Third sector accounting and accountability in Australia: anything but a level playing field

This research report seeks to understand why some Australian not-for-profit organisations make voluntary financial disclosures beyond their basic statutory obligations. Introduction This paper surveys previous work on voluntary information disclosures in accounting reports of Australian Not-for-Profit organisations (NFPs). This is new research and is a part of a project to evolve a comprehensive explanation of why Australian NFPs disclose what they do disclose; and to capture and explain patterns of variations between NFPs between what they regard to disclose and the type of information they disclose. To accomplish this, first some background information about the NFP sector are considered. Then, the Australian NFP sector is reviewed. Third, the information needs of some key stakeholders are briefly discussed. Next, the research methodology where a literature survey which looks at not just disclosures to NFPs but to the commercial sector that are plausibly &nbsp

Legal Origins of Fair Value Accounting

The paper seeks answers to the question how FASB was able to introduce the term ‘fair value’ into accounting standards and wider accounting discourse as frictionlessly as it did. Leading relevant court cases in the USA and UK in the previous two centuries had already enabled this to happen, but the judicial rationales for that term were significantly different from the current rationales in FASB and IASB. The paper traces the evolution of the notion from its origins in the ‘just price’ to its court appearances in the early stages of the Industrial Revolution through to its established meaning by the end of last century.The symposium is organised on behalf of AAHANZBS by the Business and Labour History Group, The University of Sydney, with the financial support of the University’s Faculty of Economics and Business

Towards an Ethical Framework Grounded in Everyday Business Life

Business is increasingly concerned to reconcile investor driven pressure to perform with statedriven pressure to conform (to a cascade of new regulation). Ethics generally favors the latter atthe expense of the former. The ethical frameworks developed in the last few years differ fromtheir classical predecessors, however. Integrative Social Contract Theory begins with the businesscontract and moves out from there to the wider society. Care theory begins with the relationshipbetween two individual persons and moves out from there. Both theories are skepticalof the Universalist claims of classical ethical and religious frameworks and both claim to beuser friendly. This paper compares and contrasts the two theories and hopes to show how theethical lacunae in ISCT can be fixed by Care Theory. How a business would operate under thesway of Care Theory is described. Fears that Care Theory cannot be applied to business withoutweakening competitive strength are addressed. The paper is offered as a step towards mergingISCT and Care Theory to evolve an ethical framework for business. It would be a frameworkthat engages fully with business realities, especially competitive realities, but that is directlyand clearly guided by classical ethical principles. Copyright © www.iiste.or

The Usefulness of Funds Flow Statements: An Empirical Study of Hong Kong Banks' Loan Officers' Use of Published Company Accounts

Funds flow statements were part of the published accounts of most companies in most jurisdictions in the last two decades. In the USA and a few other countries, they have been replaced by cash flow statements. Before other countries, including the UK, follow the US lead, it is important to gather and assess evidence on the usefulness of the funds statement to see if the arguments for its replacement by the cash flow statement are well founded. In essence, the usefulness of the funds flow statement is a matter of its ability to enable its readers to make better, or possibly faster, judgments about a firm's changes in financial position than they would make in the absence of that statement. The research reported in this thesis addresses the usefulness of the funds statement to a group of users especially concerned with changes in the financial position of companies with whom members of the group do business. Banks employ loan officers and credit analysts to vet applications for new loans, and this group of people is therefore likely to appreciate information useful to them in assessing the ability of applicants to meet their actual and prospective financial obligations. Such a group based in Hong Kong would be exposed to accounts prepared under all kinds of different national formats and should not be unduly fixated on the format of any one nation. Such assumptions were the basis of the research. A factorial ANOVA research design was used with 116 Hong Kong bank loan officers in 15 sets to see if the provision of funds flow statements and cash flow statements in a variety of formats improved their speed or accuracy in answering simple calculation-based or judgment-based questions concerning the accounts. Order effects were controlled by shuffling question order. Accounts difficulty effects were controlled by providing the accounts in two matched sets of equivalent processing difficulty. Subject selection effects were controlled through random assignments of subjects to accounts sets. It was found that funds statements marginally improved accuracy but greatly increased processing time. Cash flow statements performed no better than funds flow statements in either respect. An information load explanation is discussed for these results

Performance of the LHCb vertex locator

The Vertex Locator (VELO) is a silicon microstrip detector that surrounds the proton-proton interaction region in the LHCb experiment. The performance of the detector during the first years of its physics operation is reviewed. The system is operated in vacuum, uses a bi-phase CO2 cooling system, and the sensors are moved to 7 mm from the LHC beam for physics data taking. The performance and stability of these characteristic features of the detector are described, and details of the material budget are given. The calibration of the timing and the data processing algorithms that are implemented in FPGAs are described. The system performance is fully characterised. The sensors have a signal to noise ratio of approximately 20 and a best hit resolution of 4 μm is achieved at the optimal track angle. The typical detector occupancy for minimum bias events in standard operating conditions in 2011 is around 0.5%, and the detector has less than 1% of faulty strips. The proximity of the detector to the beam means that the inner regions of the n+-on-n sensors have undergone space-charge sign inversion due to radiation damage. The VELO performance parameters that drive the experiment's physics sensitivity are also given. The track finding efficiency of the VELO is typically above 98% and the modules have been aligned to a precision of 1 μm for translations in the plane transverse to the beam. A primary vertex resolution of 13 μm in the transverse plane and 71 μm along the beam axis is achieved for vertices with 25 tracks. An impact parameter resolution of less than 35 μm is achieved for particles with transverse momentum greater than 1 GeV/c

Precision luminosity measurements at LHCb

Measuring cross-sections at the LHC requires the luminosity to be determined accurately at each centre-of-mass energy √s. In this paper results are reported from the luminosity calibrations carried out at the LHC interaction point 8 with the LHCb detector for √s = 2.76, 7 and 8 TeV (proton-proton collisions) and for √sNN = 5 TeV (proton-lead collisions). Both the "van der Meer scan" and "beam-gas imaging" luminosity calibration methods were employed. It is observed that the beam density profile cannot always be described by a function that is factorizable in the two transverse coordinates. The introduction of a two-dimensional description of the beams improves significantly the consistency of the results. For proton-proton interactions at √s = 8 TeV a relative precision of the luminosity calibration of 1.47% is obtained using van der Meer scans and 1.43% using beam-gas imaging, resulting in a combined precision of 1.12%. Applying the calibration to the full data set determines the luminosity with a precision of 1.16%. This represents the most precise luminosity measurement achieved so far at a bunched-beam hadron collider

Differential branching fraction and angular analysis of the decay B0→K∗0μ+μ−

The angular distribution and differential branching fraction of the decay B 0→ K ∗0 μ + μ − are studied using a data sample, collected by the LHCb experiment in pp collisions at s√=7 TeV, corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 1.0 fb−1. Several angular observables are measured in bins of the dimuon invariant mass squared, q 2. A first measurement of the zero-crossing point of the forward-backward asymmetry of the dimuon system is also presented. The zero-crossing point is measured to be q20=4.9±0.9GeV2/c4 , where the uncertainty is the sum of statistical and systematic uncertainties. The results are consistent with the Standard Model predictions

Opposite-side flavour tagging of B mesons at the LHCb experiment

The calibration and performance of the oppositeside flavour tagging algorithms used for the measurements of time-dependent asymmetries at the LHCb experiment are described. The algorithms have been developed using simulated events and optimized and calibrated with B + →J/ψK +, B0 →J/ψK ∗0 and B0 →D ∗− μ + νμ decay modes with 0.37 fb−1 of data collected in pp collisions at √ s = 7 TeV during the 2011 physics run. The oppositeside tagging power is determined in the B + → J/ψK + channel to be (2.10 ± 0.08 ± 0.24) %, where the first uncertainty is statistical and the second is systematic

Observation of two new Ξb−\Xi_b^- baryon resonances

Two structures are observed close to the kinematic threshold in the $\Xi_b^0 \pi^-$ mass spectrum in a sample of proton-proton collision data, corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 3.0 fb$^{-1}$ recorded by the LHCb experiment. In the quark model, two baryonic resonances with quark content $bds$ are expected in this mass region: the spin-parity $J^P = \frac{1}{2}^+$ and $J^P=\frac{3}{2}^+$ states, denoted $\Xi_b^{\prime -}$ and $\Xi_b^{*-}$. Interpreting the structures as these resonances, we measure the mass differences and the width of the heavier state to be $m(\Xi_b^{\prime -}) - m(\Xi_b^0) - m(\pi^{-}) = 3.653 \pm 0.018 \pm 0.006$ MeV$/c^2$, $m(\Xi_b^{*-}) - m(\Xi_b^0) - m(\pi^{-}) = 23.96 \pm 0.12 \pm 0.06$ MeV$/c^2$, $\Gamma(\Xi_b^{*-}) = 1.65 \pm 0.31 \pm 0.10$ MeV, where the first and second uncertainties are statistical and systematic, respectively. The width of the lighter state is consistent with zero, and we place an upper limit of $\Gamma(\Xi_b^{\prime -}) < 0.08$ MeV at 95% confidence level. Relative production rates of these states are also reported.Comment: 17 pages, 2 figure

Search for CP violation in D+→ϕπ+ and D+s→K0Sπ+ decays

A search for CP violation in D + → ϕπ + decays is performed using data collected in 2011 by the LHCb experiment corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 1.0 fb−1 at a centre of mass energy of 7 TeV. The CP -violating asymmetry is measured to be (−0.04 ± 0.14 ± 0.14)% for candidates with K − K + mass within 20 MeV/c 2 of the ϕ meson mass. A search for a CP -violating asymmetry that varies across the ϕ mass region of the D + → K − K + π + Dalitz plot is also performed, and no evidence for CP violation is found. In addition, the CP asymmetry in the D+s→K0Sπ+ decay is measured to be (0.61 ± 0.83 ± 0.14)%