International Accounting Standards Harmonisation: the Case of Iran Privatisation

Accounting standards harmonisation literature shows that from the beginnhg of the twenty first century IASs and IFRSs are receiving increasing attention from professional accounting bodies and stock market authorities of developed and developing countries more than ever before. Consequently number of countries chose to join the lAS users have incresed dramatically in recent years. The objective of this paper is to explore how Iranian Accounting Standards Board achieves harmonisation with IASs and lFRSs while govemment using some efforts to develop local stock market as means of privatisation. Tehran Stock Exchange which is involved in the third wave of country privatisation required companies to prepare their financial reports using National Accounting Standards. These standards are in harmony with lASs and lFRs as they are developed based on the same procedure of lASB\u27s “due process”. In the same way, proposed projects of lran Accounting Standards Boards aim to develop conceptual framework in order toestablish a platform for standard setting. Due to recent development in privatisation in relation to Internationally harmonised national accounting and auditing standards the standard setting in lran is in the state of flex national and International wise

Spatially Aware Computing for Natural Interaction

Spatial information refers to the location of an object in a physical or digital world. Besides, it also includes the relative position of an object related to other objects around it. In this dissertation, three systems are designed and developed. All of them apply spatial information in different fields. The ultimate goal is to increase the user friendliness and efficiency in those applications by utilizing spatial information. The first system is a novel Web page data extraction application, which takes advantage of 2D spatial information to discover structured records from a Web page. The extracted information is useful to re-organize the layout of a Web page to fit mobile browsing. The second application utilizes the 3D spatial information of a mobile device within a large paper-based workspace to implement interactive paper that combines the merits of paper documents and mobile devices. This application can overlay digital information on top of a paper document based on the location of a mobile device within a workspace. The third application further integrates 3D space information with sound detection to realize an automatic camera management system. This application automatically controls multiple cameras in a conference room, and creates an engaging video by intelligently switching camera shots among meeting participants based on their activities. Evaluations have been made on all three applications, and the results are promising. In summary, this dissertation comprehensively explores the usage of spatial information in various applications to improve the usability

Attitudes of Educators and Practitioners in the UAE Towards Elements of General Education in Learning Accounting

Most universities and higher education institutions in developing countries seem to concentrate on areas of specializations inteaching accounting. Many do not seem to give attention to general education despite the fact that local and International accreditation bodies (i.c. AACSB) require general education to be pan of the accounting degree. This paper aims at finding out how educators and practitioners differ in terms of their preference ratings of general education knowledge in accounting curriculum. A survey was conducted and discriminant analysis was applied to the collected data. The results suggest that. The two groups differ in their preference in general education. Practitioners seem to give more emphasis on general knowledge in the areas of art and science and business mathematics and statistics. while educators seem to pay more attention to general knowledge in marketing and economics

Accounting, the cost of corruption and abuse of power in the United States (1970-1990): lessons to be learned

The Watergate scandal and resulting resignation of President Richard Nixon in the early 1970s, is arguably the most egregious instance of corruption at the highest levels of government in the history of the United States (U.S). The scandal revealed a disturbing pattern of misuse of corporate funds for improper or illegal purposes by U.S companies, domestically and internationally. A series of hearings in response to these issues, made it apparent that legislation was required to address corrupt activities. The hearings also shed light on discoveries of cases of financial misstatements that were not discovered or reported by auditors and boards of directors. The role of accounting, auditors and accountability in disguising the corrupt and bribery payments were not the main concern of the hearings and inquiries. Even through, bribes and questionable payments had become the norm of business practices. It was apparent that the accountability system, that is designed to assure the proper accounting of the use of corporate funds, was frustrated. The United States became the global leader in the fight against corruption in international business with the passage of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA) in 1977 as the first legislation in the world to recognise and seek to curb the contribution of domestically based corporations to foreign corruption. The act included accounting provisions relating to record keeping requirements and establishment of a system of controls for the perceived assurance of corporate accountability. However, the FCPA did little to address the accounting and auditing failures that were initially raised by the Congress or the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). The act would have been significant if it had the ability to affect the governance and accountability mechanisms of corporations, the work of independent auditors and the role of the Securities and Exchange Commission. However, the enactment of the FCPA became largely a symbolic exercise and was “referred to by some commentators as a legal sleeping dog” (Giudice 2011, p.351). From its inception, the proposed bills by Senators and Congressman reflected “a cautious approach to this immense problem” (United States 1977d, p.28), which led to “a more loose, flexible framework for disclosure… than lay[ing] down detailed, mandatory guidelines” (United States 1977d, p.29). The FCPA was not enforced vigorously by the two bodies in charge, namely the SEC and the Department of Justice. The number of cases that went to trial under the act were low and mainly resulted in minimal penalties. The enforcement was indirectly affected by the U.S. President of the time and their political agenda, which affected the amount of funding and resources available to the bodies in charge. Due to ineffectiveness of the FCPA in changing corporations’ governance system and accountability to their stakeholders, and lack of enforcement, during 2002 the Sarbanes-Oxley (SOX) act was enacted to address these post-Watergate accounting and auditing issues

The impact of Ias 36 on equity values: Empirical evidence from UAE

© 2016, Virtus interpress. All rights reserved. Amortization requirement of goodwill asset is one of the most controversial issues in financial reporting. This study provides empirical evidence on whether goodwill amortization has significant impact on equity value. It analyses the information content of goodwill amortization in the determination of firm’s market valuation by Emirates Financial Market Listed companies that clearly reported goodwill amortization over the period 2003 to 2012 inclusive. Evidence suggests that there is a statistically significant association between equity market values and goodwill amortization in the determination of firms’ market valuation, concluding that the UAE market perceives goodwill amortization as having information content when valuing firms and the use of standardized amortization requirement may be appropriate

Information Asymmetry: Evidence From Iran Listed Companies

Inherent in the International and indigenous accounting standards is managerial discretion in the application of accounting methods, preparation of financial reports and disclosures. Extent literature indicates that almost all companies are engaged in some type of earnings management (Healy, 1985; Perry & Williams, 1994; Defond & Jiambalvo, 1994; Jordon, Clark, & Pate, 2008). A crucial question posed for accounting research is to identify the environmental conditions under which managerial discretion (i.e. accounting choices) are exercised. Using empirical analysis this paper investigates one of the fundamental conditions of earnings management, information asymmetry between managers and investors. When information asymmetry is high, stakeholders including investors do not have sufficient resources, incentives, or access to relevant information to monitor managers\u27 actions, which gives rise to earnings management. Empirical results show that the level of information asymmetry index which is the combination of five important Tehran Stock Exchange (TSE) relevant proxies (volume of trade, stock price variation, P/E ratio, number of trading days and firm age) has a positive statistically significant effect on the extent of earnings management practiced by companies listed on the TSE

Corporate governance in extreme institutional environment: Evidence from emerging economy

Corporate governance (CG) is often split among rule and principle based methods to regulation in distinctive institutional contexts. Relying on an alternative theoretical framework (i.e. institutional theory), rather than the dominant agency theory, this study conceptualizes corporate governance practices and structures as institutionally resolute and directed and explores the key institutional determinants of good CG practices in an emerging economy. Drawing on qualitative and quantitative methods, this study conducted semistructured interviews from eight CG professionals, followed by a survey questionnaire (N=105) from PSX listed firms. The study explores the extent to which certain underlying formal and informal institutional determinants, such as the auditing, political, legal, board, shareholders awareness, voting, culture, and values play a determining role in corporate governance. Using exploratory factor analysis, this study identified five major barriers, i.e. firm-level barriers, external barriers, social barriers, education and training barriers and legal barriers which restrain good CG practices in Pakistan. In addition, this study identified four major drivers, i.e. internal drivers, regulatory drivers, motivational drivers and collaborative drivers which can promote good CG practices in Pakistan. The findings of multiple hierarchical regression analysis revealed that the CGI score has a significant positive relationship with both return on assets and return on equity. This study emphasizes the necessity to revisit the foundation of institutional and agency theories in the environment of developing countries

Form over substance, the politics of international accounting setting

This paper lays the foundation of the move towards international standards and an international body being dependent upon the involvement of politics. Callon\u27s translation model is adapted to develop the concept that the underling purposes and objectives that international bodies have been established by would not be achieved as a result of powerful players. According to Robson (1991, p.552) the process of translation is common to many instances of accounting problematisation and accounting chang