Kevin Stevenson retires as AASB Chair Essay Example for Free

Kevin Stevenson retires as AASB Chair Essay This article is concerned with the accomplishments and achievements of Kevin Stevenson upon his retirement as the Chairman of the Australian Accounting Standards Board on 30th June 2014. During his tenure, Kevin Stevenson ensured that the long traditions of financial reporting were upheld both internationally and domestically and also provided counsel on issues concerning the FRC. Mr. Stevenson was an example of pioneer standard setters for generations down the line as he was among the founding members of the Accounting Standards Advisory Forum of the International Accounting Standards Board. Through his leadership, the AASB’s Research Centre was established as Stevenson served the Asian-Oceanian Standard Setters Group’s chair. His main focus was to work in the interest of the public, as stated by Lynn Wood, the FRC’s chair and trustee of the IFRS Foundation. In concurrence is Ian Mackintosh, the former Chair of the PSASB of Australia and Deputy Chair of IASB. According to Mackintosh, Stevenson largely contributed in the moves by Asia countries like Nepal and Korea to the IFRS. From the onset of the 1970s, Mr. Stevenson’ attention was driven towards setting ‘principal based’ standards and developing a Conceptual Framework to be used in financial reporting. He advocated for accounting regulations as evidenced by his association with the Accounting Research Foundation and later on watched over the growth of the AARF upon being appointed its Director. He was at the forefront of setting the international pace in the development of com mon accounting standards for both the public and the private sectors. Stevenson largely contributed to the formation of the Public Sector Accounting and also played a significant role in the establishment of the stable platform of International Financial Reporting Standards in 2005 for adoption in Australia and the entire Europe. Concepts, ideas and facts                      Teamwork and leadership are two important components that must be in alignment so as to provide effective high quality and efficient accounting services. A strategic human resource management model provides guidance to accounting teams and leaders to deliver high-quality services in a timely manner. Accounting operates within a performance measurement that tolerates no errors. Therefore, a state-of-the-art investigation requires scientific leadership working with major stakeholders as a team to provide the best accounting services to a fraud investigation. The new techniques of accounting are significant steps in the right direction and they require leaders with skills and business tools to apply concepts such as efficiency, cost benefit analysis, economies of scale and cost-effectiveness analysis that will measure continuous improvement on a regular basis. Effective leadership is needed to develop, design and implement a solution that would resolve the core competency of an organization. Strategic leadership in accounting provides quality and timely accounting services to a company. Such leadership like that o Stevenson brings together a fragmented system consisting of thousands of accountants working within a fragmented system of organizations. Effective teamwork and leadership in accounting shows the way through the development of new innovative fraud investigations for the future. Leaders in positions like that of Stevenson are encouraged to consider both the social and moral implications of their decisions with regard to how their decisions will affect the clients and shareholders of the company. It is the ethical responsibility of every employee to ensure their company does not illegally evade income taxes or allow questionable deductions. They should ensure that the company finds are allocated to the appropriate activities based on their importance and determine the important elements of the business. The accounting issue                      One major way of improving the confidence in financial reporting and accounting is to ensure that there is improvement in ethical standards, reporting mechanisms, strengthening of governance and adequacy of financial management. It is ethical to maintain the right to the truth while practicing accounting and financial reporting. Those who use financial statements have the right to accurate and truthful information when engaging in investment strategies. Clients have a legal right to receive competent and professional services from accountants who have a legal obligation to perform their responsibilities within the constraints of their skills. It is often argued that most accountants lack ethical ability to recognize and solve ethical dilemmas. This has necessitated the need to include ethics education as a major component of the accounting profession. The development of professional ethics and values should be initiated early in the accounting profe ssion and be emphasized throughout the career. Major issue of the article                      Stevenson clearly shows that it is the responsibility of management to serve the best interests of the company that they are providing auditing and accounting services for, investors and society as a whole. This can be done by providing truthful and accurate financial records. Ethical guidelines require that management should be honest, concise, accurate and complete while recording financial data to ensure ethics are held to the highest degree. It is also the duty of every employee to make wise, informed decisions about the future of a company. These accounting standards are useful in financial reporting and accounting as they are processes that are currently under a great deal of scrutiny. The two are important functions that organizations should take care of and ensure that they exhibit a high code of ethics. This is because clients and shareholders use accounting and financial reports in their decision making process. Legal and ethical issues ar e important elements of financial reporting and accounting as has been demonstrated by the positions assumed by Mr. Stevenson. These issues prompted Stevenson to establish financial reporting and accounting departments to set up specific sets of rules that govern the functioning of any organization. Relevant topics and theories                      The long traditions of financial reporting applied Positive Accounting theory by focusing on various aspects that are of major interest to accounting techniques and the issues that provided an informative background and the gives in depth details of the functionality of accounting in financial reporting. Positive Accounting gives a holistic description of what is currently unknown and proposes future considerations. Financial reporting and accounting apply to any economic entity relating to the company’s future business. The major ethical elements involved are objectivity, competence, independence and integrity. These ethical elements require that accountants and financial reporters are independent of the clients to whom they provide financial and accounting services. Ethical obligations help to determine the effectiveness of accounting and financial report and redress any imbalance that may alter information symmetry. The move by Nepal and K orea followed the ethical guidelines of financial reporting and never let the desire for a better living and acquiring more possession get in the way of their financial obligations. It is ethical for any employee of the accounting or financial department working in the public or private sector to remain loyal and impartial to ethical obligations when reviewing both individual and financial reports. It is usual for one to encounter various ethical issues and it is therefore important for one to remain vigilant to resist temptations to manipulate financial records that could violate ethical guidelines. Transparency and integrity are important ethical elements of normative accounting theory. Some companies may receive pressure from management to maintain a certain public image. This is because some public companies have the burden of succeeding at high levels and it becomes an ethical issue for them to maintain true reports of the company assets, profits and liabilities without succumb ing to the pressure from management. It is unethical for management to alter the financial records of its company and manipulate the numbers to create a false image of the success of the company. This only leads to prosperity in the short term since such fraud cases are discovered by the Securities and Exchange Commission ultimately spelling the downfall of the company. For these reasons, accounting theories assert that companies must remain ethically vigilant to avoid breaching the code of conduct. High standards of ethical behavior are expected for those people engaging in accounting and financial reporting. These standards provide rules and guidance to employees in the performance of their professional obligations. Poor decision making by management based on faulty or manipulated financial records aimed at deceiving the public about a company’s financial health has negative consequences on the business. It is therefore unethical for management to overlook such behavior. Gi ven how tempting it is for companies to manipulate their financial records in order to portray an image of economic health, management should provide the last defense possible to prevent accounting fraud. In comment letter 1, the Financial Reporting Committee of the IMA wrote to express its views on financial accounting standards on simplification of the income statement presentation through the elimination of the concept of extraordinary items. The FRC is in charge of several accounting books of different companies this in essence means that they are charged with the responsibility of making timely responses to statements, pronouncements, research legislations, proposals and pending legislations. Their main concern in this letter is the complex nature of financial statements in FASB comment letters. They support the simplication initiative adopted by the board as regards to making the financial statements easier to understand by the common folk CITATION Sch l 1033 (Schroder, 2014). Their support is on the elimination of elimination of extra ordinary items as in most times this criterion is not always met. Their proposal thus rids of the tedious work in the preparation of financial documents and whether this requirement is met by auditors in the process of doing their work. Their support is based on the fact that it reduces to a great extending the complex nature of the time for the allocation of the provision of income tax by reducing the occurrence of other income items occurring. They thus advocate for a thorough examination of the details of this suggested proposal CITATION Sch l 1033 (Schroder, 2014). In comment letter number 2, Marcum Accountants and Advisors write to the FASB regarding the proposed accounting standards through the simplification of the income statement by elimination of the concept of extraordinary items. Their letter is generally a response to several questions regarding the process of simplification of the income statement. They support the concept of elimination of extra ordinary items from the General Accounting principles. Their contention is based on the difficulty of application the extra ordinary items in accounting practice CITATION Giu14 l 1033 (Giugliano, 2014). They thus support the application for extra ordinary items in previous accounting periods. A sudden change of the rules would otherwise lead to confusion in the accounting practice. The ease of application of the proposed update makes it easy to make these recommended changes quite easy to adopt. They thus suggest the immediate adoption of the proposed update. They are in agreement with the decision by the board to stick to the principle of separate disclosure of infrequent transactions. Items must thus meet the definition of occurring infrequently in recurrent expenditure. They list the following examples as those that should not be classified as unusual or infrequently occurring: occupancy related expense, routine tax audit returns and losses and gains from reimbursements from insurance CITATION Giu14 l 1033 (Giugliano, 2014). They thus suggest the importance of offering guidance on the determination of unusual items. Proper definitions should thus be provided of the unusually occurring items. In comment letter 3, Ford Motor Company also writes in support of the simplication initiative by FASB. Their agreement is based on the objective of evaluation, identification and improvement of the generally accepted accounting principles CITATION Cal14 l 1033 (Callahan, 2014). This thus means that the reduction of the cost of complexity is possible with the simplification of the income statement. They are also in agreement with the board that such an update would not lead to data loss. The overall benefit would be to the end users of such financial statements. References Callahan, S. (2014). Ford Company. Giugliano, G. (2014). Marcum Accountants. Schroder, N. (2014). Institute of Management Accounting. Source document

Internet as a Research Tool Essay -- Expository Web Internet Essays

Internet as a Research Tool Because of its speed and convenience, the Internet has quickly become one of the most-used resources for gathering information. The Internet allows people to have access to a lot of information in one place, and in the convenience of their own homes. However, many problems arise when students use the Internet as a research source for school assignments. Many students are typically under the false assumption that everything on the Internet is valid; if it’s written it must be true. Problems that emerge from using the Internet as a research tool are the quantity of information, the quality of the information, issues of plagiarism, and additional problems with general Internet usage. The issues discussed in this paper are mostly referring to the information found on the Internet when students used it to do research. Most of these problems mentioned often do not apply to publications that are found in both the print form and in an online form. A misconception many students often have is the belief that everything can be found on the Internet if provided with the right tools to find it. In reality, however, Marylaine Block asserts in her article entitled â€Å"Getting Students Beyond The Net†, that â€Å"the Net represents, at most, perhaps 12% of the world’s accumulated store of information† (Block, 2003, What’s Not on the Net section, para. 1). Because of various circumstances, such as â€Å"the prohibitive cost of digitizing, lack of interest, and copyright issues†, the majority of this information is not and will not ever appear on the Internet (The Second Largest Source: Books section, para. 1). Very few periodicals earlier than 1980 have been digitized for these reasons. Therefore, most of the peri... ... March 2, 2004 from Academic Search Premier database. Mash, S. D. (2003). Libraries, Books, and Academic Freedom. Academe, (89)3, 50-54. Retrieved March 1, 2004 from Academic Search Premier database. Matthew, K. I., Varagoor, G. (2001). Student Responses to Online Course Materials. Journal of Research on Technology in Education, (33)5. Retrieved March 4, 2004 from ERIC database. Minkel, W. (2002). Web of Deceit. School Library Journal, (48)4, 50-53. Retrieved March 4, 2004 from ERIC database. Sidler, M. (2002). Web Research and Genres in Online Databases: When the Glossy Page Disappears. Computers and Composition, (19)1, 57-70. Retrieved March 4, 2004 from ERIC database. Towson University Infotutor. Retrieved March 4, 2004 from http://cooklibrary.towson.edu/infotutor/www/web7b.cfm.

How does Shakespeare make Act 1, Scene 1 exciting and dramatic?

Romeo and Juliet is one of Shakespeare's most memorable plays. The play is based on star-crossed lovers with tragedy, violence, love and arguments. The story of Romeo and Juliet is about two lovers that can't be together because their families are enemies, but nothing can't stop them and at the end both of them due in a dramatic way. The main themes are romance, tragedy and conflict. The play is relevant for us because those kinds of things still happen, young people kill them self because of love and in some families, the girls can't be able to pick her own husbands, the females have to do the house work and the males are supposed to bring money home. The play was set in the 14th century. Shakespeare had to face loads of challenges to make the play interesting, also he had to keep on improving, to not get the audience throw the food on stage, if they have done that, then this meant that the play is boring. Theatre in Shakespeare era was a place where rich people could go to rest, and have fun, whereas the poor people would be able to earn money, by selling beer, snacks, or collecting the lost money. Theatre nowadays is a place that must be cultural; you are not allowed to throw food on stage, if you do so you have to leave. In Shakespeare era there weren't any spot lights or CD players which form you could be able to play music, or add sound effect, so Shakespeare had to make scene dramatic and exciting by costumes, voices, words and body language. The servants are the first characters on the stage. They grab the audience's attention because servants are not very important, they are on a bottom shelf in your life, and they are also known as not educated people. Thought that all the best things should only happened to them, but over a time everything has changed. Some people would like seeing servant because they are normally low status, so called groundlings. The rich people might felt weird when they saw someone poor on the stage, because how can someone lower classes than them perform, also they never could expect that. The opening scene begins with just two characters on the stage and soon there where more than ten, fighting fiercely. Shakespeare decision to include a fight at the beginning was clever because he made the play exciting and dangerous; most of the people enjoyed it, because when the beginning is great the rest must be much better. `Nay, as they dare. I will bite my thumb at them which is disgrace to them, if they bare it` this shows that Sampson is planning everything out carefully, and knows what going to make them fight. Sampson and Gregory are very good friends, and it shows that they trust each other, but Sampson is more clever than him, because he is the one that plans everything out. Tybalt and Benvolio have very contrasting characters. Tybalt seems to be angry while Benvolio is calm. ‘Part, fools! ‘ this shows that Benvolio is trying to stop the fight; this also tells as that Benvolio is a peace maker and that he has manners and he is higher status. The explanation mark show's that he is shouting and trying get attention from the fighters. On the other hand, Tybalt says `As I hate hell, all Montagues and thee`. This quote suggests he is angry and want to continue the trouble, so called fight. The audience might enjoy seeing him on stage. He also shows that he like to be everywhere, where trouble begins, he also must be the start of it, or join in, somebody else's trouble. Shakespeare then changes the mood of opening scene from a serious fight to comical rows between husbands and wives. When Lady Capulet says `A crutch, a crutch! Why call you for a sword? ` it may make the audience giggle or laugh because a women is shouting, at her husband and making him feel old and unusable. The scene could be also dramatic, Lord Capulet could go up and hit the women, and show her no respect. The scene is also exciting because in this scene woman is showing no respect to man, which normally is the other way round. This shows the audience that not only men can be in control, and they are the one that should wear pants, which mean to be in control. The males in the audience would have felt ashamed because the other main male character, is not able to join the fight, because of his wife, she didn't let him. Women however would felt joyful because a woman is keeping a man on a short string. As the scene continues, the fight escalates and Shakespeare introduces Prince Escalus to try and stop the violence. The Prince represents a figure of a strong person, which everybody should be scared of. Prince Escalus represent is responsible for everything that happens; he is like a boss or leader to everyone. He is protecting, and making sure everyone is safe when he is around. Shakespeare needs this character to be able to change the mood of the play. In the Elizabethan era everyone enjoyed the fight in the play, because it was difficult to see them on the street. Fights were improving everyone's humor, so Shakespeare had needed a character to stop the fight, and make the audience react differently. The audience could be very angry about stopping something that they had enjoyed. The upper classes may be happy because the violence has stopped, and is not giving anyone such a bad example. The groundling will be upset, because they are not used to see fight with upper class people. The prince speech used language to create a change of mood, `Purple foundations issuing my veins. In this quotation the Prince had used a metaphor, he is trying to compare our veins to foundations, because the blood would never stop going around our body. He is trying to tell everyone that, the anger should stay inside of us, like the blood in veins; Prince is also trying to say that the fight is unneeded. This gives us impression that the Prince is treating everyone equal, he never keeps anyone's side. This language contributes to making Act 1, Scene 1 a dramatic and effective opening, because Prince is changing the mood, he also shows everyone his opinion about fighting. The introduction of Romeo to the opening scene is interesting because we get to learn more about his character before he even appears on stage. From Benvolio and Lord Montague we learn that Romeo is fed up, sad and unhappy. This can make the audience feel curious or annoyed because the main character, start form being very negative about life, while he is rich and can get anything he want. Romeo's conversation with his cousin reveals a lot about his character and grabs the audience's attention. ` Why the, O brawling love, O loving hate` Romeo is talking about love difficulty, why does it have to be so painful. Romeo had used oxymoron's, `loving hate` those two words are opposite of each other, by using language like that he shows the audience that he is very confused about his life. The audience alternatively might think that Romeo is too young to know anything about love problems, and that he is not able to show his emotions. Normally 15 years old boy should have a positive character, and minds full of having fun. Shakespeare adds more elements of drama to the first scene, when Benvolio tells Romeo that he should have another look for good-looking girls. By giving liberty into thine eyes, examine other beauties. ` This could be exacting because Romeo could have an argument with him, about what love really is, and it not about only being beauty. Benvolio had sounded like, he never would understand love, and all he thinks about is girls' beauty, not what she has to offers, inside her. He is not trying to understand Romeo feeling, he is telling him, to try to find someone else, and forget about the other girl. In my conclusion, Act 1 Scene 1 is very exciting and dramatic, it makes the audience want to see more, it also explains the whole play action. Shakespeare successfully had used the first scene to introduce the themes of the play, love, argument, tragedy. Shakespeare also had good introducing of characters, such as Romeo and enemies, Shakespeare engages with a range of audience members, through language, action, humor and romance, for example females would be excited when they will be seeing romance, whereas males would be very excited watching fights. In my opinion the play is great for young people, because it explains how much love can be painful and the confusion about it, like Romeo had with Rosaline. The most dramatic and exciting scene was when Romeo was talking with Benvolio, about Rosaline. I thought that he might even kill himself, Benvolio was replaying in humor way, he really didn't understand what Romeo was saying, Romeo was very negative character, what made everything very dramatic, because nobody could think of what goes around 15 years old boy minds. He could think of death, or of ways to die. Form first scene you get the understanding, about the whole play, it tells you everything step by step.

Motivation vs Psychological Contract - 3005 Words

During the history people’s expectations and needs have been changing. They depends inter alia on actual situation on the market and current necessities of life. The economy climate is also important in creating people’s performance. People will make a good performance at work when their situation is certain. Poor performance will be made when situation is unstable. One of the key issues connected with the employee performance is motivation. Without well-motivated employees enterprise cannot exist on the market for a long time. Employees are very important part of the company, because thanks to them it can perform properly and fulfill its goals and assumptions. Unmotivated employees will not make their job with proper involvement and†¦show more content†¦He recognized two groups of factors satisfying needs. First one are external (hygiene) factors that cause unhappiness and dissatisfaction. They have to be present to avoid dissatisfaction, but by themselves they do not provide satisfaction. Managers need to provide intrinsic factors to keep employees happy with their job. He claimed that employee abilities should be fully used otherwise he will not be well motivated (Thomson 2003). „How Herzberg theory applies to XXXX employees. Management at XXXX understands that hygiene factors can potentially cause dissatisfaction among their employees, which in turn can lead to the loss of productivity and profitability. Therefore, they gave their employees Herzbergs theory assessment. With these results, the company is able to provide competitive pay and bonuses that can motivate employees to work harder XXXX believes that rewarding hard working employees satisfies the motivating factor of job security. The company confirms this with pay incentives. 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