Separation – integration – and now …? - An historical perspective on the relationship between German management accounting and financial accounting

German accounting has traditionally followed a dual ledger approach with strictly separated internal cost accounting, as the basis for management information, and external financial accounting focusing on creditor protection and based on the commercial law. However, the increased adoption of integrated accounting system implies a significant change in the relationship between financial and management accounting systems. We use Hegelian dialectic to trace the historical development of German accounting from separated systems towards antithetical propositions of full integration, and the emergence of partial integration as the synthesis of this transformation process. For this reason, our paper provides a comprehensive analysis of the literature on the relationship between financial and management accounting in Germany. On this basis, we elaborate how financial accounting in Germany has been shaped by its economic context and legislation, and how financial accounting – accompanied by institutional pressures – in turn influenced management accounting. We argue that the changing relationship between management and financial accounting in the German context illustrates how current accounting practice is shaped not only by its environment, but also by its historical path. Based on this reasoning, we discuss several avenues for future research

The reliability of an ‘off-the-shelf’ conceptual rainfall runoff model for use in climate impact assessment: uncertainty quantification using Latin hypercube sampling

Much uncertainty is derived from the application of conceptual rainfall runoff models. In this paper, HYSIM, an ‘off-the-shelf’ conceptual rainfall runoff model, is applied to a suite of catchments throughout Ireland in preparation for use in climate impact assessment. Parameter uncertainty is assessed using the GLUE methodology. Given the lack of source code available for the model, parameter sampling is carried out using Latin hypercube sampling. Uncertainty bounds are constructed for model output. These bounds will be used to quantify uncertainty in future simulations as they include error derived from data measurement, model structure and parameterization