Corporate Financial Reporting: Theory and Practice Book

	Acknowledgements
	List of Illustrations
	Preface
1	Issues in Financial Reporting	1
	The scope of the problems facing financial reporting	2
	Structure of the book	11
2	An Exploration of the Nature of Accounting 'Theory'	18
	An examination of the phrase 'accounting theory'	19
	Approaches to theory development	22
	Theory development and resistance	31
	Measurement in accounting	33
3	Developments in Accounting and Corporate Reporting	40
	The origins of stewardship	41
	Early stewardship in a management accounting context	43
	Corporate governance	45
	Early developments in accounting	47
	The recognition of income and expenditure	52
4	Financial Reporting: Frameworks Without Foundations?	60
	Accounting regulation	61
	Conceptual framework developments	62
	The UK struggle with the 'objective' of the financial statements	73
	Inconsistencies with statutory requirements	77
	Potential factors driving conceptual framework developments	78
	Arguments against the development of a conceptual framework	82
	Real-time reporting in a knowledge economy	83
5	Developments in Auditing and Assurance	90
	Early audits	90
	The detection of fraud as an audit objective	93
	The conceptual basis of auditing	93
	Developments in audit approaches: from audit efficiency to audit effectiveness?	99
	Assurance services	108
	Continuous audit - the fifth-generation audit?	109
6	The Management-Auditor Relationship: Auditing Motivations	114
	Independence and objectivity	115
	Auditing motivations	117
	Earnings management	118
	The 'neutrality' concept	121
	Management-auditor negotiations	124
	Audit committees	125
	Auditors and fraud	127
7	Communication Through the Audit Report: What Is the Auditor Trying To Say?	136
	Exploring the auditor's message	136
	The auditor's opinion	145
	The development of 'a true and fair view'	147
	The views of UK practitioners	151
	Free-form audit reports	153
	'Evergreen audit reports' for real-time reporting?	154
8	An Exploration of the Financial Reporting Expectations Gap	159
	The audit expectations gap	159
	The wider expectations gap	162
	The nature of accounting	164
	The user decision-oriented perspective	165
	The irrelevance of historical costs?	170
	Predicting future cash flows	174
	Freedom from bias?	175
	Do the financial statements represent good stewardship?	175
	The calculation of 'wealth'	178
	Harnessing the forces of technology: real-time real problem?	181
9	A Reconfiguration of the External Reporting Conceptual Framework Conundrum	189
	The specification of the problem	190
	How can 'coporate performance' be indicated?	195
	The operating and financial review (OFR)	201
	Corporate meetings	202
	Widening the range of performance indicators	204
	Reporting risk	208
	Auditors and additional assurance services	209
10	The Elusive Holy Grail	214
	Is 'history' history?	217
	An agenda for developments in corporate reporting	218
	Name index	221
	Subject index	224