Shareholder Value and Auditor Independence

This Article questions the practice of framing problems concerning auditors\u27 professional responsibility inside a principal-agent paradigm. If professional independence is to be achieved, auditors cannot be enmeshed in agency relationships with the shareholders of their audit clients. As agents, the auditors by definition become subject to the principal\u27s control and cannot act independently. For the same reason, auditors\u27 duties should be neither articulated in the framework of corporate law fiduciary duty, nor conceived relationally at all. These assertions follow from an inquiry into the operative notion of the shareholder-beneficiary. The Article unpacks the notion of the shareholder and tells a particularized story about the shareholder interest. The exercise complicates the agency description, highlighting multiple and unstable shareholder demands that displace the unitary model of the shareholder usually brought to bear. This fragmented and volatile model of the shareholder provides neither a basis for articulating a coherent set of instructions respecting aggressive accounting nor for imposing conservative accounting. The Article concludes that legal positivism provides a more appropriate conceptual framework. Auditor duties should be conceived in formal rather than relational terms, with fidelity going to the rules and the system that auditors apply rather than to a client interest

A Survey of Agent-Based Modeling Practices (January 1998 to July 2008)

In the 1990s, Agent-Based Modeling (ABM) began gaining popularity and represents a departure from the more classical simulation approaches. This departure, its recent development and its increasing application by non-traditional simulation disciplines indicates the need to continuously assess the current state of ABM and identify opportunities for improvement. To begin to satisfy this need, we surveyed and collected data from 279 articles from 92 unique publication outlets in which the authors had constructed and analyzed an agent-based model. From this large data set we establish the current practice of ABM in terms of year of publication, field of study, simulation software used, purpose of the simulation, acceptable validation criteria, validation techniques and complete description of the simulation. Based on the current practice we discuss six improvements needed to advance ABM as an analysis tool. These improvements include the development of ABM specific tools that are independent of software, the development of ABM as an independent discipline with a common language that extends across domains, the establishment of expectations for ABM that match their intended purposes, the requirement of complete descriptions of the simulation so others can independently replicate the results, the requirement that all models be completely validated and the development and application of statistical and non-statistical validation techniques specifically for ABM.Agent-Based Modeling, Survey, Current Practices, Simulation Validation, Simulation Purpose

Analysis and modeling a distributed co-operative multi agent system for scaling-up business intelligence

Modeling A Distributed Co-Operative Multi Agent System in the area of Business Intelligence is the newer topic. During the work carried out a software Integrated Intelligent Advisory Model (IIAM) has been develop, which is a personal finance portfolio ma

Sweet dilemma of mine : how glucose levels influence cooperation after a crisis?

Diariamente tomamos decisões complexas que requerem tempo e esforço que não podemos despender. Compreender como decidimos em ambientes ambíguos com recursos cognitivos limitados torna-se essencial para todos nós. Este trabalho surge da intersecção da Psicologia e Neurociência, analisando a tomada de decisão cooperativa. O objectivo é analisar como diferentes níveis de glicemia influenciam a cooperação depois de um evento crítico. Aqui, a crise é operacionalizada como uma crise de recursos num dilema social. Esta investigação torna-se a primeira a explorar a relação entre glucose e cooperação pós-crise. A nossa amostra consiste em 47 adultos voluntários de ambos os géneros, recrutados através do método de amostragem snowball. Usámos uma tarefa commons dilemma com duas condições de perigo de extinção de recurso (High vs Low Danger) e manipulámos os níveis de glicemia dos participantes administrando uma bebida rica em ou sem açúcar. Desta forma, a experiência consistiu num design factorial 2 Glucose (glucose vs placebo) x 2 Danger (High vs Low), inter-sujeitos. Os dados sugerem que participantes com níveis mais elevados de glucose sanguínea são mais cooperativos num contexto pós-crise (e não antes) e principalmente quando há maior perigo de extinção de recursos (condição High Danger). Estes resultados implicam que a glucose sanguínea influencia processos de tomada de decisão, replicando estudos anteriores; e que pode influenciar as decisões cooperativas em alguns contextos. Assim, sugerimos que níveis de glicemia mais baixos estão associados a uma redução dos recursos cognitivos o que promove um processamento cognitivo intuitivo, estimulando o uso de certas heurísticas sociais. Sugerimos que investigações futuras analisem quais as heurísticas sociais mais salientes em diferentes cenários pós-crise, sob diferentes níveis de glicemia. A combinação de métodos da Psicologia, Neurociência e Computação, integrando assim diferentes áreas da Ciência Cognitiva, permitirá continuar a expandir o nosso conhecimento sobre a tomada de decisão cooperativa.Daily we face complex decisions that require time and effort that we do not possess. Understanding how we make decisions in uncertain environments with limited cognitive resources becomes essential to all of us. The present work arises from the intersection of Psychology and Neuroscience, focusing on cooperative decision-making. The goal is to examine how much we cooperate after a critical event, under different glycemic levels. Here, the crisis is operationalized as a crisis of resources in a social dilemma paradigm. This research becomes the first to explore the connection between glucose and post-crisis cooperation. Our sample comprises 47 volunteer adults from both genders, recruited through snowball sampling. We used a commons dilemma task, with two post-crisis conditions of resource depletion (High vs Low Danger) and manipulated participants’ blood glucose levels by administering either a sugar-rich or a no-sugar drink. Thus, the experiment consisted in a 2 Glucose (glucose vs. placebo) x 2 Danger (High vs. Low) factorial design, between subjects. Results suggest participants with higher blood glucose levels are more cooperative only in a post-crisis context (and not before) and mainly under greater danger of resource depletion (High Danger condition). Our findings do not imply a direct causal link between brain glucose and cooperation but instead that blood glucose levels influence decisionmaking processes, replicating previous studies; adding it can influence cooperative decisionmaking in some contexts. We propose lower blood glucose levels are associated with lower cognitive resources that, in turn, promote an intuitive processing type, boosting the use of certain social heuristics. We suggest that future research addresses which social heuristics are more salient in different post-crisis scenarios, under different glycemic levels. Combining methods from Psychology, Neuroscience and Computation, thus integrating different areas of Cognitive Science, could expand our understanding of cooperative decision-making

Continuous monitoring of enterprise risks: A delphi feasibility study

A constantly evolving regulatory environment, increasing market pressure to improve operations, and rapidly changing business conditions are creating the need for ongoing assurance that organizational risks are continually and adequately mitigated. Enterprises are perpetually exposed to fraud, poor decision making and/or other inefficiencies that can lead to significant financial loss and/or increased levels of operating risk. Increasingly, Information Systems are being harnessed to reinvent the risk management process. One promising technology is Continuous Auditing, which seeks to transform the audit process from periodic reviews of a few transactions to a continuous review of all transactions. However, the highly integrated, rapidly changing and hypercompetitive business environment of many corporations spawns numerous Enterprise Risks that have been excluded from standard risk management processes. An extension of Continuous Auditing is Continuous Monitoring, which is used by management to continually review business processes for unexpected deviations. Using a Delphi, the feasibility and desirability of applying Continuous Monitoring to different Enterprise Risks is studied. This study uncovers a significant relationship between the perceived business value of Continuous Monitoring and years of experience in Risk Management and Auditing, determines that all key architectural components for a Continuous Monitoring system are known, and indicates that Continuous Monitoring may be better suited for monitoring computer crime than monitoring strategic risks such as the loss of a competitive position