Search results

This article describes several lessons learned during my career. Some describe ways of approaching intellectual issues and others express values and attitudes underlying these approaches. Although the lessons have evolved in a largely academic context, they seem equally appropriate in the world of practice. The personal rules of thumb and ideas inherent in these lessons are typically developed and practiced implicitly. However, readers should find these explicit statements relevant in different ways. Some lessons might be candidates for adoption outright. Others might be constructive points of departure for evolving a related lesson better suited to one's own working style. All lessons, whether or not they are agreeable or appropriate, can serve as thought starters by challenging readers to surface their own implicit career lessons for comparison.

We use design thinking in the context of accounting pedagogy to exploit recent advances in cybernetics in the form of generative artificial intelligence technology. Relying on the intuition that supplementing or augmenting human argumentation (natural intelligence or NI) with parallel AI output can produce better student written assignments, we posit the “augmentation premise,” that is, ((NI + AI) > AI > NI). To test the augmentation premise, we compare student written submissions in an Accounting Information Systems (AIS) course with and without the benefit of parallel generative AI output. We then evaluate how the generative AI output enhances student-crafted revisions to their initial submissions. Using a summative quality improvement index (QII) consisting of quantitative and qualitative assessments, we present preliminary evidence supporting the augmentation premise. The augmentation premise likely extends to other accounting subdisciplines and merits generalization for enriching accounting pedagogy.

The Bureau of Economics in the Federal Trade Commission has a three-part role in the Agency and the strength of its functions changed over time depending on the preferences and ideology of the FTC’s leaders, developments in the field of economics, and the tenor of the times. The over-riding current role is to provide well considered, unbiased economic advice regarding antitrust and consumer protection law enforcement cases to the legal staff and the Commission. The second role, which long ago was primary, is to provide reports on investigations of various industries to the public and public officials. This role was more recently called research or “policy R&D”. A third role is to advocate for competition and markets both domestically and internationally. As a practical matter, the provision of economic advice to the FTC and to the legal staff has required that the economists wear “two hats,” helping the legal staff investigate cases and provide evidence to support law enforcement cases while also providing advice to the legal bureaus and to the Commission on which cases to pursue (thus providing “a second set of eyes” to evaluate cases). There is sometimes a tension in those functions because building a case is not the same as evaluating a case. Economists and the Bureau of Economics have provided such services to the FTC for over 100 years proving that a sub-organization can survive while playing roles that sometimes conflict. Such a life is not, however, always easy or fun.