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Explore perceptions of the importance of information literacy among different stakeholders, and gain a better understanding of its role in the accounting curriculum.

Literature review, stakeholder surveys, and written feedback.

The perceptions of academics, employers, and alumni uniformly highlighted the importance of information literacy for continuous learning in an evolving environment. The feedback included open-ended questions where the alumni emphasized the importance of the area over the different stages of their careers. While there may be differences in perspectives of academics and employers/alumni on information literacy, with the latter more likely to hold a pragmatic perspective related to career advancement, the overall consensus highlights the need for a systematic approach to the area. Student feedback suggested that the learning process occurred over stages in the college curriculum. Overall, the results of this exploratory study indicate the value of planning the course curriculum systematically to enable students to develop information literacy skills incrementally and in relation to their specific areas of specialization.

Highlights the value of information literacy in deeper and lifelong learning.

Students are better equipped for continuous learning to meet the challenges of changing environment.

Although information literacy is an important pedagogic area, accounting academic research does not appear to have addressed its implications for student learning.

The educational experiences of Black immigrant women in P-16 education are often understudied in critical scholarship about race, ethnicity, and gender. The existing literature on Black students in US higher education tends to overlook within-group diversity, oftentimes highlighting the experience of domestically born African Americans and neglecting the experiences of Black people born outside of the country. To address this gap in the education discourse, we examined the experiences of Black, African immigrant girls and women who have experienced all or part of their P-16 education in the United States. Using a combination of Critical Race Feminism (CRF) and transnationalism as our theoretical frameworks, we sought to answer two research questions: (1) How do Black immigrant women in the film describe their process of racial, ethnic, and gender identity formation? and (2) What are the literacy practices and educational experiences of Black African girls and women? Methodologically, we drew from Saldaña's (2009) model of film-based qualitative inquiry to analyze the documentary Am I: Too African to be American or Too American to be African? (directed by Dr Nadia Sasso). In our analysis, we foreground the lived experiences of eight women from three African countries: Nigeria, Sierra Leone, and Senegal. Major findings from this qualitative analysis include: (1) the importance of cultural negotiation for immigrant girls and women, (2) the presence of dualities in language and ways of speaking in education, (3) a tumultuous racial identity formation process, and (4) the linked perceptions of students' gender identity and beauty. Finally, we present implications for immigration policy, inclusive research, and equitable practice across P-16 education.

This chapter explores religion and spirituality as a form and source of demographic differences relevant to the study of occupational stress and well-being. The purpose of the chapter is to provide a resource and starting point to occupational health and stress researchers who may be interested in religion/spirituality. A review of critical religion/spirituality concepts is provided, along with a discussion of how religion/spirituality can be integrated into common occupational stress theories and reconciled with commonly studied variables within this domain. A series of future research directions involving religion/spirituality and occupational health and stress are ultimately presented.

The Financial Accounting Standards Board has issued an Exposure Draft (ED) that would eliminate the use of the pooling method of accounting for business combinations (FASB 1999a, 2001). The Exposure Draft provides several rationales for the proposed changes to the accounting treatment of business combinations. This paper examines these rationales from two perspectives, namely, decision-usefulness and accountability. Decision-usefulness is currently the basis for standard setting under the FASB's Conceptual Framework. The concept of accountability, as defined in Ijiri (1983) and Williams (1987), forms an alternative basis for providing direction for financial reporting.The paper provides an empirical evaluation of the two methods used to account for business combinations (pooling-of-interests and purchase) from the decision-usefulness perspective. The results of this study suggest that the purchase method provides information that may be more useful to the investor in determining firm value. The analysis from the accountability perspective provides important insights because it considers the viewpoint of the variety of constituents that may be impacted by the accounting standard, and illustrates how this perspective may enable standard setters to gain insights that may not be evident from the decision-usefulness perspective.

This paper presents an institutional theory framework integrating normative, regulatory and cognitive-cultural pillars (Scott, 2008) to depict an interinstitutional system within which professions operate and develop. The pillars highlight the trade-offs between institutions leading to conflicts of interest that also impact the stability of the system and the ability of the profession to self-regulate. To illustrate the framework, the paper uses selected accounting-based professions and their alignment with the institutional pillars. Drawing from examples emerging from the Enron experience, the paper delves more deeply into the regulatory profession and professionals as agents to explore implications of their role in interpreting and in some instances developing institutions. Further, the paper highlights the potential fissures that emerge in a competitive environment between the public interest and market-based cognitive-cultural pillars that tends to erode public trust and weaken the institutional system, leading to the need for increased regulation to maintain the stability of the pillars. Overall, the framework presents a unique perspective on the role of public interest as a component of the normative pillar in aligning and thereby, stabilizing the functioning of the interinstitutional system. This perspective provides a basis to contextualize and articulate a public interest perspective for the accounting profession in an interinstitutional system.

The chapter first draws concepts underlying legitimacy theory (Suchman, 1995) to provide a basis to understand alternative approaches to the development of ethical cultures in global organization. The chapter then illustrates the institutionalization of Codes of Ethics through a “management” approach drawing from Simon’s Levers of Control as a framework to contextualize experiences of a large global conglomerate. The chapter adopts the case approach, applying the case of the Tata Group to highlight the integration of external institutions into the institutionalization process. The management of business ethics (MBE) can provide a basis to institutionalize ethics in global firms to create an internal culture consistent with ethical goals of the corporations that may also be different from the external environment. The MBE includes the application of managerial techniques and information technology to institutionalize ethics in organizational culture. Management Accountants can have a significant role in supporting this endeavor, given their expertise in measurement and control. The code is only one aspect through which firms develop their identity. Information on the case was unevenly distributed. For example, there was voluminous information on the code and its implementation. Therefore, some subjectivity was necessary in selecting relevant items. The chapter, to my knowledge, provides unique insights into the theoretical and practical aspects of institutionalizing ethics in corporate cultures using Codes of Ethics.

Warren J. Samuels, who died on August 17, 2011 at his home in Gainesville, Florida, was the founding editor of Research in the History of Economic Thought and Methodology. The current editors had planned to include a note regarding Samuels’ initiation of the research annual in the first volume that did not include his name among the editors on the masthead. Unfortunately, that volume is also the one in which we must memorialize him. The history of economics community has lost one of its leaders; the editors of this research annual have lost the sure hand of their mentor and guide.