This study contributes to the debate on accounting pedagogy in the basic financial accounting course by examining the pedagogical tool of fluency training as a way to improve student performance. Fluency training has been shown to improve performance of students in other academic disciplines.

In Statement No. 33, "Financial Reporting and Changing Prices," the FASB requires that some large companies disclose their historical cost/constant dollar and current cost information in the published financial statements. One of the purposes of these disclosures is to help users of the financial statements in assessing future cash flows. This study was directed toward the examination of the effects of the different levels of disclosures on cash flow projections.

This research was undertaken to test the effects of conservatism on the decisions made by auditors. The evaluation of the research results provided by the two psychological tests indicated that, when measured on the construct of resistance to change, auditors as a group are essentially heterogeneous and slightly conservative. However, the auditors' test scores on the construct of aversion to risk reflected a homogeneous group who were distinctly conservative. Based on these results, this research seems to indicate that the firm effect is more important in auditors' decision making than personal characteristics except, perhaps, in the area of compliance testing decisions. If this is indeed the case, it could be said that the different audit philosophies held by the public accounting firms and instilled in their auditors may be the prime cause of the substantial differences that have been continuously found in auditor judgments.

Fraud risk assessment is an important audit process that has a direct impact on the effectiveness of auditors' fraud detection in an audit. However, prior literature has shown that auditors are generally poor at assessing fraud risk. The Public Company Accounting Oversight Board (PCAOB) suggests that auditors may improve their fraud risk assessment performance by adopting a fraud specialist mindset. A fraud specialist mindset is a special way of thinking about accounting records. While auditors think about the company's recorded transactions in terms of the availability of supporting documentations and the authenticity of the audit trail, fraud specialists think instead of accounting records in terms of the authenticity of the events and activities that are behind the reported transactions. Currently there is no study that has examined the effects of the fraud specialist mindset on auditors' fraud risk assessment performance. In addition, although recent studies have found that fraud specialists are more sensitive than auditors in discerning fraud risk factors in situation where a high level of fraud risk is present, it remains unclear whether the same can be said for situation where the risk of fraud is low. Thus, the purpose of my dissertation is to examine the effects …

Both revenues and earnings of diversified firms are increasingly being reported, to the government and the public, on a subentity basis. Adequate criterial foundations do not exist to permit the effective general prescription of specific segment delineations, nor is it known whether such criterial assists can be usefully developed.Demands for segmentation in financial reports are currently intense. Actual reporting practices are largely nonstandardized as to either the definition of segments employed or, the disclosure modes used to present them. Neither conceptual nor theoretical supports are now adequate in guidance to the forms and levels of segmentation activity now required. Prerequisite to effective development of such supports is an-adequate understanding of the corporate diversification phenomenon itself. This dissertation project investigates and analyzes the nature of corporate diversification, as manifested in (1) its historical evolution; (2) general comprehensions of the phenomenon, as evidenced in published opinions and conceptual reasoning schemes of both authoritative experts and lay investors; and (3) formal research by others. Additionally, the results of these investigations and analyses are developed into conceptual schemes and theoretical frameworks, at moderate levels of abstraction.

The Internet provides many sources of financial information that investors can use to help with investment decisions and in interpreting companies' accounting information. One source of information is Internet stock message boards such as those at Yahoo! Finance. This source allows for anonymous postings and information exchange. Despite the possibility of the information being incorrect many individuals visit these message boards. The purpose of this study is to investigate Internet stock message boards and address the primary question: From an individual investor perspective, do message boards, which contain accounting information, influence investment decisions? The question is addressed using psychology rumor literature and attitude theories. Message board postings are a type of rumor, since not all the information is verified and is usually intended to persuade a belief or influence a decision. Further, the messages may influence an investor by causing a change in attitude about the investment. Using an experiment, message board influence on an investment decision and attitude was tested. The results indicated that individuals that received negative message board postings did have a significantly higher change in investment amount as compared to a control group that did not receive any message postings. The positive message board group and …

This research examines the assertions made by Johnson and Kaplan (1987) that cost accounting lost relevance after 1925 due to the dominance of financial accounting, to an academic preoccupation with financial accounting, to the disappearance of engineers and to a managerial emphasis on financial measures of net income and earnings per share. Additionally, the research looks at environmental effects on cost accounting, both economic and governmental.

In recent years, considerable interest has been stimulated concerning potential conflicts of interest between a company's management and their independent auditors. Many researchers examined the association between corporations who changed their present auditors, and factors such as auditor's opinion on the financial statements, management changes, mergers, financial distress, etc. Some of these research efforts resulted in findings that were inconsistent with each other. The current research was therefore undertaken with the objective of developing a theoretical model of auditor change process and to explain the justification for considering certain specific factors that may be present in an auditor-client relationship. The research design and the methodology for analyses were developed on the basis of the theory on power conflicts found in political science literature and by the use of Wrong's power model on authority relationship. Sources of power such as the size of an audit firm, size of a corporation, the stock exchange membership, the ability of an auditor to qualify the opinion on the financial statements, the ability of the management of a corporation to terminate the audit contract following the issue of a qualified opinion, and change of a corporation's CEO were identified and converted into independent variables. Data …

This study examines the impact of Statements of Financial Accounting Standards No. 141 and No. 142 (hereafter SFAS 141, 142) on the characteristics of financial analysts' earnings forecasts after mergers. Specifically, I predict lower forecast errors for firms that experienced mergers after the enactment of SFAS 141, 142 than for firms that went through business combinations before those accounting changes. Study results present strong evidence that earnings forecast errors for companies involved in merging and acquisition activity decreased after the adoption of SFAS 141, 142. Test results also suggest that lower earnings forecast errors are attributable to factors specific to merging companies such as SFAS 141, 142 but not common to merging and non-merging companies. In addition, evidence implies that information in corporate annual reports of merging companies plays the critical role in this decrease of earnings forecast error. Summarily, I report that SFAS 141, 142 were effective in achieving greater transparency of financial reporting after mergers. In my complementary analysis, I also document the structure of corporate analysts' coverage in "leaders/followers" terms and conduct tests for differences in this structure: (1) across post-SFAS 141,142/pre-SFAS 141, 142 environments, and (2) between merging and non-merging firms. Although I do not identify …

Previous research has shown that accountants may be inadequate moral reasoners. Concern over this trend caused the Treadway Commission (1987) and the Accounting Education Change Commission (1990) to call for greater integration of ethics into the student's training. Ponemon and Glazer (1990) found a difference in cognitive moral development (CMD) between accounting students at a public university and a private university with a liberal arts emphasis. This study expands Ponemon and Glazer's research by examining two liberal arts universities, one a private, secular institution and one a Catholic institution. The primary research question asks if Catholic university accounting students manifest greater CMD growth than secular university accounting students. Additionally, this study examines and compares the priority that accounting students from the different institutions place on ethical values versus economic values. It was expected that Catholic university accounting students would manifest both greater CMD growth and a greater concern for ethical values over economic values when compared with non-Catholic university accounting students. The study utilized a two-phase approach. In the first phase, an organizational study of two institutions was made to determine how each strives to integrate moral development into their accounting students' education. In the second phase, lower-division and senior …

The corporate form that developed in the early 20th century created enormous pressure for corporate governance mechanisms to curb the power of corporate managers. Berle and Means, legal pluralists, warned about concentrating economic power in the hands of a small but powerful class of professional managers. They claimed this "new form of absolutism" required governmental oversight and viewed boards of directors as part of management, rather than monitors for shareholders. The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) proposed that corporations establish a special board committee, made up of "nonofficer members" in response to the McKesson & Robbins scandal of the late 1930s. My dissertation examines the evolution of the U.S. corporate audit committee through three specific time periods: (1) 1920-1954; (2) 1955-1986; and (3) 1987 to the passage of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002. My purpose is to determine if evolution of the audit committee throughout these periods has been a reform continually couched in symbolism or whether the audit committee concept has evolved into real reform, allowing proper corporate governance and mitigation of unchecked corporate power. My analysis is a traditional empirical analysis, relying on both primary and secondary sources to develop a coherent ordering of facts. I use narrative …

This dissertation addresses the influence of "positivism" in accounting research. Accounting research has been overwhelmed by "positivism" to the extent that the "scientific method" has become sacrosanct. The dysfunctional consequences include the extreme emphasis placed on methodology. Researchers believe that the methods applied, rather than the orientations of the human researcher, generate knowledge. This belief stems from an extreme objectivist ontological orientation. A second consequence of the "positivistic" influence is a change in direction of intellectual inquiries. Obsession with measurement and quantification has all but eliminated concern for values. Specifically this dissertation asserts that the "scientific method" has been misapplied and misunderstood. The misapplication is that a method developed in the natural sciences has been blindly accepted and endorsed in the social sciences. It has been misunderstood in the sense that the abstract Cartesian-Newtonian view of reality has been mistaken for reality itself. The ontological assumptions inherent in this view have become integrated in the Western mind. The axiomatic nature of these assumptions have been ignored. The primary purpose of this dissertation is to project a point concerning research and knowledge. Hence, there are no "research findings" in the conventional sense.