Providing high-quality financial information about receivables is important in the preparation of financial statements. Currently, auditors confirm debtors’ balances as a part of their audit evidence. There is scope for the digitalization of this process and this paper provides one design as to how this might proceed and evaluates the effectiveness and transparency of this design. The objective is to design a system that allows auditors and external users to establish that the balance on an entity’s individual receivable account is accepted as an obligation by the counterparty and that these accounts are aggregated properly, without disclosing the individual balances. The paper uses a design science research approach, to design and build a computer program artifact. This program can achieve this paper’s research objectives by using Shamir’s (1979) secret sharing to provide privacy, and a permissionless blockchain and smart contracts to provide transparency and public access to total receivables.

This paper aims to develop a design for an accounting information system that will enhance the representational faithfulness of financial reporting information. One of the functions of financial reporting is to aggregate and report the entity's private data. This paper shows that recognizing that some of the firm's private data is already shared with others allows the methods of multiparty security to be applied to the reporting and audit processes. We contend that using both public key cryptography and network analysis allows the identity of an entity to be modelled as a place on a network. We also develop accounting recordkeeping techniques to balance public access with privacy using a blockchain. Taken together, these three design ideas can enhance the representational faithfulness of financial reporting systems because they use shared data from independent entities, a transparent system, and open-access immutable storage. Faithful representation is enhanced because information from this system can be used by auditors to support their audit opinion or by stakeholders who need credible information about the entity.

We apply Carroll's model of school learning, which theorizes about the relationship between time and learning, to motivate the design of a large, first-year, university mathematics course, where students have the choice to attend lectures and/or watch online videos. The theoretical model informs how the course and resources are designed in order to assist students to spend the time they need to master a task in an efficient manner. We examine the relationship between learning and time spent on lectures and/or videos, by analysing data collected on lecture attendance, videos accessed, and mathematical achievement, prior to, and at the end of, the course. Findings show that students use videos as either a complement to, or substitute for, the lecture, and time spent using either or both resources has a significant impact on learning.

Purpose - The aim of this study is to examine the relationship between customer satisfaction, earnings and firm value.Design/methodology/approach - A model borrowed from the accounting literature - the Ohlson model is used to consider the impact of customer satisfaction on Tobin's q - a capital market-based measure of firm performance widely used in marketing research. Data on firm performance is drawn from COMPUSTAT and integrated with data on customer satisfaction from the American Customer Satisfaction Index (ACSI).Findings - Results show that customer satisfaction has a positive impact on firm value. Critically, the authors find that this impact is over and above the impact that earnings has on firm value. They also find that customer satisfaction positively and significantly moderates the earnings-firm value relationship.Research limitations/implications - Findings are limited to firms covered by the American Customer Satisfaction Index and subject to the assumptions underpinning the Ohlson model.Practical implications - This study's demonstration of the complementary relationship between earnings and customer satisfaction in determining firm value should encourage managers to engage with satisfaction as a driver of business performance and value.Originality/value - Findings extend recent studies on the impact of customer satisfaction on business performance. While prior studies either ignore earnings or focus on the relationship between satisfaction and stock returns, the authors show the impact of satisfaction on firm value, in a model that includes earnings. Importantly, they also extend prior studies by showing that the interaction between customer satisfaction and earnings is central to understanding the impact of both satisfaction and earnings on firm value. In addition, they demonstrate the usefulness of an earnings-based valuation model, to explore the relationship between a marketing metric and firm value. The authors' approach may be adopted to consider the impact of other measures of marketing performance. Thus, they hope that this study helps to further bridge the gap between marketing and the financial disciplines.

The aim of this study is to examine the influence of customer satisfaction on the stock market’s response to current earnings. The study extends prior research on the value relevance of customer satisfaction to include the direct and indirect effects of customer satisfaction on firm value. Utilizing an earning-based valuation model and data from the American Customer Satisfaction Index (ACSI) and COMPUSTAT, the study shows that both satisfaction and the interaction between earnings and satisfaction have a significant influence on firm value. Stock market participants are sensitive to changes in customer satisfaction, and this is reflected in the market’s responsiveness to earnings performance.

This paper studies the relationship between changes in consumer sentiment and stock market returns in Ireland from January 1996 to June 2006. We argue that Irish consumers were highly influenced by movements in the stock market during this period because of their concerns for their stock-based compensation, their job security and their earnings. We find that the change in consumer sentiment and stock returns were related during this time, and that movements in the stock market impacted on consumer sentiment.

The proportion of listed firms reporting accounting losses has increased greatly since the 1970s. The perception that accounting losses always indicate a loss of economic value is no longer widely held. It is now accepted that many loss making firms report losses because of investments that cannot be capitalized under present accounting rules. Charges against income caused by investments are called 'revenue investments' in this study. Two aspects of the valuation of loss making firms are investigated. Firstly, a method of distinguishing firms that have made revenue investments from firms that are suffering 'real' economic losses is developed. The findings show that loss making firms can be categorized, and that the accounting and economic characteristics of firms differ over these categories. Secondly, the impact of revenue investment on the residual income valuation model is examined. The findings show that revenue investment means that book value is not sufficient to specify the stream of normal returns on the firm's investments. The Ohlson (1995) model is used to show that decomposition of residual income leads to a better valuation model and that current and past losses are associated with value creation for firms that practice revenue investment.