Statement of Financial Accounting Standard No. 130 (SFAS 130) was released in 1997 which required publicly traded companies to separately report comprehensive income in the financial statements. SFAS 130 prescribed three alternative formats for the presentation without mandating any one specific format. SFAS 130 also required certain details of comprehensive income to be displayed prominently in the financial statements. The current study examined the presentation of comprehensive income by a sample of companies traded on the NASDAQ market to determine the predominant method of presentation among these companies, five years after SFAS 130 became effective. Results of the examination of one hundred annual reports showed that a majority of the sampled companies used the third approach, which was to present comprehensive income as part of the Statement of Stockholders’ Equity, as against the first two approaches that favored presentation of comprehensive income on the face of the Income Statement or in a separate statement. Further, the paper also discusses some ancillary findings pertaining to the presentation of the details of comprehensive income.

PurposeThe purpose of the current study is to examine audit committee reports of a sample of companies listed on the NYSE to determine the extent to which these reports contain voluntary disclosures that would indicate compliance with the relevant requirements of the Sarbanes‐Oxley Act (SOX) and the rules imposed by the SEC and NYSE.Design/methodology/approachReviewed the contents of the audit committee reports from the 2004 proxy statements of a random sample of one hundred companies from those listed on the NYSE. These companies were drawn from a variety of industries and represented a wide cross‐section of the total market. The content of audit committee reports was examined to see if the committees voluntarily disclosed, within the body of the report, compliance with the requirements of SOX.FindingsThe results reveal that there is a significant diversity in the form and content of the audit committee reports published in the sample. It appears that while some audit committees treat their report as more than just a regulatory requirement and provide more voluntary disclosure, many others continue to provide only the minimum required information in their report.Research limitations/implicationsThe study focused on the actual body of the audit committee reports to examine disclosures about the compliance with SOX. It is likely that in many cases, the disclosures that did not appear within the audit committee reports may appear elsewhere in the proxy statement. Also, the study only examined audit committee reports of a sample of NYSE companies. Future research might include audit committee reports of those companies in the NASDAQ system.Practical implicationsReaders of audit committee reports might view more favorably the performance of those audit committees whose reports contain more extensive disclosures of the compliance with the SOX requirements.Originality/valueThis paper fulfills a need to know if audit committees are meeting the requirement of SOX and disclosing it. It warns readers that in order to obtain complete information as to the functioning of audit committees, they might need to conduct a complete search of the proxy statements and not only the section relating to the audit committee report.

Purpose – The purpose of this study is to examine students who have recently graduated from the standard 120 credit accountancy program and compare and contrast their ethical perceptions with students who have recently graduated from the AICPA-mandated 150 credit accountancy program which includes 30 extra credits with a focus on ethics. Design/methodology/approach – Recent graduated accounting students from selected Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business were asked to fill out a cross-sectional survey based on Victor and Cullen's Ethical Climate Questionnaire (ECQ) to determine whether a difference exists between the two groups' ethical perceptions. The nine hypotheses derived from the ECQ were tested using an independent sample t-test and Levene's test for the homogeneity of the variances between the two groups. Findings – Compared with graduates of the 120 credit program, 150 credit program graduates scored significantly higher in ethical perceptions on five domains: Company Profit, Friendship, Team Interest, Personal Morality, and Rules, when testing at a confidence level of 95 percent. The two groups were not significantly different in the domains of Self-Interest, Efficiency, Social Responsibility, or Laws. Practical implications – The paper includes implications for the need to encourage ethical intervention through education in the accounting curriculum. This study is part of a growing body of research for teaching ethics within the accounting profession. Originality/value – This paper fulfills an identified need to study business ethics. Corporate scandals in the late 1990s and early this century led to a decline in the public's trust of the accounting profession. Since that time, the government, companies, and universities have attempted to rebuild that trust through a number of methods, such as passing laws requiring better regulation and more disclosure as well as requiring improved ethics education for future accountants.

This study takes a look at the rise in the total auditor compensation that has taken place over the past several years after the passage of Sarbanes-Oxley Act (SOX). Prior research, with the exception of a few studies, has mostly focused on the possible harmful effects of non-audit service fees on the auditor ' s independence. The results of those studies have been mixed, with more studies concluding that non-audit service fees threaten auditor independence. In response to such fi ndings, the government has passed legislation (SOX) banning companies from purchasing certain non-audit services from their audit fi rms with a view to reducing the economic ties between a client and its auditor. However, the published data from a sample of companies show that while the amounts of non-audit fees received by audit fi rms have declined over the last several years, the overall auditor compensation has increased during the same period, even signifi cantly in several cases. In most cases, the rise in the total auditor compensation has been caused by a signifi cant rise in the audit fees paid by a company to its audit fi rm. The current study examines this rise in the total compensation paid by a sample of companies that are the audit clients of the Big Four CPA fi rms and fi nds that SOX has not really succeeded in reducing the economic bonding between a company and its auditor. Moreover, as total auditor compensation indicates a fl ow of money from clients to auditors, regardless of the service for which the money is being paid, the authors suggest that studies involving the issue of auditor compensation and its potential impact on auditor independence should focus primarily on the total auditor compensation and not just a segment of it such as non-audit service fees.

Recent corporate scandals-fueled partly by audit failures-have focused attention on how effective audit committees have been. The Sarbanes-Oxley Act (SOX) imposed increased responsibility on audit committees. But how negligent were they prior to SOX? How proactive were they?