Purpose The increasing responsibility of organisations towards society and the environment has inverted the relationship between accounting and accountability, leading to accountability-based accounting systems. This study aims to explore the debate on accountability for climate change within the integrating thinking (IT) perspective. Ascertaining the most significant trends in the debate around purposes and performance that characterise climate mitigation engagement and their connections, the study would explore if and to what extent organisations are tackling climate actions. Design/methodology/approach A narrative review of the extensive academic literature developed from the Kyoto Protocol to date was performed. After selecting a representative sample, papers were analysed with the support of a new analytical framework that involves three dimensions – answerability, enforcement and outcome – and governance schemes that emerge from the involvement of the private and public sector and civil society. With the support of NVivo software, themes arisen were analysed and coded. Key items were labelled, creating specific nodes and synthesised into the proposed framework. Findings A “silo approach” largely characterises the debate on accountability for climate change. The most significant reasons behind the shortcomings of extant climate actions may be retrieved firstly in the weakness of the motivations that guide organisations to operate in a climate-friendly way. Social implications This study underlines the need for a 360° integrated approach for strategically tackling climate actions. Originality/value This study would represent a further step towards an integrated approach for studying organisations behaviours in the “climate war”, embracing the connectivity between purposes and outcomes, capitals and the relationships amongst the various stakeholders.

This paper investigates the investor reaction to audit reports containing a going concern modification (GCM) in the Italian market following new amendments regarding auditing regulations and public financial information disclosures. We applied the event study (ES) methodology to short event windows considering Italian listed companies during the period 2009–2015. Our findings partially contradict previous studies revealing a systematic negative impact of GCMs, especially when a GCM is attached to unqualified opinions. We clearly observe that Italian auditors have a strong higher propensity to issue a GCM than to express a qualification. Moreover, we find other interesting results that contradict the mainstream literature, detecting a stronger negative reaction in the case of recurring GCMs and when the modification is issued by non-Big 4 auditing firms. These differences could be explained considering the environmental characteristics of the Italian market such as the ownership structure, governance mechanisms and accounting culture, where minority investors act against ownership in accordance with the type II agency problem. Our empirical results suggest that the domestic and international regulatory amendments during the study period have increased the value relevance of GCMs and the usefulness of financial disclosures. This study might be of interest to practitioners and regulators in regard to contributing to the introduction of further regulatory interventions that will enhance both the informativeness of audit reports and awareness of investors in regard to going concern uncertainty.

The purpose of this paper is to feed the debate regarding investor's reaction to relevant financial information releases as yearly earnings announcements (EAs) with a specific focus on financial distressed firms. Using the event study methodology and adopting two well-known tests in the literature, we analyzed Italian listed companies in the period of 2008-2016, to detect whether there is a market reaction to EAs releases for firms in financial distress, adopting as a measure of financial distress the presence in the audit report of a going concern opinion (GCO). In the Italian legislation, the GCO must be communicated immediately to the market and this can be done before, simultaneously or after EAs. The achieved results shed light on the negative impact of EAs of distressed firms receiving a GCO. On the other hand, the possibility that negative abnormal returns are mainly due to the GCO release cannot be neglected. Hence, through additional tests, we found that effects of EAs are more persistent and significant than GCOs, in accordance with the prevailing literature, which sees, on average, EAs predominant information for investors. Our study is pioneering in disentangling possible effects of confounding events for the Italian stock market. The EAs superior effect confirms the dynamics characterizing weak and small equity markets as Italy where, before GCOs releases, some relevant and more precise information (such as earnings magnitude) is often held by shareholders because of the high percentage of family firms and/or concentrated ownership, demonstrating also the weakness of auditor profession if compared with other developed countries.

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deemed to be caused by the chronic contained rupture. Aortouni-iliac endovascular aneurysm repair with femorofemoral crossover bypass was performed.Results: After the operation, the back pain was relieved. The postoperative course was uneventful. Contrast-enhanced computed tomography demonstrated no endoleak and decent graft flow.Conclusions: Precise mechanisms of the erosion could not be elucidated. Compared with an open procedure, endovascular aneurysm repair could provide a less invasive solution for the rupture. Careful postoperative surveillance is necessary.