Towards establishing a research tradition in accounting : a thesis presented in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Business Studies in Accounting at Massey University

Perhaps the most significant event to have affected accounting since the beginning of the 20th century was the stock market crash of 1929. Although the event took place in the U.S.A. and so only directly affected the American accounting profession the subsequent influence of the American profession on the professions in many other countries (England, Australia, Canada etc.) can be traced to this event. The significance of this event lies in the fact that it witnessed the beginning of a new era in the accounting discipline in which the general attitude toward the profession was transformed from one of disinterest to one quite the opposite. Although the attitude fostered was one of extreme disdain, the immediate consequence of which was widespread criticism of accounting practitioners and their practices, accounting was to its advantage never again to rest on its laurels. Notwithstanding the fact that the profession may have received a disproportionate amount of the blame for the events which took place at that time, the heavy criticism which the profession endured pointed unmistakably to many previously ignored responsibilities and inadequacies. Perhaps the most significant inadequacy was the fact that the profession was at a loss to answer or explain to its critics the rationale for the practices they were then using. Unable to successfully answer its critics and prompted by the threat of legislative sanctions and controls, accountants for the first time began to see the need for a critical examination of the practices which made up their discipline. Apart from the work of one or two individuals (e.g. Sprague, Paton) this amounted to the first recognition by accountants en masse of the need for research in accounting. This need for introspection was recognised by most professional bodies by the mid 1940's. The method of research adopted to facilitate this critical investigation centred around the wholesale gathering of data on what accountants were doing. The expected objective of this research was that one would from the collected information be able to establish common ways of doing things which could then, by the authoritative decree of the profession, be established as rules. This method of research continued largely unchallenged up until the 1950's and even today continues to dominate the way accountants conduct research. Concern had been expressed that research was not "organised" but this was not concerned with an organised plan of matters to be investigated or ways in which answers were to be sought but rather the questions of whether research should be an individual or group effort and whether certain issues deserved discussion with others (arguments of grouping). Since the 1950's however, concern has been expressed among the academic branch of the profession that the sort of research referred to above was not only ad hoc in nature, but hardly even deserving of the term 'research'. Sir Alexander Fitzgerald was one to come to this conclusion after considerable personal endeavour along these lines. He commented "Research is not merely an exposition of practices currently followed." (Fitzgerald, 1957, 2) Supporting Fitzgerald and also attacking the notion of authoritative rule-making, Chambers commented "We [must] question the formulation of rules before adequate analysis of the matters in respect of which they are made" (Chambers, 1966, 353). In efforts to provide a solution to the now wide open question - What is the best research method for accounting purposes?, reference has subsequently been made to the physical sciences which are thought, by virtue of the fact that they have the only well-developed research tradition, to have the only research method of any consequence. Evidencing this belief, Chambers, referring to his own particular efforts to outline a methodology for accounting, commented "... there was no pattern to follow except that of the well-developed sciences" (Chambers, 1966, 4). Following further investigation of the physical sciences however, what is now apparent is that there appears to be more than one explanation for their success and so more than just one finite method of research than that implied by the phrase 'scientific method'. In this thesis the intention is to investigate these latest developments with a view to deciding whether any or all of the explanations referred to have some relevance for accounting

A reconfigurable accelerator card for high performance computing

Includes abstract.Includes bibliographical references (leaves 68-70).This thesis describes the design, implementation, and testing of a reconfigurable accelerator card. The goal of the project was to provide a hardware platform for future students to carry out research into reconfigurable computing. Our accelerator design is an expansion card for a traditional Von Neumann host machine, and contains two field-programmable gate arrays. By inserting the card into a host machine, intrinsically parallel processing tasks can be exported to the FPGAs. This is similar to the way in which video game rendering tasks can be exported to the GFC on a graphics accelerator. We show how an FPGA is a suitable processing element, in terms of performance per watt, for many computing tasks. We set out to design and build a reconfigurable card that harnessed the latest FPGAs and fastest available I/O interfaces. The resultant design is one which can run within a host machine, in an array of host machines, or as a stand-alone processing node

A Modular Digital Twinning Framework for Safety Assurance of Collaborative Robotics

Digital twins offer a unique opportunity to design, test, deploy, monitor, and control real-world robotic processes. In this paper we present a novel, modular digital twinning framework developed for the investigation of safety within collaborative robotic manufacturing processes. The modular architecture supports scalable representations of user-defined cyber-physical environments, and tools for safety analysis and control. This versatile research tool facilitates the creation of mixed environments of Digital Models, Digital Shadows, and Digital Twins, whilst standardising communication and physical system representation across different hardware platforms. The framework is demonstrated as applied to an industrial case-study focused on the safety assurance of a collaborative robotic manufacturing process. We describe the creation of a digital twin scenario, consisting of individual digital twins of entities in the manufacturing case study, and the application of a synthesised safety controller from our wider work. We show how the framework is able to provide adequate evidence to virtually assess safety claims made against the safety controller using a supporting validation module and testing strategy. The implementation, evidence and safety investigation is presented and discussed, raising exciting possibilities for the use of digital twins in robotic safety assurance

Verified Synthesis of Optimal Safety Controllers for Human-Robot Collaboration

In human-robot collaboration, software-based safety controllers are used to improve operational safety, e.g., by triggering shutdown mechanisms or emergency stops to avoid accidents. Complex robotic tasks and increasingly close human-robot interaction pose new challenges to controller developers and certification authorities. Key among these challenges is the need to assure the correctness of safety controllers under explicit (and preferably weak) assumptions. To address this need, we introduce and evaluate a tool-supported approach for safety controller synthesis and deployment. The new approach focuses on human-robot collaboration in manufacturing, and is informed by the process, risk analysis, and relevant safety regulations for the target application. Controllers are selected from a design space of feasible controllers according to a set of optimality criteria, formally verified against correctness criteria, and translated into executable code and validated in a digital twin. The resulting controller can detect the occurrence of hazards, move the process into a safe state, and, in certain circumstances, return the process to an operational state from which it can resume its original task

Hegel, Adorno and the origins of immanent criticism

‘Immanent criticism' has been discussed by philosophers of quite different persuasions, working in separate areas and in different traditions of philosophy. Almost all of them agree on roughly the same story about its origins: It is that Hegel invented immanent criticism, that Marx later developed it, and that the various members of the Frankfurt School, particularly Adorno, refined it in various ways, and that they are all paradigmatic practitioners of immanent criticism. I call this the Continuity Thesis. There are four different claims that interest me. (i) Hegel is the originator of immanent criticism. (ii) Hegel's dialectical method is that of immanent criticism. (iii) Adorno practises immanent criticism and endorses the term as a description of his practice. (iv) Adorno's dialectical method is fundamentally Hegelian. In this article, I offer an account of immanent criticism, on the basis of which, I evaluate these four claims and argue that the Continuity Thesis should be rejected

Standards in semen examination:publishing reproducible and reliable data based on high-quality methodology

Biomedical science is rapidly developing in terms of more transparency, openness and reproducibility of scientific publications. This is even more important for all studies that are based on results from basic semen examination. Recently two concordant documents have been published: the 6th edition of the WHO Laboratory Manual for the Examination and Processing of Human Semen, and the International Standard ISO 23162:2021. With these tools, we propose that authors should be instructed to follow these laboratory methods in order to publish studies in peer-reviewed journals, preferable by using a checklist as suggested in an Appendix to this article.Peer reviewe

Book reviews

Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/46102/1/168_2005_Article_BF01287326.pd