Validation of factors relevant to the exemption of accounting courses in MBA programs

Most MBA programs allow students to exempt required core courses like accounting. The exemption decision usually depends on prior accounting course work taken. This study analyzes the performance of students with prior accounting backgrounds in a MBA core course in accounting in order to identify and validate factors that could be used in an exemption policy. Fourteen factors related to aptitude, prior academic performance, prior accounting experience, and work experience were correlated with academic performance. A reduced set of five variables was then included in a step-wise regression. Prior accounting course work, quantitative GMAT score, and grade point average in undergraduate accounting courses emerged as factors that significantly impact grade performance. A set of logit models containing these three factors classified each student by course grade. The three-factor model significantly improved the classification accuracy of students when compared to simplistic models using solely undergraduate accounting course work.     

Taxation in Australian undergraduate accounting courses: a review and case note

This review note outlines and reviews the presence of the subject of taxation in undergraduate accounting courses in Australia. It covers the period 1945–1995. Through the outline and review an explanation is provided of why the subject of taxation was present in the accounting degree in Australia. A review is made of one long-standing accounting degree course to provide a case illustration and explanation of how taxation was located within a degree. Some comparisons are made with UK findings of how and why taxation was located in undergraduate accounting degrees. The rationales for the inclusion of taxation in undergraduate degrees are also explored.     

Great Galway Goslings: Organizational Context of Managerial Accounting*

This case seeks to enhance student understanding of the relationship between accounting information and the order fulfllment and production activities of a manufacturing frm, Great Galway Goslings. Great Galway Goslings manufactures goose sculptures and has been suffering losses in recent years. Students draw on the skills they learned in financial accounting to analyze the company's order fulfllment activities, identify economic transactions, and prepare journal entries. The case provides a link to managerial accounting topics as students use segment financial statements to create contribution margin income statements, perform break‐even analyses, and recommend whether Great Galway Goslings should keep its retail business segment. Students will become familiar with the key features of business process management (BPM) and the extensive, real‐world activities that a manufacturing entity engages in to fll an order. Students will analyze the company's existing order fulfllment process and apply their knowledge of BPM to recommend process improvements for Great Galway. This case contributes to the accounting case literature by serving as a bridge from financial accounting to managerial accounting, intertwining many topics from managerial accounting into one cohesive case, and providing real‐world business process knowledge. Student feedback indicates that, overall, the case met its stated learning objectives. Great Galway Goslings is appropriate for an undergraduate introductory managerial accounting course but can be adapted to the equivalent graduate‐level course or an accounting information systems course.     

Teaching ideas for the commencement of the governmental accounting source

Many undergraduate accounting students enter their first course in governmental accounting with a negative attitude about the subject. This is due, in part, to the fact that after several courses in “accounting,” the governmental course presents methods and procedures which are quite different and are, therefore, suspect. This paper encourages an approach to the course which can overcome this bias by providing an appropriate context from which to commence the course.     

Dissolving the research mystique

This paper reports on a research oriented accounting course designed for senior undergraduate and graduate students. Topic selection, hypothesis construction and a research proposal are developed within the course through four building block assignments and a scavenger hunt. As an awareness enhancer a journal search identifies specific accounting issues researched and/or discussed in the literature. An ideas matrix collects the essence of potential topics, and three topics are developed into hypotheses based on problem statements. The design of a project culminates in a research blueprint.     

关于我国当前环境下的会计国际化问题

我国会计当前所处的环境十分复杂 ,计划经济的影响与市场经济的发展并存 ,工业经济与知识经济交融 ,这决定了我国会计具有自己的特点。会计国际化是一个国际协调的过程 ,是大势所趋 ,各国都要参与到这个协调过程中来 ,同时也将是一个艰巨而漫长的过程。在我国当前环境下 ,我们不应仅仅被动消极地接受其他国家协调的成果 ,而应主动积极地参与到协调过程中 ,以期使国际会计准则解决我们所面临的一些特殊会计问题 ;此外 ,会计国际化的发展需要法律等各个方面的配合 ,并强化会计标准的执行机制     

Analysis of the learning context, perceptions of the learning environment and approaches to learning accounting: a longitudinal study

This study investigates student approaches to learning over the 3 years of an undergraduate degree course in accounting. The objective of the study was, first, to identify changes in learning approaches over the course duration. Second, the study examined whether any changes in learning approaches were consistent with changes in the context of learning as well as students' perceptions of the teaching/learning environment. The results show that students made greater use of sophisticated learning approaches over time linked to their more favourable perceptions of the teaching/learning environment as they progressed in their course. However, there were no significant changes in learning approach attributable to the learning context. Implications for accounting educators drawn from the findings are discussed.     

Using Form 20-F reconciliations to internationalize an accounting course

Accounting courses and textbooks in the United States focus on US generally accepted accounting principles (GAAP). As a result, US accounting students have little exposure to International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) and to differences between these standards and US GAAP. To familiarize students with the differences between IFRS and US GAAP, accounting instructors can develop assignments based upon the reconciliation of IFRS to US GAAP net income included in Form 20-F, the annual document submitted to the SEC by non-US firms. The course assignment described in this paper provides students with a “road map” of the differences underlying specific company financial reporting, and helps instructors identify where these differences occur. The assignment represents an innovative way of integrating international financial reporting standards and SEC reporting requirements into a higher level undergraduate or graduate accounting course.     

Q-analytics: An ethics case on unlicensed software usage

This short role-taking ethics case is designed to provide students with several different perspectives related to the unauthorized/unlicensed use of software within a realistic accounting setting. Although the case could be considered for use in a variety of accounting classes at both undergraduate and graduate levelswith limited preparation, it is likely to be most relevant to Accounting Information Systems, Auditing, Controllership, and Accounting Ethics courses. The case can be read in about ten minutes, after which the class is assigned to groups that deliberate over the concerns of six different roles regarding the software-usage issues implied in the case.The issues are relevant to the students because they will inevitably encounter software-usage problems in their personal or professional lives. Furthermore, they inevitably have been exposed to similar copyright-infringement issues in the realms of music and video, which helps make for a rich class discussion.The case has consistently generated considerable discussion and debate within a graduate-level controllership course. A survey of students from five graduate accounting classes over a three-year period indicates favorable perceptions of the case.     

Sustainability + Accounting Education: The Elephant in the Classroom

Despite the growing importance of sustainability and the sustainable development agenda, and despite the growing presence of papers recognising the critical interaction between sustainability and accounting and finance (and, indeed, with all social science), there has been a relatively muted response apparent within the accounting education literature itself. This relative lack of literature may well be unexpected but what is not unexpected is the difficulty that accounting and finance teachers have in developing such demanding new ideas with accounting and finance students in the classroom. Without in any sense gainsaying the considerable impediments to innovation, this explicitly polemical essay seeks to address a more fundamental difficulty: that of the way in which sustainability is approached and represented in both the literature and the classroom itself. The contention is that, unless sustainability is ‘keeping you awake at night’, you do not understand it. The paper seeks to support this contention and then offers an example of one undergraduate course that is explicitly designed to stop students sleeping peacefully.     

The Competitive Intelligence Unit at Deloitte

The goal of competitive intelligence is to acquire information that can be used to make strategic decisions that further the objectives of the firm. Using publicly available information, this case describes the Competitive Intelligence Unit at the Big 4 accounting firm Deloitte and the techniques that the unit used to obtain strategic information about the plight of the consulting firm BearingPoint, a firm that Deloitte subsequently purchased in March 2009. This case can be used in an advanced undergraduate accounting theory, assurance, or capstone accounting course. It raises several interesting questions: What are acceptable and unacceptable competitive intelligence gathering techniques? Does competitive intelligence gathering by accounting firms serve the public interest?     

What actions can be taken to increase whistle-blowing in the classroom?

This study surveyed undergraduate business students on various issues concerning the potential of students whistle-blowing when they observe other students cheating. Developing the courage of one's conviction in our accounting students is important to accounting educators as we are also emphasizing traits such as integrity, skepticism, and professionalism to our accounting students. As the data were gathered in the first introductory-accounting course, students’ cheating and whistle-blowing attitudes were already established. We found that, while students who had cheated in the past were more likely to suggest incentives and cash rewards, students who had never cheated were more concerned with increased confidentiality. Consequently, the need for assuring strict confidentiality is as important to our accounting students as it was to our former accounting clients in developing the trust necessary for the disclosure of sensitive information.     

Tax education in the UK: a survey of tax courses in undergraduate accounting degrees

This paper presents the results of a postal survey designed to examine the teaching of taxation in UK universities. The project looks at taxation in undergraduate accounting degree programmes and adopts an objective centred focus. The principal aim of the survey was to examine the relationships between some characteristics of individual tax courses, including the course objectives and coverage, staffing, teaching and assessment methods, in an attempt to draw some conclusions on the nature of tax education in UK accounting degrees. The results of the survey and consequent analysis may provide taxation and accounting educators, professional bodies and researchers into accounting education with an insight into approaches to, and methods used in, taxation teaching. It may also present a framework for comparative international research in tax education.     

Creating Early Success in Financial Accounting: Improving Performance on Adjusting Journal Entries*

Adjusting journal entries constitute a necessary component of accrual basis accounting and are critical to the accuracy of financial statements. However, accounting students often struggle to comprehend these accounting entries, which is a concern given that failure to understand early topics in accounting courses has been found to impact course performance and selection of undergraduate major. Perceiving accounting as a language, we utilize psycholinguistic theory to understand how an instructor may improve coherence of students’ mental structures of accounting problems. We conduct an experiment to investigate the extent to which a simple instructor intervention, requiring that the initial deferral transaction be recorded, is able to improve student performance on the subsequent deferral adjustments, and whether this improvement is consistent across problem sets that differ in task difficulty. Consistent with our theoretical prediction, we find that this intervention results in improved performance. The beneficial effect of the intervention is found to differ across problem‐set task difficulty. Implications for accounting education are discussed.     

Jinan Qingqi Motorcycle Co., Ltd

The case deals with the decision in mid-1997 of StarInvest, an American investment company, on whether to subscribe to a new issue of 230 million B shares by Jinan Qingqi Motorcycle Co., Ltd. Qingqi Motorcycle is incorporated in the People’s Republic of China, and B shares were tradable only among foreign investors. The case solution is in the form of policy report from Daniel Campbell, asset manager at StarInvest, to his Investment Committee. The report contains his assessment of the opportunities and risks from China investment in general, and his recommendations on the Qingqi Motorcycle stock issue in particular. The objective of this case is to introduce students to the unique accounting issues and investment environment in China. From working on this case, the students should become familiar with the developmental steps and basic features of China’s accounting standards and capital markets. An important theme that should be emphasized by the instructor is that institutional environments are more important at influencing the accounting information in a country than the accounting standards as written on paper. The case has been used in an international accounting course offered to the MBA students. It could also be used in a similar course offered at the undergraduate level. Students having completed an introductory financial accounting course should have the required knowledge and skills to work on this case. The case can be used either as an individual assignment or as a group assignment.     

Using Pacioli’s pedagogy and medieval text in today’s introductory accounting course

Students today see little relevance in learning double-entry bookkeeping and find it difficult to learn how to prepare journal entries correctly. In particular, they struggle with the first stage of the double-entry process: identifying which accounts are to be debited and which are to be credited for each transaction. This paper reports on an attempt to overcome this situation by using the first printed instructional text on the subject (Pacioli, 1494) as the principal textbook on a 20-hour component of the introductory financial accounting course in an undergraduate accounting degree program. Instruction followed the pedagogy presented by Pacioli and only minimal additional costs to faculty were incurred.     

改革开放30年，彰显中国会计本科教学与时俱进

中国改革开放30年,以全面推进素质教育作为会计基础教育改革和会计专业教育改革的重要方向。会计本科教学在教学目标、教学理念、教学方案、教学手段、教学方法和教学管理等方面与时俱进,逐步形成了特有的教学风格,有效提高了本科教育质量。     

Students’ perceptions of their first accounting class: implications for instructors

The purpose of this action research study is to learn directly from undergraduate students, through focus groups, about their experiences in their first accounting class, especially about the students’ knowledge and practice of critical thinking and about which classroom experiences engaged their attention and enhanced learning. The findings show that students want to understand how the first accounting course connects to the business world and to their other classes. Participants were unsure about when and how they practiced critical thinking; for improved learning outcomes, instructors need to keep critical thinking front and center. Students also need instruction in how to study accounting and how to utilize effectively the resources provided in their textbooks and as supplemental tools (e.g. integrated accounting software). Accounting professors must adapt their teaching methods to help students to meet professional demands, such as critical thinking skills and ability to handle a complex global business environment.     

Bach Music Inc.: Impact of Price Pressure,Capacity Constraints,and a Special Order on Management Decision Making

This case has been developed for an introductory management accounting course at the undergraduate and MBA levels. Although the setting is relatively simple, it illustrates several management accounting issues that are relevant to firms of every size that produce a product or service under competitive pressures and capacity constraints. The case also integrates several topics that are often viewed as abstract by the students. Specifically, it deals with the concepts around cost‐volume profit analysis in a realistic environment, the tension between short‐term and long‐term decisions, discounted cash flow analysis, the impact of managerial incentives and compensation on decision making and the impact of operating leverage on profitability. The case was used successfully several times in an introductory course at the MBA level. Surveys of the students reveal that the case has contributed significantly to their learning and has clarified the concepts introduced in the case.