Issue #2 (Volume 7 2026)

Type of the article: Research Article

In the dynamic landscape of emerging economies like Vietnam, digital transformation is increasingly recognized as a strategic imperative for enhancing corporate governance and transparency. This study aims to evaluate the direct impact of technological integration on internal control effectiveness and investigate the moderating mechanism of firm size in this relationship. To ensure representativeness across small, medium, and large organizational scales, a stratified random sampling technique was employed. The quantitative data were collected over a six-month period from October 2024 to March 2025. A structured questionnaire, validated by experts and utilizing a 5-point Likert scale, was distributed via email to key personnel in Vietnamese enterprises, resulting in 452 valid responses. The partial least squares structural equation modeling method was applied to analyze the data, specifically chosen for its suitability with non-normal distributions. The results demonstrate that digital transformation exerts a substantial positive influence on internal control effectiveness (β = 0.424, p-value < 0.001), confirming that digitization significantly bolsters risk management capabilities. Crucially, the analysis identifies a statistically significant negative moderating effect of firm size (β = –0.190, p-value < 0.001). These findings indicate that the positive impact of digitalization on internal control diminishes as organizational scale increases. The study concludes that while large corporations face structural inertia, small and medium-sized enterprises leverage their agility to achieve superior control outcomes, necessitating tailored strategies for different enterprise scales.

Type of the article: Research Article

In contemporary corporate governance, rigorous expenditure control is essential for financial stability and for mitigating agency costs. This article investigates the influence of financial management information system functional maturity and internal audit effectiveness on expenditure control efficiency and examines the mediating role of financial information quality in Vietnamese listed companies. A quantitative approach was employed using partial least squares structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM) to analyze data collected from 258 respondents, each representing a distinct listed enterprise during the first half of 2025. The results provide quantitative evidence supporting all hypotheses. Specifically, financial management information system maturity positively influences financial information quality (β = 0.400) and expenditure control efficiency (β = 0.349). Internal audit effectiveness also positively influences information quality (β = 0.265) and control efficiency (β = 0.208). Furthermore, financial information quality directly enhances control efficiency (β = 0.399) and significantly mediates the relationships between system maturity (indirect effect = 0.160) and internal audit effectiveness (indirect effect = 0.106) on expenditure control. The model explains 46.8% of the variance in expenditure control efficiency. These findings conclude that technological infrastructure and independent oversight optimize governance performance primarily through producing highly reliable financial data, offering vital insights for executives to standardize internal control protocols in volatile markets.

Type of the article: Research Article

This study examines how accounting-based financial performance and corporate governance affect firm value among Indonesian listed technology firms. The study analyzes panel data from 28 technology companies listed on the Indonesia Stock Exchange during 2021–2024. The data were obtained from annual reports, audited financial statements, corporate governance disclosures, and capital market information. Panel regression analysis was applied, and the Fixed Effects Model was selected based on model specification tests. Corporate governance and accounting-based financial performance are measured using standardized equal-weighted composite indices constructed from their respective indicators. The corporate governance index was constructed from board independence, board size, audit committee size, and ownership concentration, while the financial performance index was constructed from ROA, ROE, TATO, current ratio, and reverse-coded DER. The results show that the corporate governance composite index has a positive and significant effect on firm value, with a coefficient of 0.263 and a t-statistic of 2.791. The accounting-based financial performance composite index also has a positive and significant effect on firm value, with a coefficient of 0.415 and a t-statistic of 4.526. Furthermore, the interaction between the corporate governance index and the financial performance index is positive and significant. These findings indicate that corporate governance strengthens the value relevance of financial performance. The model has strong explanatory power, with an adjusted R² of 0.672. The study concludes that profitability and leverage remain relevant accounting-based for firm valuation, while corporate governance enhances transparency, financial control, and investor confidence in Indonesian technology firms.

Type of the article: Research Article

A comparative assessment of how audit firms’ attributes affect financial performance using both market-based and traditional metrics remains limited in emerging markets. Hence, the study evaluated the comparative effect of audit firms’ attributes on financial performance measured by market-based and traditional metrics. Secondary data from thirty-five manufacturing companies listed at the Nigerian Exchange Group from 2012 to 2022 were analyzed. These companies are purposively selected from a population of fifty-six. Descriptive statistics and panel data regression analysis were used in the data analysis. Results indicate that audit firm resource availability has a significant positive effect on earnings per share (β = 2.1550; p ≤ 0.05), while other proxies of audit firm attributes do not have a significant effect when traditional metrics of financial performance (i.e., earnings per share and share price) were used. However, when market-based metrics of financial performance (market value added and economic value added) are used, audit firm resources availability has a positive significant effect on both market value added (β = 3.842; p ≤ 0.05) and economic value added (β = 0.1789; p ≤ 0.05). The study concluded that audit size, tenure, and industry specialization do not influence firm financial performance, but audit resource availability does. Besides, using market-based financial performance metrics yields more consistent results than traditional metrics.

Type of the article: Research Article

This study proposes Agilance as a conceptual and technical framework for explainable strategic financial planning in data-intensive organizational environments. The framework is based on a custom transformer architecture that incorporates three sector-specific components: Financial Relevance Weighting, Context Shift Stabilization, and Output Compression. Because the evaluation was conducted on a confidential sector-specific dataset and through internal benchmarking procedures, the underlying source data and job-level operational records cannot be publicly released. Within these constraints, the internal evaluation yielded indicative results: 96.03% accuracy and 95.8% F1-score for priority classification on the held-out test set, 90.26% accuracy and 90.22% F1-score for implementation-duration classification, and an average 10-fold cross-validation accuracy of 91.7%. The expert explainability assessment produced mean scores of 4.67 for clarity, 4.53 for trustworthiness, and 4.48 for actionability, with inter-rater agreement ranging from 0.87 to 0.91. Internal operational benchmarks further suggested planning-cycle reductions and economic benefits, including 95.8% improvement in real-time data analysis and time-zone synchronization, 5.4% operational cost savings, and an illustrative first-year ROI of 46%. These results should be interpreted as preliminary internal evidence obtained under specific evaluation conditions, not as independently verified proof of broad organizational generalizability. The study contributes an auditable AI-supported framework and identifies the need for future validation using anonymized multi-organizational datasets, externally audited protocols, or independently reproducible benchmarks.

Acknowledgments
The publication fees of this manuscript have been financed by the MSc Tax and Financial Services Digital Transformation (DITAF), University of Patras.

Type of the article: Research Article

In the evolving landscape of ASEAN capital markets, environmental, social, and governance (ESG) disclosure is increasingly recognized as a strategic driver of corporate value, with competitive advantage determining the extent to which its benefits are realized. This study aims to examine how competitive advantage moderates the relationship between ESG disclosure and firm value in the ASEAN emergent context. The study applies panel data comprising 2,801 observations from 726 listed companies in ASEAN during 2015-2023. Regression analysis was conducted using the two-step System Generalized Method of Moments, accompanied by a series of robustness tests. The findings emphasize ESG reporting benefits, as ESG disclosure positively influences all firm value proxies in baseline models (β_{ESG_Tobin’sQ} = 0.0034, p-value < 0.05; β_{ESG_LogMC} = 0.0040, p-value < 0.01; β_{ESG_PB} = 0.0047, p-value < 0.05). The interaction between ESG disclosure and competitive advantage is also positive and significant across the three measures (β_{ESGxCA_Tobin’sQ} = 0.0545, p-value < 0.05; β_{ESGxCA_LogMC} = 0.0254, p-value < 0.01; β_{ESGxCA_PB} = 0.0678, p-value < 0.01). These results suggest that the valuation implications of ESG disclosure are contingent on firms’ competitive advantage, with the estimated marginal effect generally increasing as competitive advantage improves. Accordingly, the study enriches the literature by resonating with the intersection between stakeholder theory and the resource-based view (RBV), demonstrating how competitive advantage conditions the link between ESG disclosure and firm value in ASEAN capital markets. The study suggests that managers should align financial objectives with stakeholder expectations and integrate ESG disclosure into broader corporate strategies to enhance valuation purposes.

Type of the article: Research Article

The rapid shift toward remote auditing since the COVID-19 pandemic has made auditor digital competence and organizational information technology (IT) support decisive factors for sustaining audit quality, yet empirical evidence on how remote audit conditions shape these relationships remains limited. This study aims to examine the effects of auditor digital competence and IT support on audit quality and to test whether remote audit moderates these two relationships. A quantitative explanatory approach was used, applying Partial Least Squares – Structural Equation Modeling (PLS-SEM) with SmartPLS on data from 160 external auditors working at Big Four-affiliated public accounting firms operating in Malang City, Indonesia, selected through purposive sampling. The results show that auditor digital competence (β = 0.267; t = 3.374; p = 0.001) and IT support (β = 0.889; t = 3.134; p = 0.002) both have a positive and significant effect on audit quality (R2 = 0.414). Remote audit significantly strengthens the effect of auditor digital competence on audit quality (β = 0.148; t = 2.020; p = 0.045), but does not significantly moderate the effect of IT support on audit quality (β = 0.061; t = 0.925; p = 0.357). These findings indicate that auditor digital competence becomes increasingly critical for audit quality as audits move to remote settings, while the contribution of IT support remains consistently strong regardless of audit mode, offering practical implications for digital audit training and IT infrastructure policy in public accounting firms.

Acknowledgments
The authors gratefully acknowledge the support of facilities and infrastructure from the LPPM Universitas Gajayana during the research process. We also extend our appreciation to the Faculty of Economics and Business, Universitas Gajayana, for the institutional support and facilities that facilitated the completion of this research.

Type of the article: Research Article

Foreign subsidiaries operate in legal and institutional environments different from those of the parent company, which raises the complexity and risk of group audits. This study examines the effect of the complexity arising from foreign subsidiaries on the audit effort of group auditors and the moderating role of the institutional reliability of the subsidiaries’ host countries, proxied by the World Bank Rule of Law indicator. Regressions of audit hours and audit fees are estimated on 1,667 firm-year observations of non-financial firms listed on the Korea Composite Stock Price Index in 2014–2017, the last years before Korea’s standard audit hours regime took effect, where engagement-level audit hours are publicly disclosed. Complexity is positively associated with audit effort (coefficient 0.127, t = 4.48 for audit hours; 0.138, t = 4.21 for audit fees), and the result is robust to firm-clustered standard errors. The interaction between complexity and host-country institutional reliability is negative for audit hours (–0.136, t = –2.21): the simple slope of complexity declines from 0.168 when no subsidiary is located in a country with a stronger rule of law than Korea to an insignificant 0.032 when all subsidiaries are. This attenuation is concentrated among groups whose foreign subsidiaries are financially significant (interaction –0.415, t = –3.13), where it is robust to firm clustering and differs significantly from the low-significance group. Because subsidiary structures vary little within firms over the sample window, the evidence is cross-sectional in nature. Overall, group auditors calibrate their effort to both the complexity of foreign subsidiaries and the institutional quality of their host countries.