A discussion of cost-benefit analysis methodology

This note serves three purposes. First, it responds to Professor Stark's comments on our earlier article, “A Cost-Benefit Analysis of Accounting for Inflation.” Second, the discussion in our earlier article is expanded to explore alternative assumptions and procedures that should be considered in future research on cost-benefit analysis of accounting policy decisions; in particular, we encourage future research to consider both inter- and intra-industry resource allocation, a short-run approach to resource allocation, and alternative reallocation bases. Third, we comment on Professor Stark's extensive discussion on the merger implications of our resource allocation assumption.     

Forum: Teaching Professional Judgement in Accounting

In May 2005, the University of Lethbridge and the Institute of Chartered Accountants of Alberta sponsored the Banff Education Conference entitled Professional Judgement: Can It Be Taught? The opening forum at the conference was a panel discussion on the topic presented by academics and practitioners. The session included an overview of the research literature on expertise as a basis for considering the nature of professional judgement and the implications of various attributes of expertise for accounting education. Past practices and current pressures facing practitioners in exercising good judgement were addressed, including increased complexity of transactions and decreased time to assess problems. The forum also included a discussion of the need for educators to help guide students to develop an understanding of a problem rather than simply seek the answer. There was a discussion of particularly challenging topics for students to grasp in a principlesbased environment. The forum culminated in a question‐and‐answer session involving the panelists and the attendees at the conference. This paper summarizes the presentations and the discussion that took place during the forum. En mai 2005, l'Université de Lethbridge et l'Institut des comptables agréés de l'Alberta commanditaient le congrès de Banff sur l'éducation ayant pour thème la question suivante: le jugement professionnel s'enseigne‐t‐il? Le forum d'ouverture a consisté en une table ronde sur cette question au cours de laquelle enseignants et praticiens ont effectué un survol des publications de recherche sur la compétence qui a servi de point de départ à l'étude de la nature du jugement professionnel et des répercussions de diverses caractéristiques de la compétence sur la formation comptable. Les panélistes se sont penchés sur les méthodes passées et sur les pressions auxquelles sont actuellement soumis les praticiens dans l'exercice d'un jugement éclairé, notamment les difficultés occasionnées par la complexité accrue des transactions et la réduction du temps dévolu à l'évaluation des problèmes. Les panélistes ont également discuté de la nécessité pour les enseignants d'amener les étudiants à mieux comprendre les tenants et les aboutissants d'un problème plutôt que de simplement en chercher la solution. Ils ont également discuté d'enjeux particulièrement importants pour les étudiants dans un environnement axé sur les principes. Le forum s'est terminé par une période d'échange entre panélistes et participants au congrès. Le texte qui suit est un résumé des exposés présentés dans le cadre de ce forum et des discussions qui s'y sont déroulées.     

Critical reflections on Laughlin's middle range research approach: Language not mysterious?

Professor Richard Laughlin is renowned for applying critical insights from the German philosopher, Jurgen Habermas. His middle range research approach has explored many accounting problems such as public–private partnerships, health care reforms and how accounting impacts cultural issues. Laughlin's work re-conceptualises accountability in terms of cultural analysis, language and systems theory. Users of his work may encounter issues associated with: (1) understanding how to judge assertoric statements concerning various truth claims; (2) exploring the dichotomy between the secular and sacred; and (3) examining whether language simply designates meaning or opens us to interpretive new pathways.     

A Real Effects Perspective to Accounting Measurement and Disclosure: Implications and Insights for Future Research

Accounting measurement and disclosure rules have a significant impact on the real decisions that firms make. In this essay, we provide an analytical framework to illustrate how such real effects arise. Using this framework, we examine three specific measurement issues that remain controversial: (1) How does the measurement of investments affect a firm's investment efficiency? (2) How does the measurement and disclosure of a firm's derivative transactions affect a firm's choice of intrinsic risk exposures, risk management strategy, and the incentive to speculate? (3) How could marking‐to‐market the asset portfolios of financial institutions generate procyclical real effects? We draw upon these real effects studies to generate sharper and novel insights that we believe are useful not only for the development of accounting standards, but also for guiding future empirical research.     

Sustainability and Accounting Education

Given the growing debate concerning the use of alternative presentation formats in corporate financial reporting, Volmer's recent paper in this journal is to be welcomed (June, 1992). Volmer conducts an experiment which compares students' perceptions of graphical and numerical presentations of financial information. From this he concludes that (i) graphical presentations improve the communication of financial information, and (ii) the integration of accounting research and teaching constitutes an effective alternative teaching method. We agree with the general message of Volmer's paper, and hope that subsequent studies will build on his exploratory work. This comment suggests a number of areas for future developments. These concern the literature base, experimental design, corporate practice and educational implications.     

Relevance of Academic Research and Researchers' Role in the IASB's Financial Reporting Standard Setting

The International Accounting Standards Board (IASB) faces a vast number of standard‐setting issues at all levels of financial reporting. The purpose of this article is to explore the relevance of academic research for financial reporting standard setting and the role of academic researchers in the standard‐setting process. We contribute to the current debate surrounding International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) by drawing inferences from prior findings regarding the role of research in the IASB's standard‐setting efforts. After defining three broad categories of standard‐setting questions, we explore how the international heterogeneity of its constituency imposes constraints on the IASB's work. Then, whether and how academic research can inform policy makers is investigated from an epistemological perspective. Based on a review of extant literature, the general criteria which a piece of research should fulfil in order to be perceived as relevant and useful by standard setters are discussed. This discussion is followed by more detailed considerations regarding the suitability of different research approaches for each of the three categories of standard‐setting questions. We also touch on the subject of inferential problems inherent in most academic accounting research. Since the main objective is to contribute insights relevant to the IASB's efforts, we analyse academics' career systems and their incentives to engage in research intermediation, before discussing possible ways in which interested researchers can channel their insights into the IASB's standard‐setting process. Overall, the international dimension of IASB standard setting and its implications for relevant research are emphasized.     

A simple template for pitching research

In this article, I propose a simple new research tool – a template designed for pitching research. The two‐page pitching template begins with four ‘preliminaries’: working title, research question, key papers and motivation. Following this is the core of the template based on a ‘3‐2‐1 countdown’, namely THREE elements – idea, data and tools; TWO questions – What's new? and So what?; and ONE bottom line – contribution. The template ends with ‘other’ considerations. Finance and accounting examples are given to illustrate application of the template.     

Celebrating 20 Years of Publication of Accounting Education: an international journal: 1992–2011

This paper describes the background to the establishment of Accounting Education: an international journal, as well as an outline of its distinctive characteristics, including the international focus of the journal both in relation to the composition of its Editorial Boards and its authorship since its launch in 1992. A thematic analysis of papers for the second decade of the journal is incorporated, together with insights as to the future directions in accounting education. As the 20-year milestone of the journal was reached Professor Richard M. S. Wilson completed his term of office as founding Editor, and a new Editor took over. The paper recognises Professor Wilson's efforts in establishing an international journal devoted to publishing accounting education research relevant to practitioners, academics, trainers, students, researchers and professional bodies.     

How Do Investors Regard ESOs?

All top‐50 and more than 80% of the top‐500 Australian listed companies now reward their executives with stock options (ESOs) of one kind or another.₁ We address the question: “Which method of accounting for ESOs — current practice, the US FASB's recommended practice or the AASB's preferred position — most closely reflects investors' pricing decisions?” We answer the question using models that relate a company's stock price to its earnings and book value of equity calculated according to these three choices of accounting treatment.     

Popular television formats,The student-as-consumer metaphor,acculturation and critical engagement in the teaching of accounting

This paper discusses six television programme formats which were self-selected by Australian university students to facilitate their group-based presentations of accounting subject matter to fellow students in seminar and tutorial classes. This paper is a reflection upon the experiences of these formats (news and current affairs, game shows, tabloid television, soap operas, children's programmes and situation comedies) using an evaluative framework comprising the student-as-consumer metaphor, notions of ‘acculturation’ and a model of ‘critical engagement’. The television programme format appears to be beneficial in serving accounting students' psychological and emotional needs and in providing them with a shared cultural structure by which to address accounting issues. This shared structure facilitates students' critical and creative engagement with accounting.     

Editorial: Special issue on tax education

In accounting education, most Student Approaches to Learning (SAL) research has investigated the relationship between students' performance and their approaches to learning. Relatively limited research has been conducted on how assessment practices influence the quality of students' learning from the students' perspective. This paper seeks to address this gap in the accounting education literature. The research is centred on a large Australian undergraduate accounting degree delivered in Australia, Singapore and Hong Kong. Focus group interviews were conducted with students across the three locations. The research results reveal that: (1) it is the English competency of students that has the most important impact on students' completion of set assessment tasks and thus their approach to learning; (2) it is the way in which assessment is designed and written and the way lecturers convey their expectations about how assessment will be undertaken that is crucial to how students from various countries perform in that assessment; and (3) students' approaches to assessment and their preferred assessment tasks are not homogeneously based on cultural background.     

HOW TO FIX ACCOUNTING—MEASURE AND REPORT ECONOMIC PROFIT

Bending accounting rules has become so ingrained in our corporate culture that even ethical business leaders succumb to the temptation to “manage” their earnings in order to meet analysts' demands for smoothly rising results. The author of this article argues that such behavior reflects not a general decline in ethical standards so much as executives' growing sense that accounting itself has become “unhinged from value.” For example, clearly valuable expenditures on R&D, customer acquisition, and employee training are generally expensed immediately against earnings. And reported corporate income is often further reduced by provisions for losses that most companies never expect to incur, by “book” taxes they never expect to pay, and by depreciation charges on assets that are actually increasing in value. At the same time, the opportunity costs associated with employee stock options and the corporate use of equity capital are not reflected in the accountant's measure of profit. To improve the quality of corporate governance and revitalize the public's faith in reported earnings, the author proposes a complete overhaul of GAAP accounting to measure and report economic profit, or EVA. Stated in brief, the author's concept of economic profit begins with an older, but now seldom used, definition of accounting income known as “residual income,” and then proposes a series of additional adjustments to GAAP accounting that are designed to produce a reliable measure of a company's annual, sustainable cash‐generating capacity. Besides expensing the cost of equity capital as well as stock options, the author recommends bringing off‐balance‐sheet items such as pension assets and liabilities back onto the balance sheet, eliminating reserve accounting, capitalizing R&D and other expenditures on intangible assets, and recording economic rather than accounting depreciation. Such changes, by replacing the accountants' current flawed definition of earnings with a comprehensive new statement of value added, could restore investor confidence in financial statements. Even more important, managers would be less likely to pursue their now common practice of boosting earnings by making value‐reducing operating and investment decisions and more likely to use financial reporting not to mislead the market but as an opportunity to communicate relevant, forward‐looking information.     

An Analysis of Concepts and Evidence on the Question of Whether IFRS Should be Conservative

Do international accounting standards require conservative accounting? The IASB's conceptual framework suggests that they should not, while the research literature is largely silent on the matter, typically presuming conservatism to be an outcome of private contracting rather than standardized, public, general purpose financial reporting. In this paper, we analyze the actual requirements of IFRS. We find multiple examples of recognition requirements that lead to unconditional conservatism, measurement requirements that lead to conditional conservatism, and also presentation/disclosure requirements that further support a conservative reporting environment. These findings complement, support and deepen existing evidence in the empirical literature that accounting is in practice conservative. We show, however, that the requirements for conservatism in IFRS conflict with, first, the IASB's stated position in its conceptual framework that accounting should not be conservative and, second, the private contracting explanation for conservatism that is generally accepted in the literature. What is missing, and lies behind both conflicts, is an acknowledgement and understanding of the role of an agency/contracting perspective in enhancing the decision‐usefulness of general purpose accounting standards, given the information/incentive asymmetry and uncertainty that characterizes the real‐world context in which those standards operate. From a policy perspective, such an understanding would reconcile the IASB's conceptual framework with the actual requirements of IFRS. From a research literature perspective, such an understanding would re‐position accounting standards as central to the practice of accounting conservatism, which would in turn require revision to the generally accepted theory of a private contracting explanation for the empirical evidence of conservative accounting practice.     

A Conceptual Framework for Learning Management Accounting

This paper demonstrates how Schoenfeld's ( 1985 ) conceptual framework for mathematics can provide an alternate framework for learning and thereby teaching management accounting. The four‐part framework—heuristics, resources, beliefs, and controls—is a refinement to problem‐based learning with three attributes in regard to management accounting. First, all aspects for teaching management accounting are integrated into a single framework or theory. Consistency among all parts of management accounting clarifies student and instructor roles in the learning process. Second, the framework's problem‐solving focus with linkages to explanatory materials or resources allows students to be rigorously informed about the functionality of management accounting heuristics. Third, transition or extension of relatively simple, standard problems to more complex nonstandard problems or cases is facilitated by introducing appropriate beliefs and controls. In effect, this approach enables management accounting, and particularly case analysis, to be taught with more structure.     

Evidence Complexity and Information Search in the Decision to Restate Prior‐Period Financial Statements

Framed in the decision to restate financial statements, this study addresses whether behavior predicted by competing theories depends on the complexity of evidence. Two experiments observe the information‐search behavior of auditors responsible for investigating their firm's prior opinion. Experiment 1 shows that auditors confronted with few (many) summarized statements that replicate in form the materials used in prior research prefer to first search statements that are inconsistent (consistent) with the prior‐period accounting. This result generally corroborates research in accounting and confirms the predictions of information‐quantity theory in psychology. In contrast, experiment 1 also shows that, when materials mimic the detailed documents common in practice, the results are different: Auditors confronted either with few or with many detailed documents prefer to search inconsistent documents first. This result confirms the predictions of evidence‐complexity theory in psychology and shows that, compared to the materials on which prior research relies, detailed documents, such as memos, emails, letters, and analyses, drive information search toward inconsistent evidence. Experiment 2 probes further and finds that auditors evaluate documents bearing notes inscribed after the documents were prepared to be more inconsistent with the prior‐period accounting, and that the dispersion in search behavior may be reliably conditional on the presence of notes.     

Goode Food Trucks Inc.*

This fictional case centers around a young Dutch couple who emigrated to Canmore, Alberta. Upon arriving, Saul and Rens opened two successful food trucks and are now looking to promote each truck's main chef to truck manager. They plan to offer a performance bonus based on the net income of each truck and have requested a local accounting student to advise them on the new bonus structure. Goode Food Trucks Inc. presents an opportunity for students to demonstrate technical competence in managerial accounting (rate methods, period cost allocation, and data visualization); strategy and governance (employee performance incentives); and financial reporting (reporting needs) while incorporating enabling competencies (communicating and adding value). The case and teaching notes were adapted from principles used to train and evaluate Chartered Professional Accountant (CPA) candidates and tailored to an appropriate level for undergraduate learners. MBA instructors may also use this case to apply multiple concepts in a defined context, thus enhancing a course's “real-life” applicability.     

An Assessment of the Psychometric Properties of the Perceived Stress Scale‐10 (PSS10) with Business and Accounting Students

Using a sample of 557 undergraduate business students from three U.S. comprehensive universities, this study examined: (a) the factor structure of the Perceived Stress Scale‐10 (PSS10; Cohen and Williamson, 1988); (b) the invariance of its factor structure; (c) the scale's reliability; and (d) its convergent and divergent validity. Confirmatory factor analyses supported a structure with two primary factors, General Distress and Ability‐to‐Cope, loading on a single second‐order factor, Perceived Stress. Furthermore, this model was confirmed for designated subpopulations including the 264 accounting majors who participated in the study. Notably absent in prior research, this study found two items, numbers 2 and 9, to load significantly on both the General Distress and Ability‐to‐Cope factors with men and the full sample, respectively. Item–total correlations, coefficient alphas, and Spearman‐Brown reliability coefficients supported the reliability of the items loading on the full scale as well as on each of the two primary factors. Combined, these findings provide compelling evidence in support of the PSS10 as a stress assessment measure for business students in general, and accounting students in particular. In fact, given its practical expediency in terms of administration and scoring, the PSS10 appears to be a tool that could be used by university administrators and potentially by human resource personnel at accounting and business organizations to assess student/employee perceived stress levels before the onset of burnout tendencies, thus facilitating more timely and cost‐effective intervention strategies.     

Stuck in the middle with who? (Belatedly) engaging with Laughlin while becoming re-acquainted with Merton and middle range theorising

The paper engages with Laughlin's 1995 and 2004 contributions to the literature on accounting research methodology, seeking to critique and thereby extend his insights. It does so at a time when the discussion of methodological issues appears less important to many empirical accounting researchers than demonstrating a familiarity with the growing range of theoretical perspectives available to pursue such enquiries. The paper initially outlines Laughlin's original and revised frameworks, following which a number of the resultant attributions of specific schools of thought are questioned. The original categorisation exercise is concluded still to offer an insightful basis on which to compare and contrast empirical research approaches. For this reason, the same exercise is extended to locate three further, currently popular ways of seeing: institutional theory, actor network theory and practice theory. The focus then shifts to a more detailed exploration of the relationship that exists between Laughlin's idea of middle range thinking and Merton's characterisation of middle range theory and theorisation. Informed by the resultant insights, the middle range or substantive theory credentials of a range of schools of thought currently widely subscribed in interdisciplinary accounting research are then examined.     

The Effect of Personnel Characteristics in the Internal Accounting Control System on Discretionary Tax Accruals: Evidence from Korea

This study examines whether the characteristics of personnel in a firm's internal accounting control system (IACS) and auditor characteristics control managers’ discretionary behaviour for tax planning. The study uses a sample of 4210 firm‐year observations from 2006 to 2014. The results show that managers’ discretionary tax planning cannot be controlled when the personnel in charge of internal accounting control are at an optimum level or higher. On the other hand, when a CPA is included among the personnel, the manager's discretionary behaviour is somewhat controlled. Moreover, the results show that firms audited by a large accounting firm also control the manager's discretionary tax planning to some extent. Unlike previous studies that examine the effects of IACS on discretionary accruals mostly in terms of book income, this study's contribution is an examination of the effects of the characteristics of personnel in IACS on the relationship between discretionary book‐tax conformity accruals and discretionary book‐only accruals that can be used when the manager establishes a tax plan. Additionally, this study also provides indirect evidence that the characteristics of auditors and personnel in charge of internal accounting perform a monitoring role that controls the manager's opportunistic behaviour.