We develop a model of audit production based on Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) using labor cost as input and hours spent on evidence-gathering activities that determine the level of assurance as output. Client characteristics are considered exogenous factors that affect audit production as a whole. We apply the model to a sample of U.S.-based engagements from an international accounting firm. Results indicate that a constrained DEA model using variable returns to scale is appropriate for modeling audit production. We find that audits are more efficient for clients that are larger, have a December year-end, and are highly automated. Audits are less efficient when the auditor relies on internal control, tax services are provided, and the client has subsidiaries. We also find that a well-specified regression-based production model can control for factors that influence auditor efficiency. Finally, we find that inefficiencies are impounded in fees for some industries and firm offices.

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Case study evidence from a large industrial firm is analysed with the purpose of constructing a new conceptual model of the influences that drive companies towards sustainability, and showing the advantages of integrating sustainability reporting with management control systems, specifically the balanced scorecard. The new conceptual model suggests an important role for external stakeholders to influence balanced scorecard measures, sustainability report measures, and management focus. These three constructs influence each other and are reinforced by a system of assigning and enforcing the assumption of individual employee responsibility, whilst supporting a drive towards sustainability. The advantages of integration include better operationalization and internal communication of sustainability ideals through the use of the balanced scorecard (BSC), and a better understanding of BSC causality (between the BSC perspectives) through the more extensive stakeholder engagement that sustainability reporting calls for.

Tordo et al. present a novel AAV gene therapy vector, AAV-TT, which exceeds the current benchmark neurotropic serotypes AAV9 and AAVrh10 and enables unprecedented correction of a lysosomal transmembrane enzyme deficiency. AAV-TT based gene therapies may thus be suitable for the treatment of human neurological diseases characterised by global neuropathology.