The complexity of the public sector generated by the mobilisation and use of significant financial resources, national cultural factors, the heterogeneity of the provision of public services, the numerous interested parties, the increasing demand for the quality of public services, the information asymmetry, require an actor to provide credible assurance regarding the proper management of public financial resources. In this context, performance audits are the link between public sector entities and stakeholders. The research has two components: the first component analyzes the degree of harmonization of the regulations specific to the performance audit in Romania with the International Standards of Supreme Audit Institutions (ISSAI); the second component analyses the degree of transparency of performance audit information by the SAIs of the EU Member States, through their official websites. In this regard, we have resorted to an in-depth longitudinal study, content analysis and disclosure index. The research results highlighted that the Romanian SAI has adopted in its normative framework the foremost ISSAI provisions on performance audit and the harmonization degree has systematically improved correlative with the regulatory revisions. The degree of disclosure for performance audit-specific information by the EU member state SAIs is high.

GOVERNMENT ACCOUNTING EDUCATION FOR UNIVERSITY UNDERGRADUATES

This research aims to identify trends in corporate governance research, the relationship between corporate governance and internal auditing, and the factors that have led to changes in corporate governance. We used a structured literature review of the corporate governance literature based on a sample of 29 articles extracted from the Web of Science, the sample covering the period from January 2007 to May 2024. The research highlighted the diversity of research topics, methodologies, and research tools used to address corporate governance, as well as the important contribution of audit journals in disseminating studies on this topic. Global regulatory changes and alignment, financial crises and stock market crashes, transparency, independence of boards of directors have brought about a paradigm shift in corporate governance. The study provides a global picture of corporate governance in the recent dedicated literature with evidence for directions that still needs to be approached. The study provides useful insights for regulators and corporate management when analyzing and establishing governance good practices. Research adds value to the literature by identifying multidimensional conceptual coordinates of corporate governance, as well as outlining new research directions.

The amplification of climate change risks and exponential impacts on the environment with multidimensional negative consequences at the global level is of interest to authorities, professional bodies, economic entities and other stakeholders. The research approach is two-dimensional. The first dimension aims at reviewing the literature on sustainability. The results highlighted the diversity of conceptual approaches and the importance given to sustainability issues. The second dimension of the research aims to identify the degree of dissemination of environmental information by companies in the Publishing Industry. Using thematic content analysis, we investigated the Annual and Sustainability Reports for the financial year 2023 published by companies in the Publishing Industry. The sample which included 29 companies operating internationally was extracted from the Refinitiv database, and the selection criterion was the existence of the calculated Resource Use Score indicator. The results of the research highlighted the low level of dissemination of environmental information and the ability of companies to reduce resource use and to identify new sustainable solutions for improving the supply chain. The ranking of the sampled companies with the highest level of environmental disclosure is as follows: Sanoma Oyj (Finland), Storytel AB (Sweden), Schibsted ASA (Norway). Diametrically opposed are companies from the United Kingdom, China and the Cayman Islands which did not provide any environmental information. The research conducted is a starting point for the development of future research on sustainability in the Publishing Industry and we consider that the research complements the literature, given its limitation from the Publishing Industry perspective.

In the context of institutional pressure and increasing stakeholders’ interest in sustainability reporting as a complementary dimension to financial reporting, the concerns of the academic environment are materializing through the development and integration of new paradigms in the specialized literature. From this perspective, this research answers the following questions: What was the research trend, research methods, but also theories regarding financial and sustainability reporting? What were the factors that generated changes in financial and sustainability reporting? What was the relationship between the requirements of financial and sustainability reporting frameworks and the main thematic directions of the academic literature? The research methodology is based on a structured literature review (SLR) that involved the identification and analysis of articles published in the period 2020–2024, coded based on conceptual and methodological criteria. The three-dimensional results of the research highlight: the evolution from predominantly theoretical contributions to empirical studies based on advanced econometric models and the use of a varied portfolio of theories; changes in financial and sustainability reporting are generated both by institutional and stakeholders’ pressures, as well as by the strengthening of the regulatory framework, especially at the European level; there is a convergence between the developments in the regulatory framework and the research directions in the specialized literature, with research focusing on dual materiality, information connectivity and the integration of financial reporting with sustainability reporting.