We consider accounting from an evolutionary perspective. Accounting encompasses the creation of transactional records, the summarization of records in t-accounts, and the preparation of audited financial statements. Accounting's history spans at least 10,000 years dating back to the first human...

This study finds that the agency problems of companies with high free cash flow (FCF) and low growth opportunities induce auditors of companies in the United States to raise audit fees to compensate for the additional effort. We also find that high FCF companies with high growth prospects have...

This paper explores the foundation of the financial accounting model. We examine the properties of the accounting equation as the principal algorithm for the design and the development of a System Dynamics model. Key to the perspective is the foundational requirement that resolves the temporal...

Organizations are often facing the problem of determining the degree of investment in building information links with their suppliers and buyers to reduce costs, lead times, and quality problems, improve timely customized delivery, increase asset utilization and improve corporate profitability....

Business executives and academics frequently criticize budget-based compensation plans as providing incentives for subordinates to build slack into proposed budgets. In this paper, we examine whether either of two practices - using budgets to allocate scarce resources, or providing information...

I contribute to the extensive earnings management literature by examining the effect of market competition on the relationship between managerial ability and earnings management. The results show that in the face of increased competition, high quality managers manipulate earnings via accruals...

Cash flow management is one of the most significant challenges that face nonprofit organizations. A shortage is cash, even if it's temporary, is a major risk factor for the organization. Nevertheless the standard method for cash flow management – a cash flow projection - does not produce...

In the asymmetric cost behavior model, managers play an active role in determining cost behavior by adding or removing resources as activity changes. Cost stickiness occurs when managers deliberately retain slack resources resulting from a decline in sales activity between periods. Because both...

Accounting research productivity has acquired mythic characteristics. What constitutes productivity in accounting research, in particular financial accounting research, has for decades not been measured by the amount of work that is required to generate publishable research, but by the quantity...

Auditors must recognize problematic patterns among the assumptions underlying complex estimates to identify misstatements. Pattern recognition requires rich problem representations of complex estimates that auditors may be unable to develop given their lack of valuation expertise. I predict and...