Matching Items (22)
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- All Subjects: Accounting
- Creators: WPC Graduate Programs
- Creators: Samuelson, Melissa
- Creators: Dawson, Gregory
- Creators: Roth, Ryder
- Member of: Barrett, The Honors College Thesis/Creative Project Collection
- Resource Type: Text
Description
Developed a business product with a team of CS students.
ContributorsPerri, Cole Thomas (Co-author) / Hernandez, Maximilliano (Co-author) / Schneider, Kaitlin (Co-author) / Call, Andy (Thesis director) / Hunt, Neil (Committee member) / School of Accountancy (Contributor) / Watts College of Public Service & Community Solut (Contributor) / WPC Graduate Programs (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2021-05
Description
The competitive nature of business requires managers to consistently work towards eliminating unnecessary costs and improving financial management. Worldwide, fraud remains a pervasive and expensive problem for businesses. Fraud involving misappropriation of assets (commonly referred to as embezzlement) and fraudulent financial reporting cost organizations trillions of dollars worldwide. To better understand the most effective ways of combating misappropriation and to a lesser extent, fraudulent financial reporting, this paper evaluates research and reports the results of expert interviews with accountants, forensic experts, and security specialists.
ContributorsMurnane, George (Author) / Munshi, Perseus (Thesis director) / Pany, Kurt (Committee member) / School of Accountancy (Contributor) / WPC Graduate Programs (Contributor) / Department of Finance (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2016-05
Description
The author is an accounting major headed into the public accounting industry. As a tax intern his senior year, he was able to work in the thick of "busy season", when tax returns are due for submission and work is very busy. The author tired of working long hours and continuous talking with his accounting friends how working on Saturdays and long weeknights was generally accepted. Best value principles from Dr. Dean Kashiwagi's Information Measurement Theory were applied to examine how to maximize efficiency in public accounting and reduce the workload. After reviewing how Information Measurement Theory applies to public accounting, the author deemed three possible solutions to improve the working conditions of public accountants. First, to decrease the work load during busy season, tax organizers need to be sent earlier and staff should be assigned to oversee this information gathering. Second, in order to better prepare new hires to become partners, the career path needs to be outlined on day one with a career guide. Finally, in order to more successfully on board new hires due to the steep learning in public accounting, firms should utilize buddy systems and encourage organic mentoring.
ContributorsBohmke, Scott (Author) / Kashiwagi, Dean (Thesis director) / Kashiwagi, Jacob (Committee member) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor) / WPC Graduate Programs (Contributor) / School of Accountancy (Contributor)
Created2015-05
Description
Financial statements are one of the most important, if not the most important, documents for investors. These statements are prepared quarterly and yearly by the company accounting department, and are then audited in detail by a large external accounting firm. Investors use these documents to determine the value of the company, and trust that the company was truthful in its statements, and the auditing firm correctly audited the company's financial statements for any mistakes in their books and balances. Mistakes on a company's financial statements can be costly. However, financial fraud on the statements can be outright disastrous. Penalties for accounting fraud can include individual lifetime prison sentences, as well as company fines for billions of dollars. As students in the accounting major, it is our responsibility to ensure that financial statements are accurate and truthful to protect ourselves, other stakeholders, and the companies we work for. This ethics game takes the stories of Enron, WorldCom, and Lehman Brothers and uses them to help students identify financial fraud and how it can be prevented, as well as the consequences behind unethical decisions in financial reporting. The Enron scandal involved CEO Kenneth Lay and his predecessor Jeffery Skilling hiding losses in their financial statements with the help of their auditing firm, Arthur Andersen. Enron collapsed in 2002, and Lay was sentenced to 45 years in prison with his conspirator Skilling sentenced to 24 years in prison. In the WorldCom scandal, CEO Bernard "Bernie" Ebbers booked line costs as capital expenses (overstating WorldCom's assets), and created fraudulent accounts to inflate revenue and WorldCom's profit. Ebbers was sentenced to 25 years in prison and lost his title as WorldCom's Chief Executive Officer. Lehman Brothers took advantage of a loophole in accounting procedure Repo 105, that let the firm hide $50 billion in profits. No one at Lehman Brothers was sentenced to jail since the transaction was technically considered legal, but Lehman was the largest investment bank to fail and the only large financial institution that was not bailed out by the U.S. government.
ContributorsPanikkar, Manoj Madhuraj (Author) / Samuelson, Melissa (Thesis director) / Ahmad, Altaf (Committee member) / Department of Information Systems (Contributor) / School of Accountancy (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2016-05
Description
The concept of data analytics has become a primary focus for companies of all types, and from within all industries. Leveraging data to enhance the decision making power of management is now vital for companies to remain competitive. Beginning as a movement pioneered by tech-startups and teams of university researchers, data analytics is reshaping every industry that it touches, and the field of accounting has been no exception.
Corporate buzzword terms like “big data” and “data analytics” are vague in meaning, and are thrown around by media sources often enough to obfuscate their actual meanings. These concepts are then associated with company-wide initiatives beyond the reach of the individual, in a nebulous world where people know that analytics happens, but don’t understand what it is.
The power of data analytics is not reserved for company-wide initiatives, or only employed by Silicon Valley tech start-ups. Its impacts are visible down at the team or department level, and can be conducted by the individual employees. The field of data analytics is evolving, and within it exists a rapid transition in which the individual employee is becoming a source for insight and value creation through the adoption of analytics based approaches.
The purpose of this thesis is to showcase an example of this claim, and demonstrate how an analytics based approach was applied to an existing accounting process to create new insights and information. To do this, I will discuss my development of an Excel based Dashboard Analytics tool, which I completed during my internship with Bechtel Corporation throughout the summer of 2018, and I will use this analytics tool to demonstrate the improvements that small-scale analytics had on a pre-existing process. During this discussion, I will address conceptual aspects of database design that related to my project, and will show how I applied this classroom learning to a working environment. The paper will begin with an overview of the desired goals of the group in which I was based, and will then analyze how the needs of the group led to the creation and implementation of this new analytics-based reporting tool. I will conclude with a discussion of the potential future use of this tool, and how the inclusion of these analytical approaches will continue to shape the working environment.
Corporate buzzword terms like “big data” and “data analytics” are vague in meaning, and are thrown around by media sources often enough to obfuscate their actual meanings. These concepts are then associated with company-wide initiatives beyond the reach of the individual, in a nebulous world where people know that analytics happens, but don’t understand what it is.
The power of data analytics is not reserved for company-wide initiatives, or only employed by Silicon Valley tech start-ups. Its impacts are visible down at the team or department level, and can be conducted by the individual employees. The field of data analytics is evolving, and within it exists a rapid transition in which the individual employee is becoming a source for insight and value creation through the adoption of analytics based approaches.
The purpose of this thesis is to showcase an example of this claim, and demonstrate how an analytics based approach was applied to an existing accounting process to create new insights and information. To do this, I will discuss my development of an Excel based Dashboard Analytics tool, which I completed during my internship with Bechtel Corporation throughout the summer of 2018, and I will use this analytics tool to demonstrate the improvements that small-scale analytics had on a pre-existing process. During this discussion, I will address conceptual aspects of database design that related to my project, and will show how I applied this classroom learning to a working environment. The paper will begin with an overview of the desired goals of the group in which I was based, and will then analyze how the needs of the group led to the creation and implementation of this new analytics-based reporting tool. I will conclude with a discussion of the potential future use of this tool, and how the inclusion of these analytical approaches will continue to shape the working environment.
ContributorsCunningham, Jared (Author) / Dawson, Gregory (Thesis director) / Prince, Linda (Committee member) / WPC Graduate Programs (Contributor) / School of Accountancy (Contributor) / Department of Information Systems (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2019-05
Description
Inclusion of diverse talent in the field of public accounting has been highly prioritized by the profession since the late 1960s. In seeking to acquire racially/ethnically diverse talent in addition to an expanding set of identities (e.g. veterans, people with disabilities, LGTBQ+, and various backgrounds contributing to “diversity of thought”), Big Four Public Accounting firms have taken on more operational ownership of their Diversity and Inclusion programming. We conducted interviews with D&I program facilitators and surveyed Accounting and Finance students at Arizona State University to assess whether these programs align with students’ outlooks and are being properly presented to enhance awareness. The uniformity across the Big Four’s D&I program structures, the persistence in competition among them in relation to talent acquisition and retention, and students’ lack of awareness relating to program timing and existence lead us to conclude that efforts in improving diversity and inclusion in Big Four Public Accounting are most effective when the Big Four act collectively
ContributorsAlaniz, Leslie M (Co-author) / Quintana, Jacob (Co-author) / Samuels, Janet (Thesis director) / Dawson, Gregory (Committee member) / School of International Letters and Cultures (Contributor) / School of Accountancy (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2020-05
Description
This paper consists of a literature review, wherein four papers surrounding Motivation Crowding Theory (MCT) were read and analyzed. The paper then goes into an analysis of a survey I conducted. The survey consisted of three main questions with three sub-questions for each, and all attempted to find a "limit" to MCT. However, results for the survey were ultimately inconclusive. The paper concludes with lessons learned in conducting research and surveys in particular, as well as a nod to the relevancy of MCT in business and personal applications.
ContributorsSmith, Mallory Anne (Author) / Reckers, Phil (Thesis director) / Samuelson, Melissa (Committee member) / Lowe, Jordan (Committee member) / School of Accountancy (Contributor) / Department of Information Systems (Contributor) / WPC Graduate Programs (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2020-05
Description
The purpose of this thesis was to create a valuation of Spotify (Ticker: SPOT) and estimate a share price for the company. Spotify is one of the largest music streaming services in the world, currently operating in 79 markets globally with a subscriber base of over 100 million people. Spotify initially offered April 3, 2018 at $132 per share and sees a huge amount of financial assets on their balance sheet due to continued investment. As a newly established high-growth company, Spotify has enjoyed a 30% average revenue growth year over year from 2014 to 2019. Although Spotify’s reach is quite large, the company is dwarfed by competitors such as Apple, Google, and Amazon in the extremely competitive music streaming industry. Within this paper, we first analyze the competitive landscape that makes up the music streaming industry. Once a baseline understanding of the music streaming industry has been reached, we turn the focus more directly onto Spotify through examining Spotify’s position within the market as well as the company’s current strategic goals and objectives. We then forecasted Spotify’s financial statements forward and created a residual income model (RIM) based on Spotify’s financial statements. As was previously stated, the purpose of this model was to arrive at a share price for Spotify that we believe accurately reflects its value and compare that with its current market trading price. After successfully accomplishing this goal, we conducted a comprehensive final analysis and offered Spotify recommendations based on the model as well and its output.
ContributorsRice, Ian (Co-author) / Nagele, Benjamin (Co-author) / Samuels, Janet (Thesis director) / Orpurt, Steven (Committee member) / School of Accountancy (Contributor) / WPC Graduate Programs (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2020-05
Description
Materiality describes the level to which the misreporting of information could influence decisionmakers who use that information. Since materiality is a highly abstract concept, it requires metrics to support its application to financial statements and other documents. Nonprofit and for-profit firms have different missions, suggesting that material information for decisionmakers looking at nonprofits' reports may differ from material information for decisionmakers looking at for-profit firms' reports.
This paper examines how materiality applies to nonprofit information disclosure. It begins by introducing the concept of materiality. It then explores how accounting literature, rule-making bodies, and the courts define and apply materiality. Nonprofit firms' structure, required financial statements, and comparisons to for-profit firms are next addressed. Issues with assessing nonprofit success and materiality in relation to various aspects of a nonprofit's mission are also introduced.
This paper finds that the metrics which support materiality should be different for nonprofit vs. for-profit firms. Nonprofit materiality measures should center around the mission statement, which differs from nonprofit to nonprofit. These nonprofit materiality measures assess the primary mission of providing goods and services, which has the greatest interest to potential donors. Examples of these materiality measures, along with the challenges and insights gained from them, are discussed. This paper concludes by overviewing nonprofit materiality measures and noting how they can improve nonprofit information disclosure. Suggestions for further research into improving materiality for nonprofit information disclosure are also given.
This paper examines how materiality applies to nonprofit information disclosure. It begins by introducing the concept of materiality. It then explores how accounting literature, rule-making bodies, and the courts define and apply materiality. Nonprofit firms' structure, required financial statements, and comparisons to for-profit firms are next addressed. Issues with assessing nonprofit success and materiality in relation to various aspects of a nonprofit's mission are also introduced.
This paper finds that the metrics which support materiality should be different for nonprofit vs. for-profit firms. Nonprofit materiality measures should center around the mission statement, which differs from nonprofit to nonprofit. These nonprofit materiality measures assess the primary mission of providing goods and services, which has the greatest interest to potential donors. Examples of these materiality measures, along with the challenges and insights gained from them, are discussed. This paper concludes by overviewing nonprofit materiality measures and noting how they can improve nonprofit information disclosure. Suggestions for further research into improving materiality for nonprofit information disclosure are also given.
ContributorsBails, Robin Hong (Author) / Shields, David (Thesis director) / Alhusaini, Badryah (Committee member) / School of Accountancy (Contributor) / WPC Graduate Programs (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2020-12
Description
Blockchain is a sophisticated and complex technology that will have a massive impact on the public accounting industry. Currently there is concern surrounding how blockchain may impact the industry as a whole. Auditors and accountants are worried that this technology has the potential to replace the responsibilities they fulfill. However, blockchain technology will not replace accountants and will enhance their daily activities by eliminating menial tasks, providing increased transparency, and allowing time to be spent in areas that require more consideration. This will change the role of accountants and professionals, requiring them to be more technologically proficient and analytically minded. This paper is organized as follows. There will be an initial explanation of the technology to inform the reader of what blockchain is and how it works. Then there will be a discussion regarding how blockchain technology relates to, and can be utilized by, public accounting firms as well as the implications of blockchain on the public accounting industry. These implications will be discussed followed by why they are extraneous, and how to combat them in both the assurance and advisory practices. In conclusion, recommendations will be provided for public accounting firms on how to effectively utilize the technology to their benefit.
ContributorsLomsdalen, Stephen A (Co-author) / Charen, Stephanie (Co-author) / Samuelson, Melissa (Thesis director) / Garverick, Michael (Committee member) / School of Accountancy (Contributor) / WPC Graduate Programs (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2018-12