Rapid Implementation Of ERP Financials Into The Curriculum: A Success Story

Most academic institutions wish to provide current, up to date and real world software applications to their students and this causes a number of common difficulties.  This is especially true as those applications become far larger and more complex, such as in Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) systems, more recently referred to as Enterprise Systems.  The authors’ institution has a degree program in accounting information systems, and the authors believed that it was critical that ERP skills and applications be included in order to maintain the stature of the program.  Although difficulties were expected, the authors nonetheless pursued various classroom ERP alternatives.  This paper reports on those efforts, which culminated in the creation and offering of an ERP financial applications class in a six month time period.  It is believed that such information will provide encouragement and useful information to other institutions that are considering such implementations

Internet Based Oracle Financial Training: A Success Story

Most academic institutions wish to provide current, up to date and real world software applications to their students and this causes a number of common difficulties. This is especially true as those applications become far larger and more complex, such as Enterprise Systems. The authors’ institution has a degree program in accounting information systems, and the authors believed that it was critical that ERP skills and applications be included in order to maintain the stature of the program. Although difficulties were expected, the authors nonetheless pursued various classroom ERP alternatives. This paper reports on those efforts particularly the adoption of internet based training rather than the traditional computer lab in the creation and offering of an ERP financial applications class. It was quickly determined that avoiding a dedicated computer lab option will result in substantial saving in additional hardware expenditure. Creating an online classroom forum for sharing of ideas and information is another component of internet based training course. “Caucus” a proprietary online software developed by our university allows faculty and students share their comments, questions, comments and suggestions with one another on broad basis. It is believed that such information will provide encouragement and useful information to other institutions that are considering such implementations

The State Of Teaching Accounting Information Systems: Is There A Gap?

Based upon a literature review and through interviews, discussions, and questionnaires filled out by accounting information systems (AIS) educators, the authors conclude that while total consistency and uniformity may not be desirable in teaching the subject of AIS, there seems to still be a need for more rigor, more consistency in coverage, and perhaps, more cutting-edge training of instructors to be able to prepare the students in this important area.  They further conclude that more hands-on exercises and practice seem to be needed in the dissemination of knowledge in this respect.  The authors also observe that perhaps more than one course is needed to be able to cover the fundamentals in accounting systems as well as provide numerous experiences with relevant software.  Additional interviews and discussions with experts in the accounting systems area on an ongoing basis are very much needed to do justice to this important matter

Systematic review on quality control for drug management programs: Is quality reported in the literature?

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Maintaining quality of care while managing limited healthcare resources is an ongoing challenge in healthcare. The objective of this study was to evaluate how the impact of drug management programs is reported in the literature and to identify potentially existing quality standards.</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>This analysis relates to the published research on the impact of drug management on economic, clinical, or humanistic outcomes in managed care, indemnity insurance, VA, or Medicaid in the USA published between 1996 and 2007. Included articles were systematically analyzed for study objective, study endpoints, and drug management type. They were further categorized by drug management tool, primary objective, and study endpoints.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>None of the 76 included publications assessed the overall quality of drug management tools. The impact of 9 different drug management tools used alone or in combination was studied in pharmacy claims, medical claims, electronic medical records or survey data from either patient, plan or provider perspective using an average of 2.1 of 11 possible endpoints. A total of 68% of the studies reported the impact on plan focused endpoints, while the clinical, the patient or the provider perspective were studied to a much lower degree (45%, 42% and 12% of the studies). Health outcomes were only accounted for in 9.2% of the studies.</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>Comprehensive assessment of quality considering plan, patient and clinical outcomes is not yet applied. There is no defined quality standard. Benchmarks including health outcomes should be determined and used to improve the overall clinical and economic effectiveness of drug management programs.</p

Corporate philanthropy, political influence, and health policy

Background The Framework Convention of Tobacco Control (FCTC) provides a basis for nation states to limit the political effects of tobacco industry philanthropy, yet progress in this area is limited. This paper aims to integrate the findings of previous studies on tobacco industry philanthropy with a new analysis of British American Tobacco's (BAT) record of charitable giving to develop a general model of corporate political philanthropy that can be used to facilitate implementation of the FCTC. Method Analysis of previously confidential industry documents, BAT social and stakeholder dialogue reports, and existing tobacco industry document studies on philanthropy. Results The analysis identified six broad ways in which tobacco companies have used philanthropy politically: developing constituencies to build support for policy positions and generate third party advocacy; weakening opposing political constituencies; facilitating access and building relationships with policymakers; creating direct leverage with policymakers by providing financial subsidies to specific projects; enhancing the donor's status as a source of credible information; and shaping the tobacco control agenda by shifting thinking on the importance of regulating the market environment for tobacco and the relative risks of smoking for population health. Contemporary BAT social and stakeholder reports contain numerous examples of charitable donations that are likely to be designed to shape the tobacco control agenda, secure access and build constituencies. Conclusions and Recommendations Tobacco companies' political use of charitable donations underlines the need for tobacco industry philanthropy to be restricted via full implementation of Articles 5.3 and 13 of the FCTC. The model of tobacco industry philanthropy developed in this study can be used by public health advocates to press for implementation of the FCTC and provides a basis for analysing the political effects of charitable giving in other industry sectors which have an impact on public health such as alcohol and food

The limits of corporate social responsibility : Techniques of neutralization, stakeholder management and political CSR

Since scholarly interest in corporate social responsibility (CSR) has primarily focused on the synergies between social and economic performance, our understanding of how (and the conditions under which) companies use CSR to produce policy outcomes that work against public welfare has remained comparatively underdeveloped. In particular, little is known about how corporate decision-makers privately reconcile the conflicts between public and private interests, even though this is likely to be relevant to understanding the limitations of CSR as a means of aligning business activity with the broader public interest. This study addresses this issue using internal tobacco industry documents to explore British-American Tobacco’s (BAT) thinking on CSR and its effects on the company’s CSR Programme. The article presents a three-stage model of CSR development, based on Sykes and Matza’s theory of techniques of neutralization, which links together: how BAT managers made sense of the company’s declining political authority in the mid-1990s; how they subsequently justified the use of CSR as a tool of stakeholder management aimed at diffusing the political impact of public health advocates by breaking up political constituencies working towards evidence-based tobacco regulation; and how CSR works ideologically to shape stakeholders’ perceptions of the relative merits of competing approaches to tobacco control. Our analysis has three implications for research and practice. First, it underlines the importance of approaching corporate managers’ public comments on CSR critically and situating them in their economic, political and historical contexts. Second, it illustrates the importance of focusing on the political aims and effects of CSR. Third, by showing how CSR practices are used to stymie evidence-based government regulation, the article underlines the importance of highlighting and developing matrices to assess the negative social impacts of CSR

Derivative$: An accounting challenge and consulting opportunity

Section 29, which provided an incentive to drill for fuel from nonconventional sources, in essence expired at the end of 1992. Since that time, there has been a precipitous decline in such drilling. Evidence exists to show that, during the 13-year period corporate oil and gas producers claimed the Section 29 income tax credit, both production and reserves of nonconventional fuel increased in the US. Congress may reopen the window of opportunity. However, not all people feel that government intervention in the energy industry is still needed. Many industry producers even lobbied against the extension of Section 29 in the Energy Act of 1992. Proponents of smaller government have objected to the use of the IRC as a means to advance economic and social policies

Teaching the indirect method of the statement of cash flows in Introductory Financial Accounting: A comprehensive, problem-based approach

We investigate what factors help explain postretirement health care benefit (PRB) reductions around the adoption of Statement of Financial Accounting Standard 106 (SFAS 106). We find that firms with more motivation to make benefit cuts because of larger PRB-related obligations were more likely to decrease benefits. Our primary contribution comes from examining the cost/benefit tradeoffs of making these reductions. For example, we find a trade-off between reductions in PRB and increases in pension obligations, consistent with firms offering higher alternative forms of compensation to make up for the loss in PRB. In addition, firms with greater unionization among employees are somewhat less likely to reduce benefits. Finally, we document that firms involved in more extensive efforts to reduce capacity and cut costs through firm restructurings are more likely to reduce benefits

The value relevance of industry and firm cash flows and accruals

Over the past two decades, more and more U.S. firms are voluntarily issuing costly standalone Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) Reports. Nevertheless, firms\u27 motivations for issuing standalone CSR Reports are not clear. In this paper, we consider two different explanations: signaling and greenwashing. The first explanation, signaling, proposes that firms use standalone CSR Reports as a signal of their superior commitment to CSR, which suggests firms with stronger social and environmental records will be more likely to issue standalone CSR Reports as compared to those without. The second explanation, greenwashing, proposes that firms use standalone CSR Reports to pose as good corporate citizens even when they do not have stronger social and environmental records. To provide insight into these explanations we compare the CSR performance scores of firms that issue CSR reports to those firms that do not. We control for firm size, leverage, profitability and industry. We find that firms that voluntarily issue standalone CSR Reports generally have higher CSR performance scores, which suggests that firms are using voluntary CSR Reports to publicize stronger social and environmental records to stakeholders.[Article abstract