Financial Reporting Journal - Winter '97
CONTENTS
PRESIDENT'S LETTER
Wayne Landsman
University of North Carolina
I am very excited to serve as President in a year in which
the Financial Accounting and Reporting Section is undertaking two major
initiatives. First, as I announced at the FARS AAA meeting luncheon in Chicago,
we will indeed have our inaugural conference on financial reporting. The
conference, which will be held in Chapel Hill at the University of North
Carolina on October 31-November 1, 1997, is intended to provide a forum for
researchers to present current, unpublished papers that are potentially useful
to standard setters in their deliberations of current and future financial
reporting issues. To this end, we will invite representatives from the FASB and
SEC to attend and participate in the program. I am delighted that Dan Collins
of the University of Iowa and John Elliott of Cornell University have agreed to
help me co-direct the conference. Please see the accompanying call for papers
in this newsletter regarding suggested topics and paper submission details. I
encourage everyone in the Section to consider sending in an appropriate paper.
Dan, John, and I are still working on the details regarding conference
participation for Section members not included on the program, but we will
announce details in the newsletter to be published later this Spring.
The other major initiative we are currently undertaking as
a Section is the development of a Section webpage. I have asked Linda Bamber of
the University of Georgia, Bala Dharan of Rice Univer-sity, and Rob Bricker of
Case Western Reserve University to oversee development of the FARS webpage. The
charge for Linda and Bala is quite different from Rob's (and vice versa).
Whereas Linda and Bala are defining a vision for the webpage, i.e., how it
best can be used to disseminate research and teaching information to Section
members, Rob's focus is on practical implementation as the first FARS
webmaster. Linda and Bala have already begun to develop a strategic plan for
the website. For example, they have discussed several research and teaching
tools that can benefit Section members, particularly junior faculty, including
working papers, cases and class syllabi, and FASB/ SEC documents and
information. Please feel free to give Linda or Bala a call with any ideas you
may have. Fortunately for the Section, Rob has received permission from Case
Western, which has recently invested heavily in information technology, to
permit the FARS homepage initially to reside on a server there. I am grateful
to Case Western, and of course, to Linda, Bala, and Rob for volunteering their
time and effort. If all goes well, the next newsletter will be available
electronically on our website!
Although it is not a new initiative, Russell Lundholm of
the University of Michigan has been busy over-seeing the manuscript review
process for the annual AAA meeting in Dallas this summer. Russell tells me that
we are blessed with a large number of inter-esting and high quality submissions
from a diverse set of schools. I am appreciative of Russell's efforts and look
forward to seeing a fine program. One final note on the Dallas meeting-Bill
Collins of the University of North Carolina at Greensboro has volunteered
again to organize and moderate the panel discussion with the SEC Chief
Accountant and FASB Chairman. I look forward to seeing everyone at our luncheon
in Dallas and on our future homepage!
SEC ACADEMIC FELLOWSHIP PROGRAM
Members of the Financial Accounting and Reporting section
and others are invited to apply for the position of Academic Accounting Fellow
in the Office of the Chief Accountant (OCA) at the Securities and Exchange
Commission (SEC). This one-year fellowship in Washington D.C. provides the
opportunity to experience the interplay between accounting and securities
markets. The primary role of the Academic Fellow is to serve as an academic
resource to the staff, by interpreting and communicating extant research
materials and relating them to the work of the SEC. The Academic Fellow also
may be assigned directly to mainstream OCA projects, such as participating in
registrant problem-solving conferences, assignment to enforcement case analysis
or investigative work, liaison with the Division of Corporation Finance on
special analytical projects, and monitoring FASB, EITF, and AICPA projects.
Past Accounting Fellows have stated that their OCA experience materially
affected their research and teaching programs by enriching their understanding
of current financial reporting issues. The September 1996 issue of Accounting
Horizons contains a summary of Tom Linsmeier's recent Academic Fellow
experience.
Because OCA primarily deals with financial reporting
issues, successful Accounting Fellows should have a solid understanding of
financial reporting, including current and broad-based knowledge of financial
economics theories and research. Applicants also should have appropriate
written and oral communication skills for dealing with SEC staff and
constituencies, and a pragmatic view of the practice and regulation of
financial accounting and reporting. The SEC also expects that the Academic
Fellow holds academic rank of professor or associate professor, possesses an
appropriate doctoral degree, and is a Certified Public Accountant.
The Academic Fellow serves for a term of one year and
remains an employee of his or her home university with the SEC reimbursing the
Fellow's university for an amount currently equal to the lesser of
approximately $97,000 or 12/9ths of the Fellow's current academic year salary,
employee fringe benefits, and a moving allowance for travel to and from
Washington D.C. Please direct applications (a letter indicating interest and a
current VITA) to Jim Boatsman (Chair of the AAA SEC Liaison Commit-tee) at
Arizona State University. Questions about the program can be directed to Jim
Boatsman (602-965-6616), Terry Warfield (immediate past Academ-ic Fellow) at
the University of Wisconsin-Madison (608-262-1028), Tom Linsmeier at the
University of Illinois (217-244-6153) or Bob Lipe (current Academic Fellow) at
the SEC (202-942-4411).
CALL FOR PAPERS: AAA
FINANCIAL ACCOUNTING AND REPORTING SECTION CONFERENCE
The first AAA Financial Accounting and Reporting Section
Conference will be held at the Kenan-Flagler Business School of the University
of North Carolina on October 31-November 1, 1997. The conference will consider
research papers that deal with issues relevant to financial reporting standard
setting. Possible research topics include, but are not limited to, the
following examples:
1. Non-financial disclosures,
2. International reporting issues and harmonization of U.S. and international reporting,
3. Segment reporting,
4. Disclosure effectiveness, and
5. Fair value accounting.
Papers using analytical, experimental economics, and large
and small sample archival empirical approaches will be considered, as well as
papers that carefully synthesize existing findings or provide a structure for
assessing the validity of arguments regarding the use and construction of
accounting standards.
Professors Dan Collins, University of Iowa, John Elliott,
Cornell University, and Wayne Landsman, University of North Carolina, will
serve as conference co-directors. Papers will be chosen based on refereed
comments from reviewers selected by conference co-directors. Only submissions
from AAA Financial Accounting and Reporting Section members will be considered.
Conference format will be author presentation, referee discussion, and
participant discussion of 6-8 papers. There will not be a published conference
proceedings volume, although abstracts will be published in the AAA Financial
Accounting and Reporting Section newsletter. Paper acceptance for the
conference does not preclude simultaneous or subsequent submission to academic
journals.
Three double-spaced copies should be sent by June 15, 1997 to:
Professor Wayne Landsman
Kenan-Flagler Business School
University of North Carolina
Chapel Hill, NC 27599-3490
Authors will be notified by August 15, 1997 of conference
paper selection status.
CALL FOR PAPERS: FINANCIAL
ACCOUNTING AND REPORTING SECTION 1997 BEST PAPER AWARD
Many good financial accounting and reporting papers were
published in the 1994-1996 period. The Best Paper Award seeks to
recognize one of these pieces of high quality published work. We would like an
increased number of submissions for the 1997 award and encourage all who
believe their papers are worthy to arrange to have them nominated.
The award will be made to the author(s) of a financial
accounting and reporting paper judged to best reflect the tradition of academic
scholarship, readability, and relevance to problems facing the accounting
profession and standard setters.
Papers must have been published during 1994-1996. They must
be accompanied by a one to two page letter, preferably by a nonauthor of the
paper, justifying the submission/nomination of the paper. At least one author
of a submitted/nominated paper must be a member in good standing of the
Financial Accounting and Reporting Section. More complete details on the award
appear in the Fall/Winter 1994/1995 Financial Reporting Journal.
Please send five copies of your paper and the letter justifying its submission/nomination by May 15, 1997 to:
Eugene E. Comiskey
Dupree School of Management
Georgia Institute of Technology
Atlanta, GA 30332-0520
CALL FOR PAPERS: PUBLIC
PRODUCTIVITY & MANAGEMENT REVIEW
Public Productivity & Management Reviewis a refereed journal co-sponsored by the American Society for Public
Administration's Section on Management Science and Policy Analysis and The
National Center for Public Productivity, Rutgers University. It is published
quarterly by SAGE Periodicals Press.
Public Productivity & Management Review invites manuscripts pertaining to the use of performance models in
academe. Collaborative efforts across disciplines and between academics and
practitioners are welcome. Contributions are solicited from the disciplinary
perspectives of accounting, management, program evaluation, public
administration, strategic management, and other relevant areas.
Universities and academic accrediting bodies increasingly
advocate rational, performance-based models for administering academe. Examples
of these models include: continuous quality improve-ment, managing for results,
performance-based management, service efforts and accomplishments, strategic
planning and budgeting, and total quality management. Such models envision the
linkage of organizational mission to measurable goals and the evaluation of
performance by explicit means of assessment. Economy, efficiency, and
effectiveness are valued.
All manuscripts should relate to the application of
performance models in academe. Potential areas of interest include: formal and
informal motivations for the advocacy of models, examination of the conceptual
strengths or weaknesses of models, investigations of the impact of models on
the behavior of stakeholders, case studies which illustrate the success or
failure of empirical studies designed to evaluate characteristics such as the
validity and reliability of indicators of performance, and other related
topics.
Papers should focus on models oriented to the performance
of the core academic activities of research, teaching, and service, as opposed
to the performance of support functions such as housing, food service,
maintenance, and other non-academic activities. Additionally, manuscripts
should extend beyond the mere advocacy of performance models in academe to
critical consideration and examination of these models.
Inquiries about this feature topic and requests for Guidelines for Manuscript Submission should be directed to:
Dr. Jean Harris
Penn State University-Harrisburg
777 W. Harrisburg Pike
Middletown, PA 17057-4898
(717) 948-6157
JEH6@PSUVM.PSU.EDU
Manuscripts for review must be postmarked by September 30,
1997. Publication of accepted manuscripts anticipated for Fall 1998.
ANNOUNCEMENTS
NEW JOURNAL: JAI Press is
pleased to announce a new journal: International Journal of Applied Quality
Management. Editor of this new journal is Philip H. Siegel, Monmouth
University, and Associate Editors are Surendra P. Agrawal, University of
Memphis; Hadassah Baum, AICPA; and Srikant M. Datar, Harvard University.
The principal aim of the proposed International Journal
of Applied Quality Management is to be an interdisciplinary journal of
interest to academicians, practitioners, business decision makers, and other
policy makers. The scope of the Journal will cover various aspects of
applied quality management decision making, including, but not limited to, such
topics as: activity-based costing and management, total quality control and
management, just-in-time systems and theory of constraints, process
reengineering, and performance measurement.
DEBATE: The editors of the
Critical Perspectives on Accounting Journal announce a forum on Gender
Research in Accounting: Where is the Mainstream Going? to be published in
an upcoming issue. Contributors include: Geralyn Frank, Austin State
University; Theresa D. Hammond, Boston College; Linda Kirkham, University of
Manchester; Dave Nichols, Brian Reithel, and Robert Robinson, University of
Mississippi.
For order information, contact:
Journals Marketing Department
Academic Press Inc.
525 B Street, Suite 1900
San Diego, CA 92101-4495
(800) 894-3434; apsubs@acad.com
Editors: David Cooper, University of Alberta; and Tony
Tinker, Baruch College: City University of New York.
FARS NOMINATIONS: The nominating committee is accepting nominations for the following positions: president-elect, secretary/treasurer, and council member of the Financial Accounting & Reporting Section of the AAA. Anyone wishing to nominate candidates should contact the nominating committee chair by March 26:
Eugene E. Comisky
Dupree School of Management
Georgia Institute of Technology
Atlanta, GA 30332-0520
(404) 894-4394; (404) 239-9318 FAX
ecomiskey@aol.com