Negative behaviors that impede learning: Survey findings from award-winning accounting educators

A review of the education literature, both within and beyond accounting, indicates previous consideration of attributes of teaching “effectiveness.” This literature provides educators with an ability to model approaches and techniques to enhance their teaching. Largely absent from the literature, however, is any attempt to identify teaching attributes that impede the learning process. While it may be assumed that “the opposite of best practices” would constitute methods or behaviors to be avoided, very little evidence is available to support this view. Little is known, except anecdotally, about why and how behaviors other than those subsumed in “best practices” frameworks can produce unintended negative results. Generally absent from the literature as well are perspectives from exemplars; that is, award-winning educators. This paper responds to both of these voids and presents evidence of classroom behaviors to be avoided because of their perceived negative effect on student learning. Specifically, we report survey responses from a sample of 105 accounting educators who have been formally recognized for their teaching excellence. These teaching exemplars were asked to list, in their own words and in ranked order of importance, up to five responses to the following question: “what behaviors would you counsel other accounting educators to avoid?” We received 374 responses to this question. A content analysis of these responses suggests the following major factors (in decreasing order of importance): negative or uncaring attitudes about students and the class; improper preparation and organization; faulty or deficient course-delivery skills; assessment mistakes; and, inflexible/inaccessible demeanor. Our results should be relevant to accounting faculty interested in assessing and improving their own teaching as well as to senior faculty who are interested in mentoring junior faculty.     

Accountants as “new guard dogs” of capitalism: Stereotype or research agenda?

Drawing inspiration from the theses of the regulation school, Gerard Hanlon analyses the socialisation process in the “big six”. For accountants are, according to him, the new “controllers” of “a process of flexible accumulation”, one that goes hand in hand with a heightened international division of labour. Unfortunately, his research site remains too limited to confirm—or disconfirm—his ambitious hypotheses. Moreover, the transposition of neo-marxist theories leads him to underestimate the whole work of construction of social credibility of accounting knowledge, as well as the complex play of interaction—and not only of opposition—between these “multinational service conglomerates” and the local or national dignitaries who continue to represent the core of the field of practice.     

Regulatory flexibility and management opportunism in the choice of alternative accounting standards: an illustration based on large French groups

Due to the flexibility of domestic accounting regulations, French groups are entitled to refer to international or American standards for their consolidation. The objective of this research paper is to focus on the choices made by the 100 largest French companies during the last 16 years (1985-2000). In practice, apart from the French rules, three “alternative” sets of standards are used: the International Accounting Standards (IAS), “international principles,” and the U.S. GAAP. The percentage of companies referring to alternative (i.e., non-French) standards rose in the first part of the period, then fell. Additionally, while the number of companies choosing U.S. GAAP increased over the period as a whole, the number preferring IAS or “international principles” has been in sharp decline since 1994-1995. Our results show that in this voluntary move towards international accounting harmonization, the choices made by French companies have clearly varied according to developments in French accounting regulations and the changing power balance between the International Accounting Standards Committee (IASC) and the SEC-FASB. This indicates a certain degree of opportunism by the management, who clearly keeps one eye constantly on the cost-benefit trade-off.     

A quasi-experimental assessment of interactive student response systems on student confidence,effort, and course performance

The interactive student response system (SRS), commonly referred to as ‘clickers,’ is an alternative learning method that has the potential to improve student course (i.e., quiz/examination) performance. Prior SRS studies both within accounting and other academic disciplines have found conflicting results as to its influence on student course performance. This quasi-experimental study re-examines the relationship between the use of an SRS and course performance. We also investigate how using SRS influences student confidence and time spent studying outside of class. Unlike prior SRS related studies, we tested both our SRS class and our control class (with no SRS) in the same academic semester with the same instructor to provide a higher degree of experimental control. Through doing so, we compared the benefit of immediate feedback achieved by SRS to the delayed feedback of traditional assessment formats. Higher in-class performance on multiple-choice quiz items was found for students using SRS versus those who did not use SRS; however, no significant differences in examination performance or overall course performance were noted between the two groups. Students using SRS reported being more confident in their abilities and spent less time preparing for the course outside of class, while maintaining similar overall course performance when compared to those who did not use the SRS. We conclude our study by providing areas of meaningful future research related to the use of SRS.     

“Holier-than-thou” perception bias among professional accountants: A cross-cultural study

Theoretical conceptions of culture in accounting research are controversial, ranging from highly deterministic, quantified and componential perspectives (such as Hosfstede's five dimensional model) to those that suggest continual changes in cultural values brought about by forces of acculturation. This paper makes a contribution to cross-cultural accounting research by examining the influence of competing theoretical perspectives of culture and acculturation on “holier-than-thou” perception bias. “Holier-than-thou” perception bias leads to individuals perceiving themselves as acting more ethically than comparable others when confronted with ethically uncertain work-related behaviours. This study contributes to cross-cultural accounting research by surveying Australian and Indian professional accountants from big four accounting firms. We firstly seek to establish the prevalence of “holier-than-thou” perception bias in both cultural settings. Secondly, we examine the differential and competing influences of culture and acculturation on perceptions of accountants from the two countries on measures of this bias. Data was collected through a survey questionnaire administered to samples of senior accountants from the big accounting firms in Australia and India. The questionnaire comprised an auditor-client conflict and two whistle-blowing scenarios and used two questions to measure the magnitude of the bias. The results show that “holier-than-thou” perception bias exists among accountants within each of the two countries. However, the magnitude of the bias was not significant between the countries. The results support the theory of acculturation in big accounting firms. Our findings have implications for accounting research where the presence of “holier-than-thou” perception bias needs to be considered in cases where respondents are questioned on socially sensitive issues. The findings may be useful to accounting researchers, managers of multinational enterprises in general, and big-four accounting firms in particular. Our conceptual framework applied in this study is innovative and provides a template for assessing current controversies in cross-cultural accounting research.     

CAPITAL AND FINANCIAL ACCOUNTING: A COMMENTARY ON BRYER'S “A MARXIST CRITIQUE OF THE FASB'S CONCEPTUAL FRAMEWORK”1

Bryer (1999) reiterates criticisms of the “balance-sheet” approach underlying the FASB's conceptual framework as failing either to explain or guide the development of financial accounting practice, and aims to demonstrate how operational and objective principles of financial accounting can be derived from Marx's labour theory of “surplus-value”. However, the potentially conflicting objectives of “Marxist” accountings remain unresolved, and Bryer's attempted derivation of accounting rules for individual business enterprises appears to misunderstand the rationale of Marx's detailed examination of the circuits of capital in Parts One and Two of Volume II of @9pCapital@2p and to offer no critical foundation for Praxis. It is argued here that the focus of a critical Marxist accounting would more appropriately shift to recognising the extraction of surplus-value from labour and its addition to the value of inventory during the process of production (rather than reporting profit as the result of sale). However, the practical application of such a principle would still require the use of convention-based allocations at least as arbitrary as those of conventional financial accounting and, more fundamentally, such a change of accounting principle could not in itself be sufficient to “force the secret of profit making” under the capitalist mode of production. The accounting would still be consistent with both Marxist and neoclassical economic theories of the nature of capitalism. Bryer's approach to deriving Marxist accounting rules cannot help us to understand the problematic nature of the power of modern financial accounting.     

Futures-thinking and identity: Why “Futures Studies” is not a field, discipline, or discourse: a response to Ziauddin Sardar's ‘the namesake’

The term we use to describe the study or research of the future or futures is indeed important, and “futures studies” is preferable, although there is considerable dispute as to who and what is involved. Even more important is the far deeper problem of defining the “we” and what “we” in fact do. Futures studies not only considers wickedly complex problems, but it is itself a wicked entity, with many puzzles and contradictions. To illustrate, a taxonomy of 12 types of futurists, first articulated in 1985, is revisited, with special emphasis on the relative handful of Synoptic Generalists, the larger category of Specialized Futurists, the still larger entity of Futurized Specialists, and the largest entity of Closet Futurists who think about futures-often in a leading-edge way-but do not identify at all with futures studies, or are seen as futurists. Most contributors to Futures and other futures journals, as well as listees in the 2000 Futurist Directory, appear to have a secondary “futurist” identity at best. The fuzzy entity of “futures studies” is thus quite unlike any field or discipline, because it is easily entered by specialists who identify with the entity weakly, while many of the most important futures-thinkers are outside the entity. Instead of denying this paradox, the reality should be acknowledged, and an alterative paradigm for “futures studies” should be seriously considered.     

Ontology-based e-assessment for accounting: Outcomes of a pilot study and future prospects

This article reports on a pilot of a novel ontology-based e-assessment system in accounting that draws on the potential of emerging semantic technologies to produce an online assessment environment capable of marking students’ free-text answers to questions of a conceptual nature. It does this by matching their response with a “concept map” or “ontology” of domain knowledge expressed by subject specialists. The system used, OeLe, allows not only for marking, but also for feedback to individual students and teachers about student strengths and weaknesses, as well as to whole cohorts, thus providing both a formative and a summative assessment function. This article reports on the results of a “proof of concept” trial of OeLe, in which the system was implemented and evaluated outside its original development environment (an online course in education being used instead in an undergraduate course in financial accounting. It describes the potential affordances and demands of implementing ontology-based assessment in accounting, together with suggestions of what needs to be done if such approaches are to be more widely implemented.     

Traditional accountants and business professionals: Portraying the accounting profession after Enron

Society’s perception of the legitimacy of the accounting profession and its members is grounded in the verbal and visual images of accountants that are projected not only by accountants themselves but also by the media. The paper uses the critical literature on stereotypes to examine how books written for a general readership on Enron and other recent corporate failures portray accountants and accounting, and the implications their authors draw for corporate governance and the survival of the financial system. The paper explores how commentators have analyzed the changing activities of accountants (including the rise of consulting) and have contrasted the personalities of “founding fathers” of the US accounting profession with their early 21st-century successors. The paper concludes that changing stereotypes of accountants are evidence of “negative signals of movement” for accounting as a profession.     

HISTORICAL ALLEGORIES: LET US HAVE DIVERSITY

This paper points out that differences between “old” and “new” accounting history are not resolvable at the level of evidence because history is a form of allegory–a “true” allegory. In addition, it cautions against an overly zealous evangelization of particular “new”/critical faiths and argues instead for a “celebration of difference” in the telling of historical stories.     

Vernacular accountings: Bridging the cognitive and the social in the analysis of employee-generated accounting systems

We unpack the concept of “informal accounting systems” and bracket “vernacular accountings” based on the modality and source of legitimacy of such systems. Vernacular accountings are accounting and control systems that are self-generated by organizational actors in the context of their work and not officially sanctioned within the organizational hierarchy. We argue that these systems capture actionable knowledge from the epistemic perspective of their users. We identify three ideal types of vernacular accountings: vernacular accountings as an inventory of knowledge that employees construct to meet their task specific information needs; vernacular accountings as a defensive resource constructed and used by employees who resist or do not trust the formally sanctioned systems; and, vernacular accountings as organizational practice that has both pragmatic and epistemic functions and that facilitates distributed cognition. Drawing on an epistemic perspective that spans cognitive and social levels of analysis we develop theoretical propositions on the emergence and use of these three types of vernacular accountings.     

CONNECTING ACCOUNTING AND EDUCATION IN THE UK: DISCOURSES AND RATIONALITIES OF EDUCATION REFORM

In this paper we analyze the processes which have structured the emphasis upon budgeting and accounting in the Local Management of Schools initiative by outlining the inter-relations between the discourses of neo-liberal government and economics, and the apparent “need” for the expansion of accounting and budgeting systems in the public sector and particularly education in the UK during the past six years.At the heart of our analysis is the contention that accounting and budgeting systems have been promoted throughout the UK public sector by connections to a discourse of managerial enterprise and economic rationality. The intersections between accounting techniques, and economic and managerial notions of decision making, responsibility and market organization have provided the complex discursive formation within which the accounting and budgeting innovations introduced under LMS have been presented and represented as “necessary” elements of proper public sector organization. The colonization of accounting into the education sector has been made possible by a series of seemingly unquestioned linkages, associations and reductions, upon which we offer a commentary, between the discourse of economic rationality and the techniques of accounting.     

Accounting for organizational performance: The construction of the customer in the privatized water industry

The concept of the customer exercising market power to obtain the desired combination of attributes in terms of price and quality of the product to be purchased has been integral to the Conservative Government's justification of privatization. However the practical import of giving effect to customer sovereignty was problematic if it was not accompanied by an increase in competition and choice for customers. This is particularly true of the recently privatized Water industry, where the monopoly character of the industry has remained unaltered. To give effect to its claims that customers would benefit, and to prevent overcharging and to protect standards of service, the Government had to introduce a new regulatory system operated by the Office of Water Services (Ofwat). In pursuing these objectives the Director General of Ofwat has stated that his aim is to secure for the customer a place that he/she would have were the companies operating in a competitive market. This paper, drawing on Miller and Rose's analysis of Governing economic life, examines the attempts that have been made to give effect to this “place for customers”. In doing so much of the analysis focuses on exploring how notions of “the customer”, and “customer service”, have been constructed through new forms of accounting and accountability, and how this new accounting for customer service has enabled the concept of “the customer” to be made operational within the newly privatized Water plcs, even though their monopoly status has remained unaltered. Central to this has been Ofwat's determination of performance indicators on levels of service to customers, its measurement of company performance against these indicators, and assessments based on these measures of companies' success in “serving customers”. The paper seeks to demonstrate how these new accounts of organizational performance required of the Water plcs by Ofwat have only been made possible by rendering “customer service” a calculable and comparable entity. The paper also looks at some of the ways in which this accounting for customer service has been incorporated into other accounts of managerial and organizational performance.     

INTERNATIONAL ACCOUNTING FIRMS VERSUS INDIGENOUS AUDITORS: INTRA-PROFESSIONAL CONFLICT IN THE GREEK AUDITING PROFESSION, 1990-1993

Jurisdictional claims over statutory audits in Greece have prompted a sustained and bitter intraprofessional conflict spanning the last 30 years. This paper examines a major episode during the climax of the struggle in the early 1990s. The main rival camps were a group of indigenous auditors—who had the legal monopoly of practice—and local branches of international accounting firms—who were excluded from the market for statutory audits. The latter fought for reform. The conflict took place against the backdrop of advancing neoliberal discourses within government stimulated by a desire for greater political and economic integration within the European Union and world-wide. The struggle ended victoriously for the international accounting firms, culminating in the “liberalisation” of the Greek auditing profession in 1992. The paper analyses the state-profession axis to expose the allegiances of conflicting professional groups to major political parties, as they strove to win vital political support to attack or defend contested territories. Of particular interest is the complex political manoeuvring employed by the government in order to grant international accountants easy access to the market for statutory audits. A secondary objective is to offer insights into the factors and conditions that precipitated and enabled a radical reform of the institution of Greek auditing. For example, the quest for the “liberalisation” was eagerly supported by the Confederation of Greek Industries. In addition, representative organisations of the international accountancy profession showed unreserved allegiance to international accounting firms and became actively involved in the conflict. Overall, the analysis shows that the structure of the auditing profession in Greece is the outcome of a dynamic interplay of economic, social, and political forces at both the national and the international level. Within these various interests, state agencies and professional groups play a prominent role.     

Relate management accounting research to managerial work!

This article argues that management accounting research should be more aligned with managerial work. Managers work with words. This means that managerial conversation and the use of accounting information in such conversation should be studied. Methodology is developing rapidly in other areas of social science where a “linguistic turn” has made an impact. Managerial work, characterised by “brevity, variety, and fragmentation,” provides the context in which accounting information is used. Management is thus described as a co-operative game where communication is central to attention direction as well as problem solving. An illustration is given of the kind of studies deemed necessary for management accounting research to progress towards managerial relevance.     

The influence of funding source and legislative requirements on government cost accounting practices

This paper provides preliminary evidence on the determinants of cost accounting practices in government agencies. Drawing on institutional and contingency theories of management accounting choice, we examine two potential influences on the design and use of government cost systems: legal requirements to be self-funding and mandated requirements for cost accounting data. We test these hypotheses using survey data from the U.S. General Accounting Office. The empirical evidence indicates that organizations using cost system output to satisfy external requirements tend to implement more “elaborate” cost accounting systems than units without external requirements, but are no more likely to use cost system data for internal purposes. In contrast, government organizations that are required to “pay their own way” by fully recovering costs through revenues or fees not only implement more elaborate systems than units funded by appropriated budgets or reimbursement of expenses by other government units, but also tend to make more extensive use of cost system output for a wide variety of internal purposes ranging from pricing to management control.     

Performance evaluation with high moments and disaster risk

Traditional performance evaluation measures do not account for tail events and rare disasters. To address this issue, we reinterpret the riskiness measures of Aumann and Serrano (2008) and Foster and Hart (2009) as performance indices. We derive the moment properties of these indices and their sensitivity to rare disasters and show that they are consistent with the asset pricing literature. As applications, we show that “anomalous” investment strategies such as “momentum” or investment in private equity lose much of their glamour when accounting for high moments and rare events. Furthermore, using the indices to select mutual funds results in desirable high-moment properties out of sample.     

Dirty work and the construction of identity. An ethnographic study of management accounting practices

This paper examines the processes by which identity work influences accounting and organisational practices. Analysing ethnographic material, we study how accountants engage in a struggle for recognition in a context where tensions emerge from the confrontation between idealised occupational aspirations and situated possibilities. To theorise this struggle we draw on Everett Hughes’s conceptualisation of a moral division of labour. Building on his concept of “dirty work”, we differentiate between the “unclean” and the “polluted”. Accountants have to perform tasks that are incompatible with the aspirational identities they claim; more than “boring”, these tasks become symbols of misrecognition. We call these unclean tasks. Yet even tasks that, in a more favourable context, would be associated with prestigious aspects of the job, can become degrading in specific situations. We call them polluted work. We highlight how trying to comply with a positively-anticipated role transition can help avoid unclean work yet generate more polluted work. Our analysis suggests that paying greater attention to symbolic differentiations between prestigious and shameful aspects of work can improve our understanding of accounting, identity work and organisational practices.     

Regulatory networks for accounting and auditing standards: A social network analysis of Canadian and international standard-setting

Rose and Miller [Rose, N., & Miller, P. (1992). Political power beyond the state: Problematics of government. British Journal of Sociology, 43(2), 173–205] note that governmentality is exercised through “centers of calculation” embedded in “networks of rule;” we focus on the “networks of rule” and use social network analysis to document the linked organizations, both domestic and international, that affect the creation of accounting and auditing standards in Canada. The network is defined as the set of regulatory bodies and other organizations that have the right to appoint (or approve the appointment of) members of another organization’s standard-setting body. The network consists of 61 organizations, sharing 131 interlocks. These organizations are clustered into four groups centered on, respectively, the Canadian Institute of Chartered Accountants, the Canadian Securities Administrators, International Federation of Accountants and the IOSCO/World Bank. The analysis identifies the boundaries of these clusters and the key organizations that maintain the cohesion of the network. The conclusion identifies research opportunities opened by this perspective on accounting and auditing regulation.     

The IASB and FASB convergence process and the need for ‘concept-based’ accounting teaching

The increasing globalization of the U.S. economy drives interest in international accounting standards. In this respect, the convergence process between the International Accounting Standards Board (IASB) and the Financial Accounting Standards Board (FASB) targets the completion of several major projects by 2011. The importance of the projects under consideration as well as the lack of conclusive theoretical solutions around them suggests that the target of a “common set” of accounting standards will be replaced in the short-medium term by a de facto situation of a “slightly different set” of accounting standards. In this paper, we draw on best available practices to make a specific proposal for the introduction of IFRS into the curriculum of institutions of higher learning in the U.S. Our proposal is driven by the idea that accounting education should move from teaching ever temporary rules to emphasize the economic and strategic underpinnings of accounting transactions.