Knowledge that Transforms

Reviews the book "History of Accounting at Berkeley," by Maurice Moonitz.

Reviews the book "Discovery Techniques: Obtaining and Analyzing Business Financial Data," by Martin Mellman, Steven B. Lilien and James M. Docherty.

Reviews the book "Corporate Financial Disclosure 1900-1933," by David F. Hawkins.

Behavioral aspects of production variance investigations have been the focus of several recent articles. This research reports on a field experiment designed to obtain empirical evidence concerning the initial attributions made by a superior and a subordinate upon the occurrence of an unfavorable variance, as well as the processes they utilize when testing their initial attributional hypotheses. Evidence indicated that superiors made initial attributions that were internal relative to the subordinates, and also tended to seek additional information which was internal relative to the subordinates. This observed confirmatory hypothesis testing procedure is consistent with other research in non-accounting related settings. Implications for the design of accounting information systems are briefly discussed.

Reviews the book "Creative Accounting," by Ian Griffiths.

Reviews the book "Legal Regulation of British Company Accounts: 1836-1900," edited by J. R. Edwards.

Reviews the book "Current Cost/Constant Dollar Accounting and Its Uses in the Managerial Decision-Making Process," by Philip W. Bell.

Reviews the book "Effective College Management: The Outcome Approach," by Bruce W. Tuckman and F. Craig Johnson.

Reviews the book "Achieving Economy, Efficiency and Effectiveness in the Public Sector," by Cyril R. Tomkins.

This study examines empirically three aspects of auditor materiality judgments: (1) their association with publicly available financial information, (2) whether materiality judgment consensus differs across Big Eight audit firms, and (3) whether judgment consensus is correlated with audit firm structure. The results suggest that nine publicly available financial measures explain a significant portion of the variability in auditor materiality judgments, thereby raising a question about potential information in auditors' interest-capitalization consistency exceptions. Although publicly available financial information was found to be significantly associated with materiality judgments in each Big Eight firm, the judgment consensus of consistency opinion decisions varied among individual Big Eight firms. Not only were there significant differences in judgment consensus among firms but also a significant positive association was found between audit judgment consensus and the degree of audit structure, thereby providing empirical evidence that audit structure may influence audit judgment.