External Influences on the Accounting Profession

The Chartered Accounting profession of South Africa is one of the most esteemed professions in the world, due to the enhancement and maintenance thereof by the South African accounting institutions (South African Institute of Chartered Accountants, 2011). This essay will discuss the Chartered Accounting profession in South Africa by referring to the professionalisation of accountancy in South Africa and the professional status of Chartered Accountancy in terms of the definition of a profession. This essay will furthermore explore the mechanisms that are inaugurated at present by the South African accounting institutions to maintain the professionalism of Chartered Accountancy.

II. Main Point #2. Contrary to popular belief, Accountants, and the tasks that they perform, are an important part of most people’s everyday life.

Accountants are held to a higher ethical standards and they must performed their duties in compliance with standards or ethical values of honesty, integrity, objectivity, due care, confidentiality, which must be fully committed to. They must put clients or public interest first before their own. They must have and ethical values and maintain those values way beyond what the society or the company’s code of ethic. It is important that accountants’ behavior or ethical values is in conformity with the

Management accounting is a political technology, constantly evolving to meet demands of stakeholders of a company and to facilitate competitive advantage. A management accountant acts as a tool to devise and implement strategies. Pre-1920, decision-making processes were executed using strictly financial instruments such as cost profit analysis. “The growth of modern corporation, between 1880 and 1925 provided stimulus for development in innovative management accounting practices” (Kaplan, 1984). Due to the prominence of the world trade organisation and international monetary fund, trade barriers have

Gray identified four widely recognised accounting values that can be used to understand a nation’s accounting practices, which are professionalism, uniformity, conservatism and secrecy (Doupnik & Perera, 2015, p. 37). Professionalism verses statutory control is understood to be the difference between a nation’s preference for either individual professional judgement and self-regulation

To over view the knowledge we learnt from accounting theory and practice, the main thing I can conclude that is the tendency of accounting will shift away from technical way to people’s behaviour way. By understanding what should do, we should ask why and how we could improve and change it into a better way. This essay aims to explain how the theoretical material that we learn in lectures can be developed under a real practical manner.

Ethics in any industry is important, but for Accounting professionals and those in need of their services, it is a particularly stressed element. Information provided by accountants is used to make major decisions, including investing, downsizing, expanding, etc, so accountants are expected to be competent, reliable, and have a high degree of professional integrity. Because of these high expectations, the professional accountancy industry, like many other professions, has adopted professional codes of ethics (Woelfel, 1986). These ethical codes go above and beyond the requirements for state or federal laws and regulations. There are several professional organizations within the

When determining and defending the use of a particular ethical system within the confines of a profession, it is important to evaluate the system in terms of the professional culture as well as the expected professional conduct laid out within the vocation itself. The accounting profession has been evolving for thousands of years. Early accounting records date business transactions back as far as third century B.C. (Schroeder, Clark, & Cathey, 2009). Early record keeping was for internal purposes and as societies and economies expanded, it became important to maintain records for external purposes as well. According to Schroeder, Clark & Cathey (2009), by the ninetheeth centruy, bookkeeing expanded into accounting (p. 3). From this time, it has been the duty of the accountant to serve the public interest and the profession has been culitvated into an organizational culture with professional norms and standards constantly taking shape in an effort to complete an all-inclusive conceptual framework.

During my time at Accounting Firm X I learned many lessons that apply not only to accounting and the principles and practices associated with that subject, but also to life as a professional in a real world work setting. The purpose of this essay is to highlight my experiences at Accounting Firm X to shed light upon key learning experiences that can contribute to a holistic educational experience. In this essay I will first describe my goals and expectations. Next, I will go in to detail about my daily routine and how these exercises contributed toward the overall experience. I will then explore the overall lessons learned from my time spent at the firm.

Another challenge convergence faces is the fact that under IFRS, there are little industry-specific standards, which has led many commentators to voice “concerns about how IFRS would impact their particular industry” (AICPA, 2009). Other critics have voiced concerns regarding the uncertainty surrounding funding for the IASB as it’s “largely funded through voluntary contributions from a wide variety of participants across the world’s capital markets. The concern with that model is that it leaves the IASB open to the perception that organizations that provide funding could try to influence the accounting standards” (SIAC, 2012). This observation questions whether there is true independence of the IASB and the integrity of its standard-setting process.

The accounting and auditing profession has been constantly making headlines throughout the past decades because of litigation against accountants. This is a major weakness in the Code of Professional Conduct that caused the accounting profession to lose the respect it has gain. In the 1990s to the 2000s accounting scandals from the Waste Management scandal in 1998 to the Saytam scandal in 2009 was discovered one after another, which only caused the public to lose confidence and harshly criticize in the profession.

Throughout history the accounting profession has seen continuous growth. It has even been discovered that an elaborate accounting system was utilized as early as 8000 to 3000 B.C. (Schroeder, Clark, & Cathey, 2014). Humans have deemed it necessary for centuries to account for money and inventory items. In the nineteenth century, the accounting profession took another major step forward when the joint ventures evolved into corporations in England- resulting in stockholders needing financial records reflecting the companies’ performance (Schroeder et. al, 2014). This emergence of corporations brought about the need for reporting on a periodic basis in order to allow owners and prospective stockholders to evaluate the company to determine if their investments, or potential investments, yielded a return (Schroeder et. al, 2014). The evolution of these corporations brought about the need for accounting standards and laws that would that protect the investment of shareholders, require that dividends be paid from net gains, and require that audits be conducted by people other than the directors of the organization(s) (Schroeder et. al, 2014). These changes in the nineteenth century led the charge in the development for accounting standards and laws that we still follow today, and they are constantly evolving and improving in order to protect investors from scandal and fraud.

Accounting is the language of business. It is a profession that is being guided by principles, concepts, conventions, laws, etc. All these fundamental building blocks serve as common and general compasses to all practitioners of the profession. In some cases, they are nation-wide tailored, while in other cases, they are universally tailored. Accounting as a living, practical, dynamic and realistic profession covers so many areas of social, economic (business), and governmental activities. Surely, any endeavour that involves monetary and material activities create a room for the services of Accounting. Many of the human endeavours for which the accounting profession plays significant (some times inevitable) roles include; Banking, Insurance, Manufacturing, Farming Contracting, Oil and Gas, Mining, Transportation (Air, Land and Sea), Educational Institutions, Churches, Ministries, ICT, Hire Purchase, Local Government Authorities, Estate Businesses, Export and Import Businesses, Bill of Exchange Transactions, Royalties Transactions, Consignment Transactions, Stock Market Transactions, Sports, Entertainment, Hospitals and Hospitality Industry, etc.

The business environment appears to get smaller with each passing day. Therefore, accountants face troubles in remaining protected from the progressions that occur around the world (Diaconu and Coman 2006). Globalization hint at the regularly changing procedure of incorporation and connection among governments, individuals and organizations. The key three things that declare incorporate globalization venture, worldwide exchange and data innovation (Diaconu and Coman 2006). Globalization moves the world to another level and places it to more at the leading edge statures reliably. Outstandingly, globalization procedure have both negative and constructive effects on accounting (Godfrey and Chalmers 2007). This is unmistakable as in,

The 2003 paper by Schipper discusses the move in the accounting community to abandon the U.S. “rules based” accounting system in favor of a principles based system. Karen Schipper is an accounting professional that is a member of the FASB. The principles based system allows for the appropriate exercise of professional judgment. The current system is “rules based” and is based on the stringent guidelines that encourage decisions be made that follow a decision tree and place a “check mark” in a box.