Accounting Assessment Task - The Essay
Learning Outcome Details
Describe the institutional environment of general purpose financial reporting, including the impact of a conceptual framework, regulation and conventional practices.
Prepare transactions and resultants reports reflecting methods used by economic entities to treat critical financial events.
Discipline knowledge and capabilities: appropriate to the level of study related to a discipline or profession.
Problem Solving: creating solutions to authentic (real world and ill-defined) problems.
Description / Requirements -
There have been many suggestions that reports provided to stakeholders should provide a broader set of information about a company's performance than just financial performance. The argument is that companies and organisations should not only report about the economic but also the environmental and social impacts caused by their operations (corporate sustainability reporting). Perrini and Tencati (2006)* define corporate sustainability as the capacity of a firm to continue operating over a long period of time, depends on the sustainability of its stakeholder relationships.
Perrini, F & Tencati, A 2006, 'Sustainability and stakeholder management: The need for new corporate performance evaluation and reporting systems' Business Strategy and Environment, vol.15, iss.5, pp296-308.
Required:
You are required to research information on the issues below, and then write the results of your research in an essay format (introduction, body and conclusion).
1. The main criticisms of traditional financial reporting
2. Theories behind corporate sustainability reporting (discuss 2 relevant theories)
3. The costs and benefits of providing this information
4. And provide your opinion on whether firms should include more than financial information in their annual reports. You must justify your opinion.
Additional information:
You are expected to undertake research in order to complete this task. Review of the above referred journal article can be a good point to start with. Your research must also include further primary-source references i.e. peer-reviewed journals and scholarly books (avoid Wikipedia type material).
Word Limit: 1200 words (excluding references), double-spaced, 12-point Ariel or Times New Roman font. A word count must be included. Students exceeding the word limit by more than 10% will incur a mark penalty.
Students must submit a properly referenced assignment that complies with the Harvard referencing style. This includes in-text citations and a reference list.
Attachment:- Assignment Files.rar