The commonly used financial statements--balance sheet, income statement, and statement of changes in cash flows-- focus on a firM's financial structure and performance over a defined period of time. Although they may conform to generally accepted accounting standards they still fail to provide other information that is equally important to achieving true full disclosure. Riahi-Belkaoui proposes remedies for this neglect by taking a close look at other types of statements: the inflation, value added, employee, social performance, and human asset reports. His book is a concise, easily accessed summary of all types of reports, for practitioners, and especially useful as a text or review for students in graduate level courses in financial management and accounting.

The author begins by examining the traditional statements. He shows how they fail to disclose vital information on the measurement and impact of inflation; the measurement of total wealth generated by the total production team, not merely its return to stockholders; necessary information on employees, and about them, that can be useful in management decision making; the measurement of social costs and the benefits attributable to the effects of organizational behavior on the environment, and the measurement of the value of human assets. He takes up these failures and neglects one by one and provides concise discussions of the other, less widely used statements that could remedy them, statements that could provide a fully useful display of an organization's financial well being, if they were better understood and commonly available.

The inclusion and factoring of political risk into accounting and non-accounting decisions is crucial if multinational firms are to avoid negative consequences ranging from unprofitable business environments to the outright expropriation of their assets. In a work that will be of particular value to professionals and academics in international and domestic finance, accounting, and management, the authors examine the characteristics of environments that give rise to political risk, explore the relationship between low economic growth and high political risk, and differentiate between definitions and forecasting models of political risk. They also provide a unique forecasting model to explain and predict risk, and they suggest alternative strategies for managing political risk.

Accounting may be viewed and analyzed as its own special sort of language says Riahi-Belkaoui, and accounting is the language of business. It represents phenomena in the business world as language represents phenomena in the larger world. To understand accounting as a language one must study such things as its readability and understandability, its impact on users behavior, its various linguistic repertories, and the impact that bilinguality has on accounting practices. Riahi-Belkaoui covers all this in a way that not only academics versed in linguistics will understand, but in a way that trained accountants will also find fascinating and useful, particularly in their international and multicultural activities.

Riahi-Belkaoui examines what he considers to be the four major aspects of his topic. First, he explores how accounting messages are based on levels of readability and understanding. Second he shows how accounting includes both lexical and grammatical characteristics, and how these shape the perceptions and thoughts of users. He then illustrates the ways in which different linguistic repertories are used by different professional groups, and shows how this leads to communication problems and from there to a schism between academics and practitioners. Finally he argues that bilingualism in accounting has clear advantage. It provides greater mental and cognitive flexibility, increased metalinguistic ability, and also makes it possible to formulate concepts better and to deal with divergent thinking.

Multinational corporations face different tax systems in different countries that require careful tax planning. A systematic approach is needed to minimize and avoid unnecessary business taxes. Some core issues of international taxation are part of a successful corporate tax plan in an international context. The first issue is a good understanding and appreciation of the principles of international taxation that include the different philosophies of taxation, the different kinds of taxes, the different tax systems, the different tax treaties and potential tax havens. The second issue is a thorough understanding of U.S. taxation of foreign income to avoid double taxation and the computation of foreign tax credits. The third issue is the choice of a transfer pricing method and the compliance with tax regulations on both the transfer of tangible and intangible assets. The fourth issue is the intelligent use of tax vehicles for exporting which can generate substantial savings and reduce the effective tax rate and involve the choice between the interest-charge domestic international sales corporation and the foreign sales corporation. A final issue is the efficient use of value-added taxation for activities taking place outside the U.S., and a new appreciation of the potential of this form of taxation for the United States. Practicing accountants, academics, business executives, students, legislators, and others who want a better understanding of the complex issues of international taxation will be interested in this book.

The functioning of the global economy depends very much on the quality and quantity of information provided by multinational corporations, not only to investors and taxing agencies but also to governmental policymakers. Underlying this is the concept of disclosure adequacy. It refers to ways in which the quality of information that MNC's divulge about their economic transactions can be measured, and such information and its adequacy can vary widely from country to country. How this happens and why it should be so-what the nature of disclosure adequacy and its determinants are-is the subject of Riahi-Belkaoui's latest Quorum book. Academics in finance and accounting will recognize quickly the beginnings of a contingency theory of disclosure adequacy internationally, one that identifies various relativisms and presents empirical evidence for their validity. Financial analysts and other investment professionals will gain useful ways to work with (and make sense of) foreign firms' annual reports, while public policy people will find insights to aid in the harmonization of accounting principles.

Riahi-Belkaoui's contingency approach to disclosure adequacy identifies determinants based on cultural, linguistic, political, civil, economic and demographic relativisms, on legal and tax relativisms and even on religious relativism. He presents evidence that accounting for information adequacy does in fact have a positive impact on economic growth. It is also an ideal mechanism by which firms can control conflicts created by favorable or unfavorable information regarding the general investment climate of a particular country. He examines international differences in disclosure adequacy, then proves there is a positive relationship between the functionings of global stock exchanges and economic and human development. From there he discusses the relationship between disclosure adequacy and political, economic, and civil factors. Finally, he examines four cultural dimensions-individualism, power distance, uncertainty avoidance, masculinity-and their impact not only on disclosure adequacy but on the way the entire accounting enterprise is practiced internationally.

Multinationality, or the degree of internationalization, has favorable financial results and implications. Highly valued by the market as a hidden asset, multinationality is related to earnings management, systematic risk, capital structure, and growth opportunities as measured by the investment opportunity set. Riahi-Belkaoui examines the performance results of a multinational strategy and concludes that multinationality can be quantified and does play a significant role in keeping a firm healthy and growing. His book is a far-reaching examination of the data and a persuasive argument for why firms should make multinationality a critical part of their overall business strategy.

Riahi-Belkaoui presents research results supporting multinationality. He confirms that the market reacts more favorably the larger (smaller) cash flows are (accruals), and he shows that the preference of cash flows over accruals will increase under conditions of high multinationality and high reputation. He argues that the level of multinationality affects net income and net worth and thereby, political costs and risk. Analyzing the association between multinationality and systematic risk as measured by the market model beta, he finds that systematic risk is positively related to the level of multinationality after controlling for corporate reputation and other factors. He examines the role of multinationality and profitability as determinants of the investment opportunity set and considers whether a firM's investment opportunity is associated with corporate financing. Finally, he investigates whether disclosure policy, level of economic risk, and the nature of the alignment of financial and tax accounting explain differences in financial analysts' forecast error internationally. The book concludes with a model of the determinants of the investment opportunity set of multinational firms.

Riahi-Belkaoui's research shows that U.S. firms, and possibly firms elsewhere, resort to the underutilization of their resources, a phenomenon known as organizational and budgetary slack. In this, the first exhaustive study of slack, the author identifies and explains the phenomenon and its causes, explicates the characteristics of organizations afflicted by it, and suggests ways to remedy it. In doing so, he also analyzes the role of the multidivisional structure and the performance plan in the creation of slack, and the distortion of information that accompanies it. A challenging study for organizational behavior theorists and for organization planners and top management in the private and public sectors.

The impact of multinationality on the operations of a firm is clear and strong. Riahi-Belkaoui shows how it affects the known relationships between earnings, efficiency, disclosure, and market valuation by its role as a dependent, moderating, intervening antecedant or consequent variable. Its impact can be felt, for example, in relationships and phenomena such as the timeliness and the informativeness of earnings, the underreaction of securities analysts, post-earnings announcement drifts, and the level and quality of disclosure. An understanding of multinationality in the earnings-disclosure-efficiency-market valuation relationship can also be used by accountants and researchers in their daily activities, and by corporate executives in multinational organizational decision making. The result is a useful, probing exploration for academics and practitioners alike.

The mix of debt and equity called capital structure, representing major claims against a corporation's assets, has been the subject of a long debate focusing on its determination, evaluation, and accounting. Riahi-Belkaoui uses both theoretical and contingency approaches to examine the question of whether capital structure really can be determined. Using a bond rating model he looks at the evaluation of capital structure and the resolution of issues pertaining to equity and liabilities and their contribution to the quality of capital structure reports. The book will be of special value to corporate financial officers and to graduate students and their teachers in accounting and finance.

Riahi-Belkaoui presents, first, the popular theories underlying the potential optimality of capital structure, the most popular of which is based on agency costs, asymmetric information, product/input market interactions and corporate control considerations. He then examines the same problem, first under a contingency of diversification and then a contingency of multinationality and investment opportunity. Since the evolution of capital structure rests on the ratings of a corporation's bonds, Riahi-Belkaoui offers a model that can be used for the prediction of industrial bond ratings. He concludes with an examination for equity and accounting for long-term liabilities.

As foreign direct investment of U.S. multinational firms increases rapidly, some key questions emerge from this trend: What is the true nature of multinationality and what are its impacts on firm performance? Both questions are answered in this book through an examination of the nature of multinationality and its alternative measures and the effect of the degree of multinationality on firm performance, where firm performance is expressed by firm value, financial performance, prediction performance of earnings forecasts, diversification strategy and ownership structure, and corporate financing. The book is of value to all those interested in international business, finance and accounting issues, including professional accountants, business executives, teachers, researchers, and students.

Clearly organized and readable, this work is a good introduction to cost accounting for someone with little prior course work or experience in the field. Most chapters include a list of suggested readings. Good index. Most appropriate for community college or public library collections. "Choice"

In response to the expanding roles of accountants in all types of organizations, cost accounting is becoming increasingly multidimensional, relying not only on traditional accounting principles, but also on behavioral, organizational, decisional, and other foundations. These conceptual foundations and their applications to cost accounting practices form the basis of this handbook, which offers both accounting students and professionals a comprehensive review and interpretation of cost accounting techniques and theories. By treating both traditional and newer dimensions of the discipline, the book defines a new scope and boundary that presents cost accounting in a multidimensional framework.

Ahmed Belkaoui presents his material from three different perspectives. First, he shows how the fields of cost accounting, economics, behavioral science, operations research, statistics, and mathematics provide the tools as well as the concepts necessary for the classification, accumulation, and reporting of relevant data for internal decision making and for the interpretation and evaluation of resulting decisions. Second, he demonstrates how standard cost accounting techniques can be complemented by other possible approaches to problems, stressing not only the descriptive but also the normative solutions to cost accounting problems. Finally, he examines how cost accounting techniques affect the planning and control of routine and nonroutine decisions, inventory valuation and income determination. Among the major new developments addressed are variance analysis, learning phenomena in cost estimation, flexible manufacturing systems, and behavioral considerations in cost allocation. This work will be especially valuable for professional accountants and graduate students preparing for an accounting career, and an important resource for academic and public libraries.

This professional book is designed for managers involved in the use of quantitative techniques to solve accounting-based problems. Belkaoui takes the reader in hand and carefully reviews the mathematical and statistical techniques needed to understand quantitative models, and then introduces those models of relevance to accounting areas of cost-volume-profit analysis, cost estimation, linear programming, cost control, inventory models, capital budgeting, and network analysis.

A firM's value consists of its assets-in-place and growth opportunities: its investment opportunity set. IOS plays a major role in determining a firM's corporate and accounting strategies, and how the marketplace reacts to them. Riahi-Belkaoui shows how IOS can be examined, measured, and used as one way to understand the various accounting and nonaccounting strategies espoused by management. His book fills a gap in the literature on this timely and provocative topic, and provides useful knowledge for upper management, academics, and graduate-level students.

The importance of the IOS concept is beginning to be acknowledged in the literature of empirical accounting, finance, and management. There, the investment opportunity set is introduced as an explanatory or moderating variable of the relationship between accounting and economic phenomena and various predictor variables. Riahi-Belkaoui explicates a concept of growth opportunities or IOS (Chapter 1) and provides a general model for its measurement (Chapter 2). He shows its role in a general valuation model based on dividend yield and price earnings ratio (Chapter 3), in the relationship between profitability and multinationality (Chapter 4), in the determination of capital structure (Chapter 5), in a general model of international production (Chapter 6), in a general model of corporate disclosure (Chapter 7), in the relationship between systematic risk and multinationality (Chapter 8), in a model of reputation building (Chapter 9), and earnings management (Chapter 10). He goes on to discuss its role in explaining the relative market value compared to the accounting value of a multinational firm in Chapter 11, and in differentiating between the usefulness of accrual and cash flow based on valuation models in Chapter 12.

In this book, Belkaoui turns his attention to significant problems he sees facing the accounting profession as a whole and examines their effects on the way accounting is practiced, on accountants' clients, and on business in general. The problems derive, Belkaoui explains, from new developments in the accounting environment including the organizational climate in CPA firms and the rising incidence of fraudulent cases. Arguing that these problems, if not resolved, will lead to a crisis of confidence in accounting and increasing government regulation of the profession, Belkaoui both identifies their causes and proposes solutions to avert a crisis in the field.

The book is divided into six chapters, each of which addresses a particular problem in contemporary accounting. Belkaoui begins by describing a new conflictual order in the accounting environment and goes on to examine particular conflicts generated by the profession's heavy reliance on credentialism, its role in the fragmentation of services in CPA firms, and its tenuous position in the courts. The following chapters show how the credibility of accounting has been shaken by fraudulent cases and explores ways in which the accounting work process has declined. Finally, Belkaoui explores problems associated with the high levels of job dissatisfaction and turnover in CPA firms and problems in the production of accounting knowledge. Students of accounting as well as practicing professionals will find both a sobering assessment of current accounting practices and an illuminating look at potential solutions.

Ahmed Belkaoui focuses on the contributions human information processing research can make in the study of accounting decision-making. Both a review and synthesis of the current literature and a springboard for further research, Human Information Processing in Accounting explores the basic psychological concepts underlying human decision-making and their applications to accounting. As Belkaoui notes at the outset, accounting information is used primarily for decision-making. Human information processing in accounting is designed to understand, describe, evaluate, and--most importantly--improve the decision process used in an accounting or auditing context. Belkaoui's book provides accounting students and practitioners with the first comprehensive overview of the ways in which human information processing research has been used to study and enhance accounting decision-making.

Divided into six parts, the volume begins by examining the policy-capturing process and the Brunswick Lens model used in this type of research. Subsequent chapters address the models of risky choice used to predict or describe how individuals make these types of choices, the application of probability elicitation and revision to accounting research and practice, the heuristics and biases individuals use to reduce complex cognitive processes to simpler judgmental operations, and the application of cognitive science to accounting. A number of chapters include appendices illustrating the type of accounting studies that exist for each of the human information processing paradigms presented. Taken as a whole, Belkaoui's work represents a pioneering attempt to focus and organize the field of human information processing in accounting.

Financial analysis, based on ratio analysis, has been used as a tool for analyzing the financial strength of corporations. Although ratio analysis is generally used as a univariate strategy, the accounting and finance literature has evolved to include multivariate-based models in financial analysis, and these models can be used to explain important economic events and often predict them. Thus, in an exhaustive coverage of the economic events to which they can be applied, Riahi-Belkaoui discusses these models in a way that will have special value to corporate management, financial planners, and to their colleagues in the academic community who specialize in business and economic analysis.

Belkaoui offers a thorough examination of the various factors that affect the judgment/decision process in an accounting setting. As the author notes at the outset, an appreciation of the various influences on accounting decisionmaking is of critical importance to users, preparers, and verifiers of accounting information--particularly in an era of multinational corporations and global markets. In order to explain the judgment process in accounting, Belkaoui proposes a new theoretical model which assumes both that a cognitive process guides judgments and decisionmaking in accounting and that the schemata underlying this process are shaped by the crucial factors of national culture, language, organizational culture, and contractual agreements. The author examines each of these influences in turn, offering a comprehensive guide to the practitioner and researcher seeking empirical hypotheses to explain the judgment process in the international accounting arena.

The bulk of the volume is devoted to an in-depth examination of each of the five relativisms which affect the accounting judgment/decision process--cognitive, cultural, linguistic, organizational, and contractual. In each chapter, the author explores the theory and findings underlying these relativisms in the social sciences and their contribution to explaining the judgment/decision process in accounting. The final chapter synthesizes the preceding material and develops an international accounting theory based upon the judgment/decision model. Throughout, Belkaoui focuses on the complexity and richness of the judgment/decision process, cautioning that the evaluation of any accounting information must take into account the various critical influences on this process.

Quality is becoming the most important competitive issue. The customer demands quality making it imperative to businesses to take it in serious consideration. It has become a matter of survival to provide a quality product. The concern with quality demands a) a better definition of the quality concept for each firm; b) a constant monitoring and planning of the quality standards and actions; and c) a continuous control of operations towards a quality objective. This is essentially the message and the content of this book: That quality needs to be defined contingent on the specific activities of the firm; that quality needs to be constantly monitored through a specific planning and recording system and finally, that quality is essentially the result of strong control activities. Belkaoui reviews the various approaches to the specification of the quality concept, the type of recording systems appropriate for its monitoring and the detailed control procedures needed to achieve it.

The book should be very helpful to executives involved in a total quality control program, management accountants involved in the control of quality and accounting students in managerial accounting courses.

The successful evaluation of capital projects requires not only a thorough understanding of traditional techniques of capital budgeting but advanced techniques as well. Riahi-Belkaoui examines the multidimensionality of capital budgeting in its various facets and in ways that executives with no special facility in the subject can follow. He covers replacement decisions, capital rationing, capital budgeting under inflation uncertainty, capital budgeting in a multinational setting with attention to political risks, social project evaluation, and concepts of wealth measurement and distribution. The result is a wide ranging treatment for executive decision makers in finance, banking, investment, and general management, and for their colleagues with similar interests in the academic community.

Riahi-Belkaoui begins by examining the principles underlying the time value of money. In Chapter Two he introduces capital budgeting and in Chapter Three moves to advanced capital budgeting. There he discusses such advanced topics as replacement decisions, capital rationing, and capital budgeting under uncertainty and inflation. In Chapter Four he takes up the same issues associated with capital budgeting but in a global context, and in Chapter Five, the determination of political risk and its use in capital budgeting internationally. Chapter Six compares the techniques of leasing versus purchasing and their reliance on capital budgeting techniques. In Chapter Seven he turns to the techniques of capital budgeting applied to social projects, and ends the book with an examination of the behavior and cognitive implications of wealth measurement and distribution. This is a useful survey and examination of the traditional and advanced techniques of capital budgeting and their applications in domestic and international contexts.

Distinguishing between accounting by design, in which accounting techniques and solutions are selected because they fit a pre-established goal, and accounting by principle, in which accounting techniques and solutions are selected according to principle and regardless of whether they mesh with preconceived ideas about the outcome, Riahi-Belkaoui describes designed accounting in detail. Characteristics of accounting by design can be found in income smoothing, earnings management, creative accounting, fraud, and slack. Preparers and users of accounting information, and anyone interested in the burgeoning accounting crisis, should find this book very valuable.

Belkaoui examines several innovative forms of financial reporting and disclosure emerging in various countries and how they can hamper attempts to harmonize accounting standards internationally. Among these are value-added reporting, information for employees and unions, the impact of value-added taxation and cash flow reporting. He also tries to summarize recent developments in comparative management research and the impact it may have on practice. The author attempts to provide a broad overview of all of these topics, which should appeal to students and to accountants with an interest in the recent developments in international accounting. "Journal of Accountancy"

This volume thoroughly examines new devlopments in international accounting from economic and social, as well as from accounting viewpoints. It reflects the current tension between attempts at unification by international standard setters and the emergence of innovative forms of reporting, disclosure, and taxation, as various countries attempt to improve their reporting accuracy. The product of this tension is the gradual but steady emergence of new accounting, reporting, disclosure, and taxation techniques of importance to the accounting practices of every country in the international arena.

Describes accounting methods designed to take into consideration not only economic factors but also factors related to the quality of life.

Leasing is by far the most important source of finance for various types of assets needed by firms, but this may cause problems. Among them are the decisions to buy or lease and the accounting decisions to capitalize or expense. Riahi-Belkaoui addresses both problems by examining the models and standards used both for management of and accounting for leases.

In five chapters Riahi-Belkaoui covers the issues involved in leasing and financing decision models and offers a decision format to reconcile disagreements among various approaches to the lease-or-buy analysis. He examines all the techniques proposed for accounting for long-term leases as formulated by the Statement of Accounting Standards No. 13 and then looks at specific issues. In his final chapter, a unique contribution to the literature on leasing, Riahi-Belkaoui explores the economics of buying. This is a valuable resource for financial accountants, decision makers, and researchers interested in the management of leases.