1,720,970 research outputs found
Protecting a new Achilles heel: the role of auditors within the practice of data protection
No full textPurpose: Privacy concerns and data security are changing the risks for businesses and organisations. This indicates that the accountability of all governance participants changes. This paper aims to investigate the role of external auditors within data protection practices and how their role is evolving due to the current digital ecosystem. Design/methodology/approach: By surveying the literature, the authors embrace a practice-oriented perspective to explain how data protection practices emerge, exist and occur and examine the auditors’ position within data protection. Findings: Auditors need to align their tasks to the purpose of data protection practices. Accordingly, in accessing and using data, auditors are required to engage moral judgements and follow ethical principles that go beyond their legal responsibility. Simultaneously, their accountability extends to data protection ends for instilling confidence that security risks are properly managed. Due to the changing technological conditions under, which auditors operate, the traditional auditors’ task of hearing and verifying extend to new phenomena that create risks for businesses. Thus, within data protection practices, auditors have the accountability to keep interested parties informed about data security and privacy risks, continue to transmit signals to users and instill confidence in businesses. Research limitations/implications: The normative level of the study is a research limitation, which calls for future empirical research on how Big Data and data protection is reshaping accounting and auditing practices. Practical implications: This paper provides auditing standard setters and practitioners with insights into the redefinitions of auditing practices in the era of Big Data. Social implications: Recent privacy concerns at Facebook have sent warning signals across the world about the risks posed by in Big Data systems in terms of privacy, to those charged with governance of organisations. Auditors need to understand these privacy issues to better serve their clients. Originality/value: This paper contributes to triggering discussions and future research on data protection and privacy in accounting and auditing research, which is an emerging, yet unresearched topic. © 2019, Emerald Publishing Limited
The fall and rise of intellectual capital accounting: new prospects from the Big Data revolution
Full text linkPurpose: As Big Data is creating new underpinnings for organisations’ intellectual capital (IC) and knowledge management, this paper aims to analyse the implications of Big Data for IC accounting to provide new conceptual and practical insights about the future of IC accounting. Design/methodology/approach: Based on a conceptual framework informed by decision science theory, the authors explain the factors supporting Big Data’s value and review the academic literature and practical evidence to analyse the implications of Big Data for IC accounting. Findings: In reflecting on Big Data’s ability to supply a new value for IC and its implications for IC accounting, the authors conclude that Big Data represents a new IC asset, and this represents a rationale for a renewed wave of interest in IC accounting. IC accounting can contribute to understand the determinants of Big Data’s value, such as data quality, security and privacy issues, data visualisation and users’ interaction. In doing so, IC measurement, reporting and auditing need to keep focusing on how human capital and organisational and technical processes (structural capital) can unlock or even obstruct Big Data’s value for IC. Research limitations/implications: The topic of Big Data in IC and accounting research is in its Ṇinfancy; therefore, this paper acts at a normative level. While this represents a research limitation of the study, it is also a call for future empirical studies. Practical implications: Once again, practitioners and researchers need to face the challenge of avoiding the trap of IC accountingisation to make IC accounting relevant for the Big Data revolution. Within the euphoric and utopian views of the Big Data revolution, this paper contributes to enriching awareness about the practical factors underpinning Big Data’s value for IC and foster the cognitive and behavioural dynamic between data, IC information and user interaction. Social implications: The paper is relevant to prepares, users and auditors of financial statements. Originality/value: This paper aims to instill a novel debate on Big Data into IC accounting research by providing new avenues for future research
All the world’s a stage
No full textPurpose: The aim is to portray the role that accounts play in society through representation in colour. Design/methodology/approach: This is a fictional poem. Findings: The author uses an existing poem by playwright William Shakespeare and adapts it to reflect the role of accountants in society. Originality/value: Using poetic rhyme, this paper represents a unique attempt to write about the different roles of accountants in modern society
Implementing a carbon measurement & reporting system in an international non-government organisation: A case study
No full textThe movement towards sustainable business practices has been necessitated by the growing acceptance that traditional business practices are unsustainable: financially, socially and environmentally. To date, studies have largely been concentrated on the for-profit sector, in particular on the implications for investors. In this research, I utilise an action research methodology to explore how the implementation of a carbon reporting system impacts the social license to operate in a large international non-governmental organisation, Christian Blind Mission. The case study summarises the process of developing the reporting system, tools, and implementation in this large organisation spanning 76 countries. The purpose of this study is to utilise institutional theory to demonstration how the NGO’s accountability has progressed beyond only being accountable to the INGO Accountability Charter to include stakeholders under the Social Licence to Operate for long term sustainability. I utilise a new institutional theory perspective in particular: constructing normative networks, ‘changing normative association’ education, undermining assumptions and beliefs, and enabling work. I utilise Institutional theory as a means to explain how institutional pressures change organisational behavior and the implications of the pressures while implementing a carbon measurement and reporting system. I also discuss the implication of carbon reporting on organisations Social Licence to Operate. I also highlight the need for research in implementing traditionally for-profit sustainability tools in the not for profit sector
Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
Full text linkThe present study examines one of the fundamental aspects of author co-citation analysis (ACA) - the way co-citation
counts are defined. Co-citation counting provides the data on which all subsequent statistical analyses and mappings
are based, and we compare ACA results based on two different types of co-citation counting - the traditional type that
only counts the first one among a cited work's authors on the one hand and a non-traditional type that takes into
account the first 5 authors of a cited work on the other hand. Results indicate that the picture produced through this non-traditional author co-citation counting contains more coherent author groups and is therefore considerably clearer. However, this picture represents fewer specialties in the research field being studied than that produced through the traditional first-author co-citation counting when the same number of top-ranked authors is selected and analyzed. Reasons for these effects are discussed
Variations on the Author
Full text link“Variations on the Author” discusses two of Eduardo Coutinho’s recent films (Um Dia na Vida, from 2010, and Últimas Conversas, posthumously released in 2015) and their contribution to the general question of documentary authorship. The director’s filmography is characterized by a consistent yet self-effacing form of authorial self-inscription: Coutinho often features as an interviewer that rather than express opinions propels discourses; an interviewer that is good at listening. This mode of self-inscription characterizes him as an author who is not expressive but who is nonetheless markedly present on the screen. In Um Dia na Vida, however, Coutinho is completely absent form the image, while Últimas Conversas, on the contrary, includes a confessional prologue that moves the director from the margins to the center of his films. This article examines the ways in which these works stand out in the filmography of a director who offers new insights into the notion of cinematic authorship
Using a word game to revitalise language and promote equity and inclusion in a quantitative subject
Full text linkEach year increasing numbers of Māori and Pacifica students graduate from universities but the numbers qualifying in accounting remain dismal. Many reasons for this phenomenon have been explored, one of which is a lack of cultural representation. This paper provides a reflective commentary on how gaming can be used in a quantitative subject to promote an Indigenous language to foster equity and inclusion in the classroom. Looking through the lens of a Constructivist Developmental Pedagogy, the paper applies cultural intelligence to urge proponents of diversity to go beyond merely recognizing awareness of cultural differences to embed cultural appreciation in learning
Appropriate Similarity Measures for Author Cocitation Analysis
Full text linkWe provide a number of new insights into the methodological discussion about author cocitation analysis. We first argue that the use of the Pearson correlation for measuring the similarity between authors’ cocitation profiles is not very satisfactory. We then discuss what kind of similarity measures may be used as an alternative to the Pearson correlation. We consider three similarity measures in particular. One is the well-known cosine. The other two similarity measures have not been used before in the bibliometric literature. Finally, we show by means of an example that our findings have a high practical relevance.information science;Pearson correlation;cosine;similarity measure;author cocitation analysis
Flight of fantasy: Writing a full proof “code” for ethics
No full textPurpose - The purpose of this paper is to portray the Code of Ethics in digital format, by using a markup language like C-# to formulate code. Digitally executed, this should reduce in the audit expectation gap.
Design/methodology/approach - Using wordplay the design consists of the technical formulation of a piece of hybrid code written in the language C-# but sourced from the Code of Ethics.
Findings - The programmer constructs the Revised Code of Ethics released by the International Ethics Standards Board for Accountants (IESBA) of the International Federation of Accountants (IFAC) in July 2009, in "code", to ensure that it is free from errors.
Originality/value - This paper, utilizing wordplay, represents a unique attempt to write the Code of Ethics in such a way that if executed by a computer it would be infallible to human judgement error, hence reducing the expectation gap of auditing and assertions
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