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This paper aims to examine the association between the working relationship between internal and external auditors and the moral courage of internal auditors to report management fraud in the Tunisian setting.

Data are gathered from 163 internal auditors working in Tunisian companies and a partial least squares–structural equation model (PLS-SEM) is used to test the hypothesis regarding the effect of the cooperation between internal and external auditors on internal auditors’ moral courage.

The results of this study provide strong empirical support for the positive impact of the working relationship between internal and external auditors on internal auditors’ moral courage to report management fraud and unethical behaviors.

The reported results increase the awareness of Tunisian regulators to enact regulations that strengthen the collaboration between internal and external auditors to promote internal auditors’ moral courage and then limit fraud and improve organizational performance in the Tunisian setting.

This paper fills one of the major research gaps in internal audit and moral courage research streams by revealing that the courageous behavior of internal auditors can be fostered by specific means efficacy such as the working relationship between internal and external auditors.

This paper aims to examine the impact of two psychological drivers, namely, psychological capital (PsyCap) and moral courage on internal audit effectiveness (IAE) and whether there is a substitution effect or complementary role of these psychological factors on IAE in the Tunisian setting.

IAE is measured using managers’ perceptions of the internal audit function based on 157 responses received from managers, while the remaining variables (including PsyCap and moral courage) are based on 157 internal auditors’ responses.

Findings suggest that PsyCap has a positive and significant impact on IAE, while moral courage has an insignificant impact on the same variable. Accordingly, PsyCap and moral courage are not playing a complementary role in improving IAE, and PsyCap substitutes for moral courage in increasing IAE. A battery of checks using interaction terms between moral courage and PsyCap corroborate these findings.

To the best of the author’s knowledge, this study fills one of the major research gaps in the auditing literature by emphasizing the role played by PsyCap in improving IAE. The findings may have policy implications for top firm management, especially when recruiting internal auditors who should enjoy efficacy, hope, resilience and optimism to help the organization achieve its strategic objectives and increase its performance.

This paper aims to conduct a meta-analysis regarding the association between political connections and the cost of debt and tests for the moderating effect of the level of creditor protection on this relationship.

Keywords used to collect relevant empirical papers include “political connections, political ties, and political connectedness” from the one side, and “cost of loan finance, and cost of debt” from the other side. The search yields 24 published empirical papers from 2005 to 2022.

Findings show that there is a significant negative association between political connections and the cost of debt; this relationship is more pronounced only for countries characterized by a strong level of creditor protection. This moderating effect is further confirmed using meta-regression.

Findings are relevant for policymakers and managers in settings where relationship-based capitalism represents a prevailing feature as they highlight the important legal and institutional characteristics when considering the impact of political connections on the cost of debt. The paper also discusses some limitations inherent to this stream of research and proposes future research perspectives.

The purpose of this study is to provide a timely synthesis of the empirical literature focusing on the economic consequences of money laundering, as this topic has been gaining momentum among policymakers and academic researchers due to its adverse effects.

Empirical studies are collected by consulting accounting and finance journals in diverse digital sources (e.g. Science Direct, Blackwell, Taylor and Francis, Springer, Sage and Emerald). Key words used to identify relevant papers include “money laundering” and “anti-money laundering regulations,” with specific focus on the economic consequences. Our search strategy includes 24 published papers over the period of 2018–2023.

Findings show that most studies represent cross-country investigations; the main topics investigated focus on accounting field (e.g. audit fees, real and accrual earnings management), tax evasion, financial stability, sustainability, economic indicators (inflation, economic growth, foreign direct investment) and financial inclusion; and the economic consequences of money laundering have been also examined within banking industry (e.g. banking profitability, banking stability). Reported findings of reviewed studies suggest that money laundering has diverse adverse impacts at the country level (e.g. increased tax evasion, higher inflation rate, less sustainability and foreign direct investments), at the firm level (e.g. increased audit risk and aggressive real and accrual earnings management) and within banking industry through negative impact of money laundering on bank’s loan portfolio quality, stability and profitability.

With respect to policymakers, strengthening anti-money laundering regulations may play a critical role in reducing money laundering activities. Furthermore, financial institutions should implement specific rules dealing with anti-money regulations to ensure adequate compliance and disclosure. Finally, policymakers should be aware about the importance of digital transformation to combat money laundering activities since it facilitates the detection of financial crimes due to their traceability.

The summary of the empirical literature focusing on the economic consequence of money laundering represents a historical record and an introduction for accounting researchers. It also urges them to further explore the economic implications of anti-money laundering disclosure within banking industry.

The objective of this paper is to provide insights into internal auditors’ perceptions and experiences regarding their role as assurance providers in the Tunisian public sector through the detection, correction and reporting of internal control weaknesses and wrongdoings.

A qualitative research is conducted based on organizational role theory and using semi-structured interviews with 13 chief audit executives across 13 Tunisian public-sector organizations. A thematic analysis of the responses of interviews is then performed.

The content analysis of internal auditors’ responses shows that ambiguity surrounds the role of Tunisian internal auditors within the public sector because they must serve multiple customers (e.g. informal groups in Tunisian society, managers and audit committees) with conflicting expectations. In addition, the authors find that they adopt a strategy of trade-off between commercial and professional values, tending to prioritize top managers’ interests at the expense of other stakeholders. Responses provided by interviewees reveal that the absence of legal protection of internal auditors is one major obstacle explaining their failure to perform their role as assurance providers.

This study provides preliminary evidence of the challenges faced by internal auditors working in public-sector organizations in an emerging African setting. The findings of this study also emphasize the need to rethink the concept of independence of the internal auditing function within the Tunisian public sector given the apparent inability of internal auditors to alter their commercial focus. Furthermore, the results may increase the awareness of professional institutions about the necessity of enacting rules reinforcing internal auditors’ protection that may strengthen the role played by internal auditors within public-sector organizations.

This paper aims to examine the association between money laundering and infrastructure quality and whether the strength of auditing and reporting standards (SARS) moderates this association.

The sample includes 348 country-year observations over the period of 2015–2017. The authors use Basel Anti-Money Laundering reports for 2015, 2016 and 2017 to collect data concerning money laundering. Infrastructure quality and the remaining variables are gathered from the Global Competitiveness reports for the same years.

Results show that money laundering is negatively associated with infrastructure quality. This negative association remains stable for countries characterised by low SARS, while it becomes less pronounced for countries with high SARS. Additional tests for the moderating impact of the SARS, using an interaction term between money laundering and SARS dummy variable, confirm that high SARS mitigates the adverse effect of money laundering on infrastructure quality.

These findings are important for policymakers, as they put emphasis on the adverse effect of money laundering and financial crimes on infrastructure quality and how solid auditing and reporting standards may improve infrastructure quality and reduce the negative effect of money laundering on the same variable. Thus, strengthening legislations concerning auditing and reporting standards in one country may improve infrastructure quality and combat money laundering and its adverse impacts.

This paper aims to investigate the relationship between digitalization and money laundering and tests whether ethical behaviour of firms and corruption moderate this association.

The sample includes 114 countries during 2016. Basel Anti-Money Laundering Report for 2016 is used to collect data concerning money laundering. Digitalization proxies are collected from digital adoption index from the World Bank for 2016. Finally, the remaining variables are gathered from the Global Competitiveness Report for the same year.

Results show negative and significant associations between the overall digitalization score and sub-scores dealing with digitalization adoption by businesses, people and government and money laundering. When testing for the moderating effect of corruption, the negative and significant association remains stable for both low and high corrupt environments for the overall digitalization score and sub-scores dealing digitalization adoption by businesses and people and money laundering. Similarly, ethical behaviour of firms does not moderate the association between digitalization (overall index and digitalization by business and people) and money laundering, as the relationship remains negative and significant for low and high ethical behaviour sub-samples. By contrast, the association becomes insignificant between digitalization adoption by government and money laundering for countries characterized by high corruption and low ethical behaviour of firms, while it is negative and significant for countries characterized by low corruption and high ethical behaviour firms.

These findings confirm that digitalization effort represents a crucial arm to combat money laundering. It also emphasizes the interrelation that may exist between digitalization effort in governmental institutions and institutional environment, as low levels of money laundering cannot be reached if the digitalization effort undertaken by governments is not supported by low corruption and ethical business environment.

This paper aims to review the empirical literature dealing with the association between family firms and tax avoidance.

Empirical papers are collected based on electronic searches in several editorial sources (e.g. Elsevier, Emerald, Meridian Allenpress, Springer, Sage, Taylor and Francis and Wiley-Blackwell) in family-related, accounting and finance journals. Key words used to identify relevant studies are “family firms” or “family ownership” combined with “tax avoidance”, “tax aggressiveness”, “tax evasion” and “tax heaven”. This search yields 21 published papers over the period of 2010–2022.

The summary of empirical studies examining the relationship between family firms and tax avoidance suggests that the majority of them have been conducted in Germany, USA and Taiwan and other European civil law countries. The association between family firms and tax avoidance is negative in USA, Finland and Belgium. By contrast, the relationship between family firms and tax avoidance is positive and significant in other developed (Germany and Italy) and developing economies (Brazil, India, Malaysia and Tunisia). In Taiwan, the impact of family firms on tax avoidance depends on corporate opacity that mitigates the negative impact of family firms on tax avoidance.

With respect to regulators, this review informs fiscal authorities that family firms are associated with high levels of tax aggressiveness in some settings (e.g. Brazil, Germany, Italy and Tunisia). Accordingly, they should be aware about this tax management behavior in family firms to avoid its adverse effect on tax revenues. With respect to auditors, this study alerts them about the necessity to consider fiscal audit risk linked to family firms when planning their audit missions especially in countries characterized by high level of corporate opacity.

This literature review represents a first historical record and an introduction for accounting scholars who aim to investigate the topics linked to tax aggressiveness in the family firms’ context. It also highlights some limits related to this stream of research and offers future research perspectives.

Given the interest in better understanding the economic effects of political connections and political corruption on auditor behavior, this paper aims to review empirical studies in the accounting and finance domain dealing with these topics.

Keywords used to search for relevant studies include “political connections or political corruption” with “audit fees, audit report lag, audit independence and audit opinion.” This paper consults several editorial sources including Elsevier, Electronic Journals Service Elton B. Stephens Company, Emerald, Springer, Palgrave Macmillan, Sage, Taylor and Francis and Wiley-Blackwell. The search yields 16 published studies since 2006.

The review reveals that the majority of studies dealing with the economic effect of political connections are conducted in an Asian setting. Political connections increase the likelihood of receiving a favorable audit opinion and they are associated with higher audit fees longer audit delays. However, they can compromise auditor independence. Studies dealing with the economic consequences of political corruption on auditing are mostly based in the US setting. The findings of the reviewed studies suggest that political corruption is associated with higher audit fees, longer audit delays and increases the likelihood of receiving a going concern audit opinion.

The synthesis suggests that political connections can adversely (compromise auditor independence) or beneficially (reduce the likelihood of issuing a going concern audit opinion) impact auditor behavior depending on the legal, institutional and cultural characteristics prevailing in a particular setting. Political corruptions increase audit assessed risks leading to a higher probability of issuing a going concern audit opinion and increased audit effort (audit fees and audit delays). It should be noted here that the literature linked to political corruption and auditor behavior is still in its infancy and much remains to be learnt if this stream of research is examined outside the US setting.

The review discusses the political connections and political corruption literature specifically devoted to auditor behavior. It identifies some limitations of this literature and offers guidance for future research avenues.

This study aims to investigate the effect of national culture (power distance, individualism, masculinity, uncertainty avoidance and long-term orientation) on audit report lag.

The authors use two econometric approaches (ordinary least squares (OLS) and quantile regression) using STATA software for a sample of 1,208 firm-year observations over the period of 2017–2018.

Using Hofstede’s (2001) cultural dimensions (power distance, individualism, masculinity, uncertainty avoidance and long-term orientation), the authors find that masculinity and long-term orientation are positively associated with audit report lag, while uncertainty avoidance is negatively associated with the same variable. Quantile regressions suggest that the adverse effect of masculinity on audit report lag is more prevailing for companies communicating companies' annual reports in a timely manner. Furthermore, the positive association between power distance and audit report lag exists only under tardy disclosure regime. Quantile regressions also confirm that the negative (positive) effect of uncertainty avoidance (long-term orientation) on audit report lag is maintained under different timely disclosure regime. Additional analysis conducted with respect to legal system shows that individualism becomes a significant predictor of audit delays with a significant negative effect for common law countries, while uncertainty avoidance has a positive effect on the same variable in civil law countries characterized by high level of discretion and secrecy.

The results of this study suggest that national culture as an informal institution may complement formal institutions (e.g. financial markets) in promoting timely disclosure. For instance, foreign investors may view high uncertainty avoidance scores, in common law emerging economies, as an indicator of transparency and timely disclosure.

This study adds to the extant literature a further understanding of the impact of cultural dimensions on timely disclosure, as proxied by, audit report lag. The use of quantile regression approach shows how different timely disclosure regime may affect the association between masculinity, power distance and audit report lag.