Accounting Research Project on Contemporary Accounting Issues ACC3005

This research project delves into contemporary issues in accounting, exploring various aspects like research methodologies, financial reporting quality, and fraudulent activities. The project examines the significance of accounting in business, highlighting its role in investment analysis, financial record-keeping, fundraising, and building prestige. It investigates the problems faced by investors and entrepreneurs due to accounting issues. The research employs a theoretical framework using inductive, deductive, pragmatic, ethical, and behavioral approaches, along with the agency theory. The literature review covers relevant studies on research methods, financial reporting quality, and accounting fraud. The findings reveal challenges related to research methodologies, skilled workforce, organizational environment, efficiency in accounting measurements, and fraudulent activities. The project recommends focusing on the quality of research methods, addressing fraudulent acts, providing current skills training, encouraging corporate governance, and improving the investment environment. The project aims to provide insights into the current landscape of accounting practices and provide recommendations for improvement.

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Accounting Research Project
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Introduction
Accounting is an integral part of any business where efficient analysis of finance is a
concern. The accounting process help businesses in reviewing the profitability status and all the
financial processes of the business (Anandarajan, Anandarajan and Srinivasan, 2012, pp.21-54).
This paper, therefore, present a research report on the contemporary issues associated with
accounting.
Background information
Accounting which is recognized as the language of finance and business that originated
in the east but flourished in Europe. This concept is not new as it was used a thousand years ago
with the ancient citizens when dealing with money problems, especially in issues of trading
goods and recording expenditure. However, the current accounting has brought about numerous
advanced techniques to improve the practice and implementation in practical life.
Statement of the problem
Some investors or entrepreneurs fail to achieve their goal profit due to some critical issues in
accounting. Accounting plays an important role in giving solutions to the financial dilemma in an
investment in the following ways;
 Accounting helps in investment analysis. Through efficient analysis of the financial
statement, the investor will be able to make appropriate decisions that will enable them to
achieve maximum benefit in their investment.
 Accounting helps in financial record keeping. It helps maintain and promote a record of
the finances of a business, which later can help in judging the financial and the economic
conditions of the countries and development of working strategies policies.

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 Accounting helps in fundraising. With a clear picture of financial affairs, one can be
aware of what need is it to fund and loan in the less a critical way.
 Lastly, accountings help in prestige and accounting building, with the accounting all
financial proceeding depicts an honest submission of inventories. This helps to gain
prestige and building a reputation.
As such, it is relevant to understand the contemporary issues that are associated with
accounting. This has precipitated the need to venture into this critical aspect.
Objective of the study.
To investigate the critical issues in accounting and to evaluate regulatory, sustainability
of contemporary research.
Theoretical framework
Five detailed research methodologies are used to develop the theory. They include
deductive, inductive, pragmatic, ethical and behavioral approaches. They have in one way or
another given rise to specific accounting theories either directly or indirectly (Hadi, 2019, pp.96-
109). The ethical approach emphasizes fairness of truth and justice. Inductive theories are
considered to be descriptive and require empirical verification testing, it can be described as
being generalized observation to conclusion. Deductive theories are normative, it is structured
around the logical relation and identity of the accounting process. The pragmatic approach is
equal to the inductive and deductive approach.
A behavioral approach to research also gives details as an encompassing element of
sociological theories towards psychological and organizations. This approach states that the
relationship between an individual and the organization is valuable preterm to view accounting
research. However, it claims that the ethical approaches and the behavior have earned more

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respect within the accounting profession in the previous many decades. And recently viewed as
supportive methods of accounting and not the independent research methodologies (Schroeder et
al., 2014).
Agency theory is another known theory used in accounting literature and it tries to
explain accounting activities or practices as a whole. This is an institutional theory that is derived
from a neoclassical economic view of maximization of utility as in principal-agent relationship
perception (Hewege, 2012, pp. 15- 17).
Literature review
Financial accounting has become a topic of concern in the recent times. This is suggested
by the massive literature on this topic. However, many studies focus on accounting in general
while the contemporary issues is given less concern; limited literature look at this critical aspect.
To the best of my knowledge, the articles reviewed here are the relevant works that have
ventured this critical aspect in financial accounting.
Smith (2017, pp.21-32) examines research methods in accounting. The scholar opines
that the research methods is one of the critical areas that are associated with issues in accounting.
He further argue that most research on accounting are not research but they are just a
rationalization or correlation analysis of observed activities. The author has not however done
research on the assumptions that are inherent in the theory. But he expound that accounting
cannot be a subject of scientific research since it does not qualify to be called a science. The
author draw reference to Ormston, Spencer, Barnard and Snape (2014, pp.52-55) where he
identifies three attributes of research findings that a research must have in order to contribute to
knowledge that lead to a positive change.

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Hoque, Covaleski and Gooneratne, (2013, pp.1170-1198), on the other hand expound that
for a good accounting research, the research methods cannot be independent of the research
questions. According to the author’s view, the research questions cannot be formulated unless it
is believed by the researchers that the answers provided by the research questions are of
fundamental relevance. However, this cannot be verified until the research is done.
Gibson (2012, pp.4-28), on its side examines the issues related to financial reporting and
quality. According to the author, lack of quality reporting is a major contemporary issue in
financial accounting. Various elements of quality are also examined. As he states, the essential
principles of assessing the quality in financial reporting depends on six main factors including
relevance, reliability, understandability, comparability, faithful representation and timeliness.
In their study, Lisic, Silveri, Song, and Wang (2015, pp.1186-1195) examines
contemporary issues in financial accounting regarding frauds, audit as well as the role of
government sanction in China. According to the authors, accounting fraud has considerable
effects in accounting and finance. The authors discuss how ethical reinforcements can be done to
keep away from these challenges. According to the scholars, ethical principles should be adopted
in the organization system and should be followed by directors during decision making
especially in the occasions where they may operate outside the organization laws.
A report by McAuley and Yang (2016, pp. 625-635), on the other hand provides
solutions to the contemporary issues regarding fraudulent acts in financial accounting and keep
away from challenges while handling most complicated issues on accounting (Christensen,
Cottrell and Baker, 2013, pp.43). According to the authors, addressing such issues provides
findings essential in dealing with the accounting frauds.
Conclusion

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In conclusion, this document has presented a research on the contemporary issues in
accounting. This is achieved through qualitative analysis aligned with the objectives and research
questions. Various ethical issues as well as theories were analyzed. The document also explore a
number of literature related to the subject of study and further provided recommendation for the
issues identified. Based on the analysis, it is worth noting that research methods in accounting is
of fundamental relevance in financial accounting.
Research Findings
In the research, it was realized that the accounting faces some contemporary issues
discussed as follows. Lack of proper research methodologies in accounting may be a
contemporary challenge in accounting. His may mainly due to Illiteracy. This is the lack of the
required latest skills. Accounting requires every profession to have the latest and modified pieces
of training, ancient models and skills to make their function more productive In addition to that,
Proficient workforce as accounting has become one of the most demanding professions, because
of the increasing competition in the field of business where accounting is becoming a basic need
of every business. Hence the need for a skilled accountant. Another cause is organizational
environment and culture. This has been another back lock in accounting as they may enhance or
fail to enhance the reputation, efficiency, and quality of its practices
Efficiency in accounting measurements. This is another critical issue concerning the
accounting report quality and measurements. When there lacks transparency or poor quality of
financial reports will hinder the investment. Measurement of quality.to measure the efficiency
and attainment of its efficiency has been very difficult in the accounting field. Maintaining the
quality of the accountings helps in implementing some low and regulations to protect procedural
quality.

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Additionally, fraudulent activities may also affect accounting in various ways. This may
eventually lead to collapse of accounting profession and economic crisis among others.
Recommendations
Based on the findings, it is recommended that the;
 It is suggested that quality of research methods in financial accounting should be focused
on when doing research in financial accounting.
 It is also suggested that dealing with fraudulent acts should be a priority to eliminate the
contemporary challenges in financial accounting.
 Moreover, the institutions that provide education on accounting should provide the
current required skills to help employ trained personnel with the latest skills training.
 For the gain of a beneficial investment, every organization needs to employ an
accountant.
 Organizations should encourage corporative role governance which will provide an
opportunity in enhancing the efficiency of the organizational system.
 The investors should improve the investment area to ensure that the environment is
secure enough, and the culture of the business should be that which does not hinder
accounting issues; it should be that which improves the financial aspect of the business.

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References
Anandarajan, M., Anandarajan, A. and Srinivasan, C.A. eds., 2012. Business intelligence
techniques: a perspective from accounting and finance.pp.21-54. Springer Science & Business
Media.
Christensen, T., Cottrell, D. and Baker, R., 2013. Advanced financial accounting. McGraw-Hill,
pp.43.
Gibson, C.H., 2012. Financial reporting and analysis.pp.4-28. Nelson Education.
Hadi, D.A., 2019. Sharia Accounting Theory in Indonesia in Moral Perspective. Global Business
and Management Research, 11(1), pp.96-109.
Hewege, C. R., 2012. A critique of the mainstream management control theory and the way
forward. Sage Open, 2(4), doi: 2158244012470114 [9]. Schroeder, R. G., Clark, M. W., &
Cathey, J. M. (2014). Financial accounting theory and analysis: Text and cases (11th ed., pp. 15-
17). Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
Hoque, Z., A. Covaleski, M. and N. Gooneratne, T., 2013. Theoretical triangulation and
pluralism in research methods in organizational and accounting research. Accounting, Auditing
& Accountability Journal, 26(7), pp.1170-1198.

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Lisic, L.L., Silveri, S.D., Song, Y. and Wang, K., 2015. Accounting fraud, auditing, and the role
of government sanctions in China. Journal of Business Research, 68(6), pp.1186-1195.
McAuley, J. and Yang, A., 2016, April. Addressing complex and subjective product-related
queries with customer reviews. In Proceedings of the 25th International Conference on World
Wide Web (pp. 625-635). International World Wide Web Conferences Steering Committee.
Ormston, R., Spencer, L., Barnard, M. and Snape, D., 2014. The foundations of qualitative
research. Qualitative research practice: A guide for social science students and researchers, 2,
pp.52-55.
Smith, M., 2017. Research methods in accounting, pp.21-32. Sage.