Fraternization in Accounting Firms: A Case Study

This case study sheds light on how to avoid risks caused by manager-subordinate dating relationships (fraternization) such as employee misunderstandings, retaliation charges, favoritism complaints, wrongful termination lawsuits, and sexual harassment lawsuits, as well as associated ethical risks.  Risk avoidance can be accomplished through a better understanding of the pervasive guidance offered by judicial outcomes and typical accounting firm directives. This case study can be used in the classroom to amplify the difficult issues that accompany fraternization in accounting firms.  The authors estimate that classroom presentation and discussion of this case would require a minimum of 30 minutes of classroom time.  Background information and inherent risks associated with fraternization are discussed.  We conclude with practical steps to mitigate those risks.&nbsp

Internal Controls For Hospitality Revenue In The Gaming Industry

In today’s difficult economic climate, business managers must carefully consider all aspects of business operations to minimize waste and increase efficiency. The revenue cycle continues to be the primary area of fraud and abuse requiring strong, comprehensive internal controls (AICPA 2002). Internal controls in the revenue arena are now more important than ever. The current paper provides a control review checklist for hospitality revenue in the gaming industry. Extant studies have often focused on internal controls for the gambling operations of the gaming industry to the neglect of the hospitality portion of the industry. For many firms in the industry, the hospitality revenue can account for half of total firm revenue. The checklist we provide can be used as a general benchmark to perform preliminary evaluations of a company’s internal control system in the hospitality arena. Auditors can compare their client’s control objectives with the objectives that are presented. During preliminary investigations of the company’s internal control system, auditors should review whether important control objectives have been omitted and whether the omission incurs or heightens risk. The control review checklist can also be used by CFOs or controllers in the gaming industry in reviewing whether their company’s internal control systems are adequate. The checklist provides CFOs or controllers internal controls that external, independent auditors consider to be important

Internal Controls For The Revenue Cycle: A Checklist For The Consumer Products Industry

In today’s difficult economic climate, business managers must carefully consider all aspects of business operations to minimize waste and increase efficiency.  The revenue cycle continues to be the primary area of fraud and abuse requiring strong, comprehensive internal controls (AICPA 2002).  Internal controls in the revenue arena are now more important than ever. The current paper provides a control review checklist for the revenue cycle that will aid managers and independent auditors in the consumer products industry. The checklist is applicable for firms at various levels of the distribution channel and can be used as a general benchmark to perform preliminary evaluations of a company’s internal control system. Auditors can compare their company’s control objectives with the objectives that are presented. During preliminary investigations of the company’s internal control system, auditors should review whether important control objectives have been omitted and whether the omission incurs or heightens risk. The control review checklist can also be used by CFOs or Controllers in the Consumer Products industry in reviewing whether their company’s internal control systems are adequate.  The checklist provides CFOs or Controllers internal controls that external, independent auditors consider to be important

Change Management Controls Compliance With The Sarbanes-Oxley Act Of 2002: An Example From Practice

Publicly held firms and the assurance services industry are currently struggling with the implementation of standards set forth in the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002 (SOX).  How to meet and assess SOX standards is considered by professionals to be uncharted territory.  This study reports the details of an actual SOX audit.  An international computer component manufacturing corporation engaged information system auditors from a Big 4 firm to determine whether change management procedures in two areas in their Finance Department were compliant with SOX.  Audit results indicated internal control deficiencies in the two areas audited.   SOX compliance was thus determined to be weak and unreliable.  In addition to reporting audit procedures actually used in practice to test SOX compliance, this case study presents key change management control procedures firms must have in place to be SOX compliant.  We provide helpful practical guidance for corporations and audit firms involved with SOX compliance audits.  In addition, this study has value for corporate internal control training sessions as well as general applicability for accounting information systems (AIS) and management information systems (MIS) courses.

Internal Controls For The Income Producing Real Estate Industry

The current paper focuses on internal controls in the income producing real estate industry. The industry is unique in that most revenue is generated from contractual lease agreements. Since the revenue cycle is a principal area of waste, fraud and abuse, revenue-related internal controls are critical. An industry-specific list of controls is presented and can be used by accounting professionals and managers of income producing real estate firms to benchmark the appropriateness and sufficiency of their own internal controls. The paper can also be used in training settings to demonstrate the manner in which internal controls are often industry-specific

Deep security analysis of program code: a systematic literature review

Due to the continuous digitalization of our society, distributed and web-based applications become omnipresent and making them more secure gains paramount relevance. Deep learning (DL) and its representation learning approach are increasingly been proposed for program code analysis potentially providing a powerful means in making software systems less vulnerable. This systematic literature review (SLR) is aiming for a thorough analysis and comparison of 32 primary studies on DL-based vulnerability analysis of program code. We found a rich variety of proposed analysis approaches, code embeddings and network topologies. We discuss these techniques and alternatives in detail. By compiling commonalities and differences in the approaches, we identify the current state of research in this area and discuss future directions. We also provide an overview of publicly available datasets in order to foster a stronger benchmarking of approaches. This SLR provides an overview and starting point for researchers interested in deep vulnerability analysis on program code

Tuning the magnetic interactions in van der Waals Fe3_3GeTe2_2 heterostructures: A comparative study of \textit{ab initio} methods

We investigate the impact of mechanical strain, stacking order, and external electric fields on the magnetic interactions of a two-dimensional (2D) van der Waals (vdW) heterostructure in which a 2D ferromagnetic metallic Fe$_3$GeTe$_2$ monolayer is deposited on germanene. Three distinct computational approaches based on \textit{ab initio} methods are used, and a careful comparison is given: (i) The Green's function method, (ii) the generalized Bloch theorem, and (iii) the supercell approach. First, the shell-resolved exchange constants are calculated for the three Fe atoms within the unit cell of the freestanding Fe$_3$GeTe$_2$ monolayer. We find that the results between methods (i) and (ii) are in good qualitative agreement and also with previously reported values. An electric field of ${\cal E}= \pm 0.5$~V/{\AA} applied perpendicular to the Fe$_3$GeTe$_2$/germanene heterostructure leads to significant changes of the exchange constants. We show that the Dzyaloshinskii-Moriya interaction (DMI) in Fe$_3$GeTe$_2$/germanene is mainly dominated by the nearest neighbors, resulting in a good quantitative agreement between methods (i) and (ii). Furthermore, we demonstrate that the DMI is highly tunable by strain, stacking, and electric field, leading to a large DMI comparable to that of ferromagnetic/heavy metal (FM/HM) interfaces. The geometrical change and hybridization effect explain the origin of the high tunability of the DMI at the interface. The electric-field driven DMI obtained by method (iii) is in qualitative agreement with the more accurate \textit{ab initio} method used in approach (ii). However, the field-effect on the DMI is overestimated by method (iii) by about 50\%. The magnetocrystalline anisotropy energy can also be drastically changed by the application of compressive or tensile strain in the Fe$_3$GeTe$_2$/germanene heterostructure.Comment: 14 pages, 12 figure

Cross-Domain Evaluation of a Deep Learning-Based Type Inference System

Optional type annotations allow for enriching dynamic programming languages with static typing features like better Integrated Development Environment (IDE) support, more precise program analysis, and early detection and prevention of type-related runtime errors. Machine learning-based type inference promises interesting results for automating this task. However, the practical usage of such systems depends on their ability to generalize across different domains, as they are often applied outside their training domain. In this work, we investigate Type4Py as a representative of state-of-the-art deep learning-based type inference systems, by conducting extensive cross-domain experiments. Thereby, we address the following problems: class imbalances, out-of-vocabulary words, dataset shifts, and unknown classes. To perform such experiments, we use the datasets ManyTypes4Py and CrossDomainTypes4Py. The latter we introduce in this paper. Our dataset enables the evaluation of type inference systems in different domains of software projects and has over 1,000,000 type annotations mined on the platforms GitHub and Libraries. It consists of data from the two domains web development and scientific calculation. Through our experiments, we detect that the shifts in the dataset and the long-tailed distribution with many rare and unknown data types decrease the performance of the deep learning-based type inference system drastically. In this context, we test unsupervised domain adaptation methods and fine-tuning to overcome these issues. Moreover, we investigate the impact of out-of-vocabulary words.Comment: Preprint for the MSR'23 technical trac

Phases of methodological research in biostatistics—Building the evidence base for new methods

Although new biostatistical methods are published at a very high rate, many of these developments are not trustworthy enough to be adopted by the scientific community. We propose a framework to think about how a piece of methodological work contributes to the evidence base for a method. Similar to the well-known phases of clinical research in drug development, we propose to define four phases of methodological research. These four phases cover (I) proposing a new methodological idea while providing, for example, logical reasoning or proofs, (II) providing empirical evidence, first in a narrow target setting, then (III) in an extended range of settings and for various outcomes, accompanied by appropriate application examples, and (IV) investigations that establish a method as sufficiently well-understood to know when it is preferred over others and when it is not; that is, its pitfalls. We suggest basic definitions of the four phases to provoke thought and discussion rather than devising an unambiguous classification of studies into phases. Too many methodological developments finish before phase III/IV, but we give two examples with references. Our concept rebalances the emphasis to studies in phases III and IV, that is, carefully planned method comparison studies and studies that explore the empirical properties of existing methods in a wider range of problems