The articles published in this issue of AABFJ cover a variety of discipline areas as well as providing a contrast in methodologies for research.

The articles published in this issue of AABFJ are drawn from the accounting discipline. Topics covered in this issue include auditing, financial reporting and management accounting.

The articles published in this issue of AABFJ are drawn from accounting, economics and finance discipline areas.Juliarto, Tower, Van der Zahn and Rusmin (2013) investigate the extent and the determinants of tunnelling behaviour in five ASEAN countries and find a positive association between managerial ownership and the extent of tunnelling.Wasiuzzaman and Arumugam (2013) examine the determinants of the level of investment in net operating working capital by firms in Malaysia and finds that in times of economic expansion, younger and smaller firms with less tangible assets, low leverage, high immediate sales growth, high operating cash flows, less volatile revenues and low levels of asymmetric information are likely to have the highest investments in operating working capital.Bhuiyan, Jamal Roudaki & Murray Clark (2013) investigate the effect of better compliance with corporate governance regulation on managerial accruals (discretionary accruals) in New Zealand listed companies.Zhang, Cheng and Charles Harvie (2013) examine the contribution and significance of firm size to the establishment, operation and success of business collaboration.Results from both the qualitative case study and quantitative study in Australia and China show that size plays a significant positive role in the formation and performance of business collaboration.Firms prefer collaborating with larger partners.Bigger firms are more likely to achieve success collaborations.However, size difference plays a negative role in business collaboration.Wei, Gerace and Frino (2013) study the estimation of intraday time-varying volume synchronised probability of informed trading (VPIN), a proxy for levels of informed trading and flow toxicity, followed by intraday analysis on its impact of the behaviour of intraday trading in a limit order book (LOB) market.

The purpose of this study was to replicate the research of Davis (1989) to test the decision usefulness of different information presentations as alternatives to financial information that would normally be represented as numbers. A laboratory experiment, based upon Davis’ (1989) study, was conducted using a within subject experimental design to test for information effects. The experiment consisted of two groups with fifteen subjects in each. Decision usefulness was measured from the perspective of a user’s efficiency and effectiveness (operationalised as accuracy and response time) in answering questions of different levels of complexity. Evidence of the superior effectiveness and efficiency of one form of information presentation over another was found only at the lowest level of question complexity. The results of this study are not consistent across the range of findings expressed by Davis (1989) and So and Smith (2004). The model does however provide a robust tool for assessing the decision usefulness of different forms of information presentations. The restricted number of subjects and the use of surrogates may present as a limitation to generalisability. However, the nature of the financial information and the task were suitably matched to the expectations of the knowledge and experience of the student surrogates. The results suggest that tables, bar graphs and line graphs are appropriate information presentations to use in general purpose financial reports when decision performance is being measured in terms of a user’s efficiency and effectiveness.

The articles published in this issue of AABFJ cover a variety of discipline areas as well as providing a contrast in methodologies for research. Cheung and Powell (2012) provide guidance on the use of the Excel modelling package to construct parametric and Monte Carlo Simulation models. Lama (2012) examined the relationship between corporate governance and a firm’s performance as measured by return on equity, earning yield and return on assets, and found and found that in mid-sized Australian ASX companies there was a positive correlation. Morunga and Bradbury (2012) report on the data overload found in the financial reports of New Zealand companies as a result of the disclosure requirements emanating from the adoption and implementation of the International Financial Reporting Standards in New Zealand.