Zugleich: Diss. Köln, 2008. / Literaturverz.

This study examined the lobbying of the International Accounting Standards Board (IASB) by South African companies. The aim of this study was to establish the timing and methods of lobbying of the IASB by South African companies. Central to this study was the seminal work of Sutton (1984), predicting when and how companies lobby an accounting standard-setter. The research hypotheses for this study were formulated on the basis of Sutton’s (1984) predictions. The online questionnaire in this study was distributed to the top 100 JSE primary listed companies in order to collect primary data to test the four hypotheses regarding the timing, methods and perceived effectiveness of lobbying by South African companies. The findings of the empirical investigation indicated that most South African companies lobby later in the due process of the IASB and prefer using their auditors to support their views at the IASB. The findings are subject to certain limitations that are addressed in the study. Lastly, the researcher provided recommendations for future research in accounting standard-setting in South Africa. / Financial Accounting / M. Phil. (Accounting Sciences)

金融風暴喚起各界改革財務報表未能反映實際虧損的缺失，因此，新版國際財務報導準則第9號及第17號公報應運而生，未來正式接軌後，對於壽險業的財報將產生重大衝擊，更突顯其資產負債管理之重要性，故本研究係採用主成分分析建構極端利率情境，並考量折現率需反映現時狀況下，於資產面分別以攤銷後成本或公允價值衡量、負債面採公允價值評價，欲探討資產負債配置及攤銷後成本比重不同時，利率變動對於壽險公司股東權益波動度之影響，以供壽險業參考。 研究結果發現攤銷後成本比重能夠有效控制股東權益波動度。再者，壽險公司應審慎評估海外投資比例，並配合其壽險商品外幣保單之銷售策略加以布局，同時謹慎考量會計決策，適當選擇攤銷後成本權重，方能有效控制資產負債表之波動。 / The financial crisis has caused wide public concern since it is failed to reflect the actual losses in financial statements. As a result, International Accounting Standards Board (IASB) issued new International Financial Reporting Standards, IFRS 9 and IFRS 17. The surplus of life insurers may fluctuate sharply if assets and liabilities don’t match appropriately under these new IFRS Standards. We follow the international regulation standard by using principal component analysis to generate extreme interest rate shock scenarios. This study examines the volatility of surplus under extreme interest rate shock scenarios for different combinations of liabilities, fair-valued assets, and amortized cost assets. In particular, the assets are measured at amortized cost or fair value, and all liabilities were acquired at fair value approach. In the numerical analysis, we showed that it is one of the most effective methods to control the surplus volatility by adjusting the percentage of amortized cost assets. Furthermore, life insurer should adjust the percentage of foreign investments and insurance policies carefully in order to reduce the fluctuation in shareholders’ equity.

The Non-Financial Reporting Directive (“NFRD”),[1]is an important contributor to the European Union’s (EU) goal of creating a more sustainable future for all. By requiring large public-interest entities to report non-financial information relating to sustainability matters, the NFRD increases business transparency and gives stakeholders the opportunity to make more informed investment decisions, monitor corporate activities and initiate discussions based on current practices. The purpose of this thesis is to analyze the NFRD as it stands today and to analyze in what way the NFRD has the potential to improve by chiefly using the legal dogmatic method. The thesis reached its completion with an appropriate timing (January 2021) as the EU has announced its ambition to revise the NFRD by the first quarter of 2021. The conclusion drawn is that the NFRD should be revised on a series of points. Most importantly, reliability of the provided information should be secured through a stronger verification mechanism. Other areas for improvement concern the enlargement of the scope of the NFRD and the implementation of further measures securing comparable data.  [1]Directive 2014/95/EU.

Object of the thesis is to define differences in financial reporting according to the Czech Accounting Standards and to the standard file International Financial Reporting Standards and to the International Financial Reporting Standards for Small and Medium-sized Entities and cost accounting and statement of benefits of transition to financial reporting according to the International Financial Reporting Standards for Small and Medium-sized Entities.

Revenue recognition is one of the most crucial issues in financial reporting and the prevalent source for recent accounting scandals. International financial reporting standard setters are conducting a major project rethinking revenue recognition. Tentative proposals of the project Revenue Recognition feature an asset-liability approach relying on measurement at fair values or at allocated customer consideration amounts. This paper chooses construction contracts to illustrate and to evaluate the far-reaching changes implied by the proposals in a multi-period context. Main results suggest that the proposals are ambivalent in terms of relevance but critical in terms of reliability compared to the recent treatment under IAS 11. Particularly, a pure fair value approach yields irritating patterns of revenue recognition found inappropriate for stewardship purposes. While its adoption for revenue recognition under IFRSs is unlikely due to regulatory incompatibilities, measuring performance obligations at allocated consideration amount partly mitigates the concerns.

The broad aim of this research was to assess the decision-usefulness of environmental reports produced by South African companies that are listed on the Johanessburg Securities Exchange (JSE) to users of the reports. The study was motivated by a lack of research on the decision-usefulness of environmental reports in South Africa. The study was conducted in two phases. The first phase in form of a content analysis evaluated the decision-usefulness of the environmental reports of top 100 JSE-listed South African companies using a control list and a judgement scale. The second phase in form of a questionnaire survey was aimed at determining, the information needs of users of environmental reports produced by South African companies (that are listed on the JSE), the extent to which they read and employ the reports for making decisions. In addition, this phase was meant to ascertain the degree of users' satisfaction with the decision-usefulness of the environmental reports as well as elicit their suggestions on ways of improving the reports. Furthermore, the second phase was aimed at determining the users’ perception of the relative importance of environmental reports as well as ascertaining whether there was an expectation gap between the users and the preparers of the reports with regard to their decision-usefulness. The results of the content analysis phase of the study indicate that the environmental reports of the sampled companies were decision-useful, however their decision-usefulness varied widely. Although decision-useful, the environmental reports of the sampled companies were not comparable. In addition, the environmental reports of companies from sectors with a significant impact on the environment, and those of large companies were more decision-useful than the reports of companies from sectors with an insignificant impact on the environment and those of smaller companies. The results of the questionnaire survey phase of the study indicate that users prefer balanced environmental reports that disclose both negative and positive aspects that identify and describe key relevant issues, that are specific and contain accurate information, and that provide future oriented information. In addition, users prefer environmental reports that identify and address key stakeholders and their concerns, demonstrate the integration of environmental issues into core business processes, and that compare quantitative impacts against best practice. Furthermore, the results also indicate that users do read environmental reports, mostly from companies’ websites Portable Document Format (PDF) annual reports and that they mostly use the environmental reports for research, their own knowledge, and to hold companies accountable. However, users are not fully satisfied with the decision-usefulness of the environmental reports as they feel that there is a need to improve the reports in order to make them more decision-useful. The results also indicate that users perceive environmental reports to be more important than any other type of reports, most notably the financial reports. Comparing the responses of the users to those of preparers on various issues pertaining to the decision-usefulness of environmental reports, significant differences were found between the views of the two groups. These differences provide ample evidence that is consistent with the existence of an environmental reporting expectation gap in South Africa. This study makes several original contributions to environmental reporting literature, most notable of which is that, it is the first study in the South African context to empirically evaluate the quality (decision-usefulness) of environmental reports in line with the accounting conceptual frameworks and the GRI guidelines combined. By so doing, the study introduces to the academic literature an extensive five dimensional qualitative characteristic framework for evaluating the quality (decision-usefulness) of environmental reports. In addition, the study uniquely employs the decision-usefulness theory to provide insights into the environmental reporting practices of South African companies that are listed on the JSE. In so doing, it re-contextualises the theory that is typically employed in explaining financial reporting, and demonstrates its applicability in explaining the decision-usefulness of the environmental reporting practices of South African companies that are listed on the JSE. / Accounting / D. Com. (Accounting)

International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) are required or permitted for use in over 100 countries across the world. IFRS are developed by the International Accounting Standards Board (IASB). The IASB, with no formal or legal mandate, is performing a task normally reserved for national standard-setters. This study sought to establish the legitimacy of IFRS by assessing the due process of the IASB. The study established that countries have different motivations for choosing IFRS which raises legitimacy concerns. The global financial crisis compounded the legitimacy challenges of IFRS by exposing due process vulnerabilities. The study established that the IFRS governance structures are dominated by powerful stakeholders especially members of the G-20. Although the due process procedures provide opportunities for participation, actual participation is still dominated by constituents from Europe. Africa and South America still account for very low proportions of governance seats and participants in standard-setting projects. / Financial Accounting / M. Com. (Accounting)

隨著資訊科技的發展，會計資訊變得更具即時性與可及性。會計資訊的提供者可利用自動化系統即時產出財務報告，並進行線上財務報導；而會計資訊的需求者，也可利用網際網路不受時空限制的特性，擷取所需的資訊。會計資訊的及時性品質獲得重大改善，而針對異質性的資訊需求者，用更低成本的方式滿足其多元需求的可能性也大為增加。XBRL可說是近年來會計與資訊科技結合的一項重要進展。本論文將以我國會計資訊市場為背景，採用XBRL及其他相關資訊技術，開發出一套能提供異質性會計資訊使用者閱讀及查詢XBRL格式文件之資訊系統。 本研究以圍繞標準財務報導之客製化（Customization Around Standard Report, CASR）架構為藍本，並與客製化報導（Customized Financial Reporting, CFR）理論結合，完成以XBRL為資料格式的客製化財務報導系統（Customized Financial Reporting System, CFRS），俾驗證XBRL在我國會計資訊市場之技術可行性，並為異質性的資訊使用者創造附加價值。在外觀客製化方面，係透過客製化樣版的設計而達成；內容客製化的部分，則因採用XBRL資料格式及CFRS的系統功能，而實現並延伸了部分的內容客製化面向。 / Accounting information has become real-time and more accessible with the development of information technology. Providers of accounting information can use automatic systems to produce real-time financial reports and distribute them on the Internet; and users of accounting information can extract data freely from WWW (World Wide Web). Consequently, the timeliness of accounting information is greatly improved, and heterogeneous information users’ various demands could be satisfied. XBRL is an important achievement on the integration of accounting and information technology in the past few years. This paper uses XBRL and other information techniques to develop an XBRL-based information system for the heterogeneous users of Taiwan accounting information market to read and inquire XBRL documents. Our research is based on the architecture of the Customization Around Standard Report (CASR) model under the Customized Financial Reporting (CFR) theory. We have developed the Customized Financial Reporting System (CFRS) to verify the technical feasibility of XBRL in Taiwan accounting information market, and to create values for heterogeneous information users. We use customized style sheets for the customized presentation of accounting information, and implement several dimensions of content customization by using XBRL and CFRS’ s functionalities.

Financial reporting fraud leads to not only significant investment risks for external stockholders, but also financial crises for the capital market. Although the issue of fraudulent financial reporting has drawn much attention, relevant research is much less than issues of predicting financial distress or bankruptcy. Furthermore, one purpose of exploring the financial reporting fraud with various forms is to obtain a better understand of the corporate through investigating its financial and corporate governance indicators. This study addresses the challenge with proposing an approach with the following four phases: (1) to identify a set of financial and corporate governance indicators that are significantly correlated with the financial reporting fraud; (2) to use the Growing Hierarchical Self-Organizing Map (GHSOM) to cluster the normal and fraud listed corporate data; (3) to extract knowledge about the financial reporting fraud through observing the hierarchical relationship displayed in the trained GHSOM; and (4) to make the justification of the extracted knowledge. The proposed approach is feasible because researchers claim that the GHSOM can discover the hidden hierarchical relationship from data with high dimensionality.