Purpose-The purpose of this paper is to propose an institutional entrepreneurship approach to examining management accounting change triggered by social and environmental concerns. Design/methodology/approach-The study begins with a literature review concerning the role that old institutional economics and new institutional sociology have played in the study of management accounting change, underlining strengths and weaknesses. To deal with the main weaknesses, the institutional entrepreneurship approach is presented and utilized as the basis for the development of a conceptual framework, which is contextualized to the examination of management accounting change triggered by sustainability issues. Findings-Management accounting change literature has not paid enough attention to the social constructivist roots of institutional theory. Through the application of a conceptual framework inspired by institutional change models and institutional entrepreneurship literature, this paper proposes another approach to examine how new management accounting practices are socially constructed during the course of organizational change, particularly in response to sustainability concerns. Research limitations/implications-This new framework has not yet demonstrated its explanatory power in a particular field. Originality/value-The paper examines management accounting change as a social construction process led by institutional entrepreneurs who aim to mobilize resources and negotiate the definition and implementation of sustainability strategies and new management accounting practices, which will take environmental and social issues into consideration, in order to reach an agreement on the pre-institutionalization, diffusion and institutionalization of sustainable practices.
Purpose
The purpose of this study is to investigate whether large blockholders are associated with financial statement fraud at their companies. Although a substantial body of prior studies has focused on chief executive officers’ motivations to manipulate financial statements, the correlation between majority shareholders and financial statement fraud has received little attention. This paper aims to fill this gap by investigating whether the sample firms have controlling shareholders or executives (i.e. blockholders vs management) and whether financial statement fraud schemes, motivations and consequences differ between blockholder- and management-controlled firms.
Design/methodology/approach
Using a clinical approach, the authors Study 12 Canadian financial statement fraud cases uncovered by the Ontario Securities Commission between 1997 and 2020.
Findings
First, the authors find blockholder control in six cases. These findings infer that these large shareholders received private benefits at the expense of minority shareholders. The comparative analyzes suggest that fraudulent firms controlled by blockholders go bankrupt more often than those controlled by managers. The authors also find that improper disclosure is the most common fraud scheme in blockholder-controlled firms.
Originality/value
The authors conduct a deep analysis of financial statement fraud cases to examine the of blockholder control on the likelihood of financial statement fraud. This paper adds new insights to the research on financial crime by investigating whether large shareholders affect the probability of fraud and the extent to which they might do so.
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