Act 211 Principles Of Accounting I: Ethics And Social Respon

Act 211 Principles Of Accounting Iethics And Social Responsibilitysar

Act 211 Principles Of Accounting Iethics And Social Responsibilitysar

ACT 211, Principles of Accounting I Ethics and Social Responsibility Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002 Like all structures, accounting requires a strong foundation. For accounting, part of that foundation is the ethical behavior of those who practice its rules. Ethics refers to a code or moral system that provides criteria for evaluating right and wrong behavior: Investors, creditors, government, and the general public rely on ethical behavior among those who record and report the financial activities of businesses. A lack of public trust in financial reporting can undermine business and the economy. The dramatic collapse of Enron in 2001 and the dismantling of the accounting firm Arthur Andersen in 2002 severely shook investors’ confidence in the stock market.

Some questioned the creditability of corporate America and well as the accounting profession. Public outrage over a number of accounting scandals at high-profile companies increased the pressure on lawmakers to pass measures that would restore creditability and investor confidence in the financial reporting process. These pressures resulted in the issuance of the Public Company Accounting Reform and Investors Protection Act on 2002, commonly referred to as the Sarbanes-Oxley Act (SOX ), named for the two congressmen who sponsored the bill. On July 30, 2002 President Bush signed into law the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002 (H.R. 3763).

This law affects the accounting profession like no bills enacted since The Security Exchange Acts of 1934 and the Securities Act of 1933. It is a federal law that mandates certain practices in financial record keeping and reporting for corporations. The Sarbanes-Oxley Act provides for the regulation of auditors and the types of services they furnish to clients, increases accountability of corporate executives, addresses conflicts of interest for securities analysts, and provides for stiff criminal penalties for violators. These increased requirements have dramatically increased the need for good accounting and, at the same time, highlighted the value of accounting information to investors and creditors.

This law contains eleven provisions (Titles I-XI) that place requirements on all U.S. public companies and their management and boards of directors, as well as public accounting firms. A number of provisions also apply to privately held companies, such as the willful destruction of evidence to impede a federal investigation. Please familiarized yourself with the bill. Use the link below to assist in completing this assignment: In addition to the Sarbanes-Oxley act, the United States Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA ), administers and enforces the Whistleblower provisions of more than twenty (20) statutes including financial reform. These statutes protect employees from retaliatory actions administered by employers.

You can read more here: Important as such legislation is in supporting the ethical foundation of accounting, it is equally important that accountants themselves have their own personal standards for ethical conduct. Accountants need to develop their ability to identify ethical situations and know the difference between right and wrong in the context of accounting topics. One of the keys to ethical decision making is having an appreciation for how your actions affect others. When you face ethical dilemmas in your professional life (and also personal life), you can apply the following framework as you think what to do: I. Identify the ethical situation and the people who will be affected (the stakeholders). II. Identify prevailing frameworks (laws, standards, codes, etc.) to use as a guide. III. Specify the options for alternative courses of action. IV. Understand the impact on the stakeholders. V. Decide on the best course of action. Required : Complete requirements 1-5 below. Be sure to provide thorough answers by addressing each of the prompts. You will be required to identify specific elements of Sarbanes-Oxley (1-4) as outlined in each requirement. 1. Title I, requires the establishment of the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board (PCAOB). Provide an overview of Title I and its major sections. 2. Title II, Section 201, dictates that auditors providing audit services are not to render certain services to the company client. Further, the law requires preapproval by the audit committee for those non-audit services that are not expressly forbidden by this Act. There are eight specific services that are outside the scope of practice of auditors (prohibited activities). Please list, explain, and include the importance of prohibiting these activities. See the SEC link here for expanded information. 3. Title II, Section 203 outlines the rule for audit partner rotation. Please explain the proposed rule and why this provision is deemed important. 4. Title IV, Section 404 specifies important work required by auditors during the course of an audit. Please explain. Include in your explanation, how this information is communicated to the public and users of financial statements. 5. Required: Address the ethical dilemma below by applying the framework above to solve the problem. Ethical Dilemma: You work for a large publicly-held corporation as a staff accountant. You recently became a licensed CPA in the state of Massachusetts and you are bound by a code of ethics and rules of professional conduct. a. Three months ago, a new CFO was hired. She is very experienced and receives substantial compensation package in the form of salary and bonuses paid in shares of company stock. She is a dynamic leader. She seems to like your work. At last month’s team building event, she engaged in a private conversation with you, indicating that she thought that you were a great candidate for a future promotion to a management position. b. Last week, at the end of the quarter, she called you into her office and verbally informed you that a substantial liability was overstated and instructed you to make an adjusting journal entry. As a result of the adjustment, quarterly net income increased ten percent. During the quarter, there was a substantial drop in sales. This adjustment would more than cover the decrease in sales. In fact, it would substantially boost the favorability of the stock. c. This adjustment seems to be out of the range of normal for the company and you feel uncomfortable. This is a delicate situation. You do not want to lose your job by not following directions of the CFO but you also do not want to violate any ethical standards or company policies. d. You are aware of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act and you review the provisions to determine if this adjustment is in violation of any of its provisions. You also review the company policies for guidance. Please provide an explanation of possible requirements and/or violations, as outlined in the law. Consider internal controls that may be in place by the company given the dollar magnitude of the adjustment. Consider the information that you may need to substantiate making the adjusting entry and how you will respond to the request of the CFO. Use the framework outlined above to decide on the best course of action. Note: As part of completing this assignment, please review the University’s academic integrity policies to avoid unintentional plagiarism. The final paper may not exceed three pages in length (double spaced), plus any exhibits. Final Essay Stage 2- Outline and Resources 1. Use either an Alphanumeric Outline, a Decimal Outline, or a sentence hierarchical outline. 2. The list of resources you expect to use includes websites, books and films. This should be in the form of an Annotated Bibliography. To see the entire description of the Final Project, click here > Final Project. Final Project Info You should select a director who was active (directed more than 3 movies) during the time period of . In your term paper, give me the basic details of the director's life and career. Identify some of the director's most important films. What honors and awards did the director receive? Provide a sampling of critical opinion about the director's work (i.e., film reviews or articles). View at least two films by your director and comment on them (one of them can be a film you would have watched previously for the class). Do not summarize any plots. Write about how this director used the following in these films: Editing (montage), Sound and Music, Cinematography, Special Camera Work (steady cam, hand held, optical effects), Special Effects (this can include stunt work). (b) Select one film of feature length made during the time period of 1970 – 2000. You are not to use a film already used by you, the instructor or the course content. In your term paper, you should present information about the making of the movie, about its success at the box office, about awards it was nominated for and/or received. Also present a sampling of the critical reaction to the film, from both the time of its release and later. Finally, you should watch the film and react to it. Do not summarize the plot. Assume that I've already seen the film. In addition, write about how this director used the following in these films: Editing (montage), Sound and Music, Cinematography, Special Camera Work (steady cam, hand held, optical effects), Special Effects (this can include stunt work). (c) This option is more of a research option that the other two. You are to take a topic or item with in an element of film making and write a short research paper on its development. For example, if you want to write about camera development, take a more focused part of that broader topic such as the steady cam and use that as your subject. You do not need to get too technical in your paper. Some broader topics include: Camera Development, Projection and Viewing in Theaters, Film, Special Effects, Director Training, Actor Training, and Editing As you prepare for the Outline of your Final Paper , here are some things to keep in mind: Wherever you are in your writing process, it's important to remember that you're trying to show me what you've learned in the course Make observations and connections and integrate vocabulary and concepts we're learning Think about the organization. Simply listing the elements in the assignment prompt is not an outline The thesis statement is the most important part of the outline I would like to see a full sentence outline. The more complete your work is now, the more helpful and substantive my feedback can be. I look forward to seeing how your work is developing! You should plan to spend about more time on this stage of the assignment (research and outline) than on the final stage of the assignment (rough draft and polish) OUTLINE I. Alfred Hitchcock: One of the Greatest Directors of All Time 1. Known as “the Master of Suspense†Hitchcock is notably one of the most influential and extensively studied filmmakers in the history of cinema. 2. Alfred Hitchcock was also a brilliant technician who deftly blended sex, suspense and humor while creating a number of motifs and devices – most famously the MacGuffin – to advance his intricate plots in addition to being a talented director. II. Life and Career Life 1. Alfred Hitchcock was born in Leytonstone, England on August 13, 1899. He was the youngest of three children born to William and Emma Jane Hitchcock. Over the years some have tried to suggest Hitchcock’s Catholicism as the source of the twisted themes he explored in his work. Film critics have traced his recurring cinematic motifs of guilt and fear to his Catholic sensibilities. 2. After attending a technical school at 15, Hitchcock spent the first years of his career as a draftsman, advertising designer, and writer. An interest in photography led to him working in London's film industry, first as a title card designer for silent movies and, just five years later, as a director. Career 1. Hitchcock’s career began in the reign of Queen Victoria and ended in the presidency of Jimmy Carter, moving from London to Hollywood, from a title designer on silent movies to becoming one of the world’s most famous directors. The first movie he directed was the silent Number ); his last was the much noisier Family Plot (1976). 2. During his career, he created over fifty feature films in a career that saw not only the development of Hitchcock's own distinctive directorial style, but also landmark innovations in cinema. Hitchcock has been credited with pioneering many camera and editing techniques for peers and aspiring directors to emulate. III. Honors and Awards Honors 1. Hitchcock collected many professional accolades including two Golden Globes, eight Laurel Awards, and five lifetime achievement awards. He was a five-time Academy Award nominee for Best Director and in 1940, his film Rebecca won the Oscar for Best Picture. 2. Hitchcock was granted a knighthood by Queen Elizabeth in 1980, shortly before his death. A knighthood is a title that is given to a man by a British king or queen for his achievements or his service to his country. Awards 1. Academy Awards, USA. 1968. Winner. Irving G. Thalberg Memorial Award. 1961. Nominee. Oscar. Best Director. Psycho (1960) Golden Globes, USA. Primetime Emmy Awards. BAFTA Awards. Academy of Science Fiction, Fantasy & Horror Films, USA. 2. In 2008, four of his movies were named in American Film Institute's Top 10 Mystery Films of all time: Dial M for Murder (No. 9), North by Northwest (No. 7), Rear Window (No. 3) and Vertigo (No. 1). Critical Opinions/Reviews Opinions 1. In 2012 when the film critics polled by Sight and Sound voted “Vertigo’ the greatest film of all time, kicking Orson Welles’s “Citizen Kane’ from a top spot it had enjoyed for decades. 2. Wellesians bit their knuckles, and the rest of us scratched our heads. “Vertigo’ is not Hitchcock’s best, but rather, with its lush morbidity, somnolent pace, poor box office and relative scarcity of jokes, the Hitchcock film for those who most wish he were French. Flops make film critics feel useful — they are the film-crit equivalent of the deserving poor. What else can you do with a gleaming hit maker except overpraise his misses? Reviews 1. Since his death in 1980, books have multiplied like gravestones, now numbering in the hundreds, with his biographers falling into two camps. There are those who side with Donald Spoto in “The Dark Side of Genius’ (1983), who had him pegged as a troubled man whose deepest creative energies were coupled with fear, lust, sadism and a thoroughly unwholesome interest in his actresses — a creep with a movie camera. 2. A man of “exaggeratedly delicate sensibilities,’ according to John Houseman, driven by fear, guilt and loathing of his own body, yet dainty to the point of effeminacy in his gestures and attitudes, wielding his bulk with the grace of Fatty Arbuckle. “Never ruffled, never gave any sign of being worried, was always in control,’ Karl Malden said of working with the director. III. Conclusion Alfred Hitchcock. No introduction necessary really. One of the greatest directors of 20th Century cinema, to this day he is still a huge influence to directors and film students around the world; his films just as popular with audiences now as back when Cary Grant was scrabbling across rooftops on the Riviera or running away from malicious biplanes. Motel owners are still very much on the fence about him however. Annotated Bibliography Alfred Hitchcock. (n.d.). This website provided information in regards to the early life and legacy of Alfred Hitchcock. This website provided early life information and details about his early education. It provided essential data integral to research for my final research paper. Alfred Hitchcock. (n.d.). This website provided information in regards to the various awards Alfred Hitchcock was nominated. Alfred Hitchcock's Early Career. (2015, August 13). Retrieved from This website provided information in regards to the early life and career of Alfred Hitchcock. Alfred Hitchcock. (2016, May 24). This website provided information in regards to the various Oscar nominations for various Alfred Hitchcock movies. As I stated in my proposal, Hitchcock never won an Oscar, but this website provided details in regards to many nominations. Alfred Hitchcock: TV Guide. (n.d.). This website provided additional information pertaining to Alfred Hitchcock’s biography. Although there were many sources that provided biographical information pertaining to Hitchcock’s life and career, the TV Guide provided some unusual information. Mystery. (n.d.). This website provided information about Alfred Hitchcock’s films that ended up in the top ten mystery films of all times. This was no small feat as there were many mystery films eligible for this category. Once again, this proves why Hitchcock is one of the greatest directors of all time. The Man Who Knew His Faith: The Catholicism of Alfred Hitchcock. (n.d.). This website provided a wealth of information in regards to Alfred Hitchcock’s Catholic faith and how it impacted his filmmaking. Paper 2 Instructions This is essentially the same assignment as Paper One BUT about a film produced between 1970 and 2000. Part 1: View a feature film made between 1970 – 2000 you have not seen before (or will see later in this class) by a great director or featuring a great actor or actress. Just as you did in the first paper, comment on the specific film you saw. Pay particular attention to the screenplay, camerawork (cinematography), the editing (montage), and the sound (including music). For this paper, also address special effects. Again, as you did in the first paper, talk about what you like and what you dislike? Why do you like the things you like, and why do you dislike the things you dislike? Is the film a good film, or is it not? Part 2: Now that you have commented on the specific film you viewed, see if you can draw some general conclusions about the work of the director and one of the main actors or actresses. Be sure to comment on the overall impression you had of the film, including how you see it as an example of the genre and its time period. Remember, this film review is based on your opinions and insights: Do not repeat what you have learned by reading up on the film or the filmmaker. Part 3: Go back to the "My Criteria for Quality in Film" page. Based on your viewing of this week's film, add four new general conclusions. These statements should be numbered (5) through (8). Be sure to include all of the criteria you created for Paper One.