The Proliferation of Special Accounting Items: A Threat to Corporate Credibility

Betty L. Brewer, DBA, CFP, is associate professor of finance, Department of Business and Economics, North Carolina A&T State University, Greensboro, NC 27411. Robert J. Angell, DBA, is professor of finance, Department of Business Administration, School of Business and Economics, North Carolina A&T State University, Greensboro, NC 27411. R. David Mautz, Jr., Ph.D., CPA, is associate professor of accounting, Department of Accounting, School of Business and Economics, North Carolina A&T State University, Greensboro, NC 27411

Health effects of acid aerosols formed by atmospheric mixtures.

Under ambient conditions, sulfur and nitrogen oxides can react with photochemical products and airborne particles to form acidic vapors and aerosols. Inhalation toxicological studies were conducted, exposing laboratory animals, at rest and during exercise, to multicomponent atmospheric mixtures under conditions favorable to the formation of acidic reaction products. Effects of acid and ozone mixtures on early and late clearance of insoluble radioactive particles in the lungs of rats appeared to be dominated by the oxidant component (i.e., the mixture did cause effects that were significantly different from those of ozone alone). Histopathological evaluations showed that sulfuric acid particles alone did not cause inflammatory responses in centriacinar units of rat lung parenchyma (expressed in terms of percent lesion area) but did cause significant damage (cell killing followed by a wave of cell replication) in nasal respiratory epithelium, as measured by uptake of tritiated thymidine in the DNA of replicating cells. Mixtures of ozone and nitrogen dioxide, which form nitric acid, caused significant inflammatory responses in lung parenchyma (in excess of effects seen in rats exposed to ozone alone), but did not damage nasal epithelium. Mixtures containing acidic sulfate particles, ozone, and nitrogen dioxide damaged both lung parenchyma and nasal epithelia. In rats exposed at rest, the response of the lung appeared to be dominated by the oxidant gas-phase components, while responses in the nose were dominated by the acidic particles. In rats exposed at exercise, however, mixtures of ozone and sulfuric acid particles significantly (2.5-fold) elevated the degree of lung lesion formation over that seen in rats exposed to ozone alone under an identical exercise protocol

Evolution of the Quality Control Inquiry Committee of the SEC Practice Section of the American Institute of CPAs

https://egrove.olemiss.edu/aicpa_assoc/1208/thumbnail.jp

An analysis of the deinstitutionalization of inflation-adjusted accounting practices in Brazilian companies

This article aims to analyze the deinstitutionalization of the inflation-adjustment accounting practices used by large Brazilian companies. The theoretical assumptions used were based on institutional theory, which provides a sociological interpretation of human behavior that recognizes the phenomenon of limited rationality and the political character of social action. Analyses were based on the empirical approach that was proposed by Oliver (1992). The research strategy consisted of questionnaires and interviews conducted in a population of 118 large Brazilian companies from Exame Magazine's list of the 500 largest companies. The primary respondents were accountants and controllers. Factor analysis, one-way ANOVA and the Kruskal-Wallis test were conducted using the approach proposed by Oliver (1992), and the research included 22 variables comprising 12 constructs and 6 qualitative hypotheses regarding the pressures that motivate the deinstitutionalization of inflation-adjusted accounting practices. Therefore, with regard to the constructs assessed, emphasis was placed on identifying the political pressures (the environment) and the functional pressures in both the organizational and environmental dimensions. However, the social pressures did not prove to be significant. We conclude that the process of deinstitutionalization results from a distinct combination of institutional factors, and these results are consistent with the findings from research conducted in the US market and in the UK