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PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to elaborate upon the notion of counter accounting, to assess the potentiality of online reports for counter accounting and hence for counter accounting's emancipatory potential as online reporting, to assess the extent to which this potential is being realised and to suggest ways forward from a critical perspective.Design/methodology/approachThere are several components to a critical interpretive analysis: critical evaluative analysis, informed to some extent by prior literature in diverse fields; web survey; questionnaire survey; case study.FindingsWeb‐based counter accounting may be understood as having emancipatory potential, some of which is being realised in practice. Not all the positive potential is, however, being realised as one might hope: things that might properly be done are not always being done. And there are threats to progress in the future.Originality/valueClarification of a notion of counter accounting incorporating the activity of groups such as pressure groups and NGOs; rare study into practices and opinions in this context through a critical evaluative lens.

This study examines managers' use of discretion in determining goodwill impairment losses following the mandatory adoption of IFRS 3 "Business Combinations," and whether this discretion reflects opportunistic reporting by managers or the provision of their private information. Although IFRS 3 was issued to improve the accounting treatment for goodwill and provide users with more useful and value-relevant information regarding the underlying economic value of goodwill, it has been criticized on the grounds of the managerial discretion inherent in impairment testing. Therefore, ex-ante, it is unclear how the impairment-only approach has affected the reporting of goodwill impairment losses. After controlling for economic factors, empirical results reveal that managers are exercising discretion in the reporting of goodwill impairments following the adoption of IFRS 3. Specifically, goodwill impairments are more likely to be associated with recent CEO changes, income smoothing and "big bath" reporting behaviors. However, the results also indicate that goodwill impairments are strongly associated with effective governance mechanisms suggesting that managers are more likely to be exercising their accounting discretion to convey their private information about the underlying performance of the firm rather than acting opportunistically. These inferences are robust to various modeling specifications and variable definitions, suggesting that IFRS 3 has provided managers with a framework to reliably convey their private information about future cash flows consistent with the IASB's objectives in developing the impairment standard.

The corporate governance literature shows that strong internal corporate governance improves the monitoring of managerial discretion over accounting choices. However, most of these studies investigated the role of internal governance in a setting highly regulated through accounting standards, such as the treatment of accruals. Thus, there is little evidence available on whether internal governance collaborates or substitutes for strict accounting regulations. This study therefore investigates whether boards and audit committees also protect shareholders' interests in areas that are less regulated through generally accepted accounting principles (GAAP). Non-recurring items are relatively lightly regulated under International Accounting Standard 1 (IAS 1) and there is increasing concern over the use of non-recurring items to mislead investors (i.e., classifying some recurring expenses as non-recurring). This study therefore investigates whether internal corporate governance constrains classification shifting. Using a sample of 713 U.K. firm-year observations, we find that high-quality internal governance, in terms of the overall quality of board and audit committees, mitigates classification shifting, suggesting therefore that strong internal governance tends to act as a substitute for strict accounting standards. In particular, it appears that long tenure and independence help to mitigate classification shifting, and more CEO directors and share ownership instead may lead to lower quality monitoring.