Is corporate governance a modern fantasy?

Is corporate governance a modern fantasy

Effective financial reporting and auditing: importance and limitations

Effective financial reporting and auditing: importance and limitation

Financial reporting fraud: are standards' setters and external auditors doing enough?

Following the fraud scandals in large companies like Enron, WorldCom, and Xerox, investors’ concern about fraud in general and fraudulent financial reporting in particular increased and is on the rise. In response to these concerns, auditing standards setters have issued fraud standards that have expanded what is required of the external auditors in relation to fraud detection. However, regardless of these efforts, academic research studies indicate that more efforts are still needed from audit regulators and external auditors. The current paper provides insights into two areas. Firstly, it explores the reasons behind the audit expectation gap, and secondly, it assesses the efforts of standards’ setters and external auditors to narrow the gap in relation to fraud detection. The paper provides a set of recommendations to regulators and external auditors in an effort to fight fraud

Implications of the fraud triangle for external auditors

In recent years the role of the external auditors in relation to the detection of fraud has come under scrutiny. In an effort to give guidance, the auditing standard setters have employed the “fraud triangle” (which originated from Cressey’s work [1950]) setting out pressures, opportunity and rationalisation behind frauds. Traditionally, it could be said that external auditors have focused on opportunity (i.e. through the assessment of internal controls). Since the mid - 1990s auditors have looked at high level risks and so have been considering pressures on management. However, the third aspect of the fraud triangle, namely rationalisation, seems to have been ignored. The point is that two people may experience the same pressures and have the same opportunity to commit a fraud, but depending on how they rationalise the situation, one may commit it whilst the other may not. The under appreciation of this aspect of the fraud triangle may mean there is a weakness in the external auditors’ approach

Constructing a national cinema in Britain

This exploration of British cinema as a national cinema looks at various cultural, political and industrial responses to the dominant presence of Hollywood, including competition, collusion, protectionism and product differentiation. Introductory chapters survey debates about British cinema, and offer an overview of the film industry and intellectual film culture in Britain since the 1920s. The first of three historically specific case studies looks at Hepworth's Collin' Thro' The Rye (1924) in the context of the 'heritage genre'; its pictorialism and 'primitive' narrational qualities are seen as a coherent attempt to establish an English art cinema which can display the 'national past'. The second study contrasts the activities of one of the majors attempting to break into the American market with films which emulate the Hollywood style (Evergreen (1934), starring Jessie Matthews, is the example used) with an 'independent' making broad musical comedies for the domestic market (Sing As We Go (1934), starring Gracie Fields, is the example used). The final case study concentrates on the influence of the documentary movement of the 1930s on the 'melodrama of everyday life' in the mid-1940s, focussing on two critical and box-office successes, Millions Like Us (1943) and This Happy Breed (1944); the episodic, multiple narratives, the play with both the 'public gaze' of documentary and the subjective point of view of narrative cinema, and the realist detail of these films produces an image of the nation as a knowable community. These analyses reveal distinctive modes of narration and uses of space, and a distinctive way of articulating the public and the private in the British films most self-consciously differentiated from Hollywood. Although the various films examined seem quite different, they have a surprisingly consistent way of imagining the community of the nation, its history, and the space which it occupies, often within the tradition of pastoral

External auditors and corporate corruption: implications for external audit regulators

The purpose of the current study is to examine the responsibility of external auditors in relation to corporate corruption and to highlight the implications of this for external audit regulators. The current study is based on a critical review of prior academic literature as well as a thorough examination of both the International and American Auditing Standards relating to fraud and illegal acts. External auditors have a responsibility for assessing corruption risks but their role was not clearly defined by external audit regulators. The current study was the first to clarify the responsibility of external auditors with regards to corporate corruption, and to shed light on current limitations in the audit standards related to this area. The current study also offers recommendations to audit regulators, external auditors, audit firms, and researchers on such controversial area

Detecting bribery: a guide for external auditors – insights from the audit profession in Egypt

Corruption in general and bribery in particular is a topic of global concern. External auditors are required by audit standards to assess and respond to the risk of illegal acts, yet neither the audit standards nor do prior studies provide a guide for external auditors to audit bribery risks. Hence, the aim of the current study is to help external auditors assess and respond to bribery risks. To achieve this, the current study proposes a guide that might help external auditorsassess and respond to bribery risks. The proposed guide is based on evidence from prior literature and the insights from the audit profession in Egypt. Data was collected by the means of mixed methods, mainly an online questionnaire and semi-structured interviews. Our results supports the current body of knowledge that argued for the effectiveness of red flags in fraud risk assessments, however our study was the first to explore the effectiveness of red flags for bribery. Our findings also revealed that although red flags for bribery were perceived as effective in assessing bribery risks, not all of them have the same significance. Our study was the first to suggest how external auditors might respond to the heightened red flags for bribery. The current study also provides recommendations to audit regulators, audit firms, policy makers, and researchers on how to combat corruption and bribery

Computational models of ontology evolution in legal reasoning

This thesis analyses the problem of creating computational models of ontology evolution in legal reasoning. Ontology evolution is the process of change that happens to a theory as it is used by agents within a domain. In the legal domain these theories are the laws that define acceptable behaviours and the meta-legal theories that govern the application of the laws. We survey the background subjects required to understand the problem and the relevant literature within AI and Law. We argue that context and commonsense are necessary features of a model of ontology evolution in legal reasoning; and propose a model of legal reasoning based upon creating a discourse context. We conclude by arguing that there is a distinction between prescriptive and descriptive models of ontology evolution; with a prescriptive model being a social and philosophical problem, rather than a technical one, and a descriptive model being an AI-complete problem

A universal characterization of higher algebraic K-theory

In this paper we establish a universal characterization of higher algebraic K-theory in the setting of small stable infinity categories. Specifically, we prove that connective algebraic K-theory is the universal additive invariant, i.e., the universal functor with values in spectra which inverts Morita equivalences, preserves filtered colimits, and satisfies Waldhausen's additivity theorem. Similarly, we prove that non-connective algebraic K-theory is the universal localizing invariant, i.e., the universal functor that moreover satisfies the "Thomason-Trobaugh-Neeman" localization theorem. To prove these results, we construct and study two stable infinity categories of "noncommutative motives"; one associated to additivity and another to localization. In these stable infinity categories, Waldhausen's S. construction corresponds to the suspension functor and connective and non-connective algebraic K-theory spectra become corepresentable by the noncommutative motive of the sphere spectrum. In particular, the algebraic K-theory of every scheme, stack, and ring spectrum can be recovered from these categories of noncommutative motives. In order to work with these categories of noncommutative motives, we establish comparison theorems between the category of spectral categories localized at the Morita equivalences and the category of small idempotent-complete stable infinity categories. We also explain in detail the comparison between the infinity categorical version of Waldhausen K-theory and the classical definition. As an application of our theory, we obtain a complete classification of the natural transformations from higher algebraic K-theory to topological Hochschild homology (THH) and topological cyclic homology (TC). Notably, we obtain an elegant conceptual description of the cyclotomic trace map.Comment: Various revisions and correction