Blockchain Papers

Masdar Ryketeng, Samsinar, Hariany Idris, Anni Suryani · 5 authors

This study examines the emergence of double-entry bookkeeping, memoranda, journals, and ledgers as the foundations of modern accounting from an accounting historiography perspective. Using a qualitative approach, the research employs a non-systematic literature review (non-SLR) of 26 national and international journal articles, supported by primary historical sources on accounting record systems. Data were analyzed through identification, classification, literature synthesis, and thematic analysis. The findings show that double-entry bookkeeping evolved gradually from medieval Italian trade through the development of memoranda, journals, and ledgers as tools for transaction recording, economic control, and trade documentation. This evolution was driven not only by commercial and technical needs but also by social, cultural, political, legal, and economic factors. The study also identifies a historical continuity between traditional ledger systems and contemporary accounting developments, including blockchain-based distributed ledger technology. It concludes that memoranda, journals, and ledgers form part of the multidimensional evolution of accounting knowledge that has shaped accounting practices from the medieval period to the modern digital era.

Todd White, Ryan D. Leece, Thomas G. Calderon, Chris Solano

Cryptocurrency represents the emergence of a new asset class in accounting. This case helps students to think through the challenges associated with accounting for this unique asset by having them play the role of an assistant controller who is tasked with assigning the correct valuation for a recently purchased cryptocurrency asset. By applying the guidelines of the new cryptocurrency standard, Accounting Standards Update No. 2023-08, to the case scenario, students deepen their understanding of fair value accounting, which is often a challenging topic for students to master. Through case analysis, students enhance their knowledge of the accounting regulations pertaining to cryptocurrency, gain the ability to articulate what makes this asset class unique, and come to understand some of the potential ethical issues that could arise when approaching cryptocurrency valuation. Data gathered from pre- and post-tests demonstrate that the case was useful in improving students’ understanding of fair value accounting and how to apply accounting standards in the valuation of cryptocurrency. Furthermore, survey data show students found the case to be a valuable learning tool that increased their awareness of the challenges associated with valuing this distinct asset class.

D. Larry Crumbley, Donald L. Ariail, Amine Khayati

Crypto assets have upset the pillars of regulatory and centralized monetary policy, and the Financial Accounting Standards Board (FASB) has been slow in developing a position on how to account for cryptocurrencies. Currently, there are many accounting, finance, and tax meanings of cryptocurrencies. The purpose of this study is to show the path FASB has taken to develop accounting standards for more than 20,000 crypto assets, outline the positions other authorities and agencies have taken, and discuss Central Bank Digital Currencies since the United States and other countries are considering replacing their fiat currency with a digital currency. Furthermore, the study presents insights from an exploratory survey of accounting faculty opinions on cryptocurrencies. The discussion of virtual currency regulatory and accounting treatments informs the development of a regulatory framework.

Carol P. McLachlan

The accountancy profession of the twenty first century, and the roles therein, are rapidly evolving, transforming, and potentially contracting. As digitalisation deepens, the acceleration of Artificial Intelligence, robotics and distributed ledger accounting threaten to finally sound the death knell for the traditional ‘bean-counter’ stereotype. The purpose of this study was to examine the career boundaries of contemporary chartered accountants, to consider how boundary expanding is expressed in practice. Employing an ethnographical approach, the study investigated the lived experience of accountants’ career boundaries through the auto-ethnographical lens of the researcher, a chartered accountant herself. The research unearthed a rich and diverse collection of boundary-stretching and boundary-contracting case studies, spanning a full career generation, and contributes a new model of ‘career boundary elasticity’ which has implications for the accountancy profession.

Cory Campbell, Sridhar Ramamoorti, Kurt S. Schulzke

Abstract Rapidly evolving fintech and decentralized finance environments present an opportunity to reconsider how best to teach financial reporting, internal controls, auditing, taxation, and accounting information systems. Industrial firms have found considerable success in growing the customer value/cost ratio by applying “design thinking” (DT) to product and service innovation. DT may serve a similar, value-enhancing role in curriculum development and accounting pedagogy. The authors demonstrate the application of DT to the accounting curriculum using non-fungible tokens (NFTs) as an illustration. This chapter defines NFTs and DT, proposes a DT-based curriculum development model, and offers specific recommendations for teaching about NFTs in the classroom.

Stacey Kaden, Jeff Lingwall, Trevor Shonhiwa

ABSTRACT This paper presents the motivation, learning experiences, and practical concerns regarding implementing a code-based method to teach blockchain technology to accounting students. With 53 percent of companies reporting blockchain as a critical priority for their organization, accountants' work will be impacted (Deloitte 2019). Yet, most blockchain education for accountants appears to be limited to theoretical exercises removed from the technology itself. This article details how coding exercises can improve students' understanding of blockchain technology. Students in a graduate accounting data analytics class were introduced to blockchain through a series of scaffolded exercises that engaged them in writing blockchain code in R. Results from implementing this module in a medium-sized accounting program showed that using code-based methods to teach blockchain to accountants was feasible and instructive. We provide code examples and Teaching Notes for those who wish to implement a similar curriculum.

Lorraine Lee, Deniz Appelbaum, Richard D. Mautz

ABSTRACT Organizations such as the AACSB and the Pathways Commission (2012) recommend that accounting curricula include emerging technologies. Yet including emerging technologies represents a challenge for accounting educators due to the complexity and uncertainty associated with such technologies, as well as the rapid pace of technology change and innovation. This paper answers the call by the Pathways Commission (2012) for additional research that is focused on enhancing learning experiences to better reflect current and emerging technologies. Using an experiential learning approach (Butler, Church, and Spencer 2019), we create an interactive learning activity that is focused on bitcoin blockchains and intended to give accounting students a conceptual understanding of blockchain technology and its mechanisms, as well as its implications beyond bitcoins.

Tatyana Ryabova, Susan Henderson

As the accounting profession is rapidly changing, faculty members are challenged with the task of incorporating emerging advances into the accounting curriculum in order to equip students for future success. There is little debate that cryptocurrency is prominent in the business world today, thus prompting attention for accounting professionals and educators is important. In this paper, we document our experiences in introducing cryptocurrencies to undergraduate financial accounting students with the goal of capturing their knowledge and measuring their perceptions of the impact digital currency holds in the current economic environment. To operationalize our research question, students were given a cryptocurrency assignment to complete outside of class and were asked a series of questions in the class period directly after the assignment was due. The results of our case study show that students became more aware of cryptocurrencies and accounting practices associated with them after their completion of this assignment and the vast majority of students found this knowledge would benefit them in their future careers.

Loy D. Lytle, William Kops, Christopher B. Seaman

This is the second paper drawn from a two-phase study aimed at (1) determining how summer sessions are organized and administered at AUSS, NAASS, NCCSS, and WASSA member institutions to better understand the range and diversity of essential summer session functions performed and (2) examining whether these administrative/organizational differences affect performance-based outcomes important to the success of the summer term. The first phase of the study (Kops & Lytle, 2013) reported that the organization and administration of summer session functions—assessed by a 38-item survey returned by 115 member institutions—fell along a centralized/decentralized continuum characterized as highly centralized (all or most functions performed by a single summer session office), hybridized (some functions performed by a summer sessions office while others are devolved to campus units/departments), or decentralized (most functions performed by campus units/departments other than summer session). This paper reports on the total 134 member institutions that completed the 38-item survey. As well, it reports on the findings of an outcomes questionnaire sent to all survey respondents to explore the possible extent to which differences in summer session organizational structures affected selected student-based (unduplicated headcount and credit hours) and finance-based (tuition revenue and instruction-related expenses incurred in teaching courses) performance outcomes in the summer 2012 term. The 38-item survey instrument proved sensitive to how functions important for the summer term are managed and performed at the colleges and universities participating in the study. Although the organizational structure of summer sessions varied significantly among survey respondents, with private institutions somewhat more centralized than publicly funded ones, the results of the outcomes questionnaire indicated that the organizational structure had no significant effect on student-based or finance-based performance outcomes.

Robert H. Chenhall

Being asked to make a short speech as part of accepting the award inevitably leads to some introspection and reflection on major factors that have influenced one's career, be they events or individuals. Past recipients of the award have been very influential in putting management accounting on the map. Some have been instrumental in developing the way we think about management accounting and teach the subject; some have developed important perspectives such as information economics, combining economics with psychology, the importance of national culture, activity-based cost management, and balanced scorecards. The way these recipients developed their thoughts is well told in their acceptance speeches and collectively provides a wealth of ideas and a historical perspective on the development of our discipline.I commenced my studies in economics, and I maintain a keen interest in economic approaches to management accounting. However, early in my academic career, I was pressed into considering an organizational approach to management accounting, not because it was an easier option; rather it addressed the world of management accounting within which I found myself. In this address, I will share with you some personal reflections on the process of my discoveries in the area of organizational approaches to management accounting from the mid-1960s.The backdrop to this address is that research is something of a growth model. Stage 1: starting from a baseline of skills and knowledge gained at undergraduate studies; stage 2: progressing through refinement of skills with more graduate study; and stage 3: consolidating through work toward publications and other academic outputs. Stages 1 and 2 are somewhat planned and incremental, while stage 3 is more often associated with less ordered processes, often stumbling across potential research areas by way of reading and personal interactions. Research projects can be focused around existing ideas, sometimes being somewhat formulaic, sometimes highly innovative. Often ideas can be serendipitous and develop in unpredictable ways. The key is to recognize when there is a management accounting angle that will relate to an important organizational or social issue.I initially thought I would pursue a career in science; however, when it came time to enroll in an undergraduate degree, I selected economics. In the 1960s, economics degrees in Australia were focused on macro- and microeconomics with a strong orientation toward public policy. Macroeconomics examined the behavior of entire economies such as overall price levels, unemployment rates, inflation, and the like. Microeconomics studied the behavior of individual decision-making units, be they individual consumers or organizations, and typically how decisions by these units are coordinated by the market mechanism. While there are many crossovers in examining macro- and microeconomics and both are required to educate economists, most students developed a preference to specialize in either macro or micro issues. I had a preference for matters related to microeconomics.Microeconomics stressed the importance of prices, income, and quantity from the perspective of consumers. Consumer choice was examined by way of indifference curves and budget lines. Market mechanisms were studied mostly assuming perfect competition. Theories related to production functions and cost curves heralded a need to consider the nature of the technology of the firm. Costs were separated into marginal, average, and total costs. Fixed and variable behavior was defined, with the curious idea of marginal fixed costs flagging that costing was deserving of more attention. Marginal analysis and profit maximization required understanding cost behavior, and the various time lines on decisions. Economic profit was seen as cleverer than accounting profit as it included a charge for capital, a notion that sparked much debate later in accounting on issues such as residual income and shareholder value models. Looking back, contemporary management accounting had much to offer these traditional theories in microeconomics as it can unpick the nature of costs and their behavior depending on activity, time, and the nature of decisions involving costs.In some courses, malfunctioning market mechanisms were considered with the economics of environmental protection, including energy and natural resources, flagging an area that would be important in management accounting 30–40 years on. I found these particularly interesting, but public policy in the 1960s was not as focused on the environment as it is now. Other topics that received limited attention but enough to whet the appetite were the economics of poverty, inequality, and discrimination. This list of issues from basic microeconomics is only illustrative of topics, but there are strong echoes in this 1960s material of research agendas that have captured the attention of management accountants over the past 20 years.It was common in Australia during the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s for individuals to go overseas to undertake graduate education, typically to the U.K. or U.S. However, in the mid-1960s, after completing my undergraduate degree, I was keen to enter the workforce and joined a bank as an economic researcher. I was involved in doing feasibility studies for client firms. After a couple of years, I decided to undertake a master's degree in financial management at Southampton University in the U.K. This was my formal introduction to more advanced ideas in finance, financial and management accounting. The area of financial accounting was heavy with theoretical debate on the meaning of income and asset valuation, with theories of finance being articulated and refined. Management accounting was pragmatic and practice oriented with the principles and practices being articulated in well-crafted books published out of both the U.S. and the U.K. In the main, theories were borrowed from financial accounting and finance to consider issues such as valuation, income, and discounted cash flows. There were some spirited debates on issues related to measuring income within divisionalized organizations and the transfer pricing issues that this might generate.Also, management accounting academics provided scholarly accounts on the application of operations research techniques to management accounting issues, such as linear programming and simulation. This generated much excitement but did not seem ever to fulfill its full promise. One suspects that the changes envisaged by the techniques were never accompanied by considering people and implementation issues in innovations driven by formal model building. In the 1990s, management accountants would address these implementation issues, in some depth, when considering changes accompanying the introduction of activity-based accounting and performance measurement systems such as balanced scorecards.On completing my master's degree, I accepted an appointment at Sheffield University. This opened up a new world of management accounting thinking, for me, being led at that time by Tony Lowe and Tony Tinker. While my background and predilections led me to study management accounting from a traditional economics approach, the Sheffield school was developing a much more sociological and critical orientation. More generally, these ideas were being advanced in the U.K. by scholars such as Anthony Hopwood, Wai Fong Chua, David Cooper, and others. While my background and orientation constrained my motivation to embrace these ideas fully at this time, the approach did open my mind to examining the assumptions behind many of the economic theories I had learned in my economics degree and graduate finance courses.My curiosity to examine economic theories with modified assumptions can be traced back to my work on feasibility studies and business plans for firms while working at the bank. Assumptions of rational behavior and perfect knowledge did not fit the business folk with whom I worked in both large- and medium-sized client organizations. While I knew that there were works in economics that had developed theories with assumptions that were flexible and realistic, I had not studied these in depth. My growing awareness that organizational context and individual behavior could be captured in solid economic theories derived from work on the behavioral theory of the firm (e.g., Simons 1947; Lindblom 1959; Cyert and March 1963), from economists who examined the behavioral ramifications of growth models (e.g., Penrose 1959; Marris 1964) and the ideas of Williamson (1975) on differences between market and non-market decision making, management, and service provision. These works had theoretical elegance combining economic and behavioral theories and resonated with my state of mind at this stage. Consideration of these works can still provide insights related to management accounting research and organizations, as can more recent work that focuses on economics and psychology.At about the same time, I became aware of another line of research that was examining diversified firms. The work of the business historian Chandler (1962) examined how divisionalized organizational structures were a response to growing diversification in U.S. firms. There followed a series of studies that examined this association between strategy and structure in the U.S. (Rumelt 1974), U.K. (Shannon 1973), France and Germany (Dyas and Thanheiser 1976), and Japan (Suzuki 1980). This was my introduction to the idea that an administrative arrangement might develop to suit a type of strategy. These studies followed an approach that was emerging known as contingency theories, or more correctly, organizational theories following contingency frameworks.More comprehensive contingency approaches were developed and articulated in the U.S. by Lawrence and Lorsch (1967), Thompson (1967), Perrow (1967), Galbraith (1973); in the U.K., Woodward (1958), Burns and Stalker (1961), the Aston school lead by Pugh and associates (Pugh et al. 1963); and later in Australia by Donaldson (1987). I found that these works combined interesting theories that context mattered when considering administrative change, and the ideas were embedded in practice. These works had a profound impact on the study of organizations and still provide important insights relevant to contemporary settings. Systems theory was also popular in some quarters but perhaps became overly complicated when applications were considered (Bertalanffi 1968). However, the seeds of configuration approaches can be seen in this thinking and important ideas, such as equifinality, are relevant to recognizing that different management control systems (MCS) can suit similar contexts.Around 1973, I returned to Australia, taking up a position at Macquarie University. 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Bonnie J. Knutson, Martin Malk, Raymond S. Schmidgall

Most directors of marketing intuitively know that accepting some business has an opportunity cost of not being able to accept potentially more lucrative business. The decision becomes particularly critical when the prospective contract is for a large event, such as a conference. Some hotels address this matter by, for instance, requiring executive committee approval for all large contracts or all business that involves function space. The decision can be made much earlier and more simply by individual sales representatives or sales managers, however, if they analyze the tradeoffs of any potential contract. An analytical approach can be built into a spreadsheet calculation that takes into account such variables as special room rates, potential banquet revenues and costs, and revenues and costs of other services (e.g., audio-visual support). The decision is more than quantitative, however, and must take into account such factors as the effect on other guests' perceptions of the hotel if, say, facilities are jammed by conventioneers. Those effects cannot be modeled on a spreadsheet and are subject to the marketing director's judgment.