With recent increases in cybersecurity incidents, it is imperative to supplement current accounting curriculum, equip accounting graduates with sufficient knowledge and skills to assess cybersecurity risk, and learn about controls to mitigate such risks. In this chapter, the authors describe 10 teaching modules, supported by 10 professionally produced video series. The authors developed these videos for educating students on cybersecurity and the videos are available free to instructors from other institutions who wish to use them. The videos are filled with insights and advice from our two experts – one a former hacker and the other an experienced cybersecurity professional. This dialogue between two different sides provides a rich discussion that leads to answering many questions that people often have about cybersecurity. Further, in Exhibit 1, this chapter offers a framework for characterizing and analyzing some recent publicized data-breach cases, which can supplement discussion on cybersecurity modules. Instructors can add more cases to this source overtime. Finally, the authors share the analysis of feedback from students who went through the series. The results suggest that the students show interest in the topic, and videos helped them better understand the complexity of cybersecurity risk and controls.

ABSTRACT This paper utilizes corporate governance concepts to assess the merit of the Digital Accountability and Transparency Act of 2014 (DATA Act). The paper first compares the information flows seen in a corporate context to those seen in a governmental reporting context. The paper then utilizes agency theory to establish a conceptual link between the two reporting processes. This conceptual link is used to identify common goals between the participants in the information flows. Following this, a corporate governance model is used to outline factors that contribute to effective corporate governance. This governance model is then used as a basis for assessing the merit of the DATA Act. After this, differences between the participants in the information flows are discussed and limitations of the paper are acknowledged. The paper suggests that the DATA Act has merit due to its potential to improve transparency and monitoring in the governmental reporting process. Increased data timeliness and usability will enhance transparency, while improvements in automation, data transfer, and data analytics will improve monitoring. The conclusions of this paper have implications for the participants in the governmental reporting process including government agencies, legislators, regulatory bodies, contractors, non-voting taxpayers, and members of the voting public.

Data analytics are an important part of the accounting profession and accountants are more and more in need of data analytics skills. There is a debate as to where should be the focus of analytics in accounting curriculum. Our paper introduces a road map for the integration of accounting data analytics in the accounting curriculum. To integrate data analytics some emphasize mastery of certain tools and propriety data set, others suggest focusing on statistical tools and data crunching. Accounting data can be used to improve analytical thinking skills of students in various accounting courses. We encourage our students to ask “interesting” questions, then we use data and tools to answer them in class.

The relationship between corporations and their stakeholders is changing with the advent and increased use of social media (SM). Stakeholders are more able and apt to deliver their levels of satisfaction via SM channels while companies must be able and willing to monitor their SM presence especially in times of crisis. This article explores recent examples of when SM has affected corporate decision making and how adding SM standards to the corporate governance model can better prepare the board of directors for the new corporate governance environment.

A core application of XBRL is to facilitate the flow of tagged financial statements and annual reports, from companies and other entities directly to the databases, web sites, and computers of regulators, stakeholders and other information consumers. Increasingly, XBRL provides the technological foundation for the communication of financial information where there is independent assurance. This XBRL-based assurance may be on the financial statements (i.e., an electronically consumable form of today's standard PDF or HTML audit report) or focus on the quality of the XBRL exhibit (i.e., the instance document). Regardless of the type of XBRL assurance report, maintenance of the security and integrity of the instance document is paramount. This conceptual paper identifies and discusses the communication, security challenges and relevant research issues when there is independent assurance on financial statements formatted in XBRL. Successful electronic communication of assurance to information consumers should clearly distinguish the responsibilities of management (i.e., the financial statements) and the auditor (i.e., the audit report). It is important to have an integrated approach where the assurance report, financial statements and other reports in which facts in the financial statements are incorporated are inextricably tied at the level of automated data consumption. Further, as much as possible, human interaction should be accommodated. The paper sets out a range of alternatives for maintenance of security on the assurance report.

XBRL (eXtensible Business Reporting language) was recently, in 2008, in its 10th year.The concept was articulated in 1998 by Charles Hoffman, known as XFRML (eXtensible Financial Reporting Mark Up Language) to facilitate the business reporting process and improve financial reporting.The objective of this paper is to examine a decade (1998)(1999)(2000)(2001)(2002)(2003)(2004)(2005)(2006)(2007)(2008) of XBRL articles published in various publications including trade, practitioner and academic journals to identify trends and patterns, milestones, and organizations actively contributed to this development.Another goal is to assess public perceptions of XBRL, its capabilities and its future.We examined published articles where XBRL appeared either in the title or abstract of the article during 1998-2008.Considering that XBRL reporting is being required only in recent years, the research shows various interest groups worked together for a long time to achieve a common goal.The academic community has also been proactive in contributing to and assessing this new reporting standard.There is a trail of research articles to document this contribution.This paper provides various charts and interesting statistics.

Corporate governance of a large company is complex, and subject to many laws and regulations. Recently, regulators, professional organizations and financial reporting standards setters around the globe have looked at XBRL (eXtensible Business Reporting Language) and interactive data as a way of promoting the transparency of financial information and monitoring of corporate reporting. This article discusses how XBRL in the business reporting supply chain contributes to transparency and monitoring, two principles of corporate governance. In the context of financial and business reporting, this article argues that a comprehensive corporate governance takes place at all levels of hierarchy in the organization and in all divisions of responsibility, and that XBRL can help bring about such a comprehensive governance system. In addition, XBRL would facilitate the delivery of corporate governance information/reports to internal as well as external users. This could be characterized as an end-to-end system of corporate governance. This article discusses some specific cases/applications of XBRL in corporate governance, including a comprehensive model of XBRL-based corporate governance at Fujitsu. Overall, the article suggests that XBRL is capable of meeting the expectations of corporate governance reporting.

This paper proposes a continuous auditing model that provides external auditors the opportunity to audit clients continuously or on a more frequent basis while reducing the possibility of compromising auditor independence. The model requires the auditor's system to be separated from the auditee's system so that the two systems do not interfere with each other. The auditor's system must also communicate smoothly and effectively with the auditee's system to continuously process data captured from that system. We show how the new technology using XML (eXtensible Markup Language) and CORBA (Common Object Request Broker Architecture) can help effectively connect the auditor's system to the auditee's system, thereby supporting smooth communication between the two independent systems. We also introduce the concept of continuous auditing cycle, which helps define the engagement period between client and auditor and makes the audit within each cycle continuous.

This paper evaluates the implications of the proposed Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) Rule (33-8496) which encourages companies to file reports in the eXtensible Business Reporting Language (XBRL) format. We examine the impact of the proposed rule in three domains: (1) the role of XBRL in financial reporting, (2) concerns with XBRL taxonomies, and (3) the impact of XBRL on the SEC's filing program. The paper adopts a descriptive approach to generate normative and prescriptive propositions with implications for research that will guide preparers, users, and regulators of XBRL-tagged information.

The accounting profession must attract and retain individuals with the interest, attitudes, and competencies demanded by the marketplace. This paper examines the influence of tolerance for ambiguity, computer anxiety, and gender on interest in acquiring IT competency among 123 accounting and AIS majors. In comparison to individuals majoring in accounting, the AIS majors were more tolerant of ambiguity (p = .025) and had slightly more positive attitudes toward computers. However, neither computer anxiety (p = .112) nor gender (p = .915) explained major selection. The results suggest the accountants with strong interests in IT are more comfortable with ill-defined, ambiguous problem-solving situations. The study implies that tolerance for ambiguity, a characteristic increasingly valued by the profession, should be considered in the classroom and in hiring decisions.

With today’s dynamic business environment there are increasing calls for more frequent financial reporting to ensure investors, bankers, and other users have access to timely information to make informed decisions. Further, recent advances in information and communication technology (ICT) infrastructures such as enterprise-wide systems, wide-area, high-bandwidth networks and XBRL (eXtensible Business Reporting Language) make it feasible to do so. Nonetheless, we have yet to see a groundswell of firms voluntarily providing more frequent monthly, daily, or continuous financial disclosures, raising the obvious question of “why?”. In this paper, we review factors affecting the supply and demand for continuous reporting (CR) and identify issues that promote or inhibit the implementation of CR. Accordingly, we consider the information economics perspective, the effect of CR on companies’ abilities to manage earnings, potential costs of disclosing firm proprietary information, the likely effects of CR on capital market behavior, litigation exposure, and related considerations associated with continuous assurance.

AbstractFactors influencing organisational performance have attracted attention, both in the literature and in practice, as a means of responding to increasing market competition. One factor that may enhance performance is a technology policy and a number of organisations have implemented such policies. Technology policy proponents argue that a society's capacity for sustained technological innovation is crucial to its economic well being. The primary purpose of the present paper is to investigate the extent to which organisational performance is influenced by the use of a technology policy. Since the literature suggests that task difficulty and task variability may influence this relationship, the paper also examines these relationships. The results suggest there is an association between technology policy and performance and that this relation is influenced by task difficulty, but not task variability. The relationship between technology policy and performance seems to greater when task difficulty is high than it is when task difficulty is low.

This case aids the exploration of exploring the financial disclosure requirements proposed by the AICPA Special Committee on Financial Reporting (i.e., the Jenkins Committee). The premise of the Committees report was to propose a model for comprehensive business reporting that is closer in line with the needs of financial statement users. This case provides a reusable framework for investigating and report upon the availability of current information disclosures available for a given company and facilitates a comparison with those disclosures advocated by the Jenkins Committee. The re-usability feature is derived from the uniqueness that each company report will have based upon the information available for a given company at a given point in time. Hence, the case will differ for each student assignment in the same semester and will also differ from one semester to the next. Five primary objectives have been specifically addressed: (1) to raise students awareness of evolving issues I the accounting profession, (2) to facilitate students understanding of the real changes in current reporting that may evolve from the Jenkins Committee, (3) to understand the difficulties faced by financial statement users who currently must search for additional disclosures through multiple information sources of questionable reliability, (4) to provide a meaningful analysis of financial statement content and disclosures, and (5) to demonstrate how the Internet can be used as s tool for aggregating information when conducting business research and analysis.