A critical examination of ethical decision making models

This paper critically examines both the need for, and the use of, ethical decision making models (EDMMs). This paper suggests that EDMMs focus on arriving at the correct decision but ignore the action required to implement it and are therefore incomplete. In most “accounting” circumstances, finding the right decision is not what is required. Rather, a model which provides both a sound decision and, appropriate implementation would be more useful. In trying to establish a new/different EDDM that provides for this it is argued that a biblical model exists which addresses both decision making and action. This paper aims to encourage accounting ethics education to move beyond determining the right decision and focus on taking the right action.

Decades of research efforts to link economic and environmental performance: still data in search of a theory?

With the proliferation of social investment vehicles, stakeholders, particularly investors, are increasingly aware of the relationship between economic, social and environmental performance, and disclosure to external parties. This is particularly evident in The Securities and Exchange Commission's Environmental Disclosure Rules. The thesis of this paper is that, after three decades of academic and professional research efforts, there are still no firm proactive guidelines to firmly link the financial performance with environmental and social performance. The purpose of this paper is to revisit empirical research efforts spanning three decades in order to delineate potential links that may assist in systematic, comparable reporting

Diversities in the professional organization of accountants : a comparability study with insights from the Chinese experience

While spatial, historical and cultural variations across different countries have prevented any generalisation to be made of the professionalization process, various analytical themes can be said to have emerged in scholarly inquires relating to the professional organization of accountants. In highlighting these broad themes, this study argues that they have all revolved around one important relationship-that of the state and the accounting profession. The dynamics and the fluid nature of this intriguing relationship is further captured and contrasted in this study through an investigation of an episode of intra-professional conflict during the professionalization experience of the Chinese accountants.

Heritage destruction and violence in Iraq : bombing mosques and ethno-religious sectarian violence, 2006-7

Since the invasion of 2003, Iraq has suffered an extraordinary era of both heritage destruction and devastating spikes in violence. While cases such as the 2003 attacks on the Iraq National Museum and the Iraq National Library and Archive, as well as the systematic looting of Iraq’s sensitive archaeological sites, understandably caused outrage among scholars of heritage studies across the world, little attention has been paid to the destruction of Iraq’s many significant Islamic sites – particularly during the ethno-religious sectarian violence that raged across the nation in 2006-7. This paper presents the first results of a three year project funded by the Australian Research Council which aims to empirically test the assumption that a significant relationship exists between this spike in violence and the targeting of sites of Islamic heritage (mosques, shrines, etc.). To do this, the paper will compare and contrast the information in the world’s first database of heritage destruction (created by the author) and existing measures of violence in Iraq (such as the Iraq Body Count database). This will set the precedent for studies of both heritage and violence and enable policy formation towards the minimization of heritage destruction and spikes in violence during times of conflict.