New public management and employee share ownership plan in Fiji’s public sector

This article provides insights into the implementation of new public management (NPM) practices in Fiji Telecom and whether the use of the employee share ownership scheme was helpful in the organisational change process. The NPM practices were influenced by the World Bank and International Monetary Fund who were the lenders to Fiji government. The adoption of NPM practices was part of a political, economic and public sector reforms introduced after 1989. The paper discusses the background and obstacles of the reform and how the employee share ownership scheme practice at a privatised Telecom Company assists employees to assimilate commercial business norms. The authors finally make recommendations for policy-makers in Fiji and other developing nations

SOME INSIGHTS REGARDING CREATIVE ACCOUNTING IN ROMANIAN ACCOUNTING ENVIRONMENT - REGULATORS, FINANCIAL AUDITORS AND PROFESSIONAL BODIES OPINION

This empirical study reports the results of a survey designed to explore the existence and magnitude of creative accounting practices in the Romanian accounting environment using as a reference point the opinion of some of the top representative accounting professionals like: financial auditors, regulators and professional bodies representatives of the Chamber of Financial Auditors of Romania and also representative of the Body of Expert and Licensed Accountants of Romania. \\r\\nSince the existence of creative accounting practices are connected in accounting with issues of vulnerability and in some cases panic getting to know its magnitude can be regarded of higher importance. In this respect we were interested to see if our respondents can document its existence and magnitude based on their experience. In order to achieve this goal our methodology employed neutral and direct interviews based on closed questions questionnaire. \\r\\nThe results of our empirical study documented that the credibility of accounting profession in the Romanian accounting environment is not affected by items like creative accounting since all our respondents asserted that is not facile to employ creative accounting schemes in the practice of accounting. One particular question was concerned about the ease of detection of creative accounting practices. In this respect we interrogated our respondents and all had similar opinions that in order to detect those practice skilled professionals are needed and more than that the desire to engage in this demarche since it is not specified particularly in the law.\\r\\nWhen it comes to creative accounting schemes that our respondents could identify in their day to day work they shared similar views: items like profit overstatement and profit undervaluation, income tax and leasing can be included frequently in those schemes. On the other hand practices of creative accounting that include goodwill, provisions and developments costs are not found in a significant proportion in the Romanian economic environment. \\r\\n \\r\\ncreative accounting, creative accounting practices, credibility, existence, magnitude

What do deficits tell us about debt? Empirical evidence on creative accounting with fiscal rules in the EU

Fiscal rules, such as the excessive deficit procedure and the stability and growth pact (SGP), aim at constraining government behavior. Milesi-Ferretti (2003) develops a model in which governments circumvent such rules by reverting to creative accounting. The amount of this creative accounting depends on the reputation cost for the government and the economic cost of sticking to the rule. In this paper, we provide empirical evidence of creative accounting in the European Union. We find that the SGP rules have induced governments to use stock-flow adjustments, a form of creative accounting, to hide deficits. This tendency to substitute stock-flow adjustments for budget deficits is especially strong for the cyclical component of the deficit, as in times of recession the cost of reducing the deficit is particularly large. --Fiscal rules,stock-flow adjustments,debt-deficit adjustments,stability and growth pact,excessive deficit procedure,ESA 95

The ethics of creative accounting

The term 'creative accounting' can be defined in a number of ways. Initially we will offer this definition: 'a process whereby accountants use their knowledge of accounting rules to manipulate the figures reported in the accounts of a business'. To investigate the ethical issues raised by creative accounting we will: - Explore some definitions of creative accounting. - Consider the various ways in which creative accounting can be undertaken. - Explore the range of reasons for a company's directors to engage in creative accounting. - Review the ethical issues that arise in creative accounting. - Report on surveys of auditors' perceptions of creative accounting in the UK, Spain and New Zealand.Accounting, creative accounting, ethics

STUDY REGARDING THE INFLUENCE OF ROMANIAN ACCOUNTING REGULATIONS ON CREATIVE ACCOUNTING TECHNIQUES

The main objective of this paper is the analysis of Romanian accounting regulations and the identification of the impact they have on creative accounting techniques. Also, we shall investigate the influence some of these creative accounting techniques have on the true and fair value. Basically, we desire to answer the question: to what extent is being affected the true and fair value reflected within the financial statements of a certain entity by appealing to creative accounting. At international level there are several papers having as subject creative accounting, most of them emphasizing the negative role it has upon achieving the true and fait view. The papers that analyze creative accounting techniques in Romania are rather few, reason to start studying the extent to which Romanian accounting regulations allow the use of creative accounting techniques. We shall use the experience comprised within papers published at international level in order to substantiate an objective analysis of creative accounting techniques in Romania and of the impact they have on true and fait view. Being familiar with the creative accounting techniques is equally useful to the entire palette of accounting information users, including the researchers, for one can quantify the positive or negative impact they have on the true and fair value. One can bring suggestions to modify the accounting regulations, if some creative accounting techniques affect the legitimate interests of certain accounting information users. Also, one can perform analyses regarding the situation of this field in Romania in comparison with the existent situation in other countries. The paper\'s originality is given by the study on the impact of applicable accounting regulations in Romania on creative accounting techniques. There are very few studies in this field in our country and we appreciate that it would be a useful source for the accounting information users. Also, the usefulness of this study is given by the suggestions concerning the instruments to identify the creative accounting techniques that have a negative role on financial statements, so that they would keep their relevance and credibility for the users of accounting information.creative accounting, true and fair value, regulations, corporate governance, financial statements, flexibility

A CENSUS OF CREATIVE ACCOUNTING TECHNIQUES

Economic development, legal and social pressure and users of information has made it necessary innovation accounts on this basis and development of creative accounting. Such accounting has been developed especially in Anglo-Saxon economies due to the accounting profession freedoms. It sat on the edge of the legal form and economic substance of transactions and events.creative accounting, hiding financial statements; lease-back

Transition to IFRS and value relevance in a small but developed market: A look at Greek evidence

We examine the value relevance of accounting fundamentals after the mandatory transition to IFRS in Greece. We find no significant change in the value relevance of book value of equity and earnings between the 2004 pre IFRS and 2005 post IFRS periods and conclude that the accounting framework is not in itself sufficient for changing market participants' perception about value relevance of accounting information. However, market participants viewed the extra information provided by reconciliations between Greek GAAP and IFRS for 2004 figures as incrementally value relevant. Specifically, this applied to adjustments resulting from standards curtailing previous creative accounting practices and was mainly driven by firms with lower reporting quality (smaller firms and firms with non-‘Big 4' auditors).Value relevance, IFRS implementation, Greece, creative accounting, firm size, audit quality.

FROM CREATIVE ACCOUNTING PRACTICES AND ENRON PHENOMENON TO THE CURRENT FINANCIAL CRISIS

The aim of this paper is to bring into attention the creative accounting phenomenon. Typesof creative accounting practices has been examined comparing scandals occurred in large companiesin the last two decades. In order to realize this scope we define the concept of creative accounting andits various forms, and we try to figure the reasons why we came into a financial crisis again, even if thehistory taught us that the risks are very large. We discuss the implication of creative accounting in thecurrent financial crisis because many financial enterprises have sought state support within a shortperiod of receiving unqualified audit opinion. The research method is a deductive one, fundamentaltype that give us the necessary prerequisites for future research. We believe that creative accountingpractices will not disappear unless the causes which have given rise to them will disappear, too.Therefore, although driven by the intention to limit creative accounting, the accounting normalisersmust take into account the circumstances that allow its expression under close supervision.creative accounting, fraud, audit, financial statements.

What do deficits tell us about debt? Empirical evidence on creative accounting with fiscal rules in the EU

Fiscal rules, such as the Excessive Deficit Procedure and the Stability and Growth Pact (SGP), aim at constraining government behavior. Milesi-Ferretti (2003) develops a model in which governments circumvent such rules by reverting to creative accounting. The amount of this depends on the reputation cost for the government and the economic cost of sticking to the rule. We provide empirical evidence of creative accounting in the European Union. We find that the SGP rules have induced governments to use stock-flow adjustments, a form of creative accounting, to hide deficits. The tendency to substitute stock-flow adjustments for budget deficits is especially strong for the cyclical component of the deficit, as in times of recession the cost of reducing the deficit is particularly large.Fiscal rules; stock-flow adjustments; debt-deficit adjustments; stability and growth pact; excessive deficit procedure; ESA 95