Skip to Content
Accountants' Handbook Volume One: Financial Accounting and General Topics, Eleventh Edition
book

Accountants' Handbook Volume One: Financial Accounting and General Topics, Eleventh Edition

by D. R. CARMICHAEL, O. RAY WHITTINGTON, LYNFORD GRAHAM
April 2007
Intermediate to advanced
1056 pages
43h 54m
English
Wiley
Content preview from Accountants' Handbook Volume One: Financial Accounting and General Topics, Eleventh Edition

Chapter 1. FINANCIAL ACCOUNTING REGULATIONS AND ORGANIZATIONS

Joseph V. Carcello, PhD, CPA, CIA, CMA

University of Tennessee

THE SOCIAL ROLE OF FINANCIAL ACCOUNTING

This chapter provides background on the environment in which financial accountants carry on their activities, including the specific organizations that regulate or otherwise affect those activities. Although the accounting profession has historically largely been self-regulated, the collapse of Enron and WorldCom has led to the passage of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002. The Sarbanes-Oxley Act created the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board (PCAOB), which is charged with overseeing the accounting profession. No financial accountant can practice properly without understanding these organizations and how they not only constrain but also assist the performance of financial accounting and reporting services.

(a) THE OBJECTIVE OF FINANCIAL ACCOUNTING.

An important beginning point for understanding the social role and importance of financial accounting is identifying the objective that it should meet. Although there are many opinions as to what the objective should be, the most authoritative and influential is this definition provided by the Financial Accounting Standards Board (FASB) in its Conceptual Framework project, which was intended to develop a unified theory of accounting (see Subsection 1.3(a) (v)):

Financial reporting should provide information that is useful to present and potential investors and creditors and other ...

Become an O’Reilly member and get unlimited access to this title plus top books and audiobooks from O’Reilly and nearly 200 top publishers, thousands of courses curated by job role, 150+ live events each month,
and much more.

Read now

Unlock full access

More than 5,000 organizations count on O’Reilly

AirBnbBlueOriginElectronic ArtsHomeDepotNasdaqRakutenTata Consultancy Services

QuotationMarkO’Reilly covers everything we've got, with content to help us build a world-class technology community, upgrade the capabilities and competencies of our teams, and improve overall team performance as well as their engagement.
Julian F.
Head of Cybersecurity
QuotationMarkI wanted to learn C and C++, but it didn't click for me until I picked up an O'Reilly book. When I went on the O’Reilly platform, I was astonished to find all the books there, plus live events and sandboxes so you could play around with the technology.
Addison B.
Field Engineer
QuotationMarkI’ve been on the O’Reilly platform for more than eight years. I use a couple of learning platforms, but I'm on O'Reilly more than anybody else. When you're there, you start learning. I'm never disappointed.
Amir M.
Data Platform Tech Lead
QuotationMarkI'm always learning. So when I got on to O'Reilly, I was like a kid in a candy store. There are playlists. There are answers. There's on-demand training. It's worth its weight in gold, in terms of what it allows me to do.
Mark W.
Embedded Software Engineer

You might also like

Accountants' Handbook, Volume One, Financial Accounting and General Topics, 12th Edition

Accountants' Handbook, Volume One, Financial Accounting and General Topics, 12th Edition

D. R. Carmichael, Lynford Graham
Financial and Managerial Accounting

Financial and Managerial Accounting

Donald E. Kieso, Paul D. Kimmel, Jerry J. Weygandt

Publisher Resources

ISBN: 9780471790389Purchase book