School of Accounting, Economics and Finance
Faculty of Business and Law
Title: ETHICS EDUCATION: Approaches to the development and maintenance of professional values, ethics and attitudes in accounting education programs
Team: Professor Pilomena Leung, Professor B. Cooper, Associate Professor S. Dellaportas, Associate Professor B. Jackling, H. Leslie and Greg Tangey
Funding body: International Federation of Accountants(IFAC)
Description: This project aims to develop a flexible framework of ethics education and provides some well researched academic literature for an International Education Guideline for Professional Accountants (IEG) in respect of the development and maintenance of professional values, ethics and attitudes. The project results and the IEG will assist and support IFAC member bodies and academics to adopt a range of appropriate approaches to the development and maintenance of professional values, ethics and attitudes in accounting education programs, at pre- and post-qualifying stages for all professional accountants and their institutions.
The deliverables of the project include:
Title: Policy Options for Improving the Value of Land Use in Smallholder Agriculture in the Fijian Islands.
Team: Associate Professor Phillip Hone, Henry Haszler and Professor Hristos Doucouliagos from Deakin; Sakiusa Tubuna, Paula Taukei, Apenisa Tuicakau, and Waisiki Gonemaituba from the Fiji Islands Ministry of Agriculture, Sugar and Land Resettlement; Epeli Waqavonovono from the Fiji Islands Bureau of Statistics; and Chris Ryan and Garth Parry from the Secretariat of the Pacific Community based in New Caledonia.
Funding body: Australian Centre for International Agricultural Research(ACIAR)
Description: Following a recent WTO ruling, the price support for Fiji s sugar production under the current EU sugar regime is set to be phased out with possibly devastating effects on the industry and the economy in general. The chances of developing and implementing appropriate agricultural policies in Fiji to deal with this and related problems are currently constrained by the lack of the fundamental economic information required for informed decision making. For example, policy makers do not have access to reliable information on critical market parameters such as the responsiveness of producers and consumers to food price changes. Nor is there is any framework for quantifying the likely impacts of food and agricultural policy changes on community well-being. And at the most fundamental level, policy makers have no reliable information on the production, sales and consumption of smallholder or subsistence farmers and fishermen who are generally counted among the poorer people in Fiji. This means there is no basis for reliably estimating either the present size of the agriculture and fishing sectors as a whole, or the full dimension of the impacts of policy changes on these sectors. This project is aimed at building the capacity of the local policy community to deal with these problems through a series of targeted collaborative research projects.
Title: Modelling Factors Affected the Long-Term Demand for and Supply of Professional Accounting and Allied Services in Rural and Regional Australia
Team: Professor CB Ferguson, Professor BJ Cooper, Associate Professor GL Wines and Associate Professor BF Jackling. Additional investigators P. Hellier and R. Carr
Funding body: 2006 ARC Linakage Project
Linkage Grant Partner: CPA Australia
Description: Rural and regional areas accommodate more than a third of Australia's population and generate two-thirds of its net export income. While accounting firm services provide substantial economic benefits to society, there are significant differences in the provision of these accounting services in rural and regional areas compared to metropolitan areas in Australia. Rural and regional accounting firms face servicing difficulties arising from industrial restructure, changing population densities, and difficulties in professional staff recruitment, but there has been little systematic analysis of rural and regional accounting and allied services. This research aims to build and test a model of factors affecting the demand for and supply of accounting services. The model can be used to monitor and manage accounting firm services to advance regional development in Australia.
The project will assist the accounting profession in establishing effective strategies and policies for the education, training and recruitment of professional staff in regional communities. The project will assist in ensuring that professional accounting and allied services can meet future regional demands, with the potential for the modelling developed by the research to be applied to other rural and regional services.
Title: Research Project: Evaluating Households Willingness to Pay for Water and Waste Water Service Attributes in Victoria
Team: Associate Professor Gamini Herath
Funding body: Consumer Utilities Advocacy Centre
Description: The main objectives of this study are to:
Title: 2006 Work and Life Style Study in the Chartered Accounting Profession
Team: Professor Philomena Leung and Heather Leslie
Funding body: The Institute of Chartered Accountants in Australia(ICAA)
Description: This research proposal aims to follow up on the 2001 Work and Life Style Survey conducted for The Institute of Chartered Accountants.
In particular the project will:
Title: Ethics Education and Development for Member Associations of Professions Australia: Phase 1: Identifying the nature and type of ethical issues and ethical risks faced by members of the member associations of Professions Australia.
Team: Professor Philomena Leung Professor B. Cooper, Associate Professor S. Dellaportas, Associate Professor B. Jackling and Heather Leslie
Funding body: Professions of Australia
Description: This project aims to develop a framework of ethics education and development, to
be implemented by the member associations of Professions Australia (PA). The project is divided into two phases. Phase 1 is a fact-finding phase which explores the nature of ethical threats or risks typically faced by members of the member associations of PA. The findings of Phase 1 will inform the research for the second Phase 2 in the development of an appropriate framework of ethics education for the member associations.
Title: Predicting Change in Management Accounting and Control Systems: Size, Decentralisation, Competition, Technology and Organisational Capacity Effects
Team: Professor Zahirul Hoque
Funding body: CPA Australia
Description: In today's business world, organisations experience dramatic change from time to time. Organisational change literature elaborates on the causes of change - in particular the multidimensionality of causes and the way one interacts with another. Organisational change often needs the adoption of innovative ideas and behaviour to achieve the desired change based on the strategic orientation of the organisation. The change process within the organisation frequently brings about changes in appropriate organisational structure and internal systems with different ramifications. New accounting and control systems can be essential to implement strategies in a changing situation at the organisational level. However, until recently, management accounting research has tended to neglect such an important phenomenon, with the exception of the studies by Libby and Waterhouse (1996) and Williams and Seaman (2001). As one would expect no significant variation in national culture between Australia and Canada, the proposed study will focus mainly on replicating the Libby and Waterhouse' study in the Australian context.. To do so, it will conduct a mail-out survey of a sample of manufacturing organisations using the determinants of size, organisational capacity, competition, decentralisation and technological development.
Title: Measuring and Reporting Performance of Government Departments in Australia
Team: Professor Zahirul Hoque and Professor Carol Adams
Funding body: CPA Australia
Description: The research project will identify current economic, social and environmental performance measurement and reporting practice within state government departments in Australia. It will link internal organizational factors (such as strategic choice and authority structures) to external institutional factors (such as recent public sector reform in Australia and increased pressure from society to improve social and environmental performance).
Title: Career Aspirations and Destinations of Accounting Graduates: Implications for Course and Career Development Strategies
Team: Associate Professor Beverley Jackling and Tracey Mc Dowall
Funding body: AFAANZ
Title: Privatisation and Efficiency: An Evaluation of the Impact of a Change in Ownership Structures on Organisations within the Australian Finance Sector
Team: Margaret McKenzie and Dr. Monica Keneley
Funding body: AFAANZ
Description: In the 1990s Commonwealth and State governments privatised a number of publicly owned banking and insurance institutions. The purpose of this project is to evaluate the operation of these enterprises since the date of privatisation. Performance is considered in relation to that of the other major deposit taking and insurance institutions in Australia, as well as relevant changes in the regulatory framework.
A key issue is comparability of appropriate measures before and after privatisation. An event methodology will be used to analyse privatisation outcomes across institutions. An assessment of the impact of privatisation on the broader development of the financial markets will be made.
Title: Measuring the Effectiveness of On-Campus Seminars - a Comparison with Recent US Research
Team: Associate Professor Bruce Clayton and Mike Kerry and Marc Olynk
Funding body: UniSuper
Description: To Measure the effect of member education delivered through on-campus seminars around Australia amd to compare the results with those of comparable research recently undertaken by UniSuper's sister fund the United States, TIAA-CREF.
