Accounting and Auditing with Blockchain Technology and Artificial Intelligence: A Literature Review

This paper surveys the published work on how blockchain technology will impact accounting in general, but AI-enabled auditing specifically. The purpose is to investigate how blockchain technology can improve transparency and trust in accounting practice and how professionals can use blockchain data to improve decision-making, based on the qualities of immutability, append-only, shared, verified, and agreed-upon (i.e., consensus-driven) blockchain data. The multi-party validation of blockchain protocols adds real-time trusted data for the AI systems used by auditors to improve assurance and efficiency. This review summarizes four themes emerging from the literature focusing on how blockchain technology has changed record-keeping in accounting: event approach to accounting; real-time accounting; triple entry-accounting and continuous auditing. The research interprets the findings using agency theory and stakeholder theory to advance how using blockchain to mitigate information asymmetry and improve stakeholder collaborations is understood. The investigation also summarizes the challenges and clarifies organizations’ reasons to be cautious about adopting blockchain. Lastly, the study suggests that future researchers use this study in two ways that enrich blockchain literature: first, to apply the themes and answer the questions identified within this review to improve the business methods of practitioners and policymakers; and second, to encourage stakeholders such as practitioners, system designers/developers, and policymakers to collaborate in designing blockchain ecosystems that suit accounting and auditing as they transform digitally

Piloting ecological sanitation toilets in peri-urban community of Nepal

Concept of Ecological Sanitation; referred as ECOSAN, integrates sanitation and agriculture by using human waste as fertilizer and soil conditioner. The ECOSAN concept has been applied in Siddhipur village of Lalitpur District, which is nearby urban settlement of the Kathmandu Valley, Nepal. The project, initiated on a small scale as a pilot project, is first of its kind in the country. The ECOSAN toilets in this village have been implemented after the demand from the community for proper management of their wastes. Main thrust of constructing ECOSAN toilets is due to their potential of preventing groundwater pollution, reuse in agriculture and management of sanitary waste. The acceptance, active participation, sharing of cost for building ECOSAN units and use of urine in agriculture are few of the indicators of sustainability of the project. The significant impact on the whole community has given impetus for replication to other areas as well

‘Is Say on Pay working? Evidence from the UK’

Copyright 2019 The Authors. Directors’ remuneration has remained a hotly debated issue and many countries have enacted rules and regulations to address the concerns on directors’ remuneration. This paper examines the effectiveness of one of the important regulations, which is the binding “say on pay (SOP)” which became effective in 2013 in the UK. We examined SOP around this binding vote regime from 2009 to 2017 and found that overall shareholders’ dissent on directors’ remuneration is relatively low in the UK. This study shows that the directors of the firms with high dissent votes responded to the shareholders dissent by changing the remuneration practices in the years following the SOP vote. We also found that pay-performance sensitivity increased since the introduction of binding SOP vote. Overall, the first binding SOP vote has appeared successful in achieving the intended objective of ‘linking the pay and performance’ for most of the FTSE 350 firms. JEL Classification: G34, G38, J33, J38, M12The British Academy (grant number: SG163484)

Organizational Form, Business Strategies and the Demise of Demutualized Building Societies in the UK

This paper examines and compares the performance and operating behaviour of demutualized building societies (DBS) over the period of 1987-2007 relative to mutual building societies and major retail banks in the ACCEPTED MANUSCRIPT ACCEPTED MANUSCRIPT 2 UK. We find significant differences in their operating behaviour over this period and show that the operating behaviour varies with the form of ownership. We also investigate the potential causes of the failure of all DBS in the UK. Our findings show significant changes in the funding and lending strategies of DBS which expose them to higher risk. We also find a strained capital formation and deteriorating capital base of DBS in the postconversion period. Our results suggest that changes in the business model, diminished capital base and, in part, failing to get all the necessary funding from the wholesale market at the time of the financial crisis of 2007-08 contributed to the demise of a once a successful financial institution in the UK

Accounting and Auditing with Blockchain Technology and Artificial Intelligence: A Literature Review

Copyright © 2022 The Authors. This paper surveys the published work on how blockchain technology will impact accounting in general, but AI-enabled auditing specifically. The purpose is to investigate how blockchain technology can improve transparency and trust in accounting practice and how professionals can use blockchain data to improve decision-making, based on the qualities of immutability, append-only, shared, verified, and agreed-upon (i.e., consensus-driven) blockchain data. The multi-party validation of blockchain protocols adds real-time trusted data for the AI systems used by auditors to improve assurance and efficiency. This review summarizes four themes emerging from the literature focusing on how blockchain technology has changed record-keeping in accounting: event approach to accounting; real-time accounting; triple entry-accounting and continuous auditing. The research interprets the findings using agency theory and stakeholder theory to advance how using blockchain to mitigate information asymmetry and improve stakeholder collaborations is understood. The investigation also summarizes the challenges and clarifies organizations’ reasons to be cautious about adopting blockchain. Lastly, the study suggests that future researchers use this study in two ways that enrich blockchain literature: first, to apply the themes and answer the questions identified within this review to improve the business methods of practitioners and policymakers; and second, to encourage stakeholders such as practitioners, system designers/developers, and policymakers to collaborate in designing blockchain ecosystems that suit accounting and auditing as they transform digitally

Investigation of potential cognition factors correlated to fire evacuation

The design of a navigation system to support indoor fire evacuation depends not only on speed but also a relatively thorough consideration of the cognition factors. This study has investigated potential cognition factors which can affect the human behaviours and decision making during fire evacuation by taking a survey among indoor occupants in age of 20s under designed virtual scenarios. It mainly focuses on two aspects of Fire Responses Performances (FRP), i.e. indoor familiarity (spatial cognition) and psychological stress (situ-ated cognition). The collected results have shown that these cognition factors can be affected by gender and user height and they are correlated with each other in certain ways. It has also investigated users‟ attitudes to the navigation services under risky and non-risky conditions. The collected answers are also found to be correlated with the selected FRP factors. These findings may help to further design of personalized indoor navigation support for fire evacuation

Understanding transport characteristics in disadvantaged regions of developing country: empirical study from Nepal

Government of Nepal accorded high priority to the development of transport in disadvantaged regions. However, current statistics reveal that the road sector failed to generate the promised impacts. There is an urgent need of research on understanding the characteristics of transport in disadvantaged regions in totality which could be integrated into transport planning in a sustainable way. We assessed the characteristics of transport that exists in the three rural settlements of Nepal through primary survey and examined the factors that contribute to the totality of transport. The study revealed that transport tasks related to meeting the basic subsistence outweighed those concerning to agriculture production and marketing. Proximity of the settlements to the highway/feeder road had little impact on overall transportation tasks of the households. Moreover, the transport burden is unduly higher on the female population. The findings can have major implications for the alteration of current transportation planning practices for disadvantaged regions

Train dwell time models development in the past forty years

The accuracy of dwell time estimation is crucial for both tactical and operational practices of public transport. This paper aims to make a systematic review of the dwell time models that have evolved over the past 40 years. The scope of this study is limited to the dwell time models pertaining to the passenger rail. Studying the literature concerning train dwell time models, similarities and differences were analysed and discussed based on the modelling approaches and assumptions made in the development of the models. For instance, models were categorised based on modelling philosophy, time-period, key variables involved, data collection and validation methods. Through the comparison, common interests and future trends were then identified. It is found that there is no perfect model that fits all scenarios. The best outcome relies on the effort of choosing the most appropriate model, calibrating the parameters, making some ad-hoc adjustment and continual improvements