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Statement of Financial Accounting Standard No. 130 (SFAS 130) was released in 1997 which required publicly traded companies to separately report comprehensive income in the financial statements. SFAS 130 prescribed three alternative formats for the presentation without mandating any one specific format. SFAS 130 also required certain details of comprehensive income to be displayed prominently in the financial statements. The current study examined the presentation of comprehensive income by a sample of companies traded on the NASDAQ market to determine the predominant method of presentation among these companies, five years after SFAS 130 became effective. Results of the examination of one hundred annual reports showed that a majority of the sampled companies used the third approach, which was to present comprehensive income as part of the Statement of Stockholders’ Equity, as against the first two approaches that favored presentation of comprehensive income on the face of the Income Statement or in a separate statement. Further, the paper also discusses some ancillary findings pertaining to the presentation of the details of comprehensive income.

The purpose of this study is to examine students who have recently graduated from the standard 120 credit accountancy program and compare and contrast their ethical perceptions with students who have recently graduated from the AICPA-mandated 150 credit accountancy program which includes 30 extra credits with a focus on ethics.

Recent graduated accounting students from selected Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business were asked to fill out a cross-sectional survey based on Victor and Cullen's Ethical Climate Questionnaire (ECQ) to determine whether a difference exists between the two groups' ethical perceptions. The nine hypotheses derived from the ECQ were tested using an independent sample t-test and Levene's test for the homogeneity of the variances between the two groups.

Compared with graduates of the 120 credit program, 150 credit program graduates scored significantly higher in ethical perceptions on five domains: Company Profit, Friendship, Team Interest, Personal Morality, and Rules, when testing at a confidence level of 95 percent. The two groups were not significantly different in the domains of Self-Interest, Efficiency, Social Responsibility, or Laws.

The paper includes implications for the need to encourage ethical intervention through education in the accounting curriculum. This study is part of a growing body of research for teaching ethics within the accounting profession.

This paper fulfills an identified need to study business ethics. Corporate scandals in the late 1990s and early this century led to a decline in the public's trust of the accounting profession. Since that time, the government, companies, and universities have attempted to rebuild that trust through a number of methods, such as passing laws requiring better regulation and more disclosure as well as requiring improved ethics education for future accountants.

The purpose of the current study is to examine audit committee reports of a sample of companies listed on the NYSE to determine the extent to which these reports contain voluntary disclosures that would indicate compliance with the relevant requirements of the Sarbanes‐Oxley Act (SOX) and the rules imposed by the SEC and NYSE.

Reviewed the contents of the audit committee reports from the 2004 proxy statements of a random sample of one hundred companies from those listed on the NYSE. These companies were drawn from a variety of industries and represented a wide cross‐section of the total market. The content of audit committee reports was examined to see if the committees voluntarily disclosed, within the body of the report, compliance with the requirements of SOX.

The results reveal that there is a significant diversity in the form and content of the audit committee reports published in the sample. It appears that while some audit committees treat their report as more than just a regulatory requirement and provide more voluntary disclosure, many others continue to provide only the minimum required information in their report.

The study focused on the actual body of the audit committee reports to examine disclosures about the compliance with SOX. It is likely that in many cases, the disclosures that did not appear within the audit committee reports may appear elsewhere in the proxy statement. Also, the study only examined audit committee reports of a sample of NYSE companies. Future research might include audit committee reports of those companies in the NASDAQ system.

Readers of audit committee reports might view more favorably the performance of those audit committees whose reports contain more extensive disclosures of the compliance with the SOX requirements.

This paper fulfills a need to know if audit committees are meeting the requirement of SOX and disclosing it. It warns readers that in order to obtain complete information as to the functioning of audit committees, they might need to conduct a complete search of the proxy statements and not only the section relating to the audit committee report.

Tax evasion and tax compliance have been popular research subjects for several decades. This paper aims to present a comprehensive review of the literature explaining individual taxpayer's behaviour.

Recognizing Allingham and Sandmo's model as the starting point, important modern behavioural approaches in conjunction with the social disciplines are reviewed.

Synthesis of findings suggests a wide array of factors influencing the tax evasion – tax compliance decision. So far, the most comprehensive explanation incorporating the attributive factors along with their interactions belongs to Kirchler et al.'s “slippery slope framework”.

Tax compliance's importance in public finance increases dramatically within the current sovereign debt crisis in the global economic environment. In light of the developments in the front of behavioural economics, further research is needed to validate all hypotheses.

The contribution of the present paper lies on the review and categorization of alternative approaches in economic theory, including recent developments and applications within the general scope of behavioral economics.

The purpose of this study is to analyze whether whistleblowing is a fact among accounting professionals when there is a serious wrongdoing at the workplace and to investigate the differences between accounting professionals about whistleblowing intention according to demographic variables. This paper reviews whistleblowing behavior in the context of professional accounting in Turkey. This study discusses whistleblowing event and analyzes it by using the scenario technique.

Three whistleblowing scenarios were used and participants were asked to indicate the likelihood that the individual in the scenario would blow the whistle. Participants indicated blowing the whistle action on a seven-point likert-type of scale for the given scenario.

The main hypothesis is the differences between whistleblowing behavior of accounting professionals in relation to such demographic characteristics as working conditions, total tenure, gender, age, membership and number of customers according to the scenario. The findings support that accounting professionals' demographic factors are important to understand the whistleblowing behavior from their perspectives. Whistleblowing is experienced among accounting professionals above the average level for each scenario. There are no differences about accounting professionals' whistleblowing behavior in terms of their demographic characteristics (working circumstances, total tenure, age, membership and number of customers) with the exception of gender and age variables.

This study's results come with some limitations. One limitation is the low response rate achieved in the data collection process. Another limitation is that this study is conducted among accounting professionals, so these finding results cannot be generalized to other different professionals in Turkey.

The findings of the study may get the board of directors' or managers' attention to the point that they should become aware of the importance of whistleblowing in their organizations to encourage employees to report the wrongdoings internally.

When employees report these wrongdoings outside the organization, corporate reputation of the company can be damaged. This ethical issue should be solved in the context of the organization.

This study aims to make several contributions to the accounting and management literature. First, it extends the recent accounting literature on whistleblowing by examining demographic characteristics. Second, most of the studies use questionnaire to collect the data from the participants, but in this study, the authors used the scenario technique that reflects the whistleblowing behavior tendency in a work environment in order to learn accounting professionals' evaluations of whistleblowing behavior.

The purpose of this study is to examine the relationship between culture and managers attitude towards business ethics in Nigeria. Several studies have recognized that culture affects ethical behavior. However, very few studies have been conducted on how culture affects managers' attitudes towards business ethics which may predict their ethical behavior especially in developing African countries. The focal point is that this study is to address this knowledge gap in the literature.

The author collected data from 351 managers in selected firms in Nigeria. Two instruments were used to measure Hofstede's five cultural dimensions and attitudes toward business ethics. Correlation and regression analysis were used to test and predict the relationship between the independent and the dependent variables in the study.

Results show that culture has a significant influence on ethical attitudes of managers. The findings also specifically revealed that relationships exist among Hofstede's cultural dimension of power distance, collectivism, masculinity, uncertainty avoidance, short-term orientation and the dimensions of attitudes towards business ethics.

The generalization of the findings may be limited by some of the sample characteristics. First, the study was limited to six cities in Nigeria; as a result, broader geographic sampling would better represent the national profile. Second, the drop off and pick up method used in data collection and the usual social-desirability bias associated with survey research could be limitations for the study. However, the author took extreme measures to protect the identities of the respondents. Finally, replication of this study using larger samples and a broader geographic base is suggested for cross-validation purposes.

Understanding that ethical beliefs and moral decision-making are dependent on culture and play an important role in managing and developing a successful ethics program. The results can help multinational corporations in developing effective culturally based ethical codes of conduct; as well as to design and manage targeted ethical policies and programs that will actively motivate, stimulate, support, encourage, and promote an outstanding ethical organization in Nigeria.

There have been very few previous studies on how culture affects managers' attitude toward business ethics within the sub-Saharan African context. To the best of the author's knowledge, this is the first empirical study on this topic in Nigeria, a sub-Saharan African country. The results provide insights on how culture can influence ethical attitude of managers in Nigeria. As a ground-breaking study on this topic in Nigeria, the findings may provide managers and scholars with an understanding of impact of culture on ethics. The insights gained from this study will contribute to the future research development on this topic in sub-Saharan Africa. Therefore, the study is of significant value to practitioners and scholars alike.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the evolution of the ethical discourse of the US public accounting profession over the last century in relation to Foucault's concept of “codified discourse”. The ethical discourse of the US public accounting profession has evolved from its first code of ethics promulgated in 1917, which focused primarily on protecting the economic interests of the profession, to a position in the most recent promulgation of the code of professional conduct, which contains aspirational elements regarding ethical behavior, but which incorporates few enforceable provisions. It is therefore necessary to look elsewhere for the ethical discourse of the profession, which appears to be located more in the behaviors of accountants practicing in large international public accounting firms, in which the professional accountant becomes molded into an “ethical being” in the Foucaultian sense, as one who is self-regulated and self-formed into an ideal member of the profession.

Using Foucault's concept of “codified discourse”, the author examines changes to the code of ethics of the US public accounting profession of over a period of 100 years. The code of ethics of the US public accounting profession has been one of the primary means through which the ethical discourse of the profession has been communicated to its members. The author addresses the question whether the code of ethics has been principally directed towards protecting the public interest or serving the private interests of the profession. Extending Preston et al. and Beets, the author argues that the changes to the code of ethics have been prompted primarily by market forces and the accounting profession's desire to expand its scope of its services, thus protecting its private economic interests.

The author demonstrates that the ethical discourse of the profession can be found more in the self-forming practices of the profession rather than its code of ethics. These self-forming practices commence early in the career of a prospective accountant and shape the accountant into an idealized “ethical being” in the Foucaultian sense; not an ethical being who complies with a code of ethics, but rather an ethical being who is self-regulated and self-formed into an ideal member of the profession, one who seeks to serve clients while at the same time giving the appearance of acting with integrity and conforming to professional ideals.

The limitations of this paper are similar to those of all qualitative studies in that there is a lack of generalizability.

Most academics are unaware of the informal ethical discourse that is effectively communicated to entry level and junior accountants. Making accounting students cognizant of the actual ethical discourse that they will face in their careers may help them to better deal with the ethical challenges that they will face.

No previous research has dealt with codes of ethics in the public accounting profession as a self-forming practice, using Foucaultian terminology.

Islamic banking institutions have been in operation for nearly 50 years now and despite having been in competition with much more entrenched conventional rivals have demonstrated remarkable potential for growth and sustainability in different countries in both Muslim-dominated and Muslim-minority jurisdictions. The sustained upsurge in Islamic banks’ operations level to even a double-digit mark is not accidental but a replica of the levels of engagement of customers with Islamic banking institutions among other factors. There are various studies on Islamic banking, which covered wide range of issues, including those on Islamic banks customers’ patronage factors.

Accordingly, this chapter presents discussions on factors that influence customers’ engagement/patronage with Islamic banking. From plethora of studies conducted over long period of time and in different countries, many different factors have been identified as the determinants of customers’ engagements. The factors include but are not limited to customers’ personal attributes such as their understanding, knowledge, and perceptions of banking products, the banking institutions’ related factors such as product pricing, technology adopted by bank, environmental factors, and other myriads of determinants.

An issue concerning Tibetan refugees in India is the poverty and unemployment among Tibetan youth. This often leads to households adopting a strategy of sending one of its members abroad towards North American or European countries in search of better income opportunities. Incomes in the form of remittances from these forward migrants have numerous impacts on living standard of left behind families. This study aims to focus on the influence of forward migrant’s remittances on livelihood in terms of human, financial and social capital development of Tibetan refugees in India.

The paper includes 400 households from high-economic and low-economic-access regions of Tibetan settlements in India. Ordinary least square method was used to study these impacts.

Findings show that remittances have significantly influenced human and financial capital development. However, it was found to be statistically not significant for social capital development.

The present paper is original work.