When I started this course, I was told by a very competent person that Financial Accounting Theory or ACC3116/5216 is about theories which relate to financial accounting practice to help students develop skills as accountants for doing bookkeeping, applying accounting standards, and exercising judgment and making decisions. From this alone, I say that the course, Financial Accounting Theory, is useful for practicing accountants today. Furthermore, although the course was designed for students, specifically to introduce students to popular accounting theories, to help the students explore the incentives or motivations that exist when making financial reporting decisions or evaluating the decisions of others, and to improve students' written communication skills and critical thinking skills; practicing accountants are not perfect. They still need to be continually updated on the changes in the accounting field specially changes in accounting theories. They still need to improve their decision making, analytical, and communication skills. And what better to do these than the Financial Accounting Theory course? Sometimes a practicing accountant, whether he or she is an auditor, manager or company accountant, needs to touch base with the profession. Through the course's introduction, a practicing accountant can do this. The course's introduction talked about what is meant by accounting theory, how theories developed over time, and how theories are actually formulated and tested
[...] After all it is these financial accounting theories that practicing accountants evaluate and quantify business transactions, and they need to be aware of the limitations of these theories which reflect on the limitations of the number or numbers that they communicate to the users of the financial information they create. Now, the third module of the course is as equally important as the first two, or even the rest of the course's modules. This module is about the conceptual framework of accounting which every would-be and practicing accountant need to go over and over again so as not to lose sight of the importance of the information they convey to the users of the financial information they communicate. [...]
[...] This research helps us to understand better the judgements and decisions made by both accountants and auditors and, in turn, how these judgements and decisions affect the end users of accounting information. In turn, this increased understanding will help us to improve our ability to exercise judgement and make financial reporting decisions. Behavioral research in Accounting was established as an experiment by the Accounting, Behavior and Organizations (ABO) Section of the American Accounting Association (AAA) in 1989, based upon the perceived need for a quality research journal dedicated solely to behavioral accounting (Meyer & Rigsby 2001). [...]
[...] However, the emerging technology of Internet-based experiments offers behavioral accounting research new possibilities for obtaining large sample sizes, providing world-wide access to previously hard-to-reach participants such as Chief Financial Officers, audit partners, and financial analysts and exploring new research questions. Although behavioral research is increasingly relying upon the Internet for data collection, few Internet- based experimental accounting studies have been published. Also the results of existing behavioural research in accounting are hardly complete. Let's take for example the audit field of the profession. [...]
[...] Birnberg, Hoffman and Moser said that Arnold and Sutton's Chapter 7 brings together one of the oldest topics in accounting research-how do users respond to financial statements using different accounting methods (e.g., LIFO-FIFO)?-with one that has been achieving some degree of visibility of late-what role can accounting research and behavioral research play in informing policy makers. The authors discussed the possible roles which can be played by the different research methods such as archival market studies and behavioral research in accounting and conclude that behavioral research has the potential to play a significant role in this area. [...]
[...] I hope with the review that I did on existing literatures on behavioural research in accounting, I sufficiently depended my viewpoint that the course Financial Accounting Theory specifically the module on Behavioural Research in Accounting is not only important to students studying to become accountants, but also to practicing accountants no matter what industry and position they work in. Lastly, we must think that consciously or subconsciously, most behavior occurs to achieve goals, avoid adverse consequences, or maintain values. And the current design of the course Financial Accounting Theory can help accountants in understanding why accountants behave the way they do. [...]
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