Defrauding the Public Interest: A Critical Examination of Reengineered Audit Processes and the Likelihood of Detecting Fraud

In the past few years, most of the major international public accounting firms have reengineered their audit processes to improve the cost effectiveness of completing an audit and to focus on value-added services for clients. The reengineered audit processes generally focus on a client’s business processes and the information systems used by the client to generate financial information. In essence, the new audit approaches deemphasize direct testing of the underlying transactions and account balances. Such an approach emphasizes analytical procedures as the main source of substantive evidence. During this same time period, however, the profession (through the AICPA) explicitly acknowledged the profession’s responsibility for fraud detection. The main premise of this paper is that the increased emphasis on systems assessments is at odds with the profession’s position regarding fraud detection because most material frauds originate at the top levels of the organization, where controls and systems are least prevalent and effective. As such, the profession may be paying lip service to fraud detection, while at the same time changing the audit process in a manner that is less effective at detecting the most common frauds

Assurance Services for Business-to- Business Electronic Commerce: A Framework and Implications

The electronic commerce assurance market has been estimated to be potentially worth $11 billion. To date the focus of assurance services has largely been on web commerce (and therefore business to consumer) related services, leaving the business-to-business (B2B or B-to-B) electronic commerce market relatively untapped. Yet, with Electronic Data Interchange (EDI) being mandated by large companies and government agencies, small- to medium-sized firms have struggled to acquire and implement this technology with little understanding of this new age of electronic commerce. As the ubiquitous Internet allows more firms to become EDI-capable, there is an imminent need for having some independent means for assuring the quality of B2B electronic commerce and related business practices. This need is not only crucial for smaller trading partners, but is essential to the success of larger firms who want to realize reduced cycle times, improved customer service and a greater return on their technology investments by electronically controlling the entire value-chain. This paper proposes a framework for delivering B2B electronic commerce assurance services and discusses some potential implications for such services

Assurance Services for Business-to- Business Electronic Commerce: A Framework and Implications

The electronic commerce assurance market has been estimated to be potentially worth $11 billion. To date the focus of assurance services has largely been on web commerce (and therefore business to consumer) related services, leaving the business-to-business (B2B or B-to-B) electronic commerce market relatively untapped. Yet, with Electronic Data Interchange (EDI) being mandated by large companies and government agencies, small- to medium-sized firms have struggled to acquire and implement this technology with little understanding of this new age of electronic commerce. As the ubiquitous Internet allows more firms to become EDI-capable, there is an imminent need for having some independent means for assuring the quality of B2B electronic commerce and related business practices. This need is not only crucial for smaller trading partners, but is essential to the success of larger firms who want to realize reduced cycle times, improved customer service and a greater return on their technology investments by electronically controlling the entire value-chain. This paper proposes a framework for delivering B2B electronic commerce assurance services and discusses some potential implications for such services

Accounting for collaborative supply chain relationships : issues and strategies

The purpose of this discussion paper is to explore the contemporary business model that has arisen with the advent of B2B e-commerce systems in order to better understand the improvements needed in the financial reporting model. The contemporary business model has relegated the enterprise-centric view of corporate competition and the current financial reporting model to insignificance in many instances. Rather, today’s business environment is one dominated by competition between supply chains with an organization’s success ultimately hinging on the viability and success of its supply chain partners as much as, or more than, enterprise-centric policies and decisions. As a result, these highly integrative systems connect supply chain partners in a manner that is more tightly coupled than most consolidated entities. Still, the current financial reporting model fails to even minimally capture the complexity of this new reality. This discussion paper provides the foundation for elaborating on a detailed discussion of how this business model could be more accurately captured through an enhanced business reporting model.El objetivo de este documento de debate es explorar el modelo contemporáneo de negocios que ha surgido con la llegada del B2B – una situación en la que un negocio le hace una transferencia comercial a otro – a los sistemas de comercio electrónico, para así comprender mejor las mejoras necesarias en el modelo de información financiera. El modelo contemporáneo de negocios ha relegado la perspectiva de la empresa como centro de la competencia corporativa, y el actual modelo de información financiera a la insignificancia en ciertos momentos. Sin embargo, el entorno empresarial actual está dominado por la competición entre las cadenas de suministro con el éxito de una organización dependiendo de la viabilidad y el éxito de sus socios de dichas cadenas, tanto, o incluso más que, en las políticas y decisiones centradas en la empresa. Como resultado de ello, estos sistemas altamente integrantes conectan a sus socios de esas cadenas de manera que está más acoplada que la mayoría de las entidades consolidadas. Aún así, el modelo actual de información financiera falla en mínimamente capturar la complejidad de esta nueva realidad. Este documento proporciona la base para elaborar un debate detallado sobre cómo este modelo empresarial podría ser capturado de una forma más exacta, a través de un modelo de información empresarial mejorado

Journal publishing with Acrobat: the CAJUN project

The publication of material in electronic form should ideally preserve, in a unified document representation, all of the richness of the printed document while maintaining enough of its underlying structure to enable searching and other forms of semantic processing. Until recently it has been hard to find a document representation which combined these attributes and which also stood some chance of becoming a de facto multi-platform standard. This paper sets out experience gained within the Electronic Publishing Research Group at the University of Nottingham in using Adobe Acrobat software and its underlying PDF (Portable Document Format) notation. The CAJUN project1 (CD-ROM Acrobat Journals Using Networks) began in 1993 and has used Acrobat software to produce electronic versions of journal papers for network and CD-ROM dissemination. The paper describes the project's progress so far and also gives a brief assessment of PDF's suitability as a universal document interchange standard

Risk Analysis in Extended Enterprise Environments: Identification of Critical Risk Factors in B2B E-Commerce Relationships

The focus of this study is to identify the critical risk factors that can be used to assess the impact of B2B e-commerce on overall enterprise risk. We apply Tthe Khazanchi and Sutton (2001) framework for B2B e-commerce assurance is applied as the organizing conceptual model for the study. The framework focuses on three primary risk components: (1) technical risks, (2) application-user risks, and (3) business risks. To identify a critical set of B2B risk factors, structured focus groups applying a nominal group technique were conducted with three internal constituency groups (corporate groups consisting of IS security, internal IT audit, and e-commerce development managers) and two external constituency groups (e-commerce consultants and external IT auditors). Tests of consistency between the groups confirm strong agreement on the identified critical B2B risk factors. Tests were also conducted on participant groups\u27 perceived relative importance of the critical B2B risk factors. The only substantial inconsistencies were between the internal constituency groups and theversus e-commerce consultants\u27 group for the business risk factors. This would appear to indicate that the priorities of internal groups might be different from the e-commerce consultants who appear more focused on management support of projects than necessarily on active involvement of trading partner staff with systems integration. Subsequent testing of the three- component B2B risk assurance model with a follow-up questionnaire suggests that the identified risk factors support the model, including theorized interrelationships among the three risk components

Cyber Supply Chain Risk Management: Toward an Understanding of the Antecedents to Demand for Assurance

Recognizing the need for effective cyber risk management processes across the supply chain, the AICPA issued a new SOC in March 2020 for assuring cyber supply chain risk management (C-SCRM) processes. This study examines supply chain relationship factors and cyber risk issues to better understand the demand for C-SCRM assurance. Resource-Advantage Theory of Competition provides the conceptual foundation for assessing the dual drivers of relationship building and cyber risk management on demand for assurance. We use a field survey to collect data from 205 professionals enabling evaluation of the complex relationships in the theoretical model. Results support all hypotheses, provide satisfactory model fit, and support the underlying theory. Trust and cyber supply chain risk both positively influence demand for assurance over C-SCRM processes. This study expands the literature on cyber assurance by auditors and elaborates on overall supply chain processes that help drive value from auditors providing such assurance

Health & homelessness in Aberdeen City: a report for the Scottish Health Council.

1. Background According to the latest official figures, 1900 households presented themselves as homeless in Aberdeen City in the year 2005/2006 (Scottish Executive 2006). The problems faced by homeless people in Aberdeen and elsewhere have already been documented in terms of inadequate housing, family and relationship breakdown, unemployment, multiple debt, reliance on benefits and low income. (Love, 1993, 1997, 2002; Spicker, Love, Strangward, McLaverty & Strachan, 2002). Such multiple and linked problems serve to marginalise homeless people relegating them to ways of life outside of mainstream society. A corollary of such exclusion is the relatively high levels of poor health (both physical and mental) found among the homeless population. Hence, physical hardship, accidents, inadequate resources to practice personal hygiene, poor diet, stress, difficulty registering with a GP, a lack of preventative care, a lack of (suitable) health information and stigma combine to increase the rates of morbidity and mortality among homeless people. 2. Research The study examined the health status and health behaviours of homeless people in Aberdeen. It sought to find out how well NHS services engage with homeless people in the city. The intention was to explore how patient and public involvement could be developed meaningfully to ensure that the views of homeless people are actively sought, listened to and acted upon. The definition of homelessness used corresponded to that used by the Homelessness Task Force (see Appendix A) and covered the statutory homeless and non statutory homeless (e.g. roofless, houseless, temporarily housed, those living in insecure accommodation etc.)

Health & ethnicity in Aberdeenshire: a study of Polish in-migrants; a report for the Scottish Health Council.

In Scotland as a whole, around 2% of the population are from minority ethnic backgrounds, although the distribution of people from such backgrounds is uneven across the country. In Aberdeenshire, out of a total population of 232,850, 1,165 people come from ethnic minority backgrounds, around 0.5% of the total population. According to the 2001 Census, there are nine main ethnic minority groups in Aberdeenshire, the largest of which is Chinese, comprising around a quarter of the total ethnic minority population of the area (n=277, 24%). The remaining groups are made up of Indians, Pakistanis, other South Asians, Africans, Black Scottish and people from the Caribbean. However, around 29% come from other minority ethnic groups. With respect to the latter, there has been a noticeable influx of people from Eastern Europe, particularly Poland, Lithuania and Latvia following the accession of ten new member states to the European Union on the 1st April 2004. It has been estimated that around 800 migrant workers and their families are now coming to Grampian each month (400 of whom are Polish), if levels of applications for National Insurance numbers are indicative in this respect (NHS Grampian, 2005). The health needs of migrants is becoming increasingly recognised. As such, the International Organization for Migrations most recent World Migration Report (2005) argued that, the social and economic costs of neglecting migration health, also as a public health issue, can be immeasurable. The experience of migration can lead to increased vulnerability to ill health as well as ill health, which arises after arrival. Poorer migrants are often lowly paid, living in damp conditions, badly nourished and exposed to higher risks in working environments yet under-utilise health services. In addition, the stigma generated from wider perceptions of poor migrant health can contribute to an undermining of the benefits of migration. In short, migration is a public health issue, which seems likely to endure in an emerging age of migration (Castles and Miller 2003). Finally communication is considered fundamentally important to the health of migrants due to language barriers having adverse effects on the accessibility of care, the quality of care received, patient satisfaction and patient health outcomes (Bischoff 2003). To help in-migrants settle into Scotland generally and Aberdeenshire in particular the Scottish Executive and a range of national and regional bodies have introduced a range of policies. Within healthcare, NHS Grampian (2005) aims to make genuine and lasting improvements in the quality of services provided to the local ethnic communities and to make NHS Grampian the leader, for other Health Boards to follow. To this end a range of policies are being implemented. These include, interpretation and translation services, training for NHS Grampian staff to better understand the needs of the local ethnic communities, access and service delivery, racial equality within NHS Grampian, appointments procedures, training procedures, actively promoting health within the ethnic communities and meeting the healthcare needs of recently arrived migrant workers and their families and asylum seekers

Microbial control of diatom bloom dynamics in the open ocean

Diatom blooms play a central role in supporting foodwebs and sequestering biogenic carbon to depth. Oceanic conditions set bloom initiation, whereas both environmental and ecological factors determine bloom magnitude and longevity. Our study reveals another fundamental determinant of bloom dynamics. A diatom spring bloom in offshore New Zealand waters was likely terminated by iron limitation, even though diatoms consumed <1/3 of the mixed-layer dissolved iron inventory. Thus, bloom duration and magnitude were primarily set by competition for dissolved iron between microbes and small phytoplankton versus diatoms. Significantly, such a microbial mode of control probably relies both upon out-competing diatoms for iron (i.e., K-strategy), and having high iron requirements (i.e., r-strategy). Such resource competition for iron has implications for carbon biogeochemistry, as, blooming diatoms fixed three-fold more carbon per unit iron than resident non-blooming microbes. Microbial sequestration of iron has major ramifications for determining the biogeochemical imprint of oceanic diatom blooms. Citation: Boyd, P. W., et al. (2012), Microbial control of diatom bloom dynamics in the open ocean, Geophys. Res. Lett., 39, L18601