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Welcome to the Accounting Research Guide!
Here you'll find an introduction to accounting resources available through Rosemont College's Kistler Memorial Library, including ebooks, databases, government information and more. Contact us with any questions, comments, or recommendations.
(See our tips for using the Library Catalog.)
Encyclopedias, handbooks, dictionaries and other reference books can be a great place to start your research. They will:
Dictionary of Accounting, 4th ed. by Provides a basic vocabulary of terms used in accounting, from personal finance and investments to company accounts, balance sheets and stock valuations.
The Handy Accounting Answer Book by Everyone needs to budget money and manage costs, whether for groceries and everyday purchases, rent or mortgage, education, retirement, or even a business. Like it or not, accounting infuses most everything in life. From credits, debits, and basic bookkeeping to getting the most out of tax deductions and from reading or creating a business' financial statement to better understanding accounting lingo.
The A to Z of Corporate Social Responsibility by The A to Z of Corporate Social Responsibility is a unique publication and is the culmination of over a hundred of the world’s leading thinkers, opinion formers, academic and business people providing an easy-to-use guide to CSR: from general concepts such as sustainability, stakeholder management, business ethics and human rights to more specific topics such as carbon trading, microfinance, biodiversity, the Base of the Pyramid model and globalisation. In addition to definitions of the most important terms across the wide range of CSR associated topics, this book also covers all the most important codes and guidelines, such as the Equator Principles, the UN Global Compact and ISO standards, as well as providing background on organizations such as the World Business Council for Sustainable Development and Transparency International and profiles of CSR in particular industries and regions.
A Financial History of Modern U.S. Corporate Scandals from Enron to Reform by Provides context and analysis to the modern era of corporate corruption.
The Rise of Accounting, Auditing, and Finance: Key Issues and Events That Shaped These Professions for Over 200 Years Since 1800 by With over 200 professional associations, 120 pieces of authoritative literature, 65 well-known fraud cases, 62 accounting firms (including the origins and growth of the “Big Four”), 55 regulatory statutes, 30 frameworks, and much more, this unique book shows in a chronological sequence a range of select issues and events that have impacted and led to the growth of the professions of accounting, auditing, and finance since 1800. The origins and factors that gave rise to the different types of accounting and auditing are all here. Over 1,200 well-researched issues and events are classified in the twelve chapters found within this book.
New Perspectives in Accounting Ethics by New Perspectives in Accounting Ethics is a unique collection of articles that represent the very highest level of scholarship in the field. The articles published in this collection identify some emergent themes that have subsequently established themselves as key trends among academics in the field. These include the following:- Accounting and Sustainability - Corporate Social Responsibility - Whistleblowing This new collection provides a key insight into accounting ethics research and will enable readers to access the most important'thinkers'active in this arena today.
The Big Four: The Curious Past and Perilous Future of the Global Accounting Monopoly by With staffs that are collectively larger than the Russian army and combined revenues of over $130 billion a year, the Big Four accounting firms—Deloitte, PricewaterhouseCoopers, Ernst & Young, and KPMG—are a keystone of global commerce. But leading scholar Ian Gow and award-winning author Stuart Kells warn that a house of cards may be about to fall.Stretching back to the Medicis in Renaissance Florence, this book is a fascinating story of wealth, power, and luck. The founders of the Big Four lived surprisingly colorful lives. Samuel Price, for example, married his own niece. Between the world wars, Nicholas Waterhouse collected postage stamps while also hosting decadent parties in his fashionable London home. All four firms have endured major calamities in recent decades. There have been hundreds of court cases and legal prosecutions for failed audits, tax scandals, and breaches of independence. The firms have come so close to “extinction level events” that regulators have required them to prepare “living wills.” And today, the Big Four face an uncertain future—thanks to their push into China, their vulnerability to digital disruption and competition, and the hazards of providing traditional services in a new era of transparency. This account of the past, present, and likely future of the Big Four is essential reading for anyone perplexed or fascinated by professional services, working or considering working in the industry, or simply curious about the fate of the global economy.
Count Down: The Past, Present and Uncertain Future of the Big Four Accounting Firms - Second Edition by The second edition of “Count Down” is revised to include and discuss developments affecting the Big Four and their business model since the December 2015 release of the first edition. Brought into this updated narrative, for example, are: The Big Four's growth to collective global 2016 revenue of $ 128 billion, and the continued disparities in growth between their Audit and Advisory practices. The imposition of mandatory auditor rotation by legislation and regulation in the European Union, and in the US, the PCAOB's requirement to name lead partners on public company audits. New examples of corporate financial malfeasance and potentially disruptive auditor litigation, involving clients of each of the Big Four. In addition, this new edition expands in scope and details the required re-engineering by which – with the necessary mutual cooperation among financial statement issuers and users, the accounting profession, legislators, regulators and agencies of law enforcement – a sustainable structure for financial reporting and assurance might emerge -- that is, a Big Audit model truly fit to serve today's global capital markets.
A Postmodern Accounting Theory: An Institutional Approach by If accounting is a means of communicating information for decision-making, then any attempt to define accounting must draw upon scholarly knowledge of communication and decision-making. This means understanding accounting as a professional jargon, a language, and also as a social and psychological object that influences individual and collective behavior. Only when all of these aspects are accounted for can we hope to achieve a truly descriptive, rather than normative, accounting theory that will stand up to the rigors of academic inquiry. Here Gaétan Breton provides a comprehensive overview of what accounting really is, not just what it is presumed to be for the purposes of ordinary, day-to-day, practicality-oriented accounting courses. Drawing upon frameworks employed in the human sciences—including those used in sociology, psychology, the communication sciences, and decision theories—Breton builds a multi-faceted theory of accounting. He explains why it should be conceived as a fundamentally social activity, one that puts preparers of financial statements in contact with users—with the state, shareholders, stakeholders, and citizens—in order to help them make economic decisions based on financial information. It is from this position that he analyzes both the behavior of preparers of financial statements (who only relate financial situations) and the behavior of users (in their own analysis, understanding, and decisions). The result is a groundbreaking move towards the first science of accounting widely acceptable within academic circles. For the fundamental questions it poses to the very heart of accounting studies, this book is a must-read for researchers and practitioners as well as teachers and undergraduate students of accounting.
Auditing: An Overview by In this compilation, critical aspects of the internal audit function are contrasted in order to provide an insight into the value of internal auditing and, within that, to submit arguments for the implementation and maintenance of an internal audit function. The authors examine how to optimize the allocation of audit resources over an auditee population with respect to available population statistics. The included survey mainly deals with audit situations where the auditee is assumed to behave rationally and optimize its expected utility based on information regarding the audit strategy. According to the “International Standards for the Professional Practice of Internal Auditing”, internal auditors must always maintain an objective and independent working attitude to perform effectively. However, data indicate that this requirement might often become challenged due to bias-prone situations, eventually leading to false conclusions or even wrong decisions by auditors and management. As such, the authors address selected cognitive biases for internal auditors and potential behavior patterns tempering the effects of these biases. In common energy audition methods, the efficiency of waste-to-energy power plants is evaluated directly. This method is highly sensitive to the measurement errors of waste mass flow which is difficult determine precisely. Further-more, the direct method does not clarify the sources of energy loss. Using the indirect method which is proposed in this chapter book, the power plant is split into three sub-systems. The overall efficiency is determined by analyzing the multiplication of thesesub-systems'efficiency and the internal energy usage. This final chapter uses case examples to showcase how auditing is a suitable method for clarifying the level of comprehensive, risk-based safety and security management of organizations operating in business and the public sector. The authors encourage organizations to develop their safety and security management system using a risk-based approach.
How to Do Financial Asset Investigations: A Practical Guide for Private Investigators, Collections Personnel and Asset Recovery Specialists by With the blinding speed at which the "Smartphone Age" came upon the investigative profession, asset investigation remains putting together a puzzle from the multiple pieces: public records, online evidence, news accounts, print documents, and human sources. Emphasizing the importance of public records and the resources of the Internet, this fifth edition concentrates on research techniques. These methods make considerable use of websites, libraries, periodicals, and government documents with a constant theme of correlating data from different open sources. This new edition remains the predominant primer on how to find assets to satisfy judgments and debts, but it now also includes significant focus on the emerging underground economy and the gshadowh financial domain. The text explores the connections between stolen credit card information, the gambling sector, money laundering, and the role a subject may play in a larger criminal enterprise. The book also addresses organized crimefs impact on the Internet and financial transactions in cyberspace, as well as the impact of portable digital devices on civil and criminal investigations and the new challenges for investigators working through the electric labyrinth, including the Deep Web and the Dark Web. This edition also includes a very helpful glossary that defines terms introduced throughout the text and an appendix that provides a checklist for traditional and nontraditional asset investigations. This fifth edition seeks to provide an essential understanding of the digital forensics and mobile digital technologies as it steers private investigators, collections specialists, judgment professionals, and asset recovery specialists in undertaking legal information collection in a most challenging age.
Knowledge Creation: Going Beyond Published Financial Information by Financial statement analysis involves an understanding of an entity by applying analytical techniques to its accounting numbers. However, financial statement analyses are going through a transformation similar to the manufacturing age changing to information centered orientation. That is, it is no longer sufficient to understand the tools for analyzing financial accounting information. Other types of relevant information that are not directly captured by financial statement information have a profound effect on creditors, investors, reporting bureaus, governmental agencies and regulators. This text differs from other financial statement textbooks in that it not only takes the traditional analysis of financial information, but also management and economic information that is not directly measurable or easily derived from financial accounting reports. Further, this textbook emphasizes the measurement and valuation of brand, sustainability, ethical systems and trusts systems. Moreover, this text also differs in that it provides a modeling viewpoint of information analysis linked with decision makers'perception and judgments before arriving at a decision. The modeling perspective enhances financial statement analysis by: 1. Including not only financial information, but also management and economic information 2. Combining the passive tools used in investment and financial analysis (e.g., ratio analysis) with individual's framing of the problem (perception) and analysis (judgment) before arriving at a decision 3. Viewing information analysis through a camera lens reinforced by a basic two stage modeling approach in order to support decisions regarding a particular course of action to implement. Further, this text transforms what other financial statement analysis textbooks emphasize as an “input-output and static analysis” approach to a more “dynamic and process” approach. In addition, this textbook divulges from a “financial analysis” viewpoint to a “knowledge creation” perspective. This new “knowledge creation” perspective is intended for upper level undergraduates and graduate students, such as accounting, economic, finance, information systems, marketing, organizational behavior students, and psychology and sociology students. In addition, this book can be beneficial to government, non-profit and business oriented individuals.
Financial Management [Revised Edition]: A Practical and Accessible Introduction for Students and Entrepreneurs by This book introduces key concepts and methods in business financial management. It consists of two parts. Part one is structured around start-up investments and key financing decisions facing entrepreneurs during their first year in business. The instruments examined include the investment budget, financing plan, the opening balance sheet, financial planning for profits and liquidity, the closing balance sheet and a complete treatment of ratio analysis. Part two is about cost prices, budgeting and variance analysis, profit calculation methods and break-even point and, finally, calculations of the returns to alternative investment options. All of these subjects are treated in an accessible, stepwise manner and are accompanied with illuminating examples. The combination of theoretical rigor and simple explanations makes the present volume indispensable for both students and entrepreneurs.
Materiality in Financial Reporting: An Integrative Perspective by Financial reporting is a strategic means of communication: management has an opportunity to interpret, and the power to deliver, what is materially important to the organization's stakeholders. Understanding materiality means steering the company in the right direction, and many internal management battles regarding what and how to disclose in external financial reporting run on the verge of materiality. This book offers an integrated perspective of materiality from the angles of accounting (IFRS, US GAAP and SEC Rules and Regulations), auditing, internal control over financial reporting, management commentary, financial analysis, management control, forensic analysis, sustainability reporting, corporate responsibility, assurance standards, integrated reporting, and limited legal considerations. In Materiality in Financial Reporting: An Integrative Perspective, the author adopts a practical, operational approach to show how strategy, processes, and communication can be used to devise a consistent corporate governance system of materiality.
Who Cheats and How?: Scams, Fraud and the Dark Side of the Corporate World by This book is a definitive account of Frauds and scams popping up in the Corporate World. A result of over six years of rigorous research, the work presents a deeper and comprehensive perspective on corporate scams and frauds. One would be surprised to know about companies that are trusted world over have agreed for multi-billion dollar settlements with the Department of Justice, as most of them have either been found guilty of misconduct or have themselves paid the settlement amounts to close further investigations. How will it feel when we get to know that Banks, wherein we keep our hard earned savings, have been found guilty of fraudulent acts in some way or the other? The list is almost a who's who of the Banking community. The book will point out another very delicate and sensitive subject and that is the drugs we take. The book will talk in detail about Pharmaceutical Companies who have been found guilty of serious misdeeds. Coming to India, where scandals involving Union Carbide, Satyam Computer, allocation of 2G spectrums involving several telecom companies, and allocation of Coal blocks to companies have made headlines. The book will discuss these and other corporate scandals including GMR-led Delhi Airports, LIC Housing, Bharat Earth Movers Ltd., among others.
IRS Examination of Tax-Exempt Organizations: Analysis and Perspective by The Exempt Organizations (EO) unit within the Tax Exempt and Government Entities (TE/GE) division at the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) reviews organizations'applications for tax-exempt status to determine whether to grant status and oversees existing exempt organizations'compliance with the tax code. To identify exempt organizations for possible examination, EO uses a variety of information sources: for example, EO receives referrals of exempt organization noncompliance from third parties, such as the public, and other parts of IRS. This book describes these processes and assesses the adequacy of examination selection controls.
