The South African Institute of Chartered Accountants recently made a decision to adopt accounting standards issued by the International Accounting Standards Committee rather than continuing to develop standards locally. Reasons used to justify this policy change include: the lack of resources to develop accounting standards from a zero base and, with what has been classified as the sub-standard financial reporting that occurs in South Africa. By adopting International Accounting Standards, amending the standard-setting process and providing legal backing for these standards, the South African Institute of Chartered Accountants aims to improve the standard of financial reporting. It will be argued that this decision will effect the contribution preparers of financial statements make to the standard-setting process. Corporate management as preparers of financial information participate in this process by reacting to proposed statements of generally accepted accounting practice in a number of ways, including lobbying the standard-setting body. This thesis aims to establish the views of South African corporate managers to the proposed changes to the accounting standard-setting process which incorporates the adoption of international accounting standards. To achieve this objective, the responses of South African corporate managers to the first six exposure drafts issued by the Accounting Practices Committee based on International Accounting Standards are examined to supply evidence that is descriptive in nature and which provides additional support for the findings of the empirical study. Forty hypotheses were developed and tested in an attempt to establish the views of executives to various issues relating to the accounting standard-setting process, corporate managers as the producers of firm specific financial information, the regulation of accounting, management incentive schemes and the international harmonisation of accounting standards. The tests of the hypotheses together with the findings of the individual case studies, provide evidence to suggest that this new disposition effectively marginalises South African corporate managers from the accounting standard-setting process. Finally, it is concluded that the existence of a management compensation/incentive scheme, is unlikely to influence corporate management's reaction to a proposed accounting standard. / Auditing / D. Compt. (Applied Accountancy)

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“In the future, virtually every function in the world of financial services will be displaced, disintermediated and decentralized. The Internet gave us a powerful way to share and access information. Blockchain now gives us a powerful way to share and access value.” During a February 2017 AICPA roundtable, Chairman of the Wall Street Blockchain Alliance and previous Global Head of Trading Analytics at Thomson Reuters, Ron Quarantana spoke to the revolutionary scale of blockchain. Quaranta, viewed by many as an expert in financial technology, predicts that the adoption of blockchain, both by the Big Four accounting firms and their clients, will disrupt the accounting industry by greatly reducing the time and skill needed to perform a quality audit. Some, such as Thomson Reuters’ Jon Baron, even claim that blockchain may eliminate the need for financial statement audits altogether. To many, blockchain is synonymous with Bitcoin, the cryptocurrency that, over the past three years, has returned 3,310%, compared to 35% and 36% returns of the S&P 500 and Dow Jones Industrial Average (DJIA), respectively. Blockchain, however, is much more than Bitcoin, with applications stretching further than cryptocurrency. Rather, it is a peer-to-peer hosted public ledger that does not require a central authority to support or verify transactions, and is unalterable in future periods. In this study, I propose to examine what blockchain technology means for the 887,000 people currently employed by the Big Four. More specifically, I seek to expand upon whether the potential adoption of blockchain in the coming years will reduce audit fees, impact audit quality, or perhaps do away with the audit completely.

M.Com. (International Accounting) / Leases have been used as an alternative means of financing for many years and they form part of the business models of entities in various industries. Many large JSE listed companies in different industries also use leases extensively. Although lease accounting requirements under IFRS have been in place for a number of years, some of the fundamental principles underlying the current lease accounting models have been the subject of much debate by standard setters and practitioners. In particular, the conceptual soundness of lessees not capitalising operating lease commitments has been a key area of consideration. In response to the conceptual debates, the IASB published an exposure draft titled ED/2010/9 Leases (hereafter ED), which will ultimately replace the current lease standard IAS 17. The ED establishes a new “right-of-use model”, which requires lessees to capitalize all leases on their balance sheets. The purpose of the minor dissertation was to determine the impact that the capitalisation of operating lease commitments under the requirements of the ED will have on the financial statements of JSE listed companies. In support of the research problem, the methodology applied in the minor dissertation was a quantitative content analysis, which was designed to obtain ex ante evidence on the potential future impact of the implementation of the ED. In order to assess the impact, the minor dissertation analysed the impact on total liabilities and total assets due to operating lease capitalisation, as well as the impact on certain key financial indicators and ratios. The initial sample was the top 50 companies in terms of market capitalisation that were listed on the JSE at 31 December 2011. After excluding companies with no or immaterial operating lease commitments, the final sample size was 44. The literature review showed that the impact of operating lease capitalisation has been researched in various countries, such as Canada, Germany, New Zealand, the UK and the US. During the completion of the minor dissertation it was found that a South African study was recently published on the impact of operating lease capitalisation on JSE listed companies. The study applied one of the methods identified in the literature for deriving information required to perform the operating lease capitalisation calculation and also assumed a uniform discount rate. The minor dissertation was based on an alternative method of deriving the required information and applied company-specific discount rates. The results of the research showed an increase in total liabilities and total assets due to operating lease capitalization. The impact on the key financial indicators and ratios varied, with some ratios impacted positively and others negatively. The impact was also found to be generally lower than international trends and differed from a similar study performed in South Africa.

FASB and IASB recently decided current revenue recognition practices were in dire need of an update and released a converged standard on revenue recognition under ASU 606 and IFRS 15. The new standard hopes to improve financial reporting by removing inconsistencies, improve comparability and overall provide more useful information to financial statement users. This paper examines how the new revenue recognition standard will impact the retail industry. This is said to be the biggest accounting standard change since Sarbanes-Oxley Act in 2002 and companies across the globe are gearing up to adjust current accounting practices to be in compliance with the new requirements. Though the accounting world is aware of the potential impacts of this new standard, is it is difficult to quantify exactly how much revenues will differ due to this change. Retailers that rely on gift card breakage as a large revenue stream will see the most material effects on their financial statements. Revised standards regarding revenue from loyalty programs and returns will also change how revenue is recognized but will have less of an impact than revenue from gift cards. Retailers can also expect their accountants to spend an abundant amount of time altering their accounting systems and restating historical data using the new method to calculate new revenue figures.

This study examines the incremental information of Canadian accounting principles when financial information according to US GAAP is known. The impact of SEC-required reconciliations of net income and voluntary disclosures of shareholders' equity reconciliations on share returns and prices are analysed. Based on such analysis, inferences are made about the incremental informativeness of Canadian GAAP. This study follows the concurrent study by Richardson et al. that examines the question of incremental informativeness of Canadian GAAP given the benchmark information provided by US GAAP. This study offers three contributions to this literature. First, it examines the components of reconciliation data and assesses their impact on share returns and prices. Second, it analyzes the effect of exchange rate flucuations on the relationship between reconciliation data and share returns. Third, it analyzes the impact of the dominant trading market on the relationship between reconciliation data and share returns. Unlike Richardson et al., the results of this study suggest that Canadian GAAP offers very limited incremental information when US GAAP financial information is known for Canadian firms that crosslist on the Toronto Stock Exchange and on a US exchange. Convergence of Canadian and US GAAP during the 1993-94 sample period used in this study may partially explain why its results are differenct from the 1983-93 sample period used by Richardson et al. Some components of the reconciliation data were statisticly significant in explaining crosslisted firms' returns (prices). However, exchange rate flucuations, location of dominant market and reporting currenies were not statistically significant in explaining crosslisted firms' returns (prices). / Business, Sauder School of / Graduate

Accounting information is an integral part of the information set used by investors. However, accrual based accounting earnings are susceptible to earnings management. Investors are concerned about earnings management since earnings management can distort reported earnings and they may make decisions that they otherwise would not have made. The purpose of this thesis is to examine the impact of earnings management on the informativeness of reported earnings about firm value and analysts' forecasts. Chapter 2 develops an earnings management model and examines the impact of earnings management on income smoothing and the earnings response coefficient. Chapter 3 critically reviews the existing discretionary accrual models and discusses the measurements of earnings management and income smoothing, which are used in the subsequent empirical chapters. Chapter 4 empirically examines the impact of earnings management on the earnings response coefficient after controlling either for the smoothness of pre-managed earnings or for the smoothness of reported earnings. Firms are further decomposed into income smoothing and variance-increasing earnings management firms and the same analyses are repeated. Chapter 5 examines the impact of smoothness of reported earnings and earnings management on the equilibrium demand for analysts' services and the properties of analysts' forecasts. This thesis contributes to our understanding of the impact of earnings management on firm value and analysts' forecasts by providing empirical evidence consistent with the hypothesis that the financial market and analysts are aware of the nature of a firm's discretionary accrual policy, and use their beliefs about the firm's discretionary accrual policy in assessing firm value and deciding whether to follow the firm. / Business, Sauder School of / Graduate

This study is an investigation of the theoretical accounting viewpoints and the accounting procedures used in business practice for the origination and administration of a self-insurance program. The purpose of this study is to compare the correct theoretical accounting procedures for self-insurance planning with those used in practice today.

Becoming a Certified Public Accountant (CPA) is the goal of many aspiring accountants. Universities and colleges prepare students to gain the necessary skills to pass this certification exam; however, the CPA exam is increasingly difficult, and students continuously struggle trying to pass all four parts of the CPA exam. The goal of this research project is to gain a better understanding of how ETSU can better prepare students to become CPA exam ready, since this certification leads to increased job opportunities, pay, etc. A survey was sent out to 90 previous graduate students at ETSU with both multiple choice and open-ended response questions. The data was analyzed qualitatively since 16 people responded, and broad conclusions of the results were assessed. Questions in the survey asked students to give their input on how ETSU can improve the Master of Accountancy (M.Acc.) program, identify parts of the CPA exam that were troublesome and easy, how prepared students felt for the CPA exam, etc. The findings of this survey presented a wide range of opinions on ETSU’s ability to prepare students for the CPA exam and offered valuable insight to be considered.

The main problem of this investigation is to study certain aspects of accounting education in the senior and junior colleges of Oklahoma during the school year 1957-1958 for the purpose of making proposals for its advancement.