Accounting Commons^™

Information Pursuit In Financial-Statement Analysis: Effects Of Choice, Effort, And Disaggregation, Mark W. Nelson, William B. Tayler

Faculty Publications

Prior research provides evidence that financial-statement users weight information less heavily in judgment when that information is provided in a less accessible format (e.g., information disclosed in a footnote or less important financial statement rather than being recognized on the income statement (Maines and McDaniel 2000)). We provide evidence that, conditional on users performing the analysis necessary to transform the financial statements to appear as if disclosed information had been recognized, users may weight that information more heavily than it would have been if it had been recognized. Our experiments are set in the context of constructive capitalization of operating …

The Effects Of Financial Statement And Informational Complexity On Cash Flow Forecasts, Leslie Hodder, Patrick E. Hopkins, David A. Wood

Faculty Publications

We characterize the operating-activities section of the indirect-approach statement of cash flows as backwards because it presents reconciling adjustments in a way that is opposite from the intuitively appealing, future-oriented, Conceptual Framework definitions of assets, liabilities and the accruals process. We propose that the reversed-accruals orientation required in the currently mandated indirect-approach statement of cash flows is unnecessarily complex, causing increased cash-flow forecast error and dispersion. We also predict that the mixed pattern (i.e., +/–, –/+) of operating cash flows and operating accruals reported by most companies also impedes investors’ ability to learn the time-series properties of cash flows and …

Individual Cognition And Dual-Task Interference In Group Support Systems, William G. Heninger, Alan R. Dennis, Kelly Mcnamara Hilmer

Faculty Publications

Previous research shows that synchronous text discussion through group support systems (GSS) can improve the exchange of information within teams, but this improved information exchange usually does not improve decisions because participants fail to process the new information they receive. This study examined one potential cause for this failure: Dual-task interference caused by the need to concurrently process new information from others while also contributing one's own information to the discussion. Although prior research argues that dual-task interference should be minimal, we found that it significantly reduced participants' information processing and led to lower decision quality. The effect sizes were …

The Application Of Model Checking For Securing E-Commerce Transactions, Bonnie Anderson, James V. Hansen, Paul Benjamin Lowry, Scott L. Summers

Faculty Publications

As firms become progressively more dependent on Internet-based information systems, they are increasingly vulnerable to defects in those systems. These defects can lead to errors, undetected fraud, and malicious intrusion. Information system errors can be catastrophic, whether they occur in market transactions, banking, air traffic control, and so forth. Resulting damages can include lost revenue, lost data, lost trust, and increased costs.

Consequently, effective design of e-business processes is essential to avoid defects that can otherwise lead to errors, fraud, and intrusion. Whereas carefully designed e-business protocols can perform effectively within most expected situations, assuring correct processing under all circumstances …

Model Checking For E-Business Control And Assurance, Bonnie B. Anderson, James V. Hansen, Paul B. Lowry, Scott L. Summers

Faculty Publications

Model checking is a promising technique for the verification of complex software systems. As the use of the Internet for conducting e-business extends the reach of many organizations, well-designed software becomes the foundation of reliable implementation of e-business processes. These distributed, electronic methods of conducting transactions place reliance on the control structures embedded in the transaction processes. Deficiencies in control structures of processes that support e-business can lead to loss of physical assets, digital assets, money, and consumer confidence. Yet, assessing the reliability of e-business processes is complex and time-consuming. This paper explicates how model-checking technology can aid in the …

Mass Mailings Made Simple, Bonnie B. Anderson, Larysa V. Oprya, Marshall B. Romney

Faculty Publications

You want to tell 130 clients about several new professional services and send them updated fee schedules. You considered outsourcing the project to a direct-mail ad agency and found the setup alone for each variation of the letter was $65—way over your budget. Worry not. This is a job your support staff should be able to handle after reading this article.

Interaction Of New Section 362(E)(2) With Loss Disallowance Rules, Boyd C. Randall, Brian C. Spilker, John M. Werlhof

Faculty Publications

The American Jobs Creation Act of 2004 added Section 362(e)(2), which addresses concerns similar to those addressed by Section 336(d). Section 362(e)(2) was added to the law to close a perceived loophole whereby taxpayers could deduct a single economic loss twice by transferring loss property to a corporation in a Section 351 transaction or as a contribution to capital with the shareholder subsequently selling the stock and the corporation selling the loss asset. This provision was designed to prevent the recognition of a single economic loss twice. However, this new provision overlaps and interacts with the corporate liquidation loss disallowance …

Are Entrepreneurs Born Or Made? Views Of Entrepreneurs And Venture Capitalists, Ervin L. Black, F. Greg Burton, Anne M. Traynor, David A. Wood

Faculty Publications

What characteristics do entrepreneurs believe make them successful? We interview entrepreneurs and venture capitalists (VCs) to determine traits that each of these groups perceive as necessary for entrepreneurial success. We show that entrepreneurs cite traits inherent to their nature (for example, hard working, persistent, risk-taker) significantly more than VCs. We also test to see if entrepreneurs are able to identify factors that VCs consider most important for the funding decision. We find that entrepreneurs who do not have previous VC funding experience differ significantly from VCs in what factors are important for VC funding; whereas, entrepreneurs with previous VC funding …

Install Your Own Wireless Network, William G. Heninger, Craig J. Lindstrom, Bryce H. Peterson, Marshall B. Romney

Faculty Publications

Would you like to access the Internet, your printer and your other computers, including laptops, without stringing wires throughout your office or home? The solution is a wireless local area network (WLAN) and we'll tell you how easy it is to install one yourself at a nominal cost. WLANs replace conventional wires with devices called wireless access points that plug into any electrical wall socket. WLAN hardware contains miniature transmitters and antennae that send and receive radio signals to and from your computers and other peripherals.

Why Do Auditors Over-Rely On Weak Analytical Procedures? The Role Of Outcome And Insensitivity To Precision, Steven M. Glover, Douglas F. Prawitt, T. Jeffrey Wilks

Faculty Publications

Recent evidence from highly publicized frauds and from the Public Oversight Board’s Panel on Audit Effectiveness (2000) indicates that auditors sometimes over-rely on weak evidence supporting a clean audit opinion. In experiment 1 we examine whether a favorable outcome, together with insensitivity to factors relating to the strength of evidence, could lead to over-reliance on weak substantive procedures. In experiment 2 we examine whether an explicit ex ante prompt can sensitize auditors to the weaknesses of an unreliable substantive procedure. Our examination is conducted in the context of substantive analytical procedures that are performed to provide evidence during the substantive …

Model Checking For Design And Assurance Of E-Business Processes, Bonnie Anderson, James V. Hansen, Paul Benjamin Lowry, Scott L. Summers

Faculty Publications

Use of the Internet for electronic business has the potential to revolutionize the way many businesses are conducted. Yet, several businesses have fallen victim to problems in information systems that facilitate e-Business. These problems are characterized by uncertainties due to system complexity, rapid development, interconnectivity, and a lack of familiarity with the new technologically based economy. This paper demonstrates how model checking can aid in the design and assurance of e- Business processes in environments characterized by distributed processing, parallelism, concurrency, communication uncertainties, and continuous operations.

The Relations Between Knowledge, Search Strategy, And Performance In Unaided And Aided Information Search, John A. Barrick, Brian C. Spilker

Faculty Publications

Information search is a critical step in resolving complex issues in many different decisionmaking domains. This study examines the relations between knowledge, search strategy, and performance in both unaided and aided information search. The results of an experiment indicates that (a) task-relevant knowledge is directly related to performance in aided but not in unaided information search; (b) in unaided information search, search strategy mediates the relation between knowledge and performance; that is, knowledge indirectly affects performance through its effect on search strategy; and (c) an information search aid moderates both the relation between knowledge and search strategy and the relation …

Research Opportunities In Internal Auditing, Douglas F. Prawitt

Faculty Publications

This chapter discusses staffing and managing the internal audit function (IAF) as a component of organizational governance, and has two main purposes. First, it familiarizes interested practitioners and researchers with current trends and issues in staffing and managing the IAF. Second, it suggests questions and topics for future thinking and research among practitioners and academics. Managing and staffing an IAF is a vast and complex undertaking that remains relatively unexplored by rigorous research. The chapter contains several citations to practitioner information and academic research, but it does not attempt to include a comprehensive literature review of all relevant articles or …

The Investment Opportunity Set And Capitalization Versus Expensing Methods Of Accounting Choice, Dan S. Dhaliwal, William G. Heninger, K.E. Hughes Ii

Faculty Publications

This paper examines the effects of the investment opportunity set (IOS) on management's decision to capitalize or expense significant costs in two diverse settings: (1) in accounting for exploration and development (E&D) costs by firms in the oil-and-gas industry, and (2) in accounting for research and development (R&D) costs by firms (across industries) prior to 1974. We argue that the relation between the IOS and the decision to capitalize versus to expense is based upon managerial incentives to reduce the variance of accounting earnings. High-growth firms are more likely to have more variable earnings, which therefore creates greater incentives to …

Structuring Time And Task In Electronic Brainstorming, Alan R. Dennis, Jay E. Aronson, William G. Heninger, Edward D. Walker Ii

Faculty Publications

There are many ways in which a GSS can beused to support group brainstorming. This paper reports the results of an experiment that manipulated task structure and time structure. Groups electronically brainstormed on intact tasks(where all parts of the task were presented simultaneously) or on partitioned tasks (where three subcategories of the task were presented to thegroups). The time periods in which groups worked were either one 30-minute time period or three 10-minute periods separated by two-minute breaks. Groups in the partitioned task treatment generated 40% more ideas, but there were no time effects. These differences are attributed to the …

Finding Auditors Liable For Fraud: What The Jury Heard In The Phar Mor Case, David M. Cottrell, Steven M. Glover

Faculty Publications

The Phar Mor case involved a massive collusive fraud by management. Although there were no claims the auditors participated in the fraud, plaintiffs' attorneys were able to convince the jury that the firm was liable for fraud on the grounds it made representations recklessly with regard to GAAS and GAAP.

The Influence Of Decision Aids On User Behavior: Implications For Knowledge Acquisition And Inappropriate Reliance, Steven M. Glover, Douglas F. Prawitt, Brian C. Spilker

Faculty Publications

Structured decision aids are widely used in many organizational settings, and their influence on judgment consistency and accuracy have received considerable attention in the literature. While two benefits commonly associated with decision aid use are improved judgment and enhanced expertise development, relatively little attention has been directed toward the potential influence of decision aids on decision maker behavior. In particular, we argue that the use of structured aids may influence relatively inexperienced decision makers to approach aided tasks mechanistically, without becoming actively involved in the task or judgment. Such passive decision behavior may, in some situations, threaten gains in performance …

An Adaptive Learning Model Which Accommodates Asymmetric Error Costs And Choice-Based Samples, James V. Hansen, James B. Mcdonald, Rayman D. Meservy

Faculty Publications

This paper introduces an adaptive-learning model, EGB2, which optimizes over a parameter space to fit data to a family of models based on maximum-likelihood criteria. We also show how EGB2 can be modified to handle asymmetric costs of Type I and Type II errors, thereby minimizing misclassification costs. It has been shown that standard methods of computing maximum-likelihood estimators of qualitative-response models are generally inconsistent when applied to sample data with different proportions than found in the universe from which the sample is drawn. We investigate how a choice estimator, based on weighting each observation's contribution to the log-likelihood function, …

Organizing Tax Instruction: Evidence Regarding The Way Students Organize Tax Knowledge, Stephen T. Limberg, Michael S. Schadewald, Brian C. Spilker

Faculty Publications

An important part of accounting curriculum reform is a movement away from traditional methods of organizing accounting courses toward improved organization schemes. Two basic approaches to organizing the content of tax courses are a transaction-based scheme and an entity-based scheme. This paper reports the results of an experiment that investigates which scheme is more consistent with how incoming masters in tax students organize tax knowledge and how different schemes affect the manner in which graduating students organize tax knowledge. Ninety students drawn from two full-time masters in taxation programs participated in the study. Subjects individually completed three separate tasks that …

Accounting Tutor: Intelligent Computer-Aided Instruction, Rayman D. Meservy

Faculty Publications

This study investigates several development of intelligent issues central to tutoring systems: the ( 1) representing domain knowledge, (2) representing instructional knowledge, (3) modeling student learning, and (4) developing userfriendly interfaces. The focus of domain learning tasks includes accounting basics, often covered in the first few chapters of an accounting principles course.

Learn Audit Selection Rules From Data: A Genetic Algorithms Approach, David P. Greene, Rayman D. Meservy, Stephen F. Smith

Faculty Publications

The construction of expert systems typically require the availability of expertise that can be modeled. However, there are many important problems where no expertise exists, yet there is a wealth of data indicating results in different situations. Machine learning algorithms attempt to discover rules which capture the regularities that exists in such data.

Case-Based Reasoning And Risk Assessment In Audit Judgment, Eric L. Denna, James V. Hansen, Rayman D. Meservy, Larry E. Wood

Faculty Publications

The purpose of this paper is to describe the results of an effort to utilize Case Based Reasoning (CBR) to model a specific audit judgment task. To date most efforts to develop computational models of audit judgment have used strictly rule-based representation methods. Some researchers have recently adopted more robust structures to model the auditor domain knowledge. Although these recent efforts to extend the representation methods appear to be more accurate descriptions of auditor reasoning and memory, they still lack a comprehensive. theory to guide the development of the model. A commonly encountered phenomenon in audit judgment is for an …

Development And , Application Of Expert Systems In Audit Services, Eric L. Denna, James V. Hansen, Rayman D. Meservy

Faculty Publications

Professional auditing has become much more complex over the past decade. This development has engendered a need for leveraging auditor expertise. In an attempt to meet this need, public accounting firms have been actively involved in supporting the development and application of artificial intelligence methods in audit services, which forms the foundation of their business. Much of the development and application of artificial intelligence in auditing has taken the form of expert systems. This paper examines the current state of the art and provides a framework for analysis of present work, as well as a guide to future efforts.

Accounting Tutor Platform, Rayman D. Meservy

Faculty Publications

Many educational researchers consider computers to be the most important technological development for education since the invention of the printing press or writing itself. They believe that computers will one day transform education, leaving their mark on education as writing and books have done. Even though computer aided instruction (CAI} has been used for many years, results at the college level have been mixed, although generally moderately positive, sometimes reducing instructional time while increasing learning effectiveness. [Kulik, 1990]

Investigating Expertise In Auditing, Paul E. Johnson, Andrew D. Bailey Jr, Rayman D. Meservy

Faculty Publications

Research on human expertise in auditing contexts is an important area of study. Our objective in this paper is to present an approach to conducting research on human expertise. We begin with some issues of terminology and then propose a strategy for inquiry into the phenomena of expertise. Finally, we attempt to illustrate this strategy with three examples of recently completed work. The examples include: two from the auditing literature that involve the analysis of internal control and a medical diagnosis case which illustrates the "garden path" problem that is of concern in any decision making context, including auditing.

Internal Control Evaluation: A Computational Model Of The Review Process, Rayman D. Meservy, Andrew D. Bailey Jr, Paul E. Johnson

Faculty Publications

This study investigated the strategies by which experienced auditors evaluate systems of internal accounting controls. The research method included: (1) observations, using concurrent protocols, of a small sample of practicing auditors performing the internal control evaluation task; (2) extensive interviews with one of the practicing auditors; (3) formalization of auditor processes as a computational model; and (4) validation of the model. The simulation model was Im· plemented as an expert system and tuned to one auditor. The model output consists of a trace of the model processing including: (1) rec• ommendatlons for specific controls to be compliance tested; and (2) …

Decision Support Systems, Expert Systems, And Artificial Intelligence: Realities And Possibilities In Public Accounting, Andrew D. Bailey, Rayman D. Meservy, Joanne H. Turner

Faculty Publications

As the business environment becomes more complex and more competitive, accountants and other business managers must exploit the advantages of the computer to remain competitive. Even though managers have long used data which was collected, stored, summarized, and reported using computer technology, managers have not traditionally used computers to manage. Only recently have managers realized that the computer is a cost-effective tool which can directly aid and support business decisions (i.e., not only can computers generate data to be used in making decisions, they can also make comparisons, evaluate alternatives, weigh the costs and benefits, and perhaps even make certain …

Kass: A Knowledge-Based Auditor Support System, Ramayya Krishnan, Rayman D. Meservy, Vandana Gadh

Faculty Publications

This paper describes the design of a knowledge-based system to assist auditors in the evaluatation of internal accounting controls and focusses on the logic-based language AL that has been developed as a knowledge representation formalism. Interesting features of AL include a declarative approach to modeling accounting systems and the means to explicitly describe authority structures typically used to enforce internal controls.

A Mathematical Contraction And Automated Analysis Of Internal Controls, Andrew D. Bailey Jr, Gordon Leon Duke, James Gerlach, Chen-En Ko, Rayman D. Meservy, Andrew B. Whinton

Faculty Publications

This paper presents a precedent oriented computer assisted method of designing, analyzing and evaluating systems of internal controls. The ..!..nternal Control _!iodel, TICOM III, is fundamentally a design and analysis tool useful in the context of Automated Office Information Systems (AOIS's). Traditional analysis and evaluation tools, such as flowcharting, written narratives and questionnaires, are inefficient, if not insufficient, to support the design and control analysis of these new systems. The advantages of TICOM III over traditional methods such as narrative description, questionnaires and flowcharts are: (1) the evaluation can be more rigorous and exhaustive because of the speed, accuracy and …