This research investigates whether audit committees are associated with improved earnings quality for a sample of Australian listed companies prior to the introduction of mandatory audit committee requirements in 2003. Two measures of earnings quality are used based on models first developed by Jones (1991) and Dechow and Dichev (2002).Our results indicate that formation of an audit committee reduces intentional earnings management but not accrual estimation errors. We also find differences in the associations between audit committee accounting expertise and the two earnings quality measures. Other audit committee characteristics examined are not significantly related to either earnings quality measure.

Sustainability reporting and assurance for sustainability reports have been used by organisations in an attempt to provide accountability to their stakeholders. A better understanding of current practices is important to provide a base for comparative and trend analyses. This paper aims to consolidate and provide information on sustainability reporting activities, assurance for sustainability reports practice and types of assurance providers. Another aim of this paper is to provide a historical perspective of these themes, summarize and compare previous studies, and suggest opportunities for future research. To accomplish these objectives, a literature review was performed, and an analysis of the organisations included in the Fortune Global 500 2010 was completed and general results were presented and consolidated by country. These results demonstrate that all organisations analysed provided some type of information in relation to their social or environmental performance in their official website. The percentage of organisations issuing a formal sustainability report has been increasing in the last few years. However, the percentage of organisations assuring their sustainability report is stagnate. Types of assurance engagements include those performed by accountants and consultants, but new practices have emerged, namely the "mixed approach" and the "stakeholder or specialist review". The analysis also shows that the practices of issuing sustainability reports and having them assured have become a worldwide phenomenon, occurring in developed and emerging economies around the world.

This study investigates security analysts' reactions to public management guidance and assesses whether managers successfully guide analysts toward beatable earnings targets. We use a panel data set between 1995 and 2001 to examine the fiscal‐quarter‐specific determinants of management guidance and the timing, extent, and outcomes of analysts' reactions to this guidance. We find that management guidance is more likely when analysts' initial forecasts are optimistic, and, after controlling for the level of this optimism, when analysts' forecast dispersion is low. Analysts quickly react to management guidance and are more likely to issue final meetable or beatable earnings targets when management provides public guidance. Our evidence suggests that public management guidance plays an important role in leading analysts toward achievable earnings targets.

Using a stakeholder engagement perspective, we investigate the collective influence of institutional investors on a comprehensive set of climate change disclosures for a global sample of large companies. The proposition tested in this paper is that the influence of these powerful stakeholders is positively associated with climate change disclosure via corporate communications channels. We find that the extent and quality of climate change disclosures to be associated with three indicators of corporate responsiveness to institutional investor expectations about the disclosure of this information. These are completion and publication of the Carbon Disclosure Project (CDP) questionnaire on CDP's website, indications in corporate communications that CDP activities have influenced climate change disclosures, and the extent and quality of climate change information provided in CDP questionnaire responses. JEL Classification Codes: M41, G23, Q54

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