Christie L. Comunale

Gender differences in perceptions of web-based shopping

Women have yet to welcome Web-based shopping as readily as men. A primary factor for this state is how men and women view shopping. Understanding those differences will help vendors address this vital pool of consumers.

Professional ethical crises

Purpose – To investigate how accounting majors have reacted to recent accounting scandals and to evaluate the extent to which they are familiar with the scandals, the effects of the scandals on their opinions of accountants and corporate managers, and the consequent influences on the students educational and career plans.Design/methodology/approach – In total 105 accounting majors at two institutions were surveyed. Forsyths ethics position questionnaire was used to evaluate the students ethical orientation. The survey instrument also measures student demographic data, the students knowledge of the profession and the scandals, and how the scandals affected the students opinions and plans. The data are analyzed using linear regression.Findings – Accounting students are generally knowledgeable about the scandals but seem to know considerably less about the accounting profession. Accounting students lowered their opinions of corporate managers more than that of accountants. Accounting students also expre...

Mandatory auditor rotation and retention: impact on market share

Purpose – To explore the effects of mandatory auditor rotation and retention on the long‐term market shares of the accounting firms that audit the members of the Standard and Poors (S&P) 500.Design/methodology/approach – A Markov model is constructed that depicts the movements of S&P 500 firms in the period 1995 to 1999 among Big 5 accounting firms. Auditor rotation and retention are reflected in the transition probabilities. The impacts of mandatory auditor rotation and retention policies are evaluated by examining the state probabilities after two, five, and nine years.Findings – The paper finds that mandatory auditor rotation will have substantial effects on long‐term market shares, whereas mandatory auditor retention will have very small effects. It shows that a firms ability to attract new clients, as opposed to retaining current clients, will be the primary factor in determining the firms long‐term market share under mandatory auditor rotation.Research limitations/implications – The paper assumes...

Current accounting investigations: effect on Big 5 market shares

Arthur Andersen’s conviction and its decision not to audit public firms will transform the Big 5 into the Big 4. Meanwhile, other Big 4 firms face investigations that threaten their future market shares. The article compares the observed post‐scandal shifts in market share with those estimated by a Markov model. It then estimates the year‐by‐year and long‐term market shares that the Big 4 firms would have achieved had they remained untouched by these investigations. The study finds that the absence of Arthur Andersen alone would not have led to excessive market share concentration. It demonstrates how the post‐scandal shifts reveal the impacts of the investigations on the Big 4 firms and provides market share benchmarks against which the firms can evaluate the long‐term effects of the investigations. Finally, the article concludes that a firm’s long‐term gain in market share depends on its ability to retain audit clients.

The Effectiveness of Course Web Sites in Higher Education: An Exploratory Study

This article describes an exploratory study of the educational effectiveness of course Web sites among undergraduate students in accounting and graduate students in business statistics. We measured Web site visit frequency, the usefulness of each Web site feature, and the impacts of the Web sites on perceived learning and course performance. Graduate students visited the Web site significantly more often than did undergraduate students. In both groups, students rated course note availability and access to grades most useful and, relative to men, women felt that the Web site added more to their learning. Undergraduate students who visited the Web site more often and graduate students who found the discussion board more useful also perceived that the Web site contributed more to their learning. Finally, the graduate (but not the undergraduate) students who visited the Web site more often also performed better in the course.

A Behavioral Beliefs Model of Trustworthiness in Consumer-Oriented E-Commerce

For e-commerce to grow, customers must trust organizations with which they interact. In this article, we propose and test a theoretically-derived model of trustworthiness of Web merchants in general. Trustworthiness is influenced by behavioral, competence, and attitudinal beliefs. Findings indicate trustworthiness is strongly influenced by behavior-related beliefs, and less strongly by attitude-related beliefs. Trustworthiness beliefs impact intentions to purchase from Web merchants.

The auditors’ client inquiry process

The efficiency and the effectiveness of the audit depend in part on the efficiency and the effectiveness of the client inquiry process. This paper presents a model that helps auditors to understand the stages of the client inquiry process and the factors that influence its reliability. The model serves to illuminate the client inquiry process and thereby assist auditors in evaluating the evidence thus obtained. Our model is a multistage communication channel that connects reality, the client’s perception of reality, the client’s representation of reality, the auditor’s perception of reality, and the auditor’s representation of reality. Distortions of reality occur between adjacent stages as the result of the subjectivity, technical incompetence, untrustworthiness, and poor presentation skills of either the client or the auditor. We discuss our model in the context of the analytical review task.

Efficiency-Based Funding for Public Four-Year Colleges and Universities.

We propose an efficiency-based mechanism for state funding of public colleges and universities using data envelopment analysis. We describe the philosophy and the mathematics that underlie the approach and apply\break the proposed model to data from 362 U.S. public four-year colleges and universities. The model provides incentives to institution administrators to eliminate wasteful spending and increase positive outcomes while maintaining educational quality and research productivity. The institutions in our study spent

Current factors and practices related to instructional approach in the introductory financial accounting course

96.74 billion, and states would reimburse

Linguistic Delivery Style, Client Credibility, and Auditor Judgment

88.02 billion. Thus efficiency-based funding would reduce state government expenditures on these institutions by