalities of strategic planning. The researcher hopes that a healthy debate would ensue regarding the reasons, means and effects of neo-liberal modes of government in the local sphere.

This thesis provides evidence enabling an analysis of systemic director-auditor links, their nature, their determinants, their association with audit quality as an important component of corporate governance, and investor confidence in companies displaying these links. / The motivation for examining interpersonal associations between directors and auditors comes from several sources. First is the observation that auditing is a knowledge-based service the quality of which is difficult to evaluate even after the product has been experienced, adding to the complexity of the purchasing decision (Murray 1991). The use of personal contacts to scan the business environment, disseminate information and reduce uncertainty is likely to assist that evaluation and so aid in auditor selection. One manifestation of these personal contacts is directors who hold directorships on more than one board, creating networks of ties between companies known as interlocking directorates. It tends to be non-executive or external directors who create these ties because they have more time to devote to multiple directorships. Interlocking directorates are a long-standing phenomenon that has been examined in the economics, organisational behaviour and sociology literatures and are argued to engender trust, and mediate transactions. Some countries restrict such directorate ties between industry competitors because of their potential to encourage collusion and competitive disadvantage but Australia has no such restrictions. / In order to promote practice growth and firm survival, public accounting firms are known to tap into these networks, which often include former employees, encouraging personal contacts with, amongst others, directors of clients and potential clients. In this way, it is argued, companies interlocked through common directors tend to be audited by a common audit firm with the links extending to even audit partners. Extensive analysis of these interlocking directorates supports these arguments and finds that the association between interlocking directorates and director-auditor links becomes stronger as intra-industry and within confined geographical region data partitioning occurs and varies across audit firms. This variation across firms is subsequently used to model with some success auditor choice - even within the Big 6. / Systematic ties between directors and audit firms and/or audit partners potentially threaten at least the appearance of auditor independence, if not the fact. On the other hand, following the DeAngelo (1981)auditor size argument, the potential loss of a ‘family’ of clients associated with a single director if audit quality is degraded may actually enhance audit quality. This thesis argues that directors value personal contact in auditor-client relationships but are aware of the potentially damaging connotations arising from such interpersonal associations and the potential for investor disquiet about them. Implicit in this argument is an assumption that investors are both interested and active in matters of corporate governance, including the audit as a component of corporate governance. As such, the formation of director-auditor links is argued to be contingent on the balance of power between directors and shareholders and the strength of other aspects of corporate governance beside the audit function. Empirical results support this hypothesis only for interlocking created between two or more directors of companies in the same industry. / Evidence of director-auditor link association with audit quality is then sought by analysing qualifications and discretionary accruals in the presence of these links. Although alternative explanations are possible, some evidence is found of reduced audit quality. However, using the frequency with which an investor chooses to invest across companies audited by the same auditor as a measure of investor confidence in that auditor, results show that audit quality attributes are valued by investors and that director-auditor links are not associated negatively with investor confidence. Additional tests that examine the association between director-auditor links and various measures of organisational performance find little evidence of negative connotations. Public policy implications flow from the findings and these are discussed together with limitations and ideas for future research.

The issues of zakah and interest for IFIs have been highlighted for several years and attracted many arguments among Islamic scholars and public. The increasing public interest on the Islamic Banking since 1970s has been driven by the increasing sensitivity among Muslims to the relationship between religion and economic activities. With the emergence of IFIs, Muslims community has demanded for an establishment of an accounting body to develop a set of accounting standards that adhere to the Islamic tenets, hence AAOIFI was established. However, the journey of AAOFI in achieving such objective has not been smooth. This paper intended to study the effectiveness of AAOIFI in dealing with the issues of zakah and riba for IFIs by examining the disclosure practice of 25 IFIs worldwide. Based on the analysis conducted, it is concluded that the extents of disclosure by the IFIs are much lower than the AAOIFI requirements. The study also found that leverage and origin factors might contribute to the level disclosures of zakah and financial products. In addition, the test performed also revealed that the adopters of AAOIFI do provide more disclosure as compared to the non-adopters. However, the mean result is relatively low to suggest full compliance with the AAOIFI standards.

This thesis reviews the evolution of interim reporting in New Zealand. The attempts to regulate interim reporting by the stock Exchange Association of New Zealand and the lobbying behaviour of affected parties are documented. The regulation of interim reporting is interpreted as a series of self-interest actions by the affected parties. In 1973 semiannual reports were mandated for all firms listed on the New Zealand stock Exchange. However, the content of these reports, was not specified until 1976. The extent of voluntary reporting practice prior to 1973 is recorded. The major empirical analysis of the thesis examines the association between corporate characteristics and the voluntary disclosure of semiannual earnings during the period 1973 to 1976. The analysis shows that firms with high semiannual earnings disclosures have more shares issued, have paid an interim dividend, carry relatively less inventory, are in a more seasonal industry and have a greater earnings forecast error. Assets in place, political costs of disclosure and competitive costs of disclosure are not found to be associated with the level of semiannual earnings disclosure. Sensitivity analysis indicates that the significance of the explanatory variables depends on firm size and upon the threshold level of disclosure.