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This article provides an analysis of the economic incentives and financial reporting for Special Purpose Entities (SPEs) over the last four decades. The analysis explains economic factors motivating business use of SPEs and the origins of SPEs in lease accounting and securitization transactions. Related financial reporting standards are identified and discussed, including the historical shift from a traditional control viewpoint to a primary beneficiary viewpoint for financial reporting for consolidation for SPEs (recently renamed Variable Interest Entities (VIEs) in U.S. Financial Accounting Interpretation 46R). The article also includes illustrative journal entries explaining SPE transactions from both the viewpoint of the creating company(s) and the SPE. Actual financial reporting examples and/or journal entries for SPEs created by Bank of America, General Motors Acceptance Corporation, Lucent Technologies and Alza Pharmaceuticals Corporation are also provided.

Financial accounting necessarily depends on an entity assumption that shapes the way it recognizes and accounts for organizational exchanges with social environments. It thereby constructs boundaries and frames permeability in terms of what counts, is accounted for, as being inside and outside of the organization. Yet there are different possible entity concepts reflecting different values about the relationship between the organizational entity and society. This essay considers four problem areas in which these values and the entity–society relationship are at stake within financial accounting: the problem of control within group accounting; accounting for externalities; the economization of public organizations; and the construction of organizational actorhood. These four problematics suggest that financial accounting, its boundary determining assumptions, and the forms of organizational permeability it permits are deeply intertwined and subject to continuous pressure for change.

This chapter explores the transformation and interrelation of the concepts of ‘competition’ and ‘competitiveness’. This analysis enables us to substantiate the elements of national economic competitiveness and, subsequently, build strategies to increase the competitiveness of economic agents in world markets.

The authors use systemic, historical, adaptive and synergetic methods. Moreover, the authors apply structural and functional analysis, empirical generalisation and grouping. The research object is the transformation of the concept of competition.

Under the conditions of digitisation, geopolitical aggravation, geo-economic factors, and more general scientific and technological progress, competition becomes a dynamic process and transforms into an endogenous component of the market environment, which stimulates change in economic entities.

Competitiveness is a diverse economic concept that encompasses mechanisms of interactions and interrelations of economic entities, multi-level economic coordination apparatus and competitive advantages that help achieve economic goals. Nevertheless, contemporary definitions of competitiveness are unclear because of its scale and the simultaneous need for its application to entire nations. Consequently, this research analyses the transformation and interrelation of the concepts of ‘competition’ and ‘competitiveness’. Moreover, the research identifies and substantiates the main elements of the national economic competitiveness of Russia. The research findings facilitate future micro- and meso-level research on strategies for managing and transforming the national economy.

We assess the impact of NZ IAS 32 on the financial reporting of convertible financial instruments by retrospective application of the standard to a sample of New Zealand companies over the period 1988 ‐ 2003. NZ IAS 32 has a broader definition of liabilities than does the corresponding current standard (FRS‐31) and it does not permit convertibles to be reported under headings that are intermediate to debt and equity. The results of the study indicate that in comparison with the reported financial position and performance, the reporting of convertibles in accordance with NZ IAS 32 would result in higher amounts for liabilities and higher interest. Thus, analysts using financial statement information to assess risk of financial distress will need to revise the critical values of commonly used measures of risk and performance when companies report under NZ IAS

This paper aims to explain transitions in a socio-technical system characterized by non-economic entities that influence economic activity, i.e. embeddedness and coalitions. The selected socio-technical system is an Indian electric network with an interventionist policy. Its embeddedness and coalitions drive the transition. The insights from such analysis expand socio-technical transition theory and provide valuable insights to practitioners in their policymaking.

The authors need to observe the effects of non-economic institutions in their setting. Moreover, in India, the regional policies influence decision-making; therefore, selected two Indian states. The two Indian states, along with their non-economic entities, provided diverse analytic and heuristic views.

The findings show that coalitions, with their embeddedness in the absence of any mediating policy systems, act as external pressures and influence innovation and the socio-technical system’s transition trajectory. Their coalitions’ embeddedness follows a shaping, not selection logic. Thereby influence innovations in cumulating as stable designs. Such an approach provides benefits in the short-term but not in the long-term.

The study selected two states and examined two of the four trajectories. By considering other states, the authors can obtain more renewable energy investments and further insights into the transformational trajectory.

The study highlights the coalition dynamics specific to the Indian electric power network and its transition trajectories. The non-economic entities influenced transition trajectories, innovation and policymaking of the socio-technical system.

The study expands the socio-technical transition theory by including embeddedness. The embeddedness brings a shaping logic instead of a selection logic.

The purpose of this paper is to distinguish between corporate accountability and corporate governance, explore the development of corporate accountability and examine the role of the tripartite audit function in securing this accountability.

A normative approach has been adopted and the research is based, primarily, on an examination of relevant literature.

Society facilities the growth of economic entities by providing them with resources. As their command over resources increases, these entities gain significant economic, social and political power and accountability is demanded of their managers as a check on possible abuse of this power. Historically, as companies have increased their power in society, those to whom and that for which their managers are held accountable have been extended. Today, the managers of large public companies are considered to be accountable to society as a whole for a wide range of corporate activities. The discharge of corporate accountability traditionally relied on the preparation and audit of accountability reports (financial statements). However, from the 1990s, responding to the increasing severity of the impact on society of unexpected corporate failures – and continued failures – responsible corporate governance was added as an accountability requirement. Further, as the activities for which companies are accountable have been extended (paralleling the growth of their “power” in society), so corporate responsibility information has featured as an element in their accountability reports. As these changes have occurred, the importance of the tripartite audit function in securing corporate accountability has come to be recognised and its members – the company's external and internal auditors and its audit committee – have become increasingly multi‐disciplinary in nature.

The paper explores the questions of why corporate accountability arises and how it is discharged. It explains the relationship between corporate governance and accountability and the role of the audit function in securing corporate accountability. It also provides insights into changes occurring in the audit function and how these might develop.

The aim of the study is to systematize scientific knowledge regarding the content, identify current trends, and develop tools and mechanisms to ensure the sustainable development of socio-economic systems based on the coordination of activities of business entities with the processes occurring in the national economy. The main productive unit of the national macroeconomic system is the regional economic system, in the process of functioning of which the reproduction of the goods necessary for the region is carried out, and the economic and environmental needs are satisfied. Sustainable development and capacity building of socio-economic systems, being a strategic goal of development, largely depends on the unity and integrity of its constituent elements. At the regional level, the effectiveness of the system of relations between producers and consumers of tangible and intangible goods and services is largely determined by the presence of large businesses. Large business structures operate in a significant number of regions, implement all stages of the reproduction process in almost all sectors of the economy, and are an important component of modern economic development. The study of the influence of the activities of large business structures on regional social and economic systems is extremely important from the point of view of analyzing the consequences of the activities of large business structures on the qualitative and quantitative parameters of the development of both a specific region and the national economy as a whole.

The title of this book suggests the possibility that new ways of managing innovative processes may favour an evolution of the economy towards an altruistic model. This chapter argues that the acceleration of innovative processes at the turn of the millennium has produced, or at least has not avoided, phenomena of the concentration of wealth and power in which it is difficult to discern an altruistic root. It is observed that the cultural models developed to interpret innovative phenomena are also focused on the profit of individual companies and not on altruistic values. The author goes on to indicate the appropriateness of referring to less limited phenomenological models and suggests exploring an analogy of innovation with Darwinian evolution. An outline of this approach is provided.

The relationship between government and market is the key to the economic development performance of market economy countries. Due to the limits such as the state/market dichotomy, the focus on static allocation efficiency and the ignorance of the diversity of the market economy and the relationship between government and market, economic liberalism and state interventionism can hardly position and explain the role and evolution of government and market in the real world accurately.

China’s economic transition has always adhered to the reform direction of the socialist market economy and the development goal of a modern socialist country as well as the symbiosis and positive and progressive evolution of government and market, blazing a “third way” in handling the relationship between government and market.

The “China’s experience” shows that the key for emerging market economies to achieve good economic development performance lies in whether they can build a new relationship of the mutual integration between and common prosperity of government and market regarding target selection, production organisation, technological innovation, institutional change and regulatory adjustment.

The second part of this paper analyses the inherent defects of economic liberalism and state interventionism as well as the reasons why they can hardly be adopted as the theoretical guidance for emerging market economies to handle the relationship between government and market. The third part analyses how China has transcended the inherent thinking of liberalism and interventionism and shaped the new relationship between government and market through goal-oriented, active and progressive, two-way interactive exploration and practice to ensure the success of China's economic transition.