Third sector accounting and accountability in Australia: anything but a level playing field

This research report seeks to understand why some Australian not-for-profit organisations make voluntary financial disclosures beyond their basic statutory obligations. Introduction This paper surveys previous work on voluntary information disclosures in accounting reports of Australian Not-for-Profit organisations (NFPs). This is new research and is a part of a project to evolve a comprehensive explanation of why Australian NFPs disclose what they do disclose; and to capture and explain patterns of variations between NFPs between what they regard to disclose and the type of information they disclose. To accomplish this, first some background information about the NFP sector are considered. Then, the Australian NFP sector is reviewed. Third, the information needs of some key stakeholders are briefly discussed. Next, the research methodology where a literature survey which looks at not just disclosures to NFPs but to the commercial sector that are plausibly &nbsp

Legal Origins of Fair Value Accounting

The paper seeks answers to the question how FASB was able to introduce the term ‘fair value’ into accounting standards and wider accounting discourse as frictionlessly as it did. Leading relevant court cases in the USA and UK in the previous two centuries had already enabled this to happen, but the judicial rationales for that term were significantly different from the current rationales in FASB and IASB. The paper traces the evolution of the notion from its origins in the ‘just price’ to its court appearances in the early stages of the Industrial Revolution through to its established meaning by the end of last century.The symposium is organised on behalf of AAHANZBS by the Business and Labour History Group, The University of Sydney, with the financial support of the University’s Faculty of Economics and Business

Towards an Ethical Framework Grounded in Everyday Business Life

Business is increasingly concerned to reconcile investor driven pressure to perform with statedriven pressure to conform (to a cascade of new regulation). Ethics generally favors the latter atthe expense of the former. The ethical frameworks developed in the last few years differ fromtheir classical predecessors, however. Integrative Social Contract Theory begins with the businesscontract and moves out from there to the wider society. Care theory begins with the relationshipbetween two individual persons and moves out from there. Both theories are skepticalof the Universalist claims of classical ethical and religious frameworks and both claim to beuser friendly. This paper compares and contrasts the two theories and hopes to show how theethical lacunae in ISCT can be fixed by Care Theory. How a business would operate under thesway of Care Theory is described. Fears that Care Theory cannot be applied to business withoutweakening competitive strength are addressed. The paper is offered as a step towards mergingISCT and Care Theory to evolve an ethical framework for business. It would be a frameworkthat engages fully with business realities, especially competitive realities, but that is directlyand clearly guided by classical ethical principles. Copyright © www.iiste.or

The Usefulness of Funds Flow Statements: An Empirical Study of Hong Kong Banks' Loan Officers' Use of Published Company Accounts

Funds flow statements were part of the published accounts of most companies in most jurisdictions in the last two decades. In the USA and a few other countries, they have been replaced by cash flow statements. Before other countries, including the UK, follow the US lead, it is important to gather and assess evidence on the usefulness of the funds statement to see if the arguments for its replacement by the cash flow statement are well founded. In essence, the usefulness of the funds flow statement is a matter of its ability to enable its readers to make better, or possibly faster, judgments about a firm's changes in financial position than they would make in the absence of that statement. The research reported in this thesis addresses the usefulness of the funds statement to a group of users especially concerned with changes in the financial position of companies with whom members of the group do business. Banks employ loan officers and credit analysts to vet applications for new loans, and this group of people is therefore likely to appreciate information useful to them in assessing the ability of applicants to meet their actual and prospective financial obligations. Such a group based in Hong Kong would be exposed to accounts prepared under all kinds of different national formats and should not be unduly fixated on the format of any one nation. Such assumptions were the basis of the research. A factorial ANOVA research design was used with 116 Hong Kong bank loan officers in 15 sets to see if the provision of funds flow statements and cash flow statements in a variety of formats improved their speed or accuracy in answering simple calculation-based or judgment-based questions concerning the accounts. Order effects were controlled by shuffling question order. Accounts difficulty effects were controlled by providing the accounts in two matched sets of equivalent processing difficulty. Subject selection effects were controlled through random assignments of subjects to accounts sets. It was found that funds statements marginally improved accuracy but greatly increased processing time. Cash flow statements performed no better than funds flow statements in either respect. An information load explanation is discussed for these results

Just Price and Fair Value: A Null Hypothesis Supported

This paper seeks answers to the question of where did the idea of the fairness in fair value originate. It is possible that there is some inheritance of the moral approbation inherent in the medieval idea of the just price. However the context and assumptions of the two notions are so very different that the journey from just price to fair value over some eight centuries cannot be just assumed to be along one single unbroken line. This article summarises the process of dilution of the medieval idea of just price and the judicial development of the modern idea of fair value and discusses the extent to which the former can be shown, if at all, to have germinated or nurtured the early development of the latter. The conclusion is tentatively drawn that the two notions lack detectable interaction or association historically and the whiff of moral approbation that both enjoy is entirely coincidental

Review of Anderson, Elizabeth 'Private Government: How Employers Rule Our Lives (and Why We Don't Talk About It)': Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2017, pp. 209-213

Private Government: How Employers Rule Our Lives (and Why We Don’t Talk About It) is a record of the two Tanner Lectures delivered in March 2015 at Princeton University by Elizabeth Anderson, Professor of Finance and Women’s Studies at the University of Michigan (https://tannerlectures.utah.edu/Anderson%20manuscript.pdf; https://press.princeton.edu/titles/ 10938.html). The Tanner Lectures began in 1978 at Clare Hall, a college of the University of Cambridge. Their founder, O. C. Tanner, said his purpose for them was “a search for better understanding and human values.” Wikipedia rates them as “one of the top lecture series among top universities,” and, indeed, the list of past Tanner lecturers includes Popper, Nagel, Rawls, Sen, and Foucault

Towards an Ethical Framework Grounded in Everyday Business Life

Business is increasingly concerned to reconcile investor driven pressure to perform with state driven pressure to conform (to a cascade of new regulation). Ethics generally favors the latter at the expense of the former. The ethical frameworks developed in the last few years differ from their classical predecessors, however. Integrative Social Contract Theory begins with the business contract and moves out from there to the wider society. Care theory begins with the relationship between two individual persons and moves out from there. Both theories are skeptical of the Universalist claims of classical ethical and religious frameworks and both claim to be user friendly. This paper compares and contrasts the two theories and hopes to show how the ethical lacunae in ISCT can be fixed by Care Theory. How a business would operate under the sway of Care Theory is described. Fears that Care Theory cannot be applied to business without weakening competitive strength are addressed. The paper is offered as a step towards merging ISCT and Care Theory to evolve an ethical framework for business. It would be a framework that engages fully with business realities, especially competitive realities, but that is directly and clearly guided by classical ethical principles

The Decimation: Not yet the Implosion

In the chapter I wrote for the book, The University of the Future (Donleavy, 2019), I predicted that by 2030 the university sector would implode. That would be because demand for university places had reduced far below supply. With 2020's Covid-19 keeping so many people locked down at home for the whole of semester one, overseas students were not able to study face to face. Universities faced a financial crisis in proportion to their reliance on overseas student fee income. It is still too early to see a clear or comprehensive picture of Covid-19 effects on universities. This paper assembles some important early effects and early responses. The verdict is that the crisis will shrink the sector but not kill it

The Nuances of fair value history: A rejoinder to Cardao-Pito

Cardao-Pito (2020) critically reviewed Donleavy's (2019) article on the origins of the use of the word 'fair' in fair value accounting. This article is a rejoinder to the criticisms in that review

Usefulness unfulfilled: a performance review of value added statements

The opportunity to achieve a major turning point in accounting history was the publication of The Corporate in the UK in 1975. It recommended several new reports, but its recommendations were largely ignored. One of the recommended reports, however, the value added statement, has been adopted by a number of jurisdictions around the world with stakeholder accountability as a prime objective. This paper surveys the arguments for the value added statement being for the generality of statement users what the income statement and statement of financial position have for stockholders and bondholders alone. The actual use made of the statements around the world and their usefulness is then reviewed, and the reasons for a quite widespread disappointment are discussed. Finally, the paper relates the value added statement to the ruins of the labour theory of value and suggests future research to determine the contribution value added statements could make to determining the extent to which a corporation's results are the spoils of a zero sum game under oligopolistic conditions or value genuinely created for the industry or economy a whole