Since the mid-1980s, professional accounting bodies, employers of accounting graduates and academics alike have lamented the failure of universities to equip accounting graduates with the competencies required for the modern business environment. Changes to accounting education have been made but the gap between the competencies which employers expect—and perceive—accounting graduates to possess has not previously been examined holistically. Based on a review of the literature, a framework of accounting education's expectation-performance gap (comprising an expectation gap, a constraints gap and a performance gap) is proposed. The paper also reports an exploratory study designed to test the proposed framework. Following a document study of the accounting programme of a New Zealand university, interviews were conducted with students, academics, graduate trainees and employers associated with the programme. The research provides support for the proposed framework and resulted in identifying ways in which the gap may be narrowed.Accounting education, graduate competencies, expectation-performance gap, institutional constraints, student constraints,

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This study aims to theorise and foster a better understanding of the strategies organisations adopt to respond to the risks and opportunities emerging from changing government climate change policies and the supporting management accounting adopted. Data include interviews and archival documents from five New Zealand electricity generators. We construct a theoretical framework that links climate change risks and opportunities to strategic responses. Climate change risk exposure increased during the period due to changes in the estimation/perception of climate change risks, market opportunities and regulatory uncertainty. Organisations' strategies changed in response, moving from a stable strategy to different combinations of anticipatory, proactive, and creative strategies, and finally regressing to a reactive strategy. Carbon management accounting changed to support the new strategy adopted in each time period. Long term physical and monetarised accounts for sustainability and extensive use of carbon information were prevalent during periods when the companies employed a proactive or creative strategy. In contrast, short-term physical accounts for unsustainability and limited use in decision-making were observed when the companies adopted stable, anticipatory or reactive strategies. Regulatory uncertainty was found to be the major constraint to a proactive strategy and carbon management accounting development in response to climate change.

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This study examines the joint effect of carbon disclosure and greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions on firms’ implied cost of equity capital (COC). Based on 4655 firm‐year observations across 34 countries, we find firms’ GHG emission intensity to be positively associated with COC. However, we find also that the penalty linked with higher COC is moderated by extensive carbon disclosure. We provide evidence that the extent of carbon disclosure helps reduce the premium required by investors to compensate for poor carbon performance. Our study provides insights to policymakers, investors and managers on the combined effect of carbon disclosure, and emission intensity.