"Management Accounting at the Hudson's Bay Company: From Quill Pen to Digitization describes the 1670 to 2005 evolution of management accounting at the longest surviving commercial company in the world. This book was possible for the extraordinary reason that by plan, and the nature of HBC's early business, the company retained virtually all management accounting documents. Through the viewpoint of management accounting, the book also tells the story of Anglo-American evolution of double-entry bookkeeping for managing companies. A study of 335 years may seem daunting until recognizing that management accounting does not change often, and changes are exciting, dramatic and consequential. Five significant sets of management accounting changes were identified, each made for significant strategic or more precisely for survival reasons. Thus, the focus of this book is on the making and remaking of management accounting to support survival strategy. A serious lesson is that management accounting can be difficult to change and without insightful managers, existing management accounting is allowed to survive well beyond its usefulness."

This convenient reference tool is designed for real estate investors who wish to maximize their tax benefits through a better understanding of real estate law. Ferguson and Spede thoroughly analyze and explain real estate tax laws, as well as the problems and advantages of purchasing, owning, and selling real estate. Specifically explained and illustrated are such issues as calculating excess investment and interest, installment selling, alternative minimum tax, investment credits, recapture of tax credits, trading properties, leases with options to buy, and the establishment of new bases for trade. In addition, the authors emphasize many of the tax traps and pitfalls encountered by investors, including accelerated depreciation, amortization of expenses, and tax write-offs. Also considered are related topics such as personal property taxes, special tax problems, the rehabilitation of historic and older commercial properties, low income housing, rental cooperatives, condominium units, and home ownership taxation. Finally, there is a discussion of tax reform, including the changes brought about by the Deficit Reduction Act of 1984, as well as the possible effects of the flat tax rate proposed by the Treasury Department in January of 1985. The volume is completely cross-referenced, and includes chapter summaries, case histories, and a glossary, as well as numerous tables and illustrations.

Cost-benefit analysis (CBA) is the systematic and analytical process of comparing benefits and costs in evaluating the desirability of a project or programme - often of a social nature. It attempts to answer such questions as whether a proposed project is worthwhile, the optimal scale of a proposed project and the relevant constraints. CBA is fundamental to government decision making and is established as a formal technique for making informed decisions on the use of society's scarce resources. This timely sixth edition of the classic Cost-Benefit Analysis text continues to build on the successful approach of previous editions, with lucid explanation of key ideas, simple but effective expository short chapters and an appendix on various useful statistical and mathematical concepts and derivatives. The book examines important developments in the discipline, with relevant examples and illustrations as well as new and expanded chapters which build upon standard materials on CBA. Highlights include: updated historical background of CBA extended non-market goods valuation methods the impact of uncertainty evaluation of programmes and services behavioural economics decision rules and heuristics CBA and regulatory reforms CBA in developed and developing countries value of household production other topics frequently encountered in CBA, such as costs of diseases and air pollution, and value of statistical life. This book is a valuable source and guide to international funding agencies, governments, interested professional economists and senior undergraduate and graduate students. The text is fully supported by a companion website, which includes discussion questions and PowerPoint slides for each chapter.

Auditing has become an essential component in market societies and the need for auditing skills has risen in line with globalization. This textbook provides a comprehensive overview of the role of financial statement auditing in contemporary society, including the auditor's role in evaluating the financial reporting of an auditee-a topic of central concern in the recent comprehensive review of the auditing profession in the Brydon Report (2019). The experienced authors provide insight into auditing research to help readers understand its function, regulation, and role in theory and practice. With focus on private sector financial statement auditing and its regulation, the book includes perspectives on social theory, history, and the importance of professional standards. The thought-provoking final chapter challenges students to consider the effectiveness of auditing in evaluating increasingly risky and complex accounting estimates involving assumptions about future events. A fundamental approach to auditing theory, this textbook will be useful reading for advanced undergraduate and postgraduate students across business and accounting fields.

Auditing has become an essential component in market societies and the need for auditing skills has risen in line with globalization. This textbook provides a comprehensive overview of the role of financial statement auditing in contemporary society, including the auditor's role in evaluating the financial reporting of an auditee-a topic of central concern in the recent comprehensive review of the auditing profession in the Brydon Report (2019). The experienced authors provide insight into auditing research to help readers understand its function, regulation, and role in theory and practice. With focus on private sector financial statement auditing and its regulation, the book includes perspectives on social theory, history, and the importance of professional standards. The thought-provoking final chapter challenges students to consider the effectiveness of auditing in evaluating increasingly risky and complex accounting estimates involving assumptions about future events. A fundamental approach to auditing theory, this textbook will be useful reading for advanced undergraduate and postgraduate students across business and accounting fields.

Risk-based operational audits and performance audits require a broad array of competencies. This book provides auditors and risk professionals with the understanding required to improve results during risk-based audits. Mastering the Five Tiers of Audit Competency: The Essence of Effective Auditing is an anthology of powerful risk-based auditing practices. Filled with practical do and don't techniques, it encompasses the interpersonal aspects of risk-based auditing, not just the technical content. This book details the behaviors you need to demonstrate and the habitual actions you need to take at each phase in an audit to manage the people relationships as well as the work itself. Each section of this book is devoted to a component of the audit: planning, detailed risk and control assessment, testing, audit report writing, project management, audit team management, and client relationship management. The book leverages The Whole Person Project, Inc.'s 30 years of hands-on organizational development experience and custom-designed internal audit training programs to aid those just starting out in audit as well as more experienced auditors. It also contains templates you can use to set performance goals and assess your progress towards achieving those goals. This book will spark ideas that can enhance performance, improve working relationships, and make it easier to complete audits that improve your organization's risk management culture and practices. Explaining how to make positive and sustained changes to the way you approach your work, the book includes a summary of the key points and a brief quiz to help you remember salient ideas in each chapter. Presenting proven methods and advice that can help you immediately save time, reduce stress, and produce reliable, quality results, this book is an ideal resource for anyone looking to make positive changes and adopt more productive work habits

A concise FAQ guide to IFRS principles and practices

Co-written by Steven Collings, winner of Accounting Technician of the Year at the British Accountancy Awards 2011, this book is a comprehensive guide to International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) which became mandatory in the EU in 2005, and they will almost certainly be adopted by most other developed countries in the near future. Unlike US-GAAP and other sets of standards, the IFRS are principles-based rather than rules-based, putting the onus of interpretation more on users than has previously been the case. Under IFRS users must understand the economic substance of operations, and they must be able to make assumptions, hypotheses, and estimations leading to an accounting treatment consistent with the general objectives of and principles behind IFRS financial reporting. In a handy, easy-to-navigate Q&A format, "Frequently Asked Questions on IFRS" provides accounting and finance professionals with the answers to some of the most commonly asked questions on the new standards. Covering the often complicated areas of accounting for financial instruments, tangible and intangible assets, provisions, and revenue recognition, the book also contains a valuable overview of the standards and the thinking behind them.Includes a comprehensive section on the new IFRS for small and medium enterprisesContains real-world examples from financial reports; a glossary of commonly used terms; and a 'Test Your Knowledge' sectionProvides a simple way to get up to speed on these often confusing, principles-based standards

In organizations, accounting produces organizational knowledge that affects decision-making and managerial action. Companies placing importance on shareholder value sometimes tend to elevate accounting to a higher truth criterion for justifying managerial actions. Yet, the nature of accounting renders it difficult to argue that accounting information necessarily produce a better basis for decision-making than arguments which are not based on accounting. This is because, as previous research has also argued, accounting counts some things but omits many others, while managers are accountable for much more than what accounting actually counts. Using a theoretical apparatus from Deleuze and Guattari, this book illustrates that accounting-based actions such as making management decisions, maintaining organisational responsibility and hierarchical control are manifestations of the ways in which accounting is composed. This concise introduction will be invaluable for researchers and advanced students of management accounting exploring responsibility accounting and accountability.

Financial reporting is a strategic means of communication: management has an opportunity to interpret, and the power to deliver, what is materially important to the organization's stakeholders. Understanding materiality means steering the company in the right direction, and many internal management battles regarding what and how to disclose in external financial reporting run on the verge of materiality. This book offers an integrated perspective of materiality from the angles of accounting (IFRS, US GAAP and SEC Rules and Regulations), auditing, internal control over financial reporting, management commentary, financial analysis, management control, forensic analysis, sustainability reporting, corporate responsibility, assurance standards, integrated reporting, and limited legal considerations. In Materiality in Financial Reporting: An Integrative Perspective, the author adopts a practical, operational approach to show how strategy, processes, and communication can be used to devise a consistent corporate governance system of materiality.

Many scholars discuss Marx's Capital from many perspectives, but Accounting for Value uniquely advances and defends an 'accounting interpretation' of his theory of value, that he used it to explain capitalists' accounts. It confirms and builds on the Temporal Single-System Interpretation's refutation of the charge that Marx's illustration of the 'transformation from values to prices' is inconsistent, and its defense of his 'Law of the Tendential Fall in the Rate of Profit'. It rejects other interpretations by showing that only a 'temporal', 'single-system' interpretation is consistent with Marx's accounting. The book shows that Marx became seriously interested in accounts from the late 1850s during an important period in the development of his critique of political economy, asking Engels for information and explanations. Examining their letters in the context of Marx's evolving work, it argues, supports the hypothesis that discovering he could explain them with his theory of value gave him the breakthrough he needed to decide how to present his work and explains why, in 1862, he decided to change its title to Capital. Marx's explanations of capitalist accounting, it concludes, amount to an 'accounting theory' that explains how individual capitalists and the capital market use what is, for many, the 'invisible hand' of accounting to control the production and distribution of surplus value. Marx claimed his theory of value was a work of 'science', a critique of political economy that would deliver a 'theoretical blow' from which the bourgeoisie would 'never recover'. He failed, critics argue, because his critique depends on hypothetical entities, which we cannot directly observe, such as 'value' and 'abstract labour', 'surplus value', which means his theory is not open to empirical refutation. The book, however, argues that he used his theory of value to explain the 'phenomenal forms' of 'profit', 'rate of profit', etc., by explaining the observable accounting principles and practices capitalists use to calculate and control them, in which, as he said, we can 'glimpse' the determination of value by socially necessary labor time, which experience could have refuted.

Since its inception some 40 years ago, petroleum-specific taxation in the UK has been subject to numerous modifications. Often these modifications were brought into place not only to sufficiently incentivise the investors but also to capture a fair share for the government. However, it is evident from the frequency of changes that finding the right balance between these two aims is no easy matter. Such a balance, and the consequent fiscal stability, is necessary for the long-term relationship between the parties to endure to their mutual benefit. Still, it does not take much for one or other party to feel that they are out of balance. As a consequence, one party feels that the other party is taking an undue proportion of the value generated and that they are losing out. Yet achieving that balance and fiscal stability is possible. To understand this possibility, this book first clarifies what is meant by sufficient incentivisation and fair share before developing a new fiscal system that manages this balance and stability. Such clarification yields objective criteria against which to assess not only the existing regime, but also the newly proposed regime. This approach is further complemented by the critical analysis of the fiscal legislative framework and the evaluation of the legal positions of specific contractual elements and mechanisms found within that framework. This latter analysis is important in order to reduce the legal uncertainty such elements may create, which can otherwise lead to further reactive amendments and revisions to the fiscal regime in the future.

This book traces the emergence and transformations of asbestos compensation to explore the wider issue of to what extent legal systems have converged in the era of globalization. Examining the mechanism by which asbestos compensation is delivered in Belgium, England, Italy and the United States, as well as the cultural forces and actors which contribute to its emergence and transformations, the book advances our understanding of how law operates within cultural norms, routines, and institutional relations of capitalist societies. With material gathered from 50 interviews and from primary and secondary sources, the author considers law as a cultural phenomenon, national styles of legal culture and the convergence and divergence of legal cultures, and law as a form of institutionalized power.

First published in 1997, this volume emerged in response to the need for material on the research, development, use and application of mass appraisal techniques for ad valorem property tax systems. The primary paradigms discussed include regression, base home technique, adaptive estimation procedure and artificial neural networks. Intending to address a wide range of property types, the authors explored residential, condominiums, retail, office and industrial property as well as agricultural and forestry land.

This handbook is intended primarily for practitioners such as accountants, auditors, financial analysts, business managers, and chief executives. The primary focus of this book is on techniques and concepts of cost and management accounting for strategic business decisions. In order to survive in the changing business environment, organizations should rethink their strategic philosophy and the role of management accounting. Management accounting systems exist to help managers make economic decisions. In preparing and assessing their strategic plans, organizations need information on many areas of their business environment. Management accounting is also in a process of change. While some businesses continue to use conventional methods of costing, performance measurement and cost analysis, increasing numbers are adopting activity based cost allocation system, strategic oriented investment decisions models, and multiple performance measures such as the Balanced Scorecard. This handbook focuses on both conventional and contemporary issues in cost and management accounting. It presents an intriguing combination of 20 chapters, separated for presentation purpose into seven themes, dealing respectively with: organizational planning and controls; costing for business decisions; pricing decisions; capital budgeting decisions; performance measurement and benchmarking; contemporary management accounting tools; and management accounting for the public sector. All chapters in this handbook provide both retrospective and modern views and commentaries by knowledgeable scholars in the field, who are able to offer unique insights on the changing role of cost and management accounting in today s businesses.

Newly revised in 2011. Contains the auditing standards promulgated by the Comptroller General of the United States. Known as the Yellow Book. Includes the professional standards and guidance, commonly referred to as generally accepted government auditing standards (GAGAS), which provide a framework for conducting high quality government audits and attestation engagements with competence, integrity, objectivity, and independence. These standards are for use by auditors of government entities and entities that receive government awards and audit organizations performing GAGAS audits and attestation engagements.

Spending on M&A has, in aggregate, grown so fast that it has even overtaken capital expenditure on increasing and maintaining physical assets. Yet McKinsey, the leading management consultancy, reports that "Anyone who has researched merger success rates knows that roughly 70% fail". The idea that businesses might be using huge and increasing sums of shareholders' money for an activity that more often than not leads to failure calls into question the information on which M&A decisions are based. This book presents statistical studies, case material, and standard-setters' opinions on company accounting before, during, and after M&A. It documents the manipulation of annual accounts by acquirers ahead of share for share bids, biased forecasts of post-merger earnings by bidders, and devices to flatter earnings when recording the deal. It explores the challenges for standard-setters in regulating information flows during and after M&A, and for account-users wishing to learn from financial statements how a deal has affected performance. Drawing on a wide range of international examples, this readable book is targeted not just at accounting specialists but at anyone who is comfortable reading the serious financial press, is intrigued by what is going on in the massive M&A market, and is concerned with achieving better-informed M&A. As such it might be of particular interest to business executives, lawyers, bankers, and investors involved in M&A as well as graduate students interested in researching or learning about the role of accounting in M&A.

As the main overview book of the FY 2021 Budget, this volume contains the Budget Message of the President, information on the President's priorities and budget overviews by agency, and summary tables. From large corporations and small business companies interested in developing new products for specific markets to policy makers, contractors, and federal agency personnel, this reference may be the go-to-resource to have at your hands for 2021 federal spending priorities.

This book examines key methodological and organizational questions with regard to assessing the quality of internal audits. By studying the status quo of these audits in the public sector, including municipalities, it identifies relevant weaknesses, loopholes and issues. In addition, the book assesses the strengths and weaknesses of the approved control system to explain the reasons why, and conditions under which, internal audits are ineffective, and proposes new metric and non-metric indicators to improve the quality of internal auditing. Given its scope, the book offers a valuable guide for anyone responsible for financial controls and internal audits, and will appeal to students and financial practitioners alike.

The Routledge Companion to Accounting History presents a single-volume synthesis of research in this expanding field, exploring and analysing accounting from ancient civilisations to the modern day. No longer perceived as the narrow study of how a mysterious technique was used in past, the scope of accounting history has widened substantially. This revised and updated volume moves beyond the history of accounting technologies, accounting theories and practices and the accountants who applied them. Expert contributors from around the world explore the interfaces between accounting and the economy, society, culture and the polity. Accounting history is shown to offer important insights into such disparate phenomena as the evolution of capitalism, control of labour, gender and family relationships, racial exploitation, the operation of religious organisations, and the functioning of the state. Illuminating the foundation and development of accounting systems, this updated, classic book opens the field to a new generation of accounting scholars and historians around the world.

Originally published in 1994, International Developments in Assuring Quality in Higher Education describes a range of national and international developments which evaluate the quality of education provided by public and private tertiary institutions. The book is based on papers from a conference organized by the International Network of Quality Assurance Agencies in Higher Education, and held in Montreal in 1993. Regional perspectives from Africa, Asia and the Pacific, Latin America, North America and Western Europe are followed by an account of national quality assurance agencies in Chile, Denmark, Korea, New Zealand, South Africa, Quebec, Romania, Scotland and the USA. There are also chapters on the work of UNESCO and the World Bank in promoting quality in higher education in industrialising nations. Together these papers supplement the account of international initiatives.

Originally published in 1995, The Business of Higher Education focuses on innovation in student financial services. It looks at the area of banking function as a tool for colleges and universities, and how this can be used to meet the market demand for new services. It also addresses how this can be used to balance the financial aid budget. The book documents just how much each colleges and universities have changed over the last decade and how each has changed given that market forces increasingly shape institutional aspirations.

The bestselling and astonishingly simple guide to the fundamental principles of accounting, written specifically for those without a financial background. Simple, easily absorbed and clearly explained, this book will guide you through all the major accounting concepts. You will learn how to master company accounts, understand balance sheets, profit and loss accounts and cash flow systems and how to analyse and monitor your company's financial performance.

This book facilitates a systematic comprehension of internal workings of corporate governance in practice. Facets of this multidisciplinary, constantly evolving field are discussed and interrelationships among them are explained to provide insights on how certain precepts come into play for various roles in governance. This book pragmatically explains and illustrates with a view to integrate. To keep the scope achievable, the emphasis is placed on the U.S.-based companies; where possible, differences in governance around the world are identified. Three rich sources of knowledge help shape the message of this book: existing paradigms, personal experience in governance, and research on issues and challenges of governance. Features: Permits a holistic view of the complex corporate governance landscape. Discusses and generously illustrates the practice of corporate governance. Aids understanding of issues and challenges of corporate governance. Identifies ways to advance the value of one's role in corporate governance. Teaches how to avoid crucial mistakes that compromise the value of one's contribution in the governance process. If you are a professional accountant, securities lawyer, economist, financial analyst, auditor, executive, entrepreneur, or an investor, you will find the book helpful in understanding the entire landscape of governance fairly quickly. Those already involved in the governance arena may find the book refreshing, and may use it to coach others. This book can serve as a reference book in any offering of a course at any academic level.

Drawing upon established academic theory, the study argues that the Big Four, as part of a globalizing transnational capital class, has dominated indigenous firms by bringing to China an ideology that came to be accepted as normative. By winning this battle of ideology, the Big Four gained access to the coercive power of the State, and to the power of transnational institutions that have subsumed part of the power of the State. Indigenous firms have pursued a counter-hegemonic strategy of undermining the ideological superiority of the Big Four through the infiltration and modification of institutional arrangements following what the academic literature calls "the long march through the institutions.