...Running head: Review of Accounting Ethics 1 Review of Accounting Ethics Cynthia Harley Dr. Julie Hamm Acc 557 5/1/2014 Review of Accounting Ethics The WorldCom Scandal Vikalpa: The Journal For Decision Makers provides us with the following excerpt from WorldCom’s 2002 press release: CLINTON, Miss., June 25, 2002 –- WorldCom Inc. (Nasdaq: WCOM, MCIT) today announced that it intends to restate its financial statements for 2001 and the first quarter of 2002. As a result of an internal audit of the company’s capital expenditure accounting, it was determined that certain transfers from line cost expenses to capital accounts during this period were not made in accordance 2 with the generally accepted accounting principles (GAAP). The amount of these transfers was $3.055 billion for 2001 and $797 million for the first quarter of 2002. Without these transfers, the company’s reported EBITDA would be reduced to $6.339 billion for 2001 and $1.368 billion for the first quarter of 2002, and the company would have reported a net loss for 2001 and for the first quarter of 2002 (Pandey & Verma, 2004, p. 113). This information came at a time where the company had reached an all time high in the industry, second only to AT&T. The company originally started out as a small provider of long distance telephone service in Mississippi under the name LDDS and later changed its name to WorldCom. During the 1990’s the company took on an aggressive acquisition strategy acquiring the likes...
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...Review of Accounting Ethics Dr. ACC 557: Financial Accounting May 22, 2013 Table of Contents 1.0 Corporate ethical breaches in recent times. 3 2.0 Accounting ethical breaches and their impacts 3 2.1 The Scandal of Enron 3 3.0 Organizational ethical issues and the management failure 5 4.0 Breach of the accounting practices and its impacts 5 5.0 Recommendations by the CFO 6 6.0 References 8 1.0 Corporate ethical breaches in recent times. Ethics is an important aspect of business in today’s enironment. Sometimes management ignores or leaves to state laws to govern the code of ethics within a company. Companies have faced a lot of issues regarding ethical situations in modern times. According to Baker (2012) contrary to the popular belief of the recent global financial crisis resulting from failures of accounting ethics, he argues that there is not enough evidence to support this connection. 2.0 Accounting ethical breaches and its impacts Breaches of the accounting ethical policies have become a source of concern for the firms today. The proper application of IFRS and GAAP standards is vital for each firm. In recent years as more scandals have come into the spotlight firms have taken more and more internal measures in addition to the policy making at the governmental level to ensure breach of consumers’ trust and laws does not take place in the future. There has been a tremendous increase in the interest in accounting ethics (Cowton, 2013). 2.1 The Scandal of Enron...
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...| Assignment 1: Review of Accounting Ethics | | | | Assignment 1: Review of Accounting Ethics | | | Doing the right thing matters. Every day, workers make decisions that are vital to a company’s success. How those decisions are made is just as important as the decisions themselves. In every company there are shareholders, consumers, business partners, and employees who have placed their trust in workers to act sincerely, rationally, and in accordance with the utmost ethical and legal standards. Albert Einstein once said that “relativity apples to physics, not ethics.” I perceive this to mean that there should never be a relative situation when it comes to ethics; there is a right and wrong choice. We as human beings need to ensure that we remain exactly that, human beings. Unfortunately, the world is not perfect. There are criminals, liars, cheaters, and scammers who hide in plain sight everywhere we go. Less than 15 years ago, there was a time where multiple financial scandals had been reported taking place in very successful companies, including Enron, WorldCom, AIG, and others (Weygandt, Kimmel, Kieso, 2012, p. 7). The number and magnitude of these scandals resulted in great suspicion of financial reporting, which proved to be detrimental to a company’s success. In my opinion, the most memorable scandal to have taken place in the business world during that time was Enron. During its existence, Enron was an American energy company based in Houston...
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...Review of Accounting Ethics Ileana M. Castro Dr. Mohammad Sumadi ACC557-Financial Accounting Establishing principles for ethical behavior frequently starts with a policy on ethics. Businesses acquire a policy on ethics to guide their measures and to set up a general meaning of correct versus incorrect. According to the American Library Association, code of ethics is a handbook for suitable behavior (2012). Given the corporate ethical breaches in recent times, assess whether or not you believe that the current business and regulatory environment is more conducive to ethical behavior. Provide support for your answer Existing businesses and regulatory environment is more conductive behavior because some companies and managers feel as though they can get away with it. The unpredictable increase and collapse of the Enron Company set off a long-burning fire under the American social conscience. From every crevasse and corner, voices rose demanding increased accountability, demanding tighter regulation, and demanding that the unethical be brought to justice. Clearly, in such estimation, those at fault should have been punished. In order for ethical principles to apply to such industries, it must be shown that they are inherently moral or ethically responsible institutions. Secondly, an adequate discussion of what business ethics is just be provided before we can truly investigate why the situation does not...
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...Review of Accounting Ethics - Week 3 Alessio Brasile Strayer University Financial Accounting ACC-557 Dr. A. Golding April 28, 2013 Review of Accounting Ethics - Week 3 Given the corporate ethical breaches in recent times, assess whether or not you believe that the current business and regulatory environment is more conducive to ethical behavior: In the past several years, Enron, WorldCom, Tyco, and others have committed financial scandals, which caused the stock market to take a hard hit. Investors and lenders learned from these scandals in the past, and just recently, have become hesitant to invest in any company that they think, or know for a fact, the company is corrupted and/or unethical. “United States regulators and lawmakers were very concerned that the economy would suffer if investors lost confidence in corporate accounting because of unethical financial reporting. In response, Congress passed the Sarbanes-Oxley Act (SOX, or Sarbox)” (Weygandt, Kimmel, & Kieso, 2012, p. 7). SOX is in place to minimize unethical conduct in corporations and ultimately, scandals. “As a result of SOX, top management must now certify the accuracy of financial information. In addition, penalties for fraudulent financial activity are much more severe” (Weygandt et al., 2012, p. 7). With these standard rules and regulations in place, corporations are less likely to commit any fraudulent activity because there is more scrutiny from lawmakers. Also, corporations have a better chance...
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...Assignment 1: Review of accounting ethics 1 Assignment 1: Review of Accounting Ethics By February 1, 2013 ACC 557: Financial Accounting Oleksii Morgun Strayer University at Arlington Campus School of Business Administration (M.S. Accounting Program) Assignment 1: Review of Accounting Ethics 2 Abstract This research writing is to describe the following: 1. Given the corporate ethical breaches in recent times, assess whether or not you believe that the current business and regulatory environment is more conductive to ethical behavior. 2. Based on research, describe organization, the accounting ethical breach and the impact to the organization related to ethical breach. 3. Determine how the organizational ethical issue was detected and how management failed to create ethical environment. 4. Analyze the accounts impacted and/or accounting guidelines violated and the resulting impact to the business operation. 5. As a CFO, recommend which measures could have been taken to prevent this ethical breach and how each measure should be implemented in future. Assignment 1: Review of Accounting Ethics 3 Before the Enron and Andersen scandals, relatively little public attention was paid to the truthfulness of financial reporting. Of course, no one believed every...
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...Introduction Accounting ethics is necessary people financial consultants, accountants or accounting executives are privy to confidential, private and sensitive information about people, companies and their clients. One trusts an accountant with information regarding their finances or business. That’s why it is so important for ethics in accounting and in financial reporting. It is important for ANY type of business to practice ethics and not breach them. History and background of Adelphia Communications Corporation Adelphia Communications Corporation or “ACC, was a small family-owned cable television company. It was established in a small Pennsylvania town. John Rigas started Adelphia and turned the local cable franchise into a communications empire. (Giroux, 2008). Under the Sarbanes-Oxley, companies must disclose their financial reports and Adelphia did this in May 2002. Adelphia announced earnings restatement for the year 2000-2001 which included billions in off-balance sheet liabilities that were associated with “co-borrowing” agreements. (Giroux, 2008). What “co-borrowing” agreements were these is what got the company in hot water. The company grew into one of the largest communications corporations in the country. (Mahony, 2005) Adelphia Communications Corporation rose to the top, but fell down due to there not being a division between the company’s property and the property of its directors. (Mahony, 2005). In 2002, Adelphia was charged with over-stating earnings...
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...regulatory environment is more conducive to ethical behavior. Ethical behavior depicts the culture of the organization which keeps and draws employees as well as future and long term benefits. “Ideally, codes of conduct affect the organizational culture by governing the actions and conduct of employees through the promotion of ethical business practices, thereby avoiding legal consequences. Further, as tangible commitments to social responsibility, adopting codes of conduct may lead to reputational benefits by functioning as a symbol of corporate social responsibility (CSR) awareness and engagement, thereby preserving and legitimating the company’s public image (Diller, 1999; Matten, 2003)” (Erwin, 2011, p. 536). Ethics is one of the building blocks to the company’s accounting (Kimmel, 2012, p. 7) as it is the rules of behavior on ideas about what is morally good and bad (Merriam-Webster, 2014) within the business industry and amongst other industries when reporting the financials. With the passing of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, ethical behavior is designed to be favorable as its creation is to downgrade unethical corporate behavior and scandal as upper management now has a greater responsibility in...
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...Assignment 1: Review of Accounting Ethics ACC 557 April 27, 2014 Conductive Ethical Behavior I believe that the current business and regulatory environment is more conductive to ethical behavior. In current times a company’s reputation can determine its success or failure. This has made more company’s own up to their ethical mistakes and behaviors. They are more likely to admit a mistake or failure when an ethical breach has surface in order to save face and keep its reputation. This is evident in the ethical breach I will be writing my paper on. Organization Yahoo Inc. is an American multinational internet corporation headquartered in Sunnyvale, California. It is widely known for its web portal, search engine Yahoo Search, and related services, including Yahoo Directory and Yahoo mail (Staff, 2012). Ethical Breach and Detection Yahoo hired Thompson as CEO in January 2012. On May 3, 2012 investor Dan Loeb, CEO of Third Point LLC, sent a letter to Yahoo’s Board of Directors (Prnewswire.com). The letter names a Yahoo SEC filing declaring that Thompson holds a Bachelor's degree in accounting and computer science from Stonehill College and that Loeb had reason to believe that the degree was in accounting only. Loeb questioned if Thompson had embellished his academic credentials and also questioned if the Board had failed to exercise appropriate diligence and oversight in one of its most fundamental tasks – identifying and hiring the Chief Executive Officer. Loeb suggests...
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...Accounting 557 Entire Course (STR) To purchase this tutorial visit here: http://mindsblow.us/question_des/Accounting557EntireCourseSTR/2804 contact us at: help@mindblows.us Accounting 557 Entire Course (STR) ACC 557 Week 3 Assignment 1 - Review of Accounting Ethics ACC 557 Week 6 Assignment 1 - You Are an Entrepreneur! ACC 557 Week 10 Assignment 2 - You Are an Investment Analyst Including All Weeks Quizzes and Homework Accounting 557 Entire Course (STR) To purchase this tutorial visit here: http://mindsblow.us/question_des/Accounting557EntireCourseSTR/2804 contact us at: help@mindblows.us Accounting 557 Entire Course (STR) ACC 557 Week 3 Assignment 1 - Review of Accounting Ethics ACC 557 Week 6 Assignment 1 - You Are an Entrepreneur! ACC 557 Week 10 Assignment 2 - You Are an Investment Analyst Including All Weeks Quizzes and Homework Accounting 557 Entire Course (STR) To purchase this tutorial visit here: http://mindsblow.us/question_des/Accounting557EntireCourseSTR/2804 contact us at: help@mindblows.us Accounting 557 Entire Course (STR) ACC 557 Week 3 Assignment 1 - Review of Accounting Ethics ACC 557 Week 6 Assignment 1 - You Are an Entrepreneur! ACC 557 Week 10 Assignment 2 - You Are an Investment Analyst Including All Weeks Quizzes and Homework Accounting 557 Entire Course (STR) To purchase this tutorial visit here: http://mindsblow.us/question_des/Accounting557EntireCourseSTR/2804 contact us at: help@mindblows.us Accounting...
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...An Analysis of Accounting Ethics Anna Aspras ACC 770 Proposal Hunter College INTRODUCTION Ethics refers to the discipline that deals with the bad and the good and also with the moral duties as well as moral obligations (Stolowy and Breton 2004). As Weidmann and Lenzen (2006) points out, ethics entails doing the right thing. Accounting ethics is mainly in the area of applied ethics and at the same time, it is also a part of business ethics as well as human ethics. It is worth pointing out that the kind of work that is always carried out by the auditors, as well as the accountants generally needs very huge ethics levels (Stolowy and Breton, 2000). The shareholders of the firms, the potential shareholders, as well as the other people who use the financial statements that are prepared by the accountants generally depend on the annual financial statements of the firms given that they are capable of using the information in making highly informed decisions concerning investments. At the same time, they depend on the accountants’ opinion and the verification of the financial statements by the auditors in order to make sure that the financial statements are giving a true, as well as a fair view of the firm (Weidmann and Lenzen, 2006). It is worth pointing out that the knowledge of ethics is capable of helping the accountants, as well as the auditors to overcome various kinds of ethical dilemmas, and this generally ensures that the correct choice is made though it might not be of benefit...
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...Reporting Practices and Ethics Yolanda Jones HCS/405 March 10, 2014 Darlene Tomlinson Page Break Reporting Practices and Ethics The healthcare industry is a rapidly growing segment of the U.S. economy, amounting to over $2.1 trillion annually. Healthcare focuses on diagnosis, treatment, and prevention among other things. Health care makes up one sixth of the U.S. GDP it is the largest source of the nation's public expenditures. With large amounts of revenue going in and out of hospitals and facilities and health care reform accounting can be challenging. To help ensure fair and accurate financial reporting, there are practices and ethical standards that must be followed when accounting for finances in health care. This paper will provide the four elements of financial management and standard accounting principles and ethics. Financial Reporting Practices The Financial Accounting Standards Board was established in 1073. It is the designated organization in the private sector that establishes standards of financial accounting for nongovernmental entities. The standards established are officially recognized as authoritative by the SEC and the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants. The FASB also has accounting standards for health care entities. "The AICPA Health Care Expert Panel developed technical guidance on the application in consolidated financial statements of a recent accounting standards update for health care entities"...
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...at its 333th meeting, revised the syllabus in a comprehensive manner in the following papers of Intermediate (IPC) and Final Course(s) as annexed herewith (shown in Bold cum Italics): Intermediate (IPC) Course Paper 1: Accounting (Group I) Paper 2: Business Laws, Ethics and Communication (Group I) Paper 5: Advanced Accounting (Group II) Paper 6: Auditing and Assurance (Group II) Final Course Paper 3: Advanced Auditing and Professional Ethics (Group I) Paper 4: Corporate and Allied Laws (Group I) Director, Board of Studies Annexure SYLLABUS PAPER 1: ACCOUNTING (One paper – Three hours – 100 Marks) Level of Knowledge : Working Knowledge Objectives : (a) To lay a foundation for the preparation and presentation of financial statements, (b) To gain working knowledge of the principles and procedures of accounting and their application to different practical situations, (c) To gain the ability to solve simple problems and cases relating to sole proprietorship, partnership and companies and (d) To familiarize students with the fundamentals of computerized system of accounting. Contents : 1. A General Knowledge of the framing of the accounting standards, national and international accounting authorities, adoption of international financial reporting standards Accounting Standards Working knowledge of: AS AS...
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...Review of Accounting Ethics Review of Accounting Ethics Dr. ACC 557: Financial Accounting May 22, 2013 Table of Contents 1.0 Corporate ethical breaches in recent times. 3 2.0 Accounting ethical breaches and their impacts 3 2.1 The Scandal of Enron 3 3.0 Organizational ethical issues and the management failure 5 4.0 Breach of the accounting practices and its impacts 5 5.0 Recommendations by the CFO 6 6.0 References 8 1.0 Corporate ethical breaches in recent times. Ethics is an important aspect of business in today’s enironment. Sometimes management ignores or leaves to state laws to govern the code of ethics within a company. Companies have faced a lot of issues regarding ethical situations in modern times. According to Baker (2012) contrary to the popular belief of the recent global financial crisis resulting from failures of accounting ethics, he argues that there is not enough evidence to support this connection. 2.0 Accounting ethical breaches and its impacts Breaches of the accounting ethical policies have become a source of concern for the firms today. The proper application of IFRS and GAAP standards is vital for each firm. In recent years as more scandals have come into the spotlight firms have taken more and more internal measures in addition to the policy making at the governmental level to ensure breach of consumers’ trust and laws does not take place in the future. There has been a tremendous increase in the interest in accounting ethics (Cowton, 2013)...
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...qualities; an ethics education program was developed based on ethics as a reflective, critical capacity. This paper aims to describe the impact of the program on reporting behavior. In the abstract of this article it states that the purpose of this study is to examine the impact of an ethics education program on actual behavior rather than hypothetical situations using a quasi-experimental design with two student groups. A ‘quasi-experiment’ is an observational study in which the subjects to be observed are not randomly assigned to different groups in order to control the assignment to the treatment condition. Throughout the abstract and introduction, the researchers provided several arguments to establish the significance of their study. The main arguments were that honest reporting under anonymous conditions suggests that students have internalized ethical values toward honest reporting and that individuals who report honestly even when anonymous are more likely to have internalized ethical values toward honest reporting. The title of the article is strong and the research topic is valid; it clearly shows the purpose of the article is some kind of experiment or observation that discusses the impact of ethics education in regards to reporting information. The article effectively discusses the need for more ethical accountants when it cites previous articles from Desplaces (2007) & Swanson and Frederick (2001-2002) that discuss previous widely publicized accounting scandals....
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