A Journey into Accounting Thought


Book Description

This book explores the role of accountants in business and society. The final work of Louis Goldberg, Professor Emeritus at the University of Melbourne, it aims to raise awareness of the existence and importance of fundamental issues that are often ignored or by-passed in contemporary discussion of accounting. The sixteen chapters assess exactly wh




The Nature of Accounting Regulation


Book Description

Accounting standards are an essential element in the regulation of current financial reporting. Standard setters promulgate such standards, and companies and professional accountants follow them in preparing financial reports. Although much has been written about the history of standard setting, the conceptual underpinnings of accounting standards, the process of setting them, and whether such standards should be ‘rules-based’ or ‘principles-based,’ there has been little written about the kind of thing they are. This book examines the nature of accounting standards and the very idea of a rule, of implementation guidance, and of the objectives that are included in them. It enables the reader to grasp the reasons for promulgating standards, the role of the conceptual framework in setting standards in an institutional context, and the kind of rules that are useful in regulating financial reporting. The insights provided by this examination are used to throw light on the distinction between ‘principles-based’ and ‘rules-based’ standards and on the nature of ‘good’ accounting standards.'




Fraud in Financial Statements


Book Description

As the monetary cost of fraud escalates globally, and the ensuing confidence in financial markets deteriorates, the international demand for quality in financial statements intensifies. But what constitutes quality in financial statements? This book examines financial statement fraud, a topical and increasingly challenging area for financial accounting, business, and the law. Evidence shows that accounting anomalies in an organization’s financial statements diminish the quality and serviceability of financial information. However, an anomaly does not necessarily signal fraud. Financial statement fraud is intended to mislead shareholders and other stakeholders. In this book, elements that underpin diversity of accounting anomalies likely found in fraudulent financial accounting statements are revealed. Multiple research methods are used in the analysis of selected international fraud cases, each illustrating examples of financial statement fraud, including: revenue recognition, overstatement and/or misappropriation of assets, understatement of expenses and liabilities, disclosure fraud, bribery and corruption. Additionally, the phoenix phenomenon with regard to fraud in financial accounting is investigated. Drawing on documented observations of commercial and legal cases globally this study highlights the necessity for continued development of financial audit practices and other audit services.




Accounting for Goodwill


Book Description




Accounting and Justice


Book Description

This book challenges the assumptions on which the current practice of financial reporting is based. Flower uses the stakeholder theory of the firm to show that companies have a responsibility to achieve distributive justice, and the company’s accounts could play an important role in fulfilling this responsibility.




Law, Corporate Governance and Accounting


Book Description

The growing internationalization of markets, the relaxation of constraints on capital flows between countries, and the creation of different economic unions -- the European Union in particular -- initiated the flow of capital, goods, and services across national borders, growth and diffusion of shareholding, and increased merger activity among the world’s largest stock exchanges. These changes have stimulated an interest in understanding developments in accounting and corporate governance in a newly qualitative way. Law, Corporate Governance, and Accounting sets out a framework for the analysis of institutional environments as the interconnected key tools of modern public corporations. Along with examining latest developments in the integrated formal structures for the formulation of international accounting principles, analyzing new accounting regulations and the extrapolating on the lessons that can be learned from the harmonization of accounting principles in Europe, this monograph provides the analyses of the convergence in both auditing and corporate governance as well as US perspective on IFRS adoption.




Accountancy and Empire


Book Description

This book brings together, for the first time, studies of the professionalisation of accountancy in key constituent territories of the British Empire. The late nineteenth century was a period of intensive activity in terms of both imperialism and professionalisation. A team of expert contributors has examined profession-state engagements between Britain, on the one hand and Canada, South Africa, Australia, Nigeria, Malaysia, Sri Lanka, Jamaica, Trinidad and Tobago, India and Kenya, and the other with a view to assessing how the organizations of accountancy in the colonies was affecting the metropolitan profession and state agents- and vice versa. Their contributions highlight the peculiarities of the professionalization processes in variant social, economic and political environments linked together by the relays of empire, prompting reflection on both the common and disparate dynamics involved. This book has numerous objectives, including giving historical insight and focus on countries that provide contrasting and variant examples of the uptake of the "British model", and broadening the appeal of accounting history and professionalisation as a taught subject in university accounting departments.




International Classification of Financial Reporting


Book Description

Financial reporting practices differ widely between countries and this has far-reaching implications for multinational businesses. Over more than a century, there have been attempts to classify countries into groups by similarities of practices. With the recent spread of International Financial Reporting Standards, it might appear that classification is largely of historical interest, but this is not the case, for several reasons explained in this book. Christopher Nobes offers a critical analysis of the many previous accounting classifications, having drawn lessons from other fields of science and social science. Revised and updated to reflect the IFRS era, the book discusses how old classifications are reflected in today’s international differences in practice under IFRS. It concludes with a discussion on the most useful classifications, and how classifications can still be relevant in the era of international standards. This book will be essential for academics, postgraduates and undergraduates in international accounting, accounting theory and to international accounting professionals.




Accounting and Emancipation


Book Description

Accounting is a social practice: it should be evaluated in terms of its contribution to a notion of social well-being. In order to do this, this book elaborates a critique of contemporary accounting. The authors encourage those with a close interest in accounting to make the search for a more emancipatory and enabling accounting a core area of thei




Auditing Theory


Book Description

Auditing is generally considered to be a particularly practical discipline. This hampers theoretical research, as does its complex nature. The unquestioning acceptance and implementation of rules governing auditing practice could lead to poor outcomes. This book provides a theory of auditing that underpins auditing practice. Identifying the objectives of auditing in the context of financial reporting, this book examines underlying beliefs to provide a deeper understanding of the concepts of auditing. In analyzing the field from a theoretical perspective, the author encounters important concepts such as materiality, verification, evidence, risk and professional judgement. Philosophical ideas about the social construction of reality are employed to explain the role of theory in a building block of the business world. This book is vital reading for auditing scholars globally, whilst its conclusions offer an interesting case study in the philosophy of professional judgement