Anne L. Christensen

Not-for-Profit Annual Reports: What Do Museum Managers Communicate?

This study addresses: (1) What disclosures are provided in annual reports of not-for-profit entities? (2) What characteristics of the reporting entities explain variations in the quantity of financial disclosure? (3) How do not-for-profit disclosures compare with those in for-profit corporate reports? The annual reports of 170 not-for-profit museums were examined. The reports were highly variable. Some contained no financial data and only 22 percent included complete financial statements with footnotes. Regression analysis indicated that the amount of museum financial data was positively associated with museum size, a larger number of pages of donor disclosures, and museum type (art and history, but not science, natural history, or general).

Implementation of Assurance of Learning Plans: An Accounting Program and Individual Course Analysis

The authors surveyed faculty at AACSB-accredited schools regarding the learning goals and measures for their accounting programs as well as course objectives for the introductory tax course. They found over 50% of respondents were still developing their learning goals and measures and only 18% of respondents had completed 2 or more rounds of assessment. Whereas most accounting program goals are assessed with direct measures, accreditation program goals typically represent a small subset of the goals specified by professional bodies such as the AICPA. Assessment results have led to numerous changes in accounting programs and courses.

Unauthorized electronic access: Students’ ethics, attitudes, and actions

Universities are expected to prepare accounting students to conduct themselves with integrity in all environments, including those that utilize information technology (IT). Our study investigates student integrity in an online environment to determine if students are honest about accessing unauthorized Internet solutions. We then evaluate student responsiveness to interventions designed to discourage unauthorized access using techniques suggested by the literature to foster ethical behavior. Our examination of such factors as moral development, moral identity, age, gender, and grade point average finds no significant relationship with student ethical behavior. More problematic, classroom interventions proved ineffective in preventing students from accessing unauthorized online solutions. We conclude with suggestions for developing and encouraging ethical behavior among accounting students in IT learning environments.

An Examination of Tax Scholars’ Publications

This study examines the research productivity of three samples of tax scholars with accounting Ph.Ds. We compare publication activity in the pre-tenure period for each sample and in the first 25, 15, and 10 years for scholars whose careers began in 1977/1978, 1987/1988, and 1993/1994, respectively. The percentage of publications in “academic” journals in the pre-tenure period has increased from 38 to 42 to 47 percent for the 77/78, 87/88, and 93/94 tax scholars, respectively. The average number of academic and professional publications combined were 3.51 for 77/78 scholars, 5.87 for 87/88 scholars, and 4.00 for 93/94 scholars.