Governance and compliance in accounting education in Vietnam – case of a public university

Prior research suggests that despite the mass development of higher education in Vietnam recently, the quality of higher education is declining. This study aims to understand the impact of the education reform on the quality of university accounting education by investigating the involvement of different stakeholders in accounting education within one leading university in Vietnam. The findings from the interviews of key stakeholders suggest that accounting education in Vietnam is driven by reduced state control, growing institutional autonomy and increasing external guidance. This has come at the expense of reduced academic self-governance as lecturers have discretion in curriculum delivery at the individual course level, but little input into the decision-making at the school or university level and minimal participation in the curriculum development process. The findings enable regulators and decision-makers to better understand the dynamics between stakeholders in accounting education to enhance accounting graduates’ competencies and outcomes.     

论高校内部会计控制

改革开放以来,我国经济迅速发展,各行业管理水平不断提高,相应地开始对内部控制提出要求。我国高校内部会计控制是与企业内部控制同步发展起来的,虽然起步比较晚,但其在推动高等教育发展,促进教育体制改革方面起了非常重要的作用。目前,我国的高等教育模式正从由政府直接管理向由政府宏观管理、学校面向社会自主办学过渡,这种模式转变所引起的高校财务管理环境变化,使高校内部控制的地位和作用越来越重要。故本文从高校内部会计控制的发展,重要性及加强措施方面对其进行了新的论述。     

Computer-assisted teaching and learning in accounting: pedagogy or product?

The availability of cost-effective computer technologies is a dynamic that has the potential to dramatically change university accounting education. There are various motivations for university accounting departments to adopt computers and computer-assisted learning technologies, and a range of applications are available. The application of computer technologies has implications for student performance, efficiency and effectiveness within accounting departments, and course content—all of which should be considered. The possibilities for generating broad accounting education reform with computers are also significant.Computer technology should not be seen as a passive addition to the classroom. If driven by the desire to economise on the inputs to the educational process, or to expand the conventional content of accounting courses, such technology may have dysfunctional consequences.This paper examines the role of computer technologies in accounting education, the motivation for their introduction and use, and the impact they may have on the contemporary education of accounting students.     

重新审视美国会计对中国会计国际化的影响

本文从会计实务、会计研究和会计教育三个方面分析了美国会计危机的现状和成因,然后讨论了在中国会计国际化进程中,如何借鉴美国会计的经验与教训,解决好中国自己的会计问题。本文认为,解决中国会计问题在根本上必须充分考虑中国的制度背景。     

Budgeting for legitimacy: The case of an Australian university

This paper reports a case study of budgeting at an Australian university to understand how accounting is involved in processes of legitimation. The university had been much enlarged and diversified in its educational offerings through a series of mergers. A response to the changes on the part of the vice-chancellor was to introduce a new budget system borrowed from the institutional environment. The intent was to convey to a key funding agency and to staff that the newly merged entity would be governed appropriately. We analyze a set of sequential and interlinked processes in which these aspirations were challenged repeatedly by senior academic and administrative staff. Finding the budget system to be inconsistent with their values and expectations for the university, staff undermined it through patterns of under- and over-spending. We show how these behaviors jeopardized the vice-chancellor’s efforts to legitimate the organization’s financial management practices for a key funding agency. A core contribution of our paper is to analyze empirically the importance of the institutional demands that an organization’s internal constituents may make of its accounting practices. We argue that managers, staff and other internal constituents should be seen as significant legitimating agents. We show how attention to their demands becomes all the more relevant when budget and accounting systems for internal use are loosely coupled from those used for external reporting. In such circumstances, conflicting demands by internal and external constituents may not be dealt with through the development of separate and compartmentalized systems. This makes it problematic to assume that adoption of accounting systems from an institutional field will result in a steady-state of organizational legitimacy.     

我国高等学校教育成本核算探析

本文阐述了高等教育成本的概念和核算范围,列举了目前高等教育成本的核算方法,分析了当前我国高等教育成本核算的现状,强调了进行成本核算的重要性,并对今后进一步完善高校教育成本核算提出对策.     

基于强互惠理论的会计准则变迁研究

强互惠理论将人类的精神活动因素引入制度变迁研究中,扩展了人们将制度作为外部环境的接受者,制度变迁是自发演化过程或理性设计过程简单＂二分法＂的认识。会计准则作为一种制度安排,能够运用制度的理论框架予以分析。本文在强互惠理论博弈解说的基础上,对1992~2006年中国会计准则变迁过程进行分析。研究结论显示：中国会计准则变迁是自发演化与理性设计的统一,中国会计准则变迁过程中体现出自愿性和强制性双重强互惠特征,而且自愿性强互惠是主要特征,政府型强互惠滞后。     

Who exacerbates the extreme swings in the Chinese stock market?

We investigate which investors buy or sell relatively more on the days when the absolute value of market returns or the daily range of market index prices exceeds 5% in the Chinese stock market. Unlike Dennis and Strickland [Journal of Finance 57(5): 1923–1949 (2002)] who find that institutional investors are buying (selling) more when there is a large market increase (decline) in U.S. equity markets, we find that institutional investors in China are systematically buying more than the less sophisticated individual investors during extreme market swings, particularly on extreme market-down days. We reveal that institutional investors in China (primarily pension funds), provide a stabilizing influence during market downturn days. Our findings highlight the benefits of having active institutional investors in an extremely volatile emerging market dominated by less sophisticated individual investors.     

Managing Multiple Institutional Logics and the Use of Accounting: Insights from a German Higher Education Institution

This paper examines the use of accounting in managing the co-existence of different institutional logics in a German higher education institution (HEI), and its impact on the HEI. The study is of particular interest as the HEI analyzed pursued its own corporatization through a re-organization from a state into a foundation university. We show that this corporatization through the adoption of new public management related ideas leads to institutional complexity arising from the co-existence of extant state and emergent business logics. Our study suggests that HEIs may deploy particular accounting practices shaped by business logic only superficially, so as to satisfy stakeholders such as governmental authorities in order to enhance their legitimacy following a self-imposed reform, while the operation of the HEI remains rooted in state logic. Specifically, the findings suggest that in the case of actual changes to the budgetary process arising through the corporatization and an emergent logic, failure to replace abandoned accounting practices shaped by a previously dominant logic with equivalent practices adhering to either extant or emerging logic(s), may put the organization at risk. Overall, our study contributes to a better understanding of the dangers of an organizational response to institutional complexity, referred to as reactive decoupling, in the management of institutional complexity and points to its negative impact on organizations' hybridization capability.     

Understanding financial accounting practice

In introducing three papers on the institutionalised nature of financial accounting practices, this paper argues for the importance of research that can provide more adequate insights into the wider institutional and social positioning of financial accounting. Illustrating the argument by appeal to both contemporary and earlier examples, emphasis is placed on the ways in which changes in the wider interests in and around the enterprise can and do mediate financial accounting practice.     

会计准则变迁的自组织演化机理研究

近年来的制度变迁研究,日趋倾向于利用自组织理论探讨。本文将会计准则视为一种制度,将会计准则制定看作是一种制度安排,并将会计准则变迁纳入制度变迁的理论框架中进行研究。本文运用自组织理论,阐述了会计准则变迁的自组织本质,并从会计准则变迁自组织演化的前提、动力、演化诱因和演化路径四个方面,分析了会计准则变迁自组织演化机理,试图为会计准则变迁研究开辟一条新的途径。     

Development of Accounting Regulatory Framework in China: An Empirical Evaluation

In China, the government has long been involved in directly regulating accounting work. The rule-based accounting regulations have been formulated for different industry and business ownership structure by the central government since the founding of the People’s Republic in 1949. Remarkable changes have, however, taken place in Chinese accounting which have resulted from the wide-ranged economic and accounting reforms in the last two decades. Recently, an accounting regulatory framework based on accounting standards has been introduced, with great efforts to develop a set of practical accounting standards. A survey study was conducted to empirically investigate the prevailing perceptions of the users and providers of business accounting in respect of four major conceptual and practical issues underlying the construction of the accounting regulatory framework in the changing business environment in China. The study results demonstrate that the respondents from various interest groups possessed mixed views. They generally endorsed the current progress in the accounting reforms. On the other hand, the majority of the respondents were supportive of further changes in reshaping accounting regulatory framework to accommodate the growth of market-oriented economy in China.     

The ERA: A Brave New World of Accountability for Australian University Accounting Schools

This study examines the potential impact of Excellence in Research for Australia (ERA) on Australian university accounting schools through a series of in-depth interviews with Heads of Schools. Using an institutional theory framework we find that the pending introduction of the ERA has brought about changes in school structures, processes and systems. A creeping isomorphism is apparent as evidenced by a sector-wide movement towards targeting publications in highly ranked North American journals. While participants were generally positive about the overall aims of the ERA many felt that it would marginalise non-mainstream research. Furthermore, they were of the opinion that the ERA would lead to a reduction in the standing of accounting schools within Australian universities relative to other disciplines.     

Beyond Self‐Evident: Recognising the Problematic Political Context of Accrual Accounting Adoption in South Korea

This paper responds to a recent call by researchers that we need to move beyond both advocacy of and technical arguments about the value of accrual accounting to more fully recognise the institutional forces, key change agents and the local political fields. We draw on elements of institutional theory and the practice theory of Pierre Bourdieu to explore the ‘problematic’ aspects of institutional forces, key organisational change agents and the local political field associated with the adoption of accrual accounting in the South Korean public sector. We found that accrual accounting was driven by many factors including a local financial scandal, the advocacy of a civil society group and the ambitions and the ideology of key actors. The contribution of this paper is that it shows how the practices of accounting cannot be separated from their political and personal context.     

Factors impacting accounting research output in developing countries: An exploratory study

The objective of this paper is to identify the factors that impact accounting research output in one of the developing regions of the world, Anglophone Sub-Sahara Africa (Anglophone SSA). Adopting an institutional theory framework, the paper uses a sequential research process comprising an original questionnaire and semi-structured interviews. Four research questions were developed to achieve the research objectives. The region's low research output is explained by a host of individual, departmental and/or university, country and international factors; of these, departmental and/or university factors appear to have the strongest impact. The study also found that factors that constitute the regulative (coercive) pillar that promote research tend to be weaker in this region's universities, while factors that constitute the normative and cultural-cognitive pillars which tend to promote teaching appear to be stronger. Thus, the institutional pressure stemming from factors that constitute normative and cultural-cognitive elements dictate the conduct of an accounting academic positioned in Anglophone SSA's universities. That is, research activities of accounting academics in the region are disempowered by the more potent, normative and cultural-cognitive pressures and are inadequately sanctioned by the regulative pressure.     

The role and impact of professional accountancy associations on accounting education research: An international study

This paper explores the relative influence of the accounting academy and accountancy professional associations in the debate concerning the profile and quality of accounting education research. This research analyses 13 semi-structured interviews undertaken with members of key accounting professional associations in Australia, New Zealand (ANZ) and the United Kingdom and Ireland (UKI). The paper makes a theoretical contribution by the novel application of the institutional logics theory to the literature concerning professional accounting associations (PAAs) demonstrating the dominant commercial logic of the education function and the more traditional fiduciary logic of the technical function. The research finds that the primary stakeholders in the professional accounting curriculum development model are the PAAs and employers, whilst the accounting academy is relatively absent. The relative independence of the education and research and technical functions within PAAs is also identified: academic research and technical activity has little influence on professional education and vice versa. However, PAAs’ funding of academic research is common across all four countries for brand recognition and in some instances to influence policy rather than informing the professional curriculum.     

Dialectical possibilities of thwarted responsibilities

The university’s responsibility in the new world dominated by global organizations is to articulate the contemporary socio-economic challenges brought about by the globalization of capital and capitalistic enterprises, enlighten society to the implications, and formulate and disseminate means for responding in an informed and just manner to the challenges. The paper argues that the colonization of the lifeworld of the university, especially schools and departments of accounting, has, and continues to, inhibit, indeed actively thwarts, the academy in carrying out its social responsibility. In a previous work (Dillard & Tinker, 1996), the authors argue that the international management system is directly implicated in dictating process and content within business schools by, among other things, influencing the accreditation standards of the American Assembly of Collegiate Schools of Business (AACSB).The current paper evaluates the developments subsequent to the total quality management (TQM) based accreditation standards implemented in the early 1990s. The focus is primarily on accounting education, accounting department/schools, and the accounting academic. A case is made for the position that the new Baldridge Award criteria for education performance excellence, the new AACSB accounting accreditation guidelines approved in 2000, the revolutionary changes in the constitution and by-laws of Beta Alpha Psi (the US professional accounting fraternity), and the current position of the American Accounting Association (AAA) as articulated in AAA monograph (Accounting Education Series, No. 16) by Albrecht and Sack are manifestations of the managerialist influence continuing to at best neutralize the academy’s responsibilities to any constituencies other than global capitalism primarily articulated in the demands of the Big 5 professional service (formally accounting) firms. The discussion evaluates the recommendations of each of the four regulative documents in terms of the underlying ideology and concludes with a discussion of the dialectic possibilities confronting accounting education.     

财经类应用型高校通识教育研究

当前我国高校的通识教育面临着一些新的问题。财经类应用型高校的通识教育具有自身特点,除这些问题外,还面临着一些新的挑战。为提高通识教育的效果,财经类应用型高校应采取四个方面的措施：改革通识教育的体制机制;合理设置核心通识教育课程;建立和完善本科生导师制度;将国内外优质网络课程纳入通识教育课程体系。