ACCOUNTING FOR SUSTAINABILITY: WHAT NEXT? A RESEARCH AGENDA

This working paper responds to increasing calls for more and different forms of accounting research involvement in accounting for sustainability. It seeks to provide background, clarify the accounting research issues, and suggest research methods. The background analysis indicates that accounting for sustainability must go beyond supplemental reporting of ecological and social information to include such emerging issues as integrated reporting of sustainability information along with financial reporting. Additional emerging issues are needs of users of sustainability reports, auditing and other assurance of sustainability information, and sustainability implications of financial failure, accounting and auditing failures, and lack of enforcement. Analysis of integrated reporting against traditional financial accounting theory concepts of the purpose of financial reporting and the postulates of going concern, reporting entity, monetary unit, and time period, indicates a need for substantial changes in the traditional financial accounting model if sustainability issues are to be integrated. The agenda concludes with five research issues and methods: - An accounting research framework for sustainability using general systems theory approaches that have been useful for similar emerging issues. - Reporting of sustainability information which has been the focus of most research to date, and the emerging important topic of integrated reporting. - Users of sustainable information, their uses and perceived needs, an area that has been largely neglected in research to date.- Auditing and assurance issues that are taking on greater importance as more users demand assurance for sustainability information. Issues include standards to be used and users expectations and reactions. - Financial distress and sustainability consequences of accounting and enforcement failures that are just now being recognized as sustainability issues.accounting for sustainability, integrated reporting, needs of users, audit, assurance

Order, Counter-order, Disorder : The Role of the IT Auditor in the Financial Statements Audit

This thesis investigates the role of an IT auditor within a financial statements audit engagement. As the company’s information system environment evolves in tandem with the emergence of disrupting technologies, financial auditors cannot adapt their audit to suit these ever-more complex environments. Financial auditors increasingly resort to the employment of IT auditors to certify the integrity and reliability of the financial information emitted by information systems. It thus becomes pertinent to study the role adopted by an IT auditor during these engagements and to explore the dynamics of a working relationship. Therefore, this thesis seeks to define the role, duties and responsibility to IT auditors working with Financial auditors. In addition, the place of the IT auditor within the team and within the audit was inspected. For that purpose, a mixed-method case study was conducted via participant observation in a Big Four Audit Firm wherein the researcher took the role of an IT auditor-in-training. A process mining analysis on the formalization of the Planning and Conclusion workpapers of the IT audit complemented the research. The analyses contribute to a clearer understanding of the role and duties of the IT auditor during a financial statements audit. In addition, they uncover and seek to explain the dynamics between IT and Financial auditors. An established hierarchical team structure was highlighted throughout the results of the process mining analysis. The main conclusion reached by this thesis established the IT auditor as subservient to the Financial auditors with complex team dynamics. Within itself, the role of the auditor is flexible and adjustable to the different audit engagements, but the comprehension of the IT environment of the client and the applicable controls, IT general and IT applications controls, are as mandatory as the presentation of the conclusions to the Financial auditors

Innovation and Employability in Knowledge Management Curriculum Design

During 2007/8, Southampton Solent University worked on a Leadership Foundation project focused on the utility of the multi-functional team approach as a vehicle to deliver innovation in strategic and operational terms in higher education (HE). The Task-Orientated Multi-Functional Team Approach (TOMFTA) project took two significant undertakings for Southampton Solent as key areas for investigation, one academic and one administrative in focus. The academic project was the development of an innovative and novel degree programme in knowledge management (KM). The new KM Honours degree programme is timely both in recognition of the increasing importance to organisations of knowledge as a commodity, and in its adoption of a distinctive structure and pedagogy. The methodology for the KM curriculum design brings together student-centred and market-driven approaches: positioning the programme for the interests of students and requirements of employers, rather than just the capabilities of staff; while looking at ways that courses can be delivered with more flexibility, e.g. accelerated and block-mode; with level-differentiated activities, common cross-year content and material that is multi-purpose for use in short courses. In order to permit context at multiple levels in common, a graduate skills strand is taught separately as part of the University’s business-facing education agenda. The KM portfolio offers a programme of practically-based courses integrating key themes in knowledge management, business, information distribution and development of the media. They develop problem-solving, communications, teamwork and other employability skills as well as the domain skills needed by emerging information management technologies. The new courses are built on activities which focus on different aspects of KM, drawing on existing content as a knowledge base. This paper presents the ongoing development of the KM programme through the key aspects in its conception and design

Governance in state-owned enterprises revisited : the cases of water and electricity in Latin America and the Caribbean

This paper studies the governance structure of state-owned enterprises in the water and electricity sectors of Latin America and the Caribbean. Through a unique dataset, the paper compares 44 leading state companies of the region based on an aggregate measure of corporate governance and six salient aspects of their design: board, chief executive officer, performance orientation, management, legal framework, and transparency/disclosure. The results indicate the need for improvement in areas such as the selection and appointment of directors to the board and the performance-orientation of the enterprises. The paper also highlights the importance of discussing the management of state-owned enterprises in the wider context of public sector governance, with particular focus on accountability. Moreover, it recognizes the role of accountability as central in the management of state-owned enterprises, recommending a better understanding of regulation and performance management. The paper finds a positive correlation between corporate governance and the utilities'performance. Among the different aspects of corporate governance, performance orientation and professional management seem to be the highest contributors to well-performing state-owned enterprises. State-owned enterprises in the electricity sector show higher governance levels than those in the water sector.National Governance,Corporate Law,Private Participation in Infrastructure,Governance Indicators,Banks&Banking Reform

Denial at the top table: status attributions and implications for marketing

Senior marketing management is seldom represented on the Board of Directors nowadays, reflecting a deteriorating status of the marketing profession. We examine some of the key reasons for marketing’s demise, and discuss how the status of marketing may be restored by demonstrating the value of marketing to the business community. We attribute marketing’s demise to several related key factors: narrow typecasting, marginalisation and limited involvement in product development, questionable marketing curricula, insensitivity toward environmental change, questionable professional standards and roles, and marketing’s apparent lack of accountability to CEOs. Each of these leads to failure to communicate, create, or deliver value within marketing. We argue that a continued inability to deal with marketing’s crisis of representation will further erode the status of the discipline both academically and professionally