The Arrival Of A New GAAP: International Financial Reporting Standards

This article examines the International Accounting Standards Board’s efforts to create greater comparability and uniformity in global financial reporting.   Prefacing this will be an examination of 1) the reasons for past and present inter-country reporting differences and 2) the changes that have affected the governing structure of the international financial reporting environment.  Most importantly, however, this article explores the areas that will be most impacted when companies move to a uniform group of international accounting standards.  An understanding of the accounting regulatory process and the changes underway is important for all businesses professionals, including those in large and small businesses alike, and understanding how to read and interpret the language of business is important to competing in today’s smaller world

Risk Manage Capital Investment Decisions: A Lease vs. Purchase Illustration

This paper demonstrates how to build risk into capital investment decisions.  We illustrate how to combine distribution theory, technology, and a business professional’s skills and insight into a capital investment analysis.  In addition, we show how management can approximate the risk of each cash flow estimate and display the overall capital investment results.  This framework is extended by showing how a mutually exclusive decision can be improved, using a lease versus purchase example.[1]  An Excel template is readily available from the authors allowing a hands-on application of the framework presented in this paper.  In addition, this paper positions the reader to comfortably use more advanced analytics, such as Monte Carlo simulation, a tool that is readily available in commercial software applications.This paper focuses on the application of net present value.  The advantage of using net present value in a capital budgeting decision is that it shows the potential stakeholder wealth creation and wealth destruction.  An internal rate of return analysis is intentionally left out of this paper.  According to Brealey, Myers and Allen, Principles of Corporate Finance, New York, NY: McGraw-Hill/Irwin 2006, pp. 91-99, internal rate of return should not be used to evaluate mutually exclusive capital investments.&nbsp

Good Bye Traditional Budgeting, Hello Rolling Forecast: Has The Time Come?

This paper argues for a new approach to accounting textbook budgeting material. The business environment is not stable. Change is continuous, for large and small business alike. A business must act and react to generate shareholder value. The rolling forecast provides the necessary navigational insight. The traditional annual static budget does not. Managing a business, looking inwards and backwards and making decisions to hit the annual budget target no longer serves management in generating shareholder value. In most situations this approach to company management only leads to compromised performance. Leadership may not reach long-term shareholder wealth potential in using the traditional annual budget as a command and control device. Our research shows companies are moving to a rolling forecast as a management navigational tool. Leadership uses the forecast to navigate continuous change in creating shareholder value. This paper demonstrates how to build leadership concepts that go along with the rolling forecast, as well as the rolling forecast process itself into the classroom and accounting textbook material. Accounting and graduate business students need this type of education to help lead and increase a business’ chances of success

A Changed Taxonomy Of Retail Financial Ratios

Thirty-five years ago researchers established a taxonomy of retail financial ratios. During the intervening period, extensive changes in retailing practices have been accompanied by equally extensive changes in financial reporting, marketing and management methods. Financial reporting standards have adapted to reflect these new domestic and international business practices, while technological innovation has produced continually evolving hardware and software advancements. This study investigates the extent to which the taxonomy of retail financial ratios has changed and, if justified, will establish a revised taxonomy. It extends prior work in two ways. First, it utilizes advanced statistical methodologies and computing technologies to provide a more discriminating investigation than previous researchers were capable of conducting. Second, this study investigates the current taxonomy of retail industry financial ratios as well as its stability over a ten-year period. Our findings identify a shift in the retail sector taxonomy of financial ratios. Empirical analysis points to a taxonomy consisting of five factors: capital intensiveness, cash position, inventory turnover, return on assets-return on sales, and return on equity-leverage. Contrary to expectations, a separate operating cash flow factor was not identified, despite the emergence of a mandatory cash flow statement during the intervening period. These findings provide an empirical basis to formulate testable hypotheses regarding the predictive and descriptive utility of retail financial ratios

Human Asset Accounting And Measurement: Moving Forward

Changes in the accounting profession and in the way organizations are managed and operated over the past several decades have led to the identification of a new factor that makes up a substantial part of the value of an organization: human capital.  The value that employees add to organizations, however, has been difficult to measure because of the many elements that comprise it and aspects of human nature and free will that are involved.  Many models have been proposed to capture the value that organizations gain from employees, but none have succeeded in full.  Additionally, strict financial reporting regulations would require an accurate and uniform method of accounting for human capital in order to give much relevance to the data collected.  Despite its complex nature, the field of human asset accounting continues to gain momentum and is headed in the right direction.  The development of a universal method of accounting for human capital would provide a much more exact valuation of organizations and have deep benefits for owners, managers, investors, accountants, and human resource employees.  This paper examines the history of human asset accounting and its feasibility in current financial reporting environments.  Additionally, it demonstrates the importance of human asset accounting, different approaches toward human asset accounting, and how beneficial an accurate method could prove to be in financial reporting.  Finally, the paper recommends that, as a precursor to measurement, the development of general quantitative and qualitative human capital disclosures, with real company examples, be included in a company’s sustainability reporting

Strategic Alignment Map: The Ongoing Development of a Program Management Tool

This article explains the development and continuous modification of a tool that can be used to improve both participant experience and faculty performance in Executive Education programs. This tool is the Strategy Alignment Map (SAM). Participants that use the SAM create a document that summarizes 1) their strategic purpose for attending a program, 2) specific learning outcomes and how they align with their strategic purpose, and 3) action steps for implementing the learning. Executive Education, faculty and the Dean all benefit in different ways from this tool that improves participant educational experiences

Charge injection instability in perfect insulators

We show that in a macroscopic perfect insulator, charge injection at a field-enhancing defect is associated with an instability of the insulating state or with bistability of the insulating and the charged state. The effect of a nonlinear carrier mobility is emphasized. The formation of the charged state is governed by two different processes with clearly separated time scales. First, due to a fast growth of a charge-injection mode, a localized charge cloud forms near the injecting defect (or contact). Charge injection stops when the field enhancement is screened below criticality. Secondly, the charge slowly redistributes in the bulk. The linear instability mechanism and the final charged steady state are discussed for a simple model and for cylindrical and spherical geometries. The theory explains an experimentally observed increase of the critical electric field with decreasing size of the injecting contact. Numerical results are presented for dc and ac biased insulators.Comment: Revtex, 7pages, 4 ps figure

Longitudinal trends in food cravings following Roux-en-Y gastric bypass in an adolescent sample

This is the author's accepted manuscript. Made available by the permission of the publisher.Background Food cravings are more prevalent and potentially problematic for many individuals with obesity. Initial evidence suggests that bariatric surgery has some short-term beneficial effects on cravings in adults, but little is known about the effect on adolescents or the trajectory beyond 6 months. Methods The purpose of the present study was to determine the longitudinal effect of Roux-en-Y gastric bypass (RYGB) on food cravings in a sample of adolescents with severe obesity (body mass index (BMI) ≥40 kg/m2). Sixteen adolescents were recruited and underwent RYGB. Participants completed the Food Craving Inventory before RYGB, and 3, 6, 12, 18, and 24 months postoperatively. The present study took place in a single pediatric tertiary care hospital. Results RYGB produced a negative (cravings decreased as time increased) nonlinear trend for total food cravings as well as for each individual subscale (sweets, high fat foods, carbohydrates, fast food) over the 24-month study period. This means that while cravings decrease postsurgically, there is a decline in the slope with the line reaching asymptote at approximately 18 months. BMI change was not a significant predictor of food cravings, but low statistical power may account for this lack of significance. Conclusion These findings provide preliminary evidence that RYGB decreases food cravings in adolescents

The NY-Ålesund TurbulencE Fiber Optic eXperiment (NYTEFOX): investigating the Arctic boundary layer, Svalbard

The NY-Ålesund TurbulencE Fiber Optic eXperiment (NYTEFOX) was a field experiment at the Ny-Ålesund Arctic site (78.9◦ N, 11.9◦ E) and yielded a unique meteorological data set. These data describe the distribution of heat, airflows, and exchange in the Arctic boundary layer for a period of 14 d from 26 February to 10 March 2020. NYTEFOX is the first field experiment to investigate the heterogeneity of airflow and its transport of temperature, wind, and kinetic energy in the Arctic environment using the fiber-optic distributed sensing (FODS) technique for horizontal and vertical observations. FODS air temperature and wind speed were observed at a spatial resolution of 0.127 m and a temporal resolution of 9 s along a 700 m horizontal array at 1 m above ground level (a.g.l.) and along three 7 m vertical profiles. Ancillary data were collected from three sonic anemometers and an acoustic profiler (minisodar; sodar is an acronym for “sound detection and ranging”) yielding turbulent flow statistics and vertical profiles in the lowest 300 m a.g.l., respectively. The observations from this field campaign are publicly available on Zenodo (https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.4756836, Huss et al., 2021) and supplement the meteorological data set operationally collected by the Baseline Surface Radiation Network (BSRN) at Ny-Ålesund, Svalbard

Modeling atmospheric effects of the September 1859 Solar Flare

We have modeled atmospheric effects, especially ozone depletion, due to a solar proton event which probably accompanied the extreme magnetic storm of 1-2 September 1859. We use an inferred proton fluence for this event as estimated from nitrate levels in Greenland ice cores. We present results showing production of odd nitrogen compounds and their impact on ozone. We also compute rainout of nitrate in our model and compare to values from ice core data.Comment: Revised version including improved figures; Accepted for publication in Geophys. Res. Lett, chosen to be highlighted by AG