EUFIN 2012 - Vysoká škola ekonomická v Praze

construction is explored in section 2, while section 3 considers public interestimplications emerging in this context. Regulators and the market for accountingservices are explored in section 4, while section 5 tries to propose a way out inthe complex relation Regulators, Accounting and Markets, underlining the roleof financial information users.2-2/1 Thursday, 16:30 - 18:30, Room: RB 113 ID: 31Rachel BASKERVILLE (Victoria University of Wellington), Simon COX, KevinMCMEEKING, Huw RHYSFit as a Fiddle? Determining the UK Fitness Landscape for Large and Mid-tierfirmsOrganizations enhance their fitness by modifying their existing attributes, andthese landscapes are conjectured to range from smooth to rugged. By defininglandscape as a fitness landscape , this study determines from the most recentpublicly available financial data if the fitness of twenty mid-tier and large UKaccounting firms is highly interactive, i.e. whether the value of one feature (e.g.specialisation) depends on a variety of other features (e.g. size or spread ofoffices). The particular research question in this study is: do the largest UKaccounting firms undertake strategic decisions in a landscape which can bedistinguished from that in which Mid-tier firms operate?The methodology is to identify K from N attributes for the Big Four and Mid-tierfirms utilising financial data regarding accounting firm size, activities etc.available in the public domain. Much other research focuses on organizationalfields, but these are implicitly bounded domains - often self-reflexively -whereas the advantage of reification of a landscape for multi-entity analysisimputes boundaries are dynamic and negotiated, if they exist at all.The simulation in this study offers a fresh understanding to changes in thestrategic landscape following the adoption of limited liability partnershipstructures by accounting firms in the last ten years. If, as we had conjectured,the largest firms were able to be correctly distinguished from Mid-tier firms bythe ruggedness of their landscape in this simulation, this may have hadimplications for the possible entry of one or more of the Mid-tier firms - bymergers or organic growth - up to the same level of operations as currentlyundertaken by the Big Four. This links to debates on the processes and outcomesfrom the strategic globalization of Big Four accounting firms, to the extent thatthe Big Four are now more commonly studied as global professional networks.The proxies we used are clearly more complex than has to be assumed in orderto undertake the simulation. However, the dependent variable Fees per partnerbuilds in brand value in so far as it translates into actual revenue differentials.The insights that the NK model have given to understanding organizational8 th Workshop on European Financial Reporting, Prague September 6 – 7, 2012 25