Child maltreatment is a worldwide concern. In the Commonwealth of Virginia, social workers are mandated reporters. When there is reasonable suspicion, they are required by law to report suspected child maltreatment to the appropriate Child Protective Services office. In this study, the research problem was the underreporting of child maltreatment, even when reasonable suspicion existed. The purpose of this study, as reflected in the research questions, was to understand social workers' perceptions of their role as mandated reporters, to explore how their perceptions impacted reporting, and to develop recommendations that could be implemented to help ensure appropriate reporting. An action research study was conducted with master's level social workers in southern Virginia. Symbolic interaction theory was used in researching the social workers' role and their perceptions as mandated reporters interacting with clients. Qualitative data were collected from a focus group of 6 social workers and analyzed using specific coding protocols. Six themes emerged: (a) importance of the role of social worker as a mandated reporter, (b) role conflict, (c) negative consequences, (d) feelings, (e) increased knowledge of child abuse laws, and (f) education of clients. The findings of this study may be used by regulators and agency personnel to design education, training, and supervision to help ensure social workers are prepared to appropriately respond to mandated reporting requirements.

Title: Sustainability accounting - A qualitative study about the understanding, usefulness and relevance of sustainability reporting based on an employee perspective. Problematization: There has been previous research about sustainability reporting through an external point of view. There is however a gap in research about sustainability reporting from an employee perspective. Purpose: The purpose of this study is to develop a better comprehension of how employees perceive the information presented in sustainability report and if they feel that the report is aimed for them or external stakeholders. Frame of reference: This episode began with previous research about the three qualitative characteristics that are used when creating a financial report. The framework of GRI is also presented. Lastly the stakeholder theory and stakeholder dialogue are introduced. Method: This study has a qualitative approach where 10 semi-structured interviews have been held to collect data. Research: The employees have a better understanding of the information related to the social and environmental issues. Furthermore they only consider the information regarding the environment to be useful in their daily work. The employees believe that the environmental and social part of the report is relevant while the economic could not be assessed by the employees. Conclusions: Diagrams, thorough explanations and knowledge of the subject increased the understanding of the report. The economical part can be further understood if there is more extensive content. The information becomes useful when they can directly use it in their daily work and when they feel that the information is aimed for them. They need to receive the information through meetings for it to be useful for them. They had little previous knowledge of the economical part and were there for not able to assess the relevance of the report's content while the environmental and the social area were relevant because the content has currently been highlighted in newspapers and debates.

This study investigates whether a relationship exists between fraudulent financial reporting and a variety of corporate governance attributes. Numerous high profile accounting scandals perpetuated over recent years have brought prominence to the corporate governance structure employed by US public companies. Many of these scandals involved manipulation of the financial reporting process by high level managers. It is therefore thought that a lack of effective oversight provided by the governing bodies engaged to monitor the actions of management may be at the heart of the problem. A review of prior research is used to identify the attributes of corporate governance relevant for inclusion in this study and to provide support for the posing of twenty directional hypotheses. The selected corporate governance attributes are classified into four broad categories depicting Audit Committee Functionality, Board of Director Composition, Ownership Structure, and External Auditor Factors. A matched pair research design is utilised to determine whether significant differences exist between the corporate governance attributes employed by fraud and non-fraud companies. A sample of 76 fraud companies, identified through an examination of Accounting and Auditing Enforcement Releases issued by the Securities Exchange Commission and drawn from a total of 223 companies examined, are tested along with an industry-size matched sample of non-fraud companies. The results of univariate paired t-tests and a conditional logistic regression equation find that statistically significant relationships do exist between a number of corporate governance attributes and fraudulent financial reporting. Specifically, the study finds that the percentage of independent directors on a company's board, the existence of a nominating committee, and the engaging of a Big6 auditor are negatively related to the incidence of fraud. Whereas, the average number of directorships held by audit committee members, the duality of the CEO and Chairman of the Board positions, and the percentage of company ownership held by outside blockholders are positively related to the incidence of fraudulent financial reporting.

Mini-dissertation (M.Com. (Accounting))--North-West University, Potchefstroom Campus, 2007.

Im Zuge der zunehmenden Digitalisierung von Unternehmens- und Finanzdaten war es ein Industriekonsortium, das auf Basis der eXtensible Markup Language (XML) die Sprache eXtensible Business Reporting Language (XBRL) entwickelte und damit die Finanzberichterstattung in ein neues Zeitalter versetzte. Internetbasiert, plattform-unabhängig, vergleichbar, transparent und in Echtzeit sollen Geschäftsdaten mittels der XBRL übertragen werden und zur Verfügung stehen. Die kumulative Dissertation untersucht dazu den Spannungsbogen zwischen Flexibilität und Automatisierbarkeit im Rahmen der XBRL-basierten Finanzberichterstattung. Neben der wissenschaftstheoretischen Auseinandersetzung mit Standards gibt die Dissertation einen systematischen Überblick von wissenschaftlichen Publikation zur XBRL-Forschung. Im Detail erbringt die Arbeit einen umfassenden und systematischen empirischen Nachweis zur Verwendung von erweiterten Berichtskonzepten sowie den empirischen Nachweis der Ausprägungen von einzelnen Konflikttypen in XBRL-basierten Finanzberichten und erweitert somit die bestehende wissenschaftliche Literatur um die gewonnenen Ergebnisse und Erkenntnisse. Die darauf aufbauende Methode steigert die Vergleichbarkeit der Finanzberichte und verwendet Techniken, welche Konflikte erkennen und diese nach Konflikttypen unterscheiden. Gleichzeitig werden die Möglichkeiten und Grenzen der Arbeit verdeutlicht und zukünftige Forschungsthemen aufgeführt.

Helmut-Schmidt-Universiẗat, Diss. u.d.T.: Stute, Andreas: Konvergenzpotenziale der Rechnungslegung nach IFRS--Hamburg, 2006. / Literaturverz. S. 453 - 479.

Universiẗat, Diss. u.d.T.: Wohlgemuth, Frank: Aussagefähigkeit der IFRS für die Bilanzanalyse aus Sicht der zwischenbetrieblichen Vergleichbarkeit--Saarbrücken, 2006.

Zugl.: Erlangen, Nürnberg, Univ., Diss., 2009

Zugl.: Mainz, Universiẗat, Diss., 2009.

Hochsch., Master-Thesis--Wismar.