The Wall Street Journal, tại C1 (ngày 26 tháng ba năm 1996), Giới thiệu tóm tắt, Dukerich, Brown, Brett, "Có gì sai với Báo cáo của Ủy ban Treadway? Thí nghiệm phân tích ảnh hưởng của các giá trị và mã cá nhân ứng xử trên báo cáo tài chính gian lận, "15 Tạp chí Đạo Đức kinh doanh 183 (1996). | Andersen Has the Solution Really SUMMARY AND CONCLUSION As I have said several times principles-based accounting standards require principled people. To have principled people society needs to set in motion forces that will encourage behaviors that add to the common good and work for the public interest. At the same time it needs to have and use a series of disincentives for those who break the public trust. With respect to accounting I agree with Levitt s oft-quoted declaration that we need a culture change. The process is simple to state Managers and their professional advisers have to renounce the philosophy of earnings management and replace it with an attitude that understands that investors and creditors are members of the business community. Managers must learn that investors and creditors are not outside the process they are not the enemy and they are not to be despised. They are the capital customers of the business and because of this managers need to treat them with as much respect as they treat their product A simple example explains the difference in viewpoint. Consider when a firm applies straight-line depreciation to a piece of equipment. Everyone in the business community understands that this is not an engineering marvel for no one knows the life or the salvage value of the property and thus the computation of depreciation is somewhat arbitrary and inaccurate. What happens next however depends very much on the mind-sets of managers and their professional advisers. One way of viewing this situation is to think of it as an opportunity to massage corporate earnings. If earnings otherwise are small this year managers might lengthen the life of the equipment and increase the estimate of the salvage value. In this manner depreciation expense is lowered and net income is increased. Alternatively if earnings are healthy during this fiscal period managers could decrease the life of the asset and reduce the salvage value. Depreciation is .
