No abstract

Purpose The purpose of this study is to analyze the perception of accountants in relation to the complexity of accounting for financial instruments and in relation to the disclosure of financial instruments in annual reports. Both aspects are relevant for the external users, and for the firms’ internal management. Design/methodology/approach The database comprises questionnaires answered by accountants from Brazil and Chile. Data were analyzed based on reliability statistics and multivariate regression analysis. Findings The main results indicate that accountants perceive the accounting for derivatives, hedge accounting, fair value measurement of financial instruments and the respective disclosure of these operations as a complex issue. These findings are interesting considering that there are detailed accounting standards relating to financial instruments. Research limitations/implications The results indicate that education and gender affect the perception of complexity about accounting of derivatives. Practical implications Findings from this research show that accountants do perceive derivatives as complex items for accounting, particularly accounting for hedges. Social implications The results can motivate some initiatives for training activities and for teaching academic content about financial instruments in undergraduate courses. Originality/value To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first study that tests some personal characteristics of accountants (namely, professional experience, education and gender), in contrast to their perceptions about complexity of accounting for derivatives.

The literature on serious games (SGs) indicates that they are very useful tools to improve the teaching/learning process. In this paper, we analyze some potential benefits of a SG on academic performance of undergraduate accounting students. The database is comprised of scores obtained by students during an undergraduate discipline related with accounting history. The game was presented to the students during the academic semester of the discipline; they also developed an academic activity using the concepts of this game. The main results of the paper indicate that students who used the game and scored the maximum grade in this activity also registered higher indexes of academic performance in such discipline. These results reinforce the benefits of the SG to interact with undergraduate students and teach academic content.

The main purpose of this research is to analyze the relationship between characteristics of hiring firms and the perception of auditors/accountants that provide services to them regarding complexity in the elaboration/disclosure of sensitivity analyses and risk management. We seek to analyze whether characteristics of firms that have a better level of disclosure could also be associated with the complexity perceived by the professionals that provide services to such firms concerning the information to do with sensitivity analyses and risk management. Information about risk management arouses considerable debate in the area of accounting and finance; nevertheless, how it is addressed, from the point of view of the professionals, still deserves more attention. The results of this study may lead to an improvement, or even a revision, of the standards related with sensitivity analyses and risk management involving financial instruments. The study sample was composed of respondents from South America, namely accountants and auditors from Brazil and Chile. The perception of complexity was evaluated through a structured questionnaire, which was applied using electronic forms. Regarding the explanatory variables, the quantitative model considers the following characteristics of hiring firms: auditor type; firm size; industry; listed firms; transparency; exporting firms. The main advancement provided by this research lies in it revealing that some characteristics of companies usually associated with better levels of disclosure are not necessarily reflected in the perception by accountants/auditors of lower levels of complexity in the elaboration/disclosure of sensitivity analyses and risk management.

Este tutorial esta disponível em vídeo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hgAOoBdjsCo&t=1s.