General institutional knowledge typically relates to one of the functional areas of accounting, e.g., managerial accounting, or to a particular group of individuals of interest to accounting researchers, e.g., financial analysts. Having general institutional knowledge about financial analysts means that one understands the tasks analysts perform as part of their job, the organizational factors that influence their work (e.g., performance measurement and reward systems), the characteristics that are perceived to be important for their work (e.g., expertise in a particular industry), and the general sources of information they tap.