Importance Of Corporate Governance In Accounting

Project Proposal

Discuss about the Importance of Corporate Governance in Accounting.

Accounting is a systematic and comprehensive process of recording all the financial transactions of a business organization. An accountant of an organization has the responsibility to manage, update, correct and report all the financial activities of a business organization. In a more precise note, the accountants can be called the ‘keepers of the accounts’ of the organizations (Carmona, Ezzamel & Gutiérrez, 2016). Hence, it can be said that Accounting is one of the major professions in the world and the accountants have a significant role to play in the success of any business organization. It can be clearly said that to be accounting practitioner is the best career opportunity for them who are pursuing their master of accounting courses. Many accounting professionals all over the world consider that accounting is a mixture of art and science. Moreover, many of them consider that accounting is an art more than science. There are reasons behind this statement. It has been seen that the two accountants cannot bring the same results from the exact same data for the purpose of decision-making process (Monterio, 2014).

This happens due to the presence of too many accounting principles that do not portrait all the hidden facts in the process of accounting. Some accountants consider those hidden facts and some do not consider. This is the reason for accountants having different results from the exact same data. In a business, the professional accountants are seen as the pillars of the organization as they contribute huge for the success and growth of the business organization. The professional accountants provide their valuable financial and accounting advises to the organization to achieve the financial objectives and goals of business. Apart from this, there are other many ways by which the accountants can contribute to the cause of the organizations (Byrne et al., 2012).

In the business organizations, the professional accountants are considered as one of the major assets of the organizations as they help the organizations to sustain the organizational growth and values. They are considered as the most important factors when it comes to the preparation of financial statements of the organizations (Goretzki, Strauss & Weber, 2013). It can be seen that there are different kinds of responsibilities of the professional accountants in a business organization. They help the organizations in the preparation of corporate strategy; they help the organizations in the preparation of budgets and to record all the accounting information; they help the organizations by providing valuable tax advices; they help the organizations in managing risks and many others (Paulsson, 2012).

Aim and Objectives

The professional accountants have immense knowledge and training about finance, accounting and other matters. For this reason, they can take innovative approaches to solve different kinds of problems in the business organizations. Apart from the business organizations, the professional accountants get great honor in the society (Clinton & White, 2012). It has been seen that the professional accountants deal with a wide range of social issues for the betterment of the society and the people of the society. Hence, it is expected that the professional accountants maintain a high level of ethical standard both in the business organizations and in the society. The professional accountants have the responsibility to establish corporate governance in every aspect of accounting. There are various instances where the lack of corporate governance can be seen in the process of accounting in the business organizations. Hence, one cannot ignore the importance of corporate governance in the accounting process as corporate governance helps to retain integrity in the accounting profession. Thus, these are the main characteristics that a person must have to become a professional accountant.

Accounting is considered as one of the main operations in any business organizations. The process of accounting is a key determinant of the success of the businesses. Hence, it is expected that there must be integrity and ethics in the process of accounting. However, in recent days, the scenario has changed drastically. Some major drastic changes can be observed in the way the accounting activities of the organizations are carried on. There are many instances where it has been seen that the accountants of the organizations are involved with different kinds of accounting frauds or manipulation of financial data and information. The main reason behind these kinds of fraudulent or manipulation is the lack of corporate governance in the process of accounting in the business organizations (McCahery, Sautner & Starks, 2016). There are numerous number of accounting issues all over the world that are attracting the attention of many people. This is a major issue in accounting profession. The process of the preparation of the financial reports of the business organizations is the major activity of the accounts profession (ArAs, 2016).

A major link between corporate governance and the preparation of financial reports can be seen. It is a fact that the imperfection in the financial reports can be happened due to the imperfection in the corporate governance process of the business organizations (Kathy Rao, Tilt & Lester, 2012). Corporate governance has many roles to play in the process of running a business organization. There are many issues in the process of corporate governance for the business organization related to accounting profession. For example, a major issue in corporate governance related to accounting is the personnel problems. In order to supervise large and complex types of business organizations, accountant professionals having high level of technical expertise are needed; they should have the ability to make specific judgment based on the accounting principles. The lack of this kind of personnel is a major problem in the corporate governance and accounting. There are many other problems like problem in public accounting, problem in cash flow management and many others (Hilb, 2012). The completion of this research project will help to get the desired solutions of these corporate governance related problems.

Literature Review

Every research project must have some major objectives. There is not any exception of this fact in this project. The aim of this research is to analyze and evaluate various aspects of corporate governance in accounting profession in the business organizations. The major objectives of this research are as follows;

• The first objective is the analysis and evaluation of the importance of corporate governance in accounting.
• The second objective is the investigation of the influence of corporate governance and accounting for the success of the businesses.
• The third objective is to provide specific strategies in order diminish various problems in corporate governance and accounting.

As per Tricker & Tricker, (2015), corporate governance refers to the process of controlling different kinds of operations of a business organization. For this purpose, various kinds of rules, regulations and policies need to be implemented in the organization. On the other hand, accounting is the process of maintaining all the financial transactions of the organization. Corporate governance has a crucial role to play in the accounting process of the organizations. Looking at the several accounting scandals, the importance of corporate governance in accounting cannot be ignored. A significant relation is there in the process of corporate governance and accounting. The main responsibility of corporate governance is to develop rules and regulations to direct the decisions of the businesses. On the other hand, the core responsibility of accounting is to track the financial performance of the business organizations. Hence, the smooth ruining of the accounting processes of the business organizations largely depends on the rules and policies implemented in corporate governance. There are many business areas where the success depend on the combined work of corporate governance and accounting (Aebi, Sabato & Schmid, 2012).

Project planning can be considered as an example of such areas. Many accountants throughout the world consider accounting practices as the instruments of corporate governance. With the help both corporate governance and accounting practices, large corporations can take intelligent operation about how to operate, how much to invest, how to make the strategies of business expansion and many others (Gill & Biger, 2013). It is the responsibility of the large public corporations to disclose their business practice to the outside world. In this process, corporate governance has a significant role to play. It is the responsibility of corporate governance to make it sure, that the corporation must disclose accurate and honest financial statements like income statement, balance sheet, statement of shareholder’s equity and many others (Hoechle et al., 2012). Hence, based on the examples, the huge and significant contribution of corporate governance on the accounting practices of the organizations can be judged. Thus, it is desired that the there is a proper balance between corporate governance and accounting practices.

In order to do this research, secondary data will be collected in order to analyze them to achieve the goals of the research process. The required secondary data will be collected from different sources; some of the major sources are different kinds of journal articles on corporate governance and accounting profession, the websites of different companies, recent news about corporate governance and accounting, financial statements of different companies, different type of case studies and others. After the collection of necessary data, they will be thematically evaluated to establish the relationship between corporate governance and accounting profession. In this research process, qualitative method will be used to analyze the collected secondary data. Lastly, based on the analysis of the data, various strategies will be suggested to encounter the issues in corporate governance in relation to corporate governance.

The research will be divided into five chapters. Chapter One will provide a brief introduction about the topic including the background information and statement of the problems. Chapter Two will include the review of various literatures about this research topic. Chapter Three will discuss the research methodology include the collection of secondary data and methods of data analysis. Chapter Four will highlight the findings and analysis of the secondary data. Lastly, Chapter Five will summaries the results, implications and recommendations.

Research Activities	1-2 Weeks	3-5 Weeks	6-10 Weeks	11-14	15-16
Project Proposal	ü
Literature Review
Data Collection
Data Analysis
Submission of Final Report			ü

Table 1: Gantt chart

(Source: as created by Author)

References

Aebi, V., Sabato, G., & Schmid, M. (2012). Risk management, corporate governance, and bank performance in the financial crisis. Journal of Banking & Finance, 36(12), 3213-3226.

ArAs, G. (2016). A handbook of corporate governance and social responsibility. CRC Press.

Byrne, M., Flood, B., Hassall, T., Joyce, J., Montaño, J. L. A., González, J. M. G., & Tourna-Germanou, E. (2012, June). Motivations, expectations and preparedness for higher education: A study of accounting students in Ireland, the UK, Spain and Greece. In Accounting Forum (Vol. 36, No. 2, pp. 134-144). Elsevier.

Carmona, S., Ezzamel, M., & Gutiérrez, F. (2016). Accounting history research: traditional and new accounting history perspectives. De Computis-Revista Española de Historia de la Contabilidad, 1(1), 24-53.

Clinton, B. D., & White, L. R. (2012). The Role of the Management Accountant: 2003-2012. Management Accounting Quarterly, 14(1), 40.

Gill, A. S., & Biger, N. (2013). The impact of corporate governance on working capital management efficiency of American manufacturing firms. Managerial Finance, 39(2), 116-132.

Goretzki, L., Strauss, E., & Weber, J. (2013). An institutional perspective on the changes in management accountants’ professional role. Management Accounting Research, 24(1), 41-63.

Hilb, M. (2012). New corporate governance: Successful board management tools. Springer Science & Business Media.

Hoechle, D., Schmid, M., Walter, I., & Yermack, D. (2012). How much of the diversification discount can be explained by poor corporate governance?. Journal of Financial Economics, 103(1), 41-60.

Kathy Rao, K., Tilt, C. A., & Lester, L. H. (2012). Corporate governance and environmental reporting: an Australian study. Corporate Governance: The international journal of business in society, 12(2), 143-163.

McCahery, J. A., Sautner, Z., & Starks, L. T. (2016). Behind the scenes: The corporate governance preferences of institutional investors. The Journal of Finance.

Monterio, B. J. (2014). Integrated reporting and corporate disclosure. Strategic Finance, 95(9), 54.

Paulsson, G. (2012). The role of management accountants in new public management. Financial Accountability & Management, 28(4), 378-394.

Tricker, R. B., & Tricker, R. I. (2015). Corporate governance: Principles, policies, and practices. Oxford University Press, USA.