Re-Inventing Realities: Volume 10

This paper examines the alternative frameworks adopted in empirical research in accounting in developed and colonised developing countries, and suggests that a more appropriate methodological framework is necessary to explain the emergence and subsequent development of the accounting profession in the colonised developing countries. In this regard, the paper rejects the claim that the expansion of the Western-based accountancy bodies into colonised developing countries is inevitable. Rather it posits the view that the influences of the U.K.-based Association of Chartered and Certified Accountants (ACCA), the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants (AICPA), the Canadian Institute of Chartered Accountants (CICA) and the dominance of Western accounting practices in the colonised developing world are intertwined with the local historical, global and cultural circumstances. Therefore, the problematique of imperialism is critical and significant for understanding the context in which the accounting profession has developed in former colonised countries. Bearing this in mind, the paper argues, then, that in order to adequately and validly investigates accounting issues in any former colonised developing nation; one has to adopt the frameworks of cultural imperialism and globalisation to fully contextualise the nature of accounting in colonised developing countries.

Over ten thousand years ago the needs of society to be able to account for economic transactions led to the development of accounting tokens made of clay. In a world in which writing and numbering had not emerged, the attributes of the economic transactions had to be represented by shape and size, as well as incised markings. Changes in the accounting system coincided with changes in the social structure and economic advancement.

These tokens were the genesis of writing and numbering. The use of pictographs led to a large variety of signs; finally, when the signs assumed a sound value in addition to the commodity, writing and speech were united. The tokens also provided the necessary seriation and one-one correspondence necessary to develop counting as well as higher cognitive structures.

This article compares the archeological evidence regarding the development of the tokens to the theories and experiments of Piaget, concerning the development of numbering and cognitive structures.

Fair value issues remain central to the pace of convergence in international accounting standards. This article identifies a fundamental issue at the root of the fair value debate, places the issue in an international and historical context, and recommends that standard-setters work to rationalize principles of accounting for money.

This case study deals with the financial accounting fraud at Sunbeam Corporation during the time “Chainsaw” Al Dunlap was the company’s CEO. This was a very pervasive fraud, involving improper revenue recognition, understatements of the reserves for sales returns and bad debts, abuse of the rules governing consignment sales, and other manipulations. While the amounts involved seem insignificant when compared to those of Enron and WorldCom, the study of Sunbeam is illuminating. Many of the problems at Sunbeam were caused by an abusive and egotistical CEO. In addition, Sunbeam’s external auditor during the period of the fraud was Arthur Andersen. Sunbeam can be viewed as being part of a continuum of audit failures extending from Waste Management to WorldCom. This case is designed in part to serve as an antidote to the coverage found in typical accounting by exposing students to a real situation in which people knowingly violated GAAP, and still received a clean audit opinion, and the company was eventually forced to declare bankruptcy.

Recent high-profile bankruptcies have renewed attention to earnings management practices. This study investigates whether high publicity of corporate bankruptcies makes a difference in the ethical perception of these practices. A survey depicting actual earnings management scenarios was administered to business students before and after these bankruptcies. The results showed a significant increase in the negative perception of earnings management actions after high publicity of unethical corporate behavior. In addition, many demographic factors such as age, experience and college major played a role in business students’ perception of the ethics of earnings management. The study suggests that business students are influenced by actual unethical examples of earnings management. These results, along with demographic differences, have implications for accounting education and the accounting profession.

Carbon dioxide emissions are considered to be one of the main culprits in global warming and the Kyoto Protocol specifically targets reductions in carbon dioxide to reduce global warming. Because the fossil burning electric utility plants are the primary industrial source of carbon dioxide emissions, we examine how effective the U.S. electric utility companies have been in reducing carbon dioxide emissions. We evaluate 1998 carbon dioxide emissions in relation to the emissions of the base year of 1990 set by the Kyoto Protocol. We also examine whether adequate disclosures are being made by the utilities to reflect their pollution performance. The findings show that the total amount of carbon dioxide emissions increased by 35% in 1998 compared to 1990, but on a relative basis, they decreased from 205 to 204lbs/MMBTU. Though we detect some support for a positive association between pollution disclosures and pollution emissions, the electric utilities in general do not disclose much about global warming or carbon dioxide.

This research investigates whether firms that voluntarily publish environmental reports to supplement their annual financial statements disclose significantly more sustainability data than others. A matched-pair sample of companies, drawn from the EPA’s list of the 500 largest (volumetric basis) U.S. polluters, that published such environmental reports during 2001 or 2002 is used to assess the type and level of non-environmental social accounting disclosures in five different areas: employee safety/health, workforce and supplier diversity, product safety, community involvement, and energy usage. Fifty-two environmental report producers were matched with non-reporters based on total asset size and SIC. Content analysis was used to assess the substance of sample firm reporting. The results show highly significant differences in social accounting reporting, with the environmental report publishers disclosing more sustainability data in a wider range than their matched counterparts.

At any time, there will be differing views on what needs to be done to be properly accountable, because accountees are likely to be in favour of more accountability, and accountors, of less (Perks, 1993). This leads to a tension between these two groups (Ijiri, 1983).

The focus of this paper is to provide an understanding to the economics of accounting crime. The accounting crime is considered to be part of the white-collar crime, where economists believe that white-collar criminals are rational men. Thus, this paper assumes that a person commits an accounting crime is a rational man. In making choices, the criminal managers take account of expected gains and costs from various available actions. If they estimate that there is a net gain from their actions, they do commit an accounting crime. External pressures, internal pressures, capital requirements, and compensation pressures are the circumstances that may lead managers to commit an accounting crime. The paper concludes by arguing that if white-collar criminals know that costs of their action are more than the benefits of the action, as a rational man they will not take that action. Thus, the most important step to prevent white-collar crime is to make the cost of the crime so high that it will never generate an estimated net gain for white-collar criminals.

The liberal wing of accounting research has taken some peculiar turns into postmodernism in recent years; gyrations that are echoed elsewhere in social science (Petras, 1991). Such circumlocutions are also prevalent in Gallhofer and Haslam’s book. The fingerprints of Laclau (1992, 1996), Laclau and Mouffe (1985), Lyotard (1984), Nederveen (1992), etc. are all over these sections, and this is where the book alerts us to the first troubles that beset postmodernist accounting research. We begin with the uncritical embrace of the ‘philosophical critique of modernity…[specifically Laclau’s desire to go beyond]…totalizing perspectives’ (p. 19).“Totalizing,” in Laclau’s sense, is the key that gives away the punch-line. Laclau’s thesis springs directly from French disenchantment with Soviet Communism and its satellite: the French Communist Party. The red-baiters lump these “communisms” (and their progenitor, Marx) into the same dock as Totalitarianism and modern capitalism. The conclusion is that both are equally despotic.

According to Best (1995, p. 270), ours “is an age devoid of emancipatory vision” (cited in Gallhofer & Haslam, 2003, p. ix). In Accounting and Emancipation we aim to impact upon the present in that our concern is to explore how accounting may be positively aligned with a (positive) notion of emancipation. In the process of exploration, we draw upon and intervene in debates from the social sciences and humanities (especially debates pertaining to emancipation), radically question existing practices and ways of seeing and engage with multiple accountings and agencies in various modern contexts. Aside from the motivating concern to search out an emancipatory vision vis-à-vis accounting, we hold that the relation between accounting and emancipation and how it may constitute a positive alignment are matters that are complex, multifariously shaped and notably fluid. Thus, another factor motivating our study is the need to keep such matters under review.

Poland’s heady transition to a democracy and free market economy has brought dramatic changes in societal values and attitudes, and some of the deepest transformations have been in women’s identity and gender relations, which this feminist art show explores. The exhibit draws its life force – and its title as well – from our global age of permeable borders, with its import-export of material and intellectual goods. This border became permeable in Poland only very recently, bringing in what some Poles call “good Western imports,” such as monetary profits, and “bad Western imports” such as feminism.