Ahmed Riahi-Belkaoui – författare

Drawing upon cost accounting, mathematics, operations research, economics, and the behavioral sciences, Riahi-Belkaoui answers the call for a unique, multifaceted approach to the study of management accounting. His goal: to enhance performance in the essential tasks of cost estimation, allocation, planning, control, and performance evaluation. He covers the traditional techniques, but expands into quantitative methods and applications, then extends further into the behavioral unification of these techniques. His book is state of the art, ingenious in the way it adapts quantitative methods' solutions to traditional cost accounting topics, and innovative in its use of the behavioral implications. The result is an important resource for professionals, academics, and upper-level students in the field.Riahi-Belkaoui arranges his various techniques chapter by chapter. First, he looks at cost allocation and then at cost-volume profit analysis under stochastic conditions. In Chapter three he treats regression for cost estimation; in Chapter Four, the learning curve for the same purpose. He takes up advanced planning analysis in Chapter Five, advanced control analysis in Chapter Six, and decentralizing and performance evaluation in Chapter Seven. He then finishes with an important discussion of transfer pricing.

The successful evaluation of capital projects requires not only a thorough understanding of traditional techniques of capital budgeting but advanced techniques as well. Riahi-Belkaoui examines the multidimensionality of capital budgeting in its various facets and in ways that executives with no special facility in the subject can follow. He covers replacement decisions, capital rationing, capital budgeting under inflation uncertainty, capital budgeting in a multinational setting with attention to political risks, social project evaluation, and concepts of wealth measurement and distribution. The result is a wide ranging treatment for executive decision makers in finance, banking, investment, and general management, and for their colleagues with similar interests in the academic community.Riahi-Belkaoui begins by examining the principles underlying the time value of money. In Chapter Two he introduces capital budgeting and in Chapter Three moves to advanced capital budgeting. There he discusses such advanced topics as replacement decisions, capital rationing, and capital budgeting under uncertainty and inflation. In Chapter Four he takes up the same issues associated with capital budgeting but in a global context, and in Chapter Five, the determination of political risk and its use in capital budgeting internationally. Chapter Six compares the techniques of leasing versus purchasing and their reliance on capital budgeting techniques. In Chapter Seven he turns to the techniques of capital budgeting applied to social projects, and ends the book with an examination of the behavior and cognitive implications of wealth measurement and distribution. This is a useful survey and examination of the traditional and advanced techniques of capital budgeting and their applications in domestic and international contexts.

A firm's value consists of its assets-in-place and growth opportunities: its investment opportunity set. IOS plays a major role in determining a firm's corporate and accounting strategies, and how the marketplace reacts to them. Riahi-Belkaoui shows how IOS can be examined, measured, and used as one way to understand the various accounting and nonaccounting strategies espoused by management. His book fills a gap in the literature on this timely and provocative topic, and provides useful knowledge for upper management, academics, and graduate-level students.The importance of the IOS concept is beginning to be acknowledged in the literature of empirical accounting, finance, and management. There, the investment opportunity set is introduced as an explanatory or moderating variable of the relationship between accounting and economic phenomena and various predictor variables. Riahi-Belkaoui explicates a concept of growth opportunities or IOS (Chapter 1) and provides a general model for its measurement (Chapter 2). He shows its role in a general valuation model based on dividend yield and price earnings ratio (Chapter 3), in the relationship between profitability and multinationality (Chapter 4), in the determination of capital structure (Chapter 5), in a general model of international production (Chapter 6), in a general model of corporate disclosure (Chapter 7), in the relationship between systematic risk and multinationality (Chapter 8), in a model of reputation building (Chapter 9), and earnings management (Chapter 10). He goes on to discuss its role in explaining the relative market value compared to the accounting value of a multinational firm in Chapter 11, and in differentiating between the usefulness of accrual and cash flow based on valuation models in Chapter 12.

Producers and users of management accounting information are confronted with crucial behavioral phenomena--factors that can affect the communication of this information and its use. Riahi-Belkaoui shows what these factors and phenomena are and how to understand and cope with them. In doing so, he shows how producers and users together can improve the efficiency of management accounting itself.He explains the judgment process in management accounting, identifies and explains the major behavioral phenomena, and then provides ways to use them for the firm's benefit. Thoughtful and comprehensive, his book is important reading for executive decision makers in almost all organizations throughout the public and private sectors.

The impact of multinationality on the operations of a firm is clear and strong. Riahi-Belkaoui shows how it affects the known relationships between earnings, efficiency, disclosure, and market valuation by its role as a dependent, moderating, intervening antecedant or consequent variable. Its impact can be felt, for example, in relationships and phenomena such as the timeliness and the informativeness of earnings, the underreaction of securities analysts, post-earnings announcement drifts, and the level and quality of disclosure. An understanding of multinationality in the earnings-disclosure-efficiency-market valuation relationship can also be used by accountants and researchers in their daily activities, and by corporate executives in multinational organizational decision making. The result is a useful, probing exploration for academics and practitioners alike.

Financial analysis, based on ratio analysis, has been used as a tool for analyzing the financial strength of corporations. Although ratio analysis is generally used as a univariate strategy, the accounting and finance literature has evolved to include multivariate-based models in financial analysis, and these models can be used to explain important economic events and often predict them. Thus, in an exhaustive coverage of the economic events to which they can be applied, Riahi-Belkaoui discusses these models in a way that will have special value to corporate management, financial planners, and to their colleagues in the academic community who specialize in business and economic analysis.

An important but usually overlooked variable that affects the process and product of accounting is culture. Consensus on what constitutes proper accounting methods and behavior varies among countries, and it is this cultural relativism and its impacts that Riahi-Belkaoui explores here. His purpose is to elaborate on the nature of cultural relativism in accounting and in the interpretation of accounting data. He thus shows the way culture determines accounting judgments, and explains the intercultural differences in the perception of accounting concepts, and in the field's self-regulation internationally. His point is that accounting is actually a cultural rather than a technical process, and that professionals as well as academics should be aware of this. A challenging, useful discussion for teachers, graduate students, and accounting practitioners, particularly in international settings.

Riahi-Belkaoui examines the crucial issues involved in the determination and uses of earnings as a measure of financial performance. He points out that the nature and measurement of earnings are subject to various interpretations, that determination of earnings follows determination of net value added, and that earnings is subject to management manipulation (earnings can be smoothed, for example.) A succinct, penetrating, illuminating treatment of earnings in general as well as its particulars, the book will be especially useful to upper management and accounting professionals, and to their colleagues in the academic community.Riahi-Belkaoui argues that the interest in earnings and its related issues of measurement, determination, management, and usefulness stems from three factors: 1) the crucial importance of earnings as the shareholders' share of the corporation's wealth; 2) the reliance of investors and users on earnings and the transformation of earnings for resource allocation decision making; and 3), the direct association between the efficiency of the capital markets and timely provision of earnings data. Each chapter identifies the nature of the issues surrounding the concept of earnings and presents empirical evidence that can be used to make enlightened corporate decisions or to aid in the development of public policy.

Belkaoui offers a critical analysis of accounting and the societal problems the profession faces. The roles played by accountants and auditors, the standard-setting and oversight processes, the history, function, and current status of the discipline itself--all are treated systematically and with candor. Clarifying our understanding of what is wrong and what is right with accounting in the context of public interest, the author probes questions of public policy and shows where correction, standardization, and legislation are needed. He reviews solutions advanced by the courts, the Internal Revenue Service, the Securities and Exchange Commission, and researchers in other fields, then offers his own constructive suggestions.

This professional book is designed for managers involved in the use of quantitative techniques to solve accounting-based problems. Belkaoui takes the reader in hand and carefully reviews the mathematical and statistical techniques needed to understand quantitative models, and then introduces those models of relevance to accounting areas of cost-volume-profit analysis, cost estimation, linear programming, cost control, inventory models, capital budgeting, and network analysis.

In an important and innovative contribution to the scholarship of accounting theory, Ahmed Belkaoui presents new ways of thinking about the practices, problems, and directions of accounting. According to Belkaoui, researchers, practitioners, users, and students of accounting hold many different visions of the field, each the result of a conscious choice between alternative approaches, methodologies, images, structures, and paradigms. Here, Belkaoui offers a thorough, comprehensive examination of these various methods and techniques of accounting as well as an in-depth exploration of their philosophical determinants.

Belkaoui examines several innovative forms of financial reporting and disclosure emerging in various countries and how they can hamper attempts to harmonize accounting standards internationally. Among these are value-added reporting, information for employees and unions, the impact of value-added taxation and cash flow reporting. He also tries to summarize recent developments in comparative management research and the impact it may have on practice. The author attempts to provide a broad overview of all of these topics, which should appeal to students and to accountants with an interest in the recent developments in international accounting. Journal of AccountancyThis volume thoroughly examines new devlopments in international accounting from economic and social, as well as from accounting viewpoints. It reflects the current tension between attempts at unification by international standard setters and the emergence of innovative forms of reporting, disclosure, and taxation, as various countries attempt to improve their reporting accuracy. The product of this tension is the gradual but steady emergence of new accounting, reporting, disclosure, and taxation techniques of importance to the accounting practices of every country in the international arena.

This book is useful, readable and intelligent survey of the emerging field of behavioral accounting, a field that is doing much to narrow the gap between accounting and behavioral scholars and practitioners. Personnel Psychology The relatively new field of behavioral accounting relies on the application of behavioral concepts from the social sciences for an understanding of the forces that underlie the accounting environment. Here, Belkaoui presents the first comprehensive survey of behavioral accounting theories and findings, organizing them into a systematic framework for the further study of behavioral accounting issues and questions. The result is a new understanding of the behavioral environment of accounting and a guide to solving practical behavioral problems that result from the preparation and use of accounting information.As Belkaoui demonstrates, the quality of accounting information is often adversely affected by human perceptions, attitudes, predispositions, and other behavioral characteristics. Belkaoui fully explores the behavioral underpinnings of the problem by examining the behavioral dimensions of a wide range of accounting issues and practices including: contingency approaches to the design of accounting systems; functional and data fixation; the practice of slack; accounting and language; goal setting, participative budgeting and performance; the human resource considerations in public accounting firms; and, finally, cultural determinism in accounting. By offering both a realistic appraisal of the theories behind behavioral accounting and a cogent statement of the questions still left unanswered, Belkaoui makes a major contribution to the ongoing inquiry into the influence of behavioral factors on accounting practice.

Ahmed Belkaoui focuses on the contributions human information processing research can make in the study of accounting decision-making. Both a review and synthesis of the current literature and a springboard for further research, Human Information Processing in Accounting explores the basic psychological concepts underlying human decision-making and their applications to accounting. As Belkaoui notes at the outset, accounting information is used primarily for decision-making. Human information processing in accounting is designed to understand, describe, evaluate, and--most importantly--improve the decision process used in an accounting or auditing context. Belkaoui's book provides accounting students and practitioners with the first comprehensive overview of the ways in which human information processing research has been used to study and enhance accounting decision-making.Divided into six parts, the volume begins by examining the policy-capturing process and the Brunswick Lens model used in this type of research. Subsequent chapters address the models of risky choice used to predict or describe how individuals make these types of choices, the application of probability elicitation and revision to accounting research and practice, the heuristics and biases individuals use to reduce complex cognitive processes to simpler judgmental operations, and the application of cognitive science to accounting. A number of chapters include appendices illustrating the type of accounting studies that exist for each of the human information processing paradigms presented. Taken as a whole, Belkaoui's work represents a pioneering attempt to focus and organize the field of human information processing in accounting.

In this book, Belkaoui turns his attention to significant problems he sees facing the accounting profession as a whole and examines their effects on the way accounting is practiced, on accountants' clients, and on business in general. The problems derive, Belkaoui explains, from new developments in the accounting environment including the organizational climate in CPA firms and the rising incidence of fraudulent cases. Arguing that these problems, if not resolved, will lead to a crisis of confidence in accounting and increasing government regulation of the profession, Belkaoui both identifies their causes and proposes solutions to avert a crisis in the field.The book is divided into six chapters, each of which addresses a particular problem in contemporary accounting. Belkaoui begins by describing a new conflictual order in the accounting environment and goes on to examine particular conflicts generated by the profession's heavy reliance on credentialism, its role in the fragmentation of services in CPA firms, and its tenuous position in the courts. The following chapters show how the credibility of accounting has been shaken by fraudulent cases and explores ways in which the accounting work process has declined. Finally, Belkaoui explores problems associated with the high levels of job dissatisfaction and turnover in CPA firms and problems in the production of accounting knowledge. Students of accounting as well as practicing professionals will find both a sobering assessment of current accounting practices and an illuminating look at potential solutions.

Belkaoui offers a thorough examination of the various factors that affect the judgment/decision process in an accounting setting. As the author notes at the outset, an appreciation of the various influences on accounting decisionmaking is of critical importance to users, preparers, and verifiers of accounting information--particularly in an era of multinational corporations and global markets. In order to explain the judgment process in accounting, Belkaoui proposes a new theoretical model which assumes both that a cognitive process guides judgments and decisionmaking in accounting and that the schemata underlying this process are shaped by the crucial factors of national culture, language, organizational culture, and contractual agreements. The author examines each of these influences in turn, offering a comprehensive guide to the practitioner and researcher seeking empirical hypotheses to explain the judgment process in the international accounting arena.The bulk of the volume is devoted to an in-depth examination of each of the five relativisms which affect the accounting judgment/decision process--cognitive, cultural, linguistic, organizational, and contractual. In each chapter, the author explores the theory and findings underlying these relativisms in the social sciences and their contribution to explaining the judgment/decision process in accounting. The final chapter synthesizes the preceding material and develops an international accounting theory based upon the judgment/decision model. Throughout, Belkaoui focuses on the complexity and richness of the judgment/decision process, cautioning that the evaluation of any accounting information must take into account the various critical influences on this process.

As multinational firms struggle to compete in a global economy, their operating and accounting decisions are being made in an environment that's characterized by fluctuating exchange rates, innovative and flexible organizational structures, and a dynamic and diverse control strategy. As a result, managerial accounting techniques have to adapt to this unique environment by devising new ways to solve decision problems. This book explores the major issues that accountants in multinational corporations, and their outside consulting firms, must deal with if they are to understand how the corporation is performing financially, and if they are to effectively advise top management.To describe the specific environment of multinational management accounting and the particular accounting techniques required for efficient operation, Ahmed Belkaoui divides his study into four topical sections. The first offers an introductory overview of the new international business environment and the extent of financial engineering. Section two focuses on managing exchange rate risks, and covers such issues as the management of foreign exchange risk, the management of economic exposure, and the management of transaction exposure. Organization and controlling are detailed in section three, with separate chapters exploring the organizational structures and control of multinational operations and performance evaluation techniques. The final section examines management accounting issues, including international financial analysis, international capital budgeting, pricing strategies, the lease-or-buy decision, and advanced capital budgeting. This work will be an essential resource for accounting professionals working in multinational organizations and the international business environment, as well as for students in accounting and international business courses. Public, academic, and business libraries will all find it to be a valuable addition to their collections.

Clearly organized and readable, this work is a good introduction to cost accounting for someone with little prior course work or experience in the field. Most chapters include a list of suggested readings. Good index. Most appropriate for community college or public library collections. ChoiceIn response to the expanding roles of accountants in all types of organizations, cost accounting is becoming increasingly multidimensional, relying not only on traditional accounting principles, but also on behavioral, organizational, decisional, and other foundations. These conceptual foundations and their applications to cost accounting practices form the basis of this handbook, which offers both accounting students and professionals a comprehensive review and interpretation of cost accounting techniques and theories. By treating both traditional and newer dimensions of the discipline, the book defines a new scope and boundary that presents cost accounting in a multidimensional framework.Ahmed Belkaoui presents his material from three different perspectives. First, he shows how the fields of cost accounting, economics, behavioral science, operations research, statistics, and mathematics provide the tools as well as the concepts necessary for the classification, accumulation, and reporting of relevant data for internal decision making and for the interpretation and evaluation of resulting decisions. Second, he demonstrates how standard cost accounting techniques can be complemented by other possible approaches to problems, stressing not only the descriptive but also the normative solutions to cost accounting problems. Finally, he examines how cost accounting techniques affect the planning and control of routine and nonroutine decisions, inventory valuation and income determination. Among the major new developments addressed are variance analysis, learning phenomena in cost estimation, flexible manufacturing systems, and behavioral considerations in cost allocation. This work will be especially valuable for professional accountants and graduate students preparing for an accounting career, and an important resource for academic and public libraries.

Written for both corporate accountants and advanced students of accounting, this volume offers comprehensive coverage of multinational financial accounting issues. As Ahmed Riahi-Belkaoui explains at the outset, multinational financial accounting is the branch of accounting developed to accommodate the specific international accounting needs of multinational corporations that are not met by their national accounting systems. Among the specific topics he addresses are the dimensions of multinational financial accounting, the efforts underway to harmonize international standards, the international environment within which multinational firms operate, and specific multinational financial accounting practices. Throughout, Riahi-Belkaoui emphasizes both theoretical concerns and practical solutions to multinational financial accounting problems.The book begins by describing the nature of the emerging global economy and the challenges it poses for accountancy. Subsequent chapters address accounting for foreign currency transactions, futures contracts, and other financial instruments; illustrate the management of translation exposure; and examine accounting for inflation proposals. Riahi-Belkaoui goes on to explore accounting for inflation internationally and includes a separate appendix of illustrative calculations to compute current cost/constant purchasing power information. Finally, the author reviews segmental reporting and value-added reporting within the multinational financial accounting context.

In recent years, the accounting profession has been faced with a number of unresolved problems. One of the most crucial has been the failure to distinguish between two separate sectors of the economy, the core and the periphery. This work offers a comprehensive study of this dual economy in which large organizations are clustered at the center while smaller organizations are arrayed on the periphery. At least two sets of accounting standards are required to adequately serve this structure, Monti-Belkaoui and Belkaoui argue, and just what these standards are, and how they would affect such issues as financial reporting, is the subject of this book.The work explores the nature of the dual economy and provides a perspective on the way in which the concept operates. The authors begin their study with a survey of the theories and implications of the dual economy, and the issues of accounting validation in such a structure. In a number of succeeding chapters, they then analyze some fundamental accounting problems and their relation to economic dualism, including income smoothing, auditor switching, and bond rating changes. The work concludes with an examination of public policy and standard-setting solutions to the dual economy situation. Accounting in the Dual Economy will be a useful resource for a wide variety of professionals, including practicing accountants, financial managers, and legislators. It will also be an important supplementary text for courses in accounting and public policy.

This study offers a thorough analysis of what determines the level of executive compensation in one corporation as opposed to another. Challenging prior research which has tended to focus solely on the influence of coporate financial performance, the authors argue that structural characteristics of the firm--size, internal organization, and ownership--are equally decisive in influencing the level and structure of executive compensation which allows for the investigation of both the direct and indirect effects of each of these factors on executive compensation and offer a guide to the assessment of executive compensation in the large corporation that will be of significant value to financial analysts, investors, and researchers interested in the role and ramifications of executive compensation policies.Following a review of theoretical considerations and recent findings on the determination of executive compensation, the authors present a model of executive compensation which integrates the concepts of corporate performance, organizational structure, size, and ownership structure. This path model is then tested by utilizing data from a sample of over 200 Fortune 500 firms. Both regression results and path analysis results show significant direct and indirect effects of the structural variables tested. Based upon their results, the authors offer policy suggestions for those involved in determining executive compensation or evaluating the financial status of organizations under investment consideration.

A new form of accounting statement--the value added statement--is gaining popularity in the corporate annual reports of the largest companies in the United Kingdom. This new statement can be viewed as a modified version of the income statement. Like the income statement, the value added statement reports the operating performance of a company at a given point in time, using both accrual and matching procedures. Unlike the income statement, however, it is interpreted not as a return to shareholders but as a return to the larger group of capital and labor providers. Riahi-Belkaoui shows that the value added statement can be easily derived from the income statement and is therefore easily adaptable to the needs of U.S. companies.To illustrate the usefulness of the value added statement, Riahi-Belkaoui devotes Chapter 1 to a thorough discussion of its many benefits. He then analyzes the usefulness of the value added concept in understanding the characteristics of corporate takeovers in the United States, and in Chapter 3 he discusses the relationship between the value added concept and the systematic risk of U.S. companies, concluding in Chapter 4 with a discussion of value added statements in financial analysis. His book will thus interest not only accountants, teachers, and students who follow trends in international and multi-national accounting but also those who want to prepare themselves for the development of value added techniques and procedures that might reasonably be expected in the United States.

The book is designed to provide a conceptual framework for management accounting. The student as well as the practitioner in management accounting should be aware not only of the new multidisciplinary scope of the field but also of the conceptual foundations which justify this extended scope. Unlike most management accounting books which do not introduce or integrate all these foundations and are generally restricted to an exposition of cost accounting techniques, this book both asserts that the management accounting professional needs a grounding in various disciplines and justifies the adaptation of their techniques to managerial problem solving.Five conceptual foundations envisioned for management accounting are presented: accounting foundations, decisional foundations, organizational foundations, behavioral foundations, and strategic foundations. A recurrent theme in each of these chapters is that a failure to grasp any of these conceptual foundations of management accounting may result in deficiencies in the management accounting system and inadequacies in the provision of the diverse services required by both the small and the complex organizations of today.

This unique book examines conceptual, empirical, and practical issues associated with corporate reputation. Emphasizing the importance of the roles of corporate social disclosure and organizational effectiveness, the authors emphasize the need for an integrative framework in explaining the nature of corporate reputation. Utilizing valuable data provided by Fortune magazine, the book provides both a historical evaluation of reputational rankings of Fortune 500 firms for the period 1987-1991 and insights as to the market reaction to disclosure of these rankings. These can be utilized by firms in building reputation, investors in evaluating their strategies, and public policy officials in dealing with corporations.Following an extensive review of the conceptual foundations of corporate reputation, namely corporate social performance and disclosure and organizational effectiveness, the authors present explanatory and predictive models of corporate reputation. They then examine the potential relationship between corporate reputation and shareholders' wealth--the market reaction to reputation signals. Their findings suggest that a firm's benefit from the disclosure of reputation signals will depend on size and expectations, and that such disclosure appears to lead to a significant, lagged market reaction. Based on a detailed analysis of the 1987-1991 performance of U.S. firms on eight key attributes of reputation, the authors conclude with insights that can be utilized by corporations and investors alike.

Timely and reliable accounting information is essential. Not only firms themselves but the markets they serve, and particularly the investment community, depend on it. Accounting data and their interpretation must be above suspicion, says Riahi-Belkaoui, and to be sure of that, corporations and other users of accounting information must be certain that accountants subscribe to and practice morality set to high standards. What these standards are, and how they are deficient, distorted, and sometimes even fallacious, are the themes explored here. In doing so, Riahi-Belkaoui's book leads readers through the complexities of what the author identifies as the five aspects of accounting morality: fairness, ethics, honesty, social responsibility, and truth.Riahi-Belkaoui begins with a discussion of fairness as a concept of justice, illustrated by the intellectual contributions of Rawls, Nozick, and Gerwith. From there he moves to ethics in accounting, and a review of such ethical perspectives as the utilitarian, the deontological, and the notion of fittingness. He also takes up the subject of ethical codes, and asks how do we discipline the accounting profession; then, how do we teach and research accounting ethics? Chapter 3 treats a variety of ethical issues and several key cases, among them the ESM Government Securities Case, the Drysdale Affair, and the Wedtech and Penn Square cases. In Chapter 4 Riahi-Belkaoui turns to honesty in the accounting environment and to discussions of the nature and framework of fraud, including what he calls outcome situations arising from corporate fraud. Chapter 5 explores the relationship between accounting and social responsibility, and makes clear that there is a need for an effective paradigm to define and help implement a socially responsible accounting. Finally, in Chapter 6 he comes to grips with the problem of truth in accounting--first, the notion of truth, then the impossibilities as well as the possibilities of attaining it. Morality in Accounting will be of special value to the producers and users of accounting, and to graduate and undergraduate students of the accounting discipline.