Research Topics in Accounting Fraud in the 21st Century: A State of the Art

Abstract

Companies play a role in society that clearly goes beyond mere economic interest. Their contribution to social development and to the sustainability of the territory where they are located seems unquestionable. However, after the great financial scandals of companies such as ENRON, WorldCom or AHOLD, interest groups require accurate and transparent financial information. The development of more demanding financial reporting standards seems, however, not to have been up to scratch, since accounting fraud continues to be detected all over the world. The search, therefore, for possible causes that may induce companies to act unethically was the main motivation behind this research. To do this, a review of the literature in high-impact journals that has dealt with accounting fraud, covering the main lines of research, was carried out. The findings of the literature review highlight the importance of responsible corporate governance and good accounting practices, as well as the importance of certain psychological characteristics of managers and employees as enhancers of the lack of ethics. It is clear that the social cost of accounting fraud should be minimized, and governments should develop specific policies that combine responsible corporate governance in companies with the sustainability of their environment.

The influence of profit, revenues and debt on audit prices in large companies: insights from Slovenia

“…Erkens et al (2012) proved that corporate governance had an essential impact on corporate performance during the crisis by influencing the financing policies of companies. Companies play a role in society that goes well beyond the purely economic interest (Montesdeoca et al, 2019). Their results also show that companies with more independent boards of directors and greater institutional ownership achieved more average stock returns during the crisis.…”

Strengths and weaknesses of forensic accounting: an implication on the socio-economic development

“…Although there are prior reviews of the forensic accounting literature (Botes and Saadeh, 2018;Howieson, 2018;Huber and DiGabriele, 2015;Tiwari and Debnath, 2017), it is important to understand the factors that affect forensic accounting education and profession in both positive and negative ways. Forensic accounting literature is increased in the last few years (Honigsberg, 2020;Huber and DiGabriele, 2015;Ozili, 2020;Ramos et al, 2019). This increase has been driven by the important applications of forensic accounting for companies and their stakeholders (Sahdan et al, 2020;Yang and Lee, 2020), as well as the heightened anxiety about fraud against companies and societies (Abdullahi and Mansor, 2018;Allan et al, 2018;Association of Certified Fraud Examiners, 2016a, b, 2018Blythe and Goodpasture, 2019;Dennis and Johnstone, 2018;Honigsberg, 2020;€ Ozt€ urk and Usul, 2020;Ramos et al, 2019;Sadaf et al, 2018;Timofeyev and Jakovljevic, 2020).…”

What Best Explains Reporting Delays? A SME Population Level Study of Different Factors

“…Financial performance is also a key topic studied in conjunction with sustainability [12]. In a narrower sense, firms violating accounting rules could be less responsible towards different stakeholders [13], including being less environmentally and socially responsible. The latter issue could be especially characteristic of non-audited SMEs [14].…”