I am keen to research on effects of creative accounting on accounting professionals, and organizations. One of the most significant topic for discussion in accounting field. Creative accounting has been practised by majority of accounting professionals in every organization and country over the past few years. However, there are positive and negative impacts of creative accounting. Accounting is one of the vital elements of any business, which is associated with the success or failure of business. Thus, it is important for the accounting professionals to be aware of related business scandals. This research aims at understanding the creative accounting practices, its effects on organizations, and the different techniques used by the accounting professional. Explaining all these facts, will help to analyse, if creative accounting practices are boon or bane.
The secondary data is sourced from online journals, periodicals, books and various articles published on internet. These existing researches on creative accounting attempted to explain the meaning, advantages and disadvantages, and the techniques used in the creative accounting practice. The articles published from year 2000 will be mainly focused, however articles published before year 2000 and that are highly cited, will also be given considerable weightage. There are many newspapers reports, for example Financial Times report by Spellman XXXXXXXXXXlink: https://www.ft.com/content/fd30eaf2-3fa8-11e2-b0ce-00144feabdc0, are available electronically which will be also studied and referred where required.
Creative accounting practices arise when due to loopholes in the standards and law, companies alter accounts to improvise their financial performance, by abiding law. That will be positive effect of creative accounting. Yet another aspect to be researched is the negative effects of creative accounting. What if creative accounting is practiced for personal benefit, e.g. to show increased profits? How will that effect the organization and the users of financial statements? Comparable questions need to be answered through this research, which will help to gain a better understanding about creative accounting. Therefore, the most important thing is to analyse, if creative accounting practice is more advantageous or disadvantageous?
Google scholar search will be used majorly, the exact phrase will be “creative accounting”, the limit for year will be since 2000. To retrieve the best article from the results, the first preference will be given to the title, then the number of times the article has been cited. To explore more journals phrases like advantage, disadvantage, effects etc. will be used.
A study conducted by Balaciu, Bogdan, Felega & Popa XXXXXXXXXXexhibited that, from the time accounting principles are used to showcase better company performance, creative accounting has been a problem and a temptation for the players in business. To overcome this problem, the players must practice ethically. Tassadaq & Malik XXXXXXXXXXbelieve that ethics state right and wrong to the players, by drawing on this concept Baralexis XXXXXXXXXXhas shown in his study, that creative accounting is practised in Greece extensively, but with right ethics, and thus legitimate practice is more prevalent that illegitimate in Greece.
References Balaciu, D. E., Bogdan, V., Feleaga, L., & Popa, A.-L. (2014). “Colorful” approach regarding creative accounting. An introspective study based on the association technique.
Accounting and Management Information Systems, 13(4), XXXXXXXXXX.
Baralexis, S XXXXXXXXXXCreative accounting in small advancing countries: The Greek case.
Managerial Auditing Journal, 19(3), XXXXXXXXXXdoi: https://doi.org/10.1108/ XXXXXXXXXX
Hussey, R., & Ong, A XXXXXXXXXXCreative accounting--do numbers reveal the whole picture?
Credit Control, 17(10), p. 16. Retrieved from http://gateway.library.qut.edu.au/login?url=https://search-proquest-com.ezp01.library.qut.edu.au/docview/ XXXXXXXXXX?accountid=13380
Spellman, J. D. (2012, December 16).
Bad governance to blame for creative accounting. Retrieved from Financial Times : https://www.ft.com/content/fd30eaf2-3fa8-11e2-b0ce-00144feabdc0
Tassadaq,, F., & Malik, Q XXXXXXXXXXCreative Accounting and Financial Reporting: Model.
International Journal of Economics and Financial Issues, 5(2), XXXXXXXXXX.
Marks:Big topic here Piyushika, and so it always worries me…can you do this with secondary data? Can you do this in the short space of time you have? In this case, my answer to both questions is…no! Please read the following carefully. - Field of research. Good. We are looking for something that is linked to your degree at CQU.
There should be a solid thread, a solid connection, between your field (in this case marketing) your topic, your scholarly literature (with theory and other findings as a background) your secondary data, and then finally your research question and method of analysing it. All of these things should be ALIGNED nicely, that is, be related to or FIT WITH each other. The more closely aligned the better. If it reasonably well aligned, that’s also OK.
- Source of Secondary Data. No I don’t think you…so please check following. To fully understand what I mean by secondary data, please review:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=660&v=rgAq0I_si_k
https://moodle.cqu.edu.au/pluginfile.php/492031/course/section/113044/primary%20and%20secondary%20data%20sources%20and%20research.pdf
So you need to firstly, find data, locate some variables in it and do some original analysis to it… It’s not enough to find some mention of
findings (whether numbers or words)
in someone else’s report or website, and then just report them on to us in your final project. That’s using that material as a ‘secondary’ or ‘primary’ SOURCE…. We want you to do something, some kind of ‘cooking’ and ‘cleaning’ to the data, so you can talk about something even SLIGHTLY
new, something
you created in this research project. - Research Questions/Aims/Hypotheses.
Some interesting ideas here… BUT Your research question needs to refer to variables that are present in the database or databases you’ve identified in B (above). So if your research question was to examine the “impact of online marketing on the sale of luxury goods in the Middle East” I would expect to find that your data contained some data on the sale of luxury good in the Middle East, and also data on the use of online marketing and NORMAL (not online) marketing, so you could do some kind of comparison. It would be great if you had similar data for a country that was NOT in the Middle East, so you could say things like “the evidence I’ve presented suggests that online marketing seems to be powerful in the marketing of luxury goods in Canada, in Kuwait traditional marketing still seems to be more potent.” Remember in your conclusions you should NOT claim things you have NOT found in your analysis.
- Search terms. I think you are on the right track with your search strategy here, in general. For further advice, have a look at:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k_1M_BOCQS4
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qJe6biGl9m8
Are your terms the only and the best terms (from a disciplinary point of view) to describe the constructs/topic you are aiming at? Have you checked in the textbook(s) from your previous units to see what are the right key terms for the topic you are looking at? Keep your terms short, (in quote marks for more than one word, but try not use more than three words in a row in a search term, otherwise you will get NO ‘hits’).
- Sentences, references. Your two sentences were OK, with a f ew errors like the use of & in the first sentence. Not bad APA referencing J
To do correct research work, even in a literature review section, it is important to read an article ‘deeply’ not just superficially, and work out the core messages. Students do have a tendency to read articles very superficially (if at all), and just reference them without much reading or thinking. As markers, we can pick up on that, and realise, “no the student has not read this really…or not understood.”
Remember in your ‘minimum of 20 articles’ target for the final assignment to focus on peer-reviewed scholarly publications as a base…and then you can have some industry sources on top of that.
Additional problems
You will need to tighten up your topic and find data relating to it. Don’t be too ambitious. Just choose something simple. In your final two assignments, make sure you are super careful with spelling and if possible get an English-as-a-first-language student or friend to check your work.