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The memorial is an account of Smith's personality and work by a former and favored student. It is a sustained personal reminiscence backed by the reminiscences of others who admired Smith together with an account of Smith's working practices and of his main texts. It is in this sense subjective as well as objective. It is not a full-scale biography, rather a biographical sketch and it is necessarily limited by its very proximity to the subject. The principal and other informants knew Smith and liked him. However, given Stewart's own profession, the work is more than this. It was written in the context of the consequences for Smith's reputation in the light of the French Revolution. Stewart is anxious, given the sensitivities concerning the destructive radicalism in France and in the context of the conservative reaction in Britain, to distance Smith's ideas on liberty and on policy from those ideas as they were being expressed in revolutionary France. In this way, Stewart's biographical work is both an account of Smith's life and works and a politicized interpretation of his principle economic ideas.

The intention of this chapter is to examine race and racism in the accounting industry in the context of neutrality. Objectivity and impartiality minimize the space for alternative voices, too often unheard from the margin, that speak of a differing racialized professional existence for the Black accountant. A Critical Race Theory (CRT) of accountancy is called for among a number of takes in the genre of Critical Accounting to begin a process of unpacking systemic processes within the profession, which encourage homogeneity and exclusion.

Belief in professional colorblindness as impartiality where race is concerned is critiqued as a tool of domination that fosters injustice because it hides racism from the institution while simultaneously allowing racist practice to go unchallenged.

This study examines the factors that influence a private institution student’s plan to sit for the CPA exam soon after the undergraduate program versus after a master’s program or never. The author examines the CPA exam factors: exam, cost, support, and career, noted by Coe (2016), and extend CPA exam literature through the examination of exam fees and review course material costs, rather than the composite CPA exam cost. From a survey of 63 accounting seniors, the author finds having 150 credit hours does not increase the likelihood of a plan to sit for the CPA exam soon after the undergraduate program. This result is different from studies that showed 150 credit hours is a barrier to taking the CPA exam. Consistent with studies that used the composite CPA exam cost, the author finds that perception of review course material as expensive negatively affects the likelihood of sitting for the CPA exam soon after the undergraduate program. The perception of exam fees as expensive positively affects the likelihood of sitting for the CPA exam soon after the undergraduate program. This result differs from studies that used the composite CPA exam cost.

Delineates differing attitudes towards knowledge of the past in accounting and illustrates one of these by referring to accounting histories informed by the work of Michel Foucault. Foucauldian accounting histories are a part of the pluralization of accounting history. Its categories of description and its view of history are different from traditional accounting history. Suggests that many approaches are needed to ensure an undogmatic view of history but that the new history has enriched our understanding of accounting in action in our society.

For most of us in the industry, and certainly the members of CEMA, 1992 could have been much better. To look back over the black spots would serve only to remind us that we are not yet out of the woods. Despite the continuing recession with its attendant gloom and despondency, the Association has had some high points during the past year.

This chapter presents a new model for developing and assessing the decision competencies of executive decision-makers. Prior models consider individual and group decision-making but neglect to consider the impact of group-interactive decision-making on real-world problem-solving and sense-making activities. In the present study experimental protocols represent an approximation of a realistic business decision-making process, where decision-makers consult with groups of stakeholders and then make decisions on their own. The model juxtaposes decision competence with the level of decision confidence with which decisions are made. The study furnishes an objective test for this phenomenon, resulting in quantitative empirical evidence of either follow-the-herd (FTH) behavior, or group-forged individual decisions (GFID), or follow-my-own-mind (FMOM) individual decision behavior. The study investigates the impact of group-interactive decision processes on hubristic behavior – decision-makers who make poor/wrong decisions, but remain confident in their choices, judgments, and decisions. The resulting management decision competency model provides an inter-disciplinary matrix, of benefit to human resource development specialists, and provides scholars in organizational behavior and leadership development with guidance for current and future research into group dynamics and decision competencies.

Companies use figures within the annual report to send messages. The purpose of this paper is to explore the opinions and understandings of annual report preparers who produce the figures and users who interpret them. The focus is on figures that the authors consider convey messages about the company's intellectual capital (IC).

The paper used a questionnaire to obtain the opinions of “informed investors” and conducted interviews with the preparers of the annual reports. It compared the opinions of the two respondent groups.

Preparers and users bring multiple meanings to the figures. Users overlooked some messages which were complex and symbolic and also perceived more messages than intended by the preparers. The two respondent groups generally perceived brands, corporate image building and aspects related to employees as the IC items best portrayed in the selected figures. Most users and some preparers perceived the main reason for using figures was their strength as a marketing tool.

The paper is exploratory in nature and there is scope to extend the work to a greater number of annual reports and/or figures. The research is limited by the use of students as a proxy for users of annual reports.

The findings may be helpful to annual report preparers in understanding the rhetorical impact of images. Such understanding will help them in choosing figures which are effective and persuasive when seeking user engagement.

The authors are not aware of any prior research that examines the perceptions of preparers and users in respect of messages conveyed through figures, and, in particular, research that incorporates aspects of IC in corporate annual report figures. The paper, therefore, extends the empirical literature on IC.

In this paper, we study financial foundations of Austrian business cycle theory (ABCT). By doing this, we (1) clarify ambiguous and controversial concepts like roundaboutness and average period of production, (2) we show that the ABCT has strong financial foundations (consistent with its microeconomic foundations), and (3) we offer examples of how to use the flexibility of this approach to apply ABCT to different contexts and scenarios.