Ron Dagwell

Implications of the IFRS goodwill accounting treatment

Purpose - This paper aims to critically examine the change in accounting treatment for goodwill pursuant to international financial reporting standards (IFRSs) by reference to the Australian reporting regime. Design/methodology/approach - The paper discusses and compares the former Australian and the new IFRS treatments for goodwill. This comparison focuses on the advantages and potential complexities of the new method, with the aim of identifying the issues and challenges that preparers, independent auditors and those involved in corporate governance face in complying with the new requirements. Findings - The paper highlights that the identification and valuation of cash-generating units and goodwill require numerous assumptions to be made in estimating fair value, value in use and recoverable amount. Considerable ambiguity and subjectivity are inherent in the IFRS requirements. Research limitations/implications - Findings suggest that future research should examine how financial report preparers and corporate governance mechanisms are dealing with the complex change required by the new goodwill accounting treatment and how the many critical issues involved in auditing the resulting figures are being addressed. Practical implications - The research has practical implications for financial report preparers in identifying the issues that must be addressed in complying with the international goodwill accounting treatment. In turn, the paper highlights conceptual issues of relevance to auditors in their role of providing assurance on the resulting accounting numbers. It also has implications for others involved in corporate governance, such as audit committee members, in emphasising the areas in which they should be providing oversight of the accounting judgments. These issues are of relevance in any reporting regime based on IFRSs. Originality/value - While much has been written about the mechanics of the new goodwill accounting requirements, there has been a lack of critical research highlighting the many problems and ambiguities that will arise in the application of those rules.

Educators' epistemological beliefs of accounting ethics teaching: a cross-cultural study

This study is an exploratory examination of cultural differences in accounting educators’ epistemological beliefs of accounting ethics education. It is motivated by a renewed global interest in accounting ethics in recent years following the reported breaches of ethical conducts by individuals from different cultures. In Pratt’s model, conceptions of teaching should be an interdependent and internally consistent trilogy of beliefs, intentions and actions. The purpose of this empirical study is to sketch an outline of how accounting ethics education is broadly understood by accounting educators from three different cultural backgrounds, the Anglo-influenced Australian, the Chinese and the Moslem-dominated Malaysian. It explores the cross-cultural variations in their epistemological beliefs of what to teach, objectives to achieve, the ethics educator, and the learning process. Results suggest that Australian and Malaysian accounting educators differed significantly in their epistemological beliefs on the source of knowledge as well as the acquisition of knowledge. Interestingly, there were no significant statistical differences in the epistemological beliefs held by participants in this study concerning other issues in accounting ethics education, i.e. the delivery of ethics education, transferability, goals of ethics education, separate course, and qualification.