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Sophie Maussen and Sophie Hoozée are very excited to share their newest publication in Accounting, Organizations and Society! Together with their coauthor Eddy Cardinaels, they experimentally study how costing system design choices impact managerial misreporting in a multi-agent budgeting setting.

In particular, when superiors receive an aggregate signal of unused capacity and subordinates have no discretion over cost allocation input parameters, misreporting of cost budgets decreases compared to when capacity reporting is absent. However, the benefits of capacity reporting on misreporting largely vanish when subordinates have discretion over the inputs allowing them to hide their unused capacity. Results are driven by the anticipation of both peer reporting behavior and superior rejection behavior. Our results have important implications for practice and imply that costing system designers should be aware that giving employees discretion over time inputs can offset the decision-making benefits of TDABC.

This publication is based on the third chapter of Sophie Maussen’s doctoral dissertation.

Read the full article here: Costing system design and honesty in managerial reporting: An experimental examination of multi-agent budget and capacity reporting

Full reference: Maussen, S., Cardinaels, E., & Hoozée, S. 2024. Costing system design and honesty in managerial reporting: An experimental examination of multi-agent budget and capacity reporting. Accounting, Organizations and Society 112: 101541.

This study investigates (1) the change in procrastination throughout a semester and (2) whether a nudging intervention can reduce procrastination, increase class attendance and class preparation, and, subsequently, improve performance. A random assignment to treatment experiment is executed in the exercise classes of a first-year undergraduate accounting course (N = 211). The treatment group receives five different nudges throughout the semester, the control group receives no nudges. Results show increasing procrastination in the first part of the semester, followed by decreasing procrastination. Additionally, simply providing students with nudges does not yield beneficial effects. However, students clicking more intensively on the nudges report lower procrastination and higher class attendance and preparation. Moreover, the decreased procrastination and increased class preparation caused by intensively clicking on the nudges subsequently resulted in higher performance. The results prove how nudges can beneficially influence students’ procrastination, class attendance, class preparation, and performance.

Blondeel, E., Everaert, P., and Opdecam, E. (2023). A Little Push in The Back: Nudging Students to Improve Procrastination, Class Attendance and Preparation. Studies in Higher Education, forthcoming.

This study investigates, based on the resource-based theory, the differences in financial performance of small- and medium-sized accounting practices (SMPs). Survey data of Belgian heads of SMPs was collected, by asking about personal characteristics regarding education and experience (representing human capital resources), firm size, service types provided, cooperation, and communication (representing organisational capital resources). The results demonstrate practitioners how to efficiently allocate their scarce resources to increase their accounting firms’ performance. Additionally, the study’s insights are another reason for including communications, teamwork, and lifelong learning skills in the education of future accountants.

Verplancke, F., De Bruyckere, S., Everaert, P., Coppens, C., and Blondeel, E. (2023). Small and medium-sized accounting practices (SMPs): Explaining financial performance based on human capital and organizational resources. Accounting in Europe, https://doi.org/10.1080/17449480.2023.2241871.

ChatGPT is a large language-learning model that utilizes machine learning to generate natural language text and has garnered considerable attention for its ability to respond to users’ questions. This study compares ChatGPT’s performance on accounting assessments to student averages on the same set of questions, analyzing where it performs better and worse. A crowd-sourcing technique for data collection and paper authorship is used. By this, data from 14 countries and 186 institutions is collected. The results of the 28,085 analyzed questions show, as of January 2023, that ChatGPT provides correct answers for 56.5 percent of questions and partially correct answers for an additional 9.4 percent of questions. When considering point values for questions, students significantly outperform ChatGPT with a 76.7 percent average on assessments compared to 47.5 percent for ChatGPT if no partial credit is awarded and 56.5 percent if partial credit is awarded. Still, ChatGPT performs better than the student average for 15.8 percent of assessments when a partial credit is included. The results will help academics, administrators, faculty, instructors, and students better understand the potential impact of large language-learning models like ChatGPT on education, not only in the field of accounting, but also in many fields with similar types of assessments such as finance, information systems, management, and operations.

Blondeel, E., and Everaert, P. in Wood et al. (2023). The ChatGPT Artificial Intelligence Chatbot: How Well Does It Answer Accounting Assessment Questions? Issues in Accounting Education, https://doi.org/10.2308/ISSUES-2023-013

Link to the paper : https://publications.aaahq.org/iae/article/doi/10.2308/ISSUES-2023-013/10903/The-ChatGPT-Artificial-Intelligence-Chatbot-How?searchresult=1

This study investigates the potential of voluntary online exercises – online formative assessments (OFAs) – to increase self-efficacy and decrease test anxiety. The results make educators aware of an unfavourable change in students’ self-efficacy and test anxiety throughout the semester. However, this study also provides accounting educators with a solution to this problem. More specifically, this research proves that students who use OFAs experience an increase in self-efficacy, and those students also tend to experience lower test anxiety. Students confirm these favourable effects based on their experiences with the OFAs. The results demonstrate how OFAs support accounting students to increase their self-efficacy and decrease their test anxiety.

Blondeel, E., Everaert, P., and Opdecam, E. (2023). Does Practice Make Perfect? The Effect of Online Formative Assessments on Students’ Self-Efficacy and Test Anxiety. The British Accounting Review, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.bar.2023.101189.

On May first 2019, the new Belgian corporate law, “Wetboek van vennootschappen en verenigingen” (WVV) replaced the former “Wetboek van Vennootschappen” (W.Venn.). In this study, we focus in-depth on one specific novelty: the replacement of the former “Private Company with Limited Liability” (BVBA) by the “Private Company” (BV). Earlier, Belgium had voluntarily chosen to apply many of the stringent European regulations to the former BVBA. The BV now ends this phenomenon of “goldplating”. Although existing literature gives a profound justification to include less stringent regulation in corporate law, there is a gap in the literature when it comes to the impact on practice. This research reveals important insights for practitioners by means of a qualitative (interviews) and quantitative (database) study. In doing so, we conclude that the new BV, although much more flexible, does not differ fundamentally from its predecessor.

Read our full article here: Van BVBA naar BV: what’s in a name? . (article written in Dutch)

Reference: Waeye, D., Maussen, S., & Everaert, P. (2022). Van BVBA naar BV: what’s in a name? Accountancy & Bedrijfskunde 2022(2): 20-38.

Following up on their previous publication in Radiotherapy and Oncology (Defourny et al., 2019), the authors now report the policy implications of their interdisciplinary costing project, in which they estimated the cost of radiation treatments at the national level.

Defourny, N., Hoozée, S., Daisne, J.-F., Lievens, Y., forthcoming. Developing time-driven activity-based costing at the national level to support Belgian policy recommendations for radiation oncology. Journal of Accounting and Public Policy.
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jaccpubpol.2022.107013

Organizations pursuing a hybrid mission balance multiple objectives without singling out the financial objective as the dominant one, they. Based on a case study undertaken at a luxury hotel chain, this study investigates how a control package that fosters staff’s basic psychological needs can be designed to the persistence of such a hybrid mission.

Bouten, L., Hoozée, S., forthcoming. Hybridity in a hotel chain: designing a package of controls to sustain a hybrid mission. Accounting, Auditing & Accountability Journal.
https://doi.org/10.1108/AAAJ-06-2020-4622