ALBERT

Notes: Compares auditors' legal liability to third parties in several major countries, with principal emphasis on comparisons between the USA and the UK. Public accountants claim that they are being adversely affected by lawsuits brought by shareholders, creditors and other third parties. It has been asserted, without any specific evidence, that increased exposure to legal liability has caused public accounting firms to cease the practice of auditing or go out of business entirely. Details auditors' legal liability to third parties in the USA and Europe and, in particular, the UK. Concludes by reviewing certain positions taken by the Fédération des Experts Comptables Européens with respect to auditors' legal liability in the face of European economic and political union.

Notes: This paper examines the issue of fraud on the Internet and discusses three areas with significant potential for misleading and fraudulent practices, namely: securities sales and trading; electronic commerce; and the rapid growth of Internet companies. The first section of the paper discusses securities fraud on the Internet. Activities that violate US securities laws are being conducted through the Internet, and the US Securities and Exchange Commission has been taking steps to suppress these activities. The second section of the paper discusses fraud in electronic commerce. The rapid growth of electronic commerce, and the corresponding desire on the part of consumers to feel secure when engaging in electronic commerce, has prompted various organizations to develop mechanisms to reduce concerns about fraudulent misuse of information. It is questionable, however, whether these mechanisms can actually reduce fraud in electronic commerce. The third section of the paper discusses the potential for fraud arising from the rapid growth of Internet companies, often with little economic substance and lacking traditional management and internal controls. The paper examines the three areas of potential Internet fraud mentioned above and suggest ways in which these abuses may be combated.

Notes: Purpose - To examine the rhetorical claims put forth by several prominent organizations in the American public accounting profession that claim to act in the public interest, and to attempt to identify the ideological position or positions underlying their claims. Design/methodology/approach - Certain rhetorical claims put forth by the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants (AICPA), the Financial Accounting Standards Board (FASB), and PricewaterhouseCoopers (PWC) are examined. A discussion of Paul Ricoeur's concept of ideology follows, along with an explanation of the way in which Ricoeur's understanding of ideology can be used to gain a better understanding of the ideology of the American public accounting profession. Findings - Initially it appears that the rhetorical claims of the prominent organizations of the American public accounting profession reveal an underlying neo-liberal ideology. Closer examination indicates a certain degree of ambiguity with respect to a neo-liberal ideology, with a greater emphasis placed on the importance of regulation of capital markets through auditing and financial accounting standards setting. This ambiguity also reveals that there are economic interests involved and that these economic interests constitute a public accounting ideology, one which conflates the values and activities of the public accounting profession with serving the public interest. This public accounting ideology can be understood as providing a socially integrative function for the public accounting profession and also a justifying function with respect to maintaining the legitimate authority of CPAs with respect to auditing and financial accounting standards setting. The distortive aspect of ideology is also evident, in that there seems to be an inability to determine precisely what the meaning of the public interest is or may be. Research limitations/implications - This is a limited study of only three prominent organizations in the American public accounting profession. Practical implications - May help to define the meaning of the term "the public interest." Originality/value - Uses Ricoeur's concept of ideology for the first time in the accounting literature. One of the first papers to explicitly address the meaning of "the public interest."

Notes: Investigates the negative effect on employee welfare caused byeconomic decisions taken by corporate managements which they attributeto the adoption of an accounting standard, focusing on the case ofMcDonnell Douglas Corporation, which ended health-care benefits fornon-union employees as a result of adopting the Financial AccountingStandards Board's Statement 106 (FASB 106). It is estimated that theadoption of FASB 106 caused $148 billion in charges to earningsto be recorded by companies in the Standard & Poor's 500 Index.Despite the large negative effect on earnings, FASB 106 had little or noimpact on the economic condition of the affected firms. Nevertheless,managements have taken economic actions that have negatively affectedemployee welfare, and these actions have been attributed to FASB 106.Some of the hardest hit are employees at older industrial companies withmature workforces hired during the 1950s and 1960s. Some companies endedretirement health plans abruptly, while others required workers andretirees to pay more towards insurance premiums, or prevented new hiresfrom receiving retirement health coverage.

Notes: This paper adopts a literary theory perspective to depict accounting reports and information as texts rather than as economic commodities and so available for analysis from the vantage point of semiotic linguistic theory. In doing so it takes the literary turn followed by many of the social sciences and humanities in recent decades. It compares and contrasts four dominant genres of literary theory - expressive realism, the new criticism, structuralism, and deconstructionism - to developments in accounting. The paper illustrates these and other ideas in the context of the controversies surrounding the oil and gas accounting crisis and practices circa 1961 to 1990. The paper concludes by outlining a new way of preparing accounting reports based on Mikhail Bakhtin's notion of the heteroglossic novel. This approach calls for making accounting for an enterprise an ongoing conversation rather than a monologic process of closing down on a single meaning.

Notes: The bankruptcy of Enron Corp. has evolved into a scandal of enormous proportions involving allegations of fraud, corruption and unethical practices on the part of Enron's corporate executives, members of its board of directors, external auditors, and high government officials in the USA. No doubt there will be many articles written about various aspects of the Enron scandal. The focus of this paper is on the relationships between Enron's business model and the deregulatory phase of the American economy during the 1980s and 1990s. It is the argument of this paper that deregulation in the US electricity and natural gas industries fostered the creation of the Enron business model, and that this model was unsustainable, resulting in the demise of Enron Corp. Furthermore, while Enron can be viewed as an example of capitalistic excess, the paper reveals how the Enron business model developed as an American form of a public private partnership, similar to the types of public private partnerships that have been created in recent years in the UK. Investigating Enron as a public private partnership may help us to better understand the role of public private partnerships in contemporary capitalism and shed some light on the advisability of deregulatory schemes and the unintended consequences that can result from such schemes.