How accountants responded to the financial fallout owing to the COVID-19 pandemic

Purpose: Before the COVID-19 pandemic, the last time a crisis affected businesses worldwide by putting economies into hibernation was in 1918 – the Great Influenza Pandemic. Environmental, social and governance frameworks require businesses to respond to such crises as it significantly changes the business environment. With approximately 2.84 million accountants existing across 130 countries, this study aims to determine whether the accounting profession responded to this crisis. As these responses can provide insights into the type of activities accountants performed during the lockdown, the authors analysed them for emerging themes and identified changes in the way that accountants performed tasks. Design/methodology/approach: Using search engines, the authors examined publicly available secondary sources such as websites of professional bodies, the Big Four and mid-tier accounting firms and government organisations using the keyword "COVID-19” to identify responses on issues faced by accountants during the 2020 lockdown period in New Zealand. The authors used interpretive text analysis to examine the responses for emerging themes. Findings: The accountants' responses to the COVID-19 pandemic emphasised information technology and soft skills but most importantly the interaction, integration and immersion of technical skills with information technology and soft skills. The findings also highlight changes in the way accountants performed their tasks. Originality/value: The study insights enable accounting academics to better understand the interconnection between hard and soft skills for incorporating it in syllabi, thereby preparing students for future roles. In addition, the study findings will assist both practitioners and researchers to explore the emerging changes in the way accountants perform their tasks. © 2022, Emerald Publishing Limited.

The mediating effect of IT governance between corporate governance mechanisms, business continuity, and transparency & disclosure: An empirical study of Covid-19 Pandemic in Jordan

The present study aims to assess the mediating role of IT governance between corporate governance mechanisms and business continuity, and transparency & disclosure during the pandemic of Covid-19 in Jordan. The study uses a sample of 232 questionnaires retrieved from different firms of different sectors. The sample includes a survey response from board members, senior executives, auditors, IT experts, and other practitioners. Factor analysis and structural equation modeling were conducted to estimate the results. The results indicate that IT governance exhibits a statistically significant positive effect on business continuity and transparency & disclosure. Further, the results reveal that corporate governance mechanisms are less efficient in their influence on business continuity and transparency & disclosure in the absence of the mediating effect of IT governance during the pandemic. The current study's findings provide insight and empirical evidence to the importance of IT governance and its role in business continuity and transparency & disclosure in constraining the negative effects during any crisis. The current study provides a novel contribution as it links corporate governance, transparency, and IT governance in the context of Covid-19 in an emerging country. © 2022 Taylor & Francis Group, LLC.

Covid-19 disclosure: do internal corporate governance and audit quality matter?

Purpose: This study aims to examine the impact of internal corporate governance and audit quality on the level of COVID-19 disclosure in Egypt. Design/methodology/approach: The authors use manual content analysis to measure levels of COVID-19 disclosure in the narrative sections of annual reports. The authors analyze all companies listed on the Egyptian Stock Exchange over 2020–2021. The authors use different regression models to test the research hypotheses. Findings: The analysis adds to the literature in two crucial respects. First, it provides a measure for COVID-19 disclosure in Egypt. Second, it provides evidence that governance mechanisms (board diversity, audit committee [AC] independence), auditor type and audit opinion affect the level of COVID-19 disclosure. The higher level of COVID-19 disclosure is associated with firms with more female directors on the board, being audited by one of the big four audit firms and receiving standard clean audit opinion. While the inexistence of an AC and more executives on the AC negatively affect COVID-19 disclosure levels. Originality/value: To the best of the authors' knowledge, it is the only paper that examines COVID-19 disclosure in the Egyptian context. It is also the first paper that provides evidence on the impact of internal governance and audit quality on COVID-19 disclosure. © 2022, Emerald Publishing Limited.

The effect of corporate governance elements on corporate social responsibility reporting of listed companies in Vietnam

This paper examines the impact of various corporate governance characteristics on the disclosure of corporate social responsibility (CSR) information in the context of developing markets during the COVID-19 pandemic. We used data from the annual reports of the top 100 companies listed on the Ho Chi Minh Stock Exchange from 2019 to 2021 to investigate the relationship between board independence, board size, CEO duality, foreign ownership, government ownership, and the disclosure level of CSR reporting. We employed a content analysis to measure CSR disclosure level by using the CSR reporting index (CSRRI) with 17 items. The panel regressions including three techniques like the pooled-ordinary least squares (OLS), fixed effects model (FEM), and random effects model (REM), were used to analyze the data, and FEM) shows its best fit to the model. The results suggest that board independence and government ownership correlate positively and significantly with companies' decisions to disclose CSR information. In contrast, board size, CEO duality, foreign ownership and was found to be insignificant. Our study extends the literature on CSR particularly in developing countries where governments play a significant role in promoting economic development. It also evaluates the CSR disclosure level of the top listed companies in Vietnam. Since then, the paper's results provide several insights to the policymakers to identify the corporate governance characteristics that will promote CSR reporting in Vietnam's listed companies.

Influence of Corporate Governance on Firm Value: Sequential Mediating Role of CSR and Organizational Identification

Corporate Governance (CoGv) has gained significance with an increase in the number of enterprises and has evolved with several prescriptions from scholars and broader audiences (shareholders and stakeholders). Another reason for this growing significance can be attributed to the pressing social and environmental concerns that these enterprises share. This study focuses on Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) in India. It proposes a conceptual model and attempts to provide insight into the role of corporate governance in enhancing Firm Value (FV). Some studies have established a positive relationship between these two variables. However, this relationship can be further enhanced by variables such as Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) and Organizational Identification (OI). The proposed conceptual model has been empirically tested to check whether these variables have contributed to enhancing FV. The study uses Partial Least Squares-Structural Equation Modeling (PLS-SEM) along with SmartPLS. It provides empirical evidence on the mediating influence of CSR and OI and the mediating effect between CoGv and FV. Based on the findings, theoretical and managerial implications are also proposed.

Can we learn lessons from the past? COVID‐19 crisis and corporate governance responses

The coronavirus (COVID‐19) pandemic has seriously threatened the lives of the people. The pandemic has also threatened the survival of the firms, which has drawn the attention of policymakers and corporate governance practitioners around the world. In this study, we focus on how corporate governance practices can help firms to survive during COVID‐19 crisis. For this purpose, we take insights from prior crises by reviewing leading business journals articles and identify key corporate governance mechanisms that could potentially be effective in the ongoing COVID‐19 crisis. Our review of a large body of literature highlights several governance mechanisms that may help firms to cope with COVID‐19 crisis. These governance attributes include risk management committees, board diversity, independent directors, foreign investors, institutional ownership, ownership concentration, CEO's dual roles, block ownership, and family ownership. We provide several policy implications after reviewing the corporate governance literature. Our review illustrates that firms may be subject to at least one of the identified governance mechanisms and they may learn how these governance attributes can be effective in the COVID‐19 crisis. Our review illustrates that independent risk management committees, institutional ownership, board independence, blockholders, and family ownership are some of the essential and effective governance mechanisms compared to other governance attributes during COVID‐19 crisis.