"The Great Depression was a time of incomparable financial desperation in America. Thugs with submachine guns and square-jawed G-men have long dominated the vernacular images of fear, lawlessness, and corruption set against the decimating poverty of that decade. But little known-until now-are the many serial dramas that played out in homes and hideouts, courtrooms and cold cases across the country. In a time of panic, legal lethargy, corruption, and incompetence, there was one sure-fire means to make money, one that was seized upon by both criminals and resourceful civilians. Best of all, one likely to go unpunished: kidnapping. Gritty, visceral, and thoughtfully reported, The Kidnap Years chronicles a forgotten time in America's history when the economic hardships of the Great Depression and the low legal risk of kidnapping led to a sweep of abductions that afflicted all corners of the country"--
On February 25, 1957, the nude, badly bruised body of a young boy was found in a cardboard box in trash-strewn woods of north Philadelphia. Posters of the "Boy in the Box" soon dotted the city and police stations nationwide-to no avail. In November 1998 the remains were exhumed for DNA analysis, and the boy was reburied as "America's Unknown Child." The Boy in the Box is the first book to examine America's most famous unsolved case of child murder-one that led to the "Stranger Danger" child safety campaign and a Law & Order episode. Written in a fast-paced style and featuring
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ABSTRACTThis paper extends the self-reflections presented earlier in Stout (2016) to include some of the things I learned over the years in terms of publishing in accounting education. I offer these new reflections from the perspective of my experience over many years as an author, editor, and consumer of accounting education literature. I provide comments related to publishing instructional resources in accounting education (including educational cases) and to publishing research articles. I also offer general comments regarding publishing in accounting education, including comments as to the suitability (defensibility) of these scholarly pursuits. The manuscript complements other recent papers in the area by focusing more narrowly on the publication process in accounting education. The contents of this paper may be of interest to those wishing to enhance their publication potential in the field of accounting education.
ABSTRACTThis paper provides best practices evidence from a sample of accounting educators in the U.S. recognized formally for their teaching excellence. These teaching exemplars were surveyed and asked to list, in their own words and in ranked order of importance, "a minimum of three and up to five factors or qualities of your teaching that you believe have helped distinguish you as an effective teacher." We received 453 responses to this question from our sample of 105 award-winning accounting educators. A content analysis of these responses suggests the following major characteristics of teaching effectiveness in accounting (in decreasing order of perceived importance): class session learning environment, student focus, preparation and organization, importance of the practice environment, passion and commitment to teaching (as a profession), and the design of the course learning environment. Response breakdowns suggest the existence of contextual effects: differences in importance ratings for selected characteristics of teaching effectiveness were observed with respect to respondent professorial rank, years of full-time teaching experience, and gender. Results shine a light on teaching effectiveness in accounting education providing, for the first time, both evidence of the perceived relative importance of specific characteristics, as well as insights on pedagogical knowledge to guide educator classroom pursuits.
ABSTRACT: Elora Electronics, Limited (EEL), a fictitious company, manufactures sophisticated, high-tech electronic equipment. Though successful in the past, the company has seen a decline in the number of bids it has won. Management is especially concerned about the bids the company recently lost on one of its main products, a sophisticated radar system. Most of the contracts for EEL, including those for the radar system, are bid on a "cost-plus" basis. Up to this point, divisional managers have used a simple average of recent actual costs to estimate costs for contract-bidding purposes. Such a procedure was deemed useful for cost-control purposes because actual costs have consistently been below budgeted costs. However, given the changed competitive environment in which EEL now finds itself, these managers are now wondering whether the contract-bidding process can be made more successful through the use of a more sophisticated approach to cost estimation. For purposes of completing this case, assume that you were recently hired by EEL as a management accountant for the Radar Unit. For your first assignment you have been asked to use Excel (or other software, such as SPSS) to analyze and model the direct labor-hour (DLH) consumption associated with the production of radar units. (The production of these units requires a significant amount of highly skilled labor.) You have a set of historical observations to which you've been asked to fit both linear and nonlinear functions (in the form of learning curves); these observations relate to the last 14 radar units produced by EEL. Among other tasks, you will need to generate and interpret for management the statistical output associated with the model-fitting task and to recommend to the company a particular model for cost-estimation purposes. There is an expectation that the model you recommend will be used by EEL for contract-bidding purposes. To prepare adequately for your cost-analysis project, you will need to complete two "refresher" tutorials presented as appendices to the case.
ABSTRACTSurveys of practitioners point to the importance of leadership skills in the accounting profession. However, leadership is not currently emphasized much within accounting curricula. Further, a review of the accounting education literature indicates a lack of instructional resources for accounting faculty desiring to help students develop leadership skills. As a result, accounting students may graduate without the mindset required to think of themselves as potential leaders. Therefore, there are opportunities to add value to accounting curricula by intervening in the area of leadership development. This article describes one such intervention that can be used as part of a comprehensive approach to leadership development. The primary goal of this three-week module is modest but important: to help instill a leadership mindset in accounting students. The class-tested module consists of targeted cases and supplementary readings covering six primary leadership topics. These topics were selected to build upon leadership material covered in a basic management course. While the module was used in undergraduate cost accounting, it (or a suitably reduced version of it) is appropriate for use in other accounting courses, particularly upper-level courses. This article offers implementation guidance and resources for the accounting instructor, including access to electronic files that can be used to teach the module. Assessment data from the students who recently completed this module indicate that they viewed the module as a beneficial learning experience.
ABSTRACTThe AAA/J. Michael and Mary Anne Cook/Deloitte Foundation Prize is an award designed to recognize up to three currently active faculty members annually for teaching excellence in accounting. This paper has a three-fold objective: (1) provide an additional mechanism for promoting the Cook Prize as a formal means of rewarding and—in the words of the Pathways Commission (2012)—"shining a light" on teaching excellence in accounting; (2) share with other accounting faculty the self-reflective insights on effective and ineffective teaching practices from the first six recipients of the Cook Prize; and (3) compare Cook Prize recipient responses to those of other accounting educator exemplars reported previously in the literature. With regard to categorical identification of effective and ineffective teaching practices, we find general agreement between Cook Prize recipients and accounting educator exemplars, as reported by Stout and Wygal (2010) and Wygal and Stout (2015). Further analysis identifies purposeful planning perspectives common to Cook Prize respondents that inform their teaching strategies. Collectively, these insights from accounting exemplars should be of interest to accounting faculty members who wish to improve their teaching effectiveness, to individuals considering a teaching career in accounting, and to those seeking to inform their professional/teaching development.
The authors of this manuscript have served as editors of two major accounting education journals for the decade ending in 2005. During this period, we evaluated approximately 500 research manuscripts submitted to the "Main Section" of Issues in Accounting Education and the Journal of Accounting Education. We performed a content-analysis of the files of research manuscripts that had been rejected to determine both primary and secondary reasons for rejection. We find that, by far, most manuscript rejections occur after a first-round review (i.e., after initial submission). We also find that, for the most part, the reasons accounting education research manuscripts are rejected are consistent over time, journal, and editor. The reasons for rejection are generally manifested early in the life of the project. Primary reasons for rejection are (1) a poorly motivated study, (2) a poorly designed study, and/or (3) an insignificant contribution to the accounting education literature. Poor writing is a common secondary reason for rejecting accounting education research manuscripts. The most common reason a manuscript was rejected after resubmission was the failure of the author to adequately address concerns expressed by reviewers and the editor during previous review rounds. We include an appendix that provides sources of guidance for getting manuscripts published in accounting education journals.
ABSTRACTPrior research and practitioner-academic bodies (Lawson et al. 2014; Lawson et al. 2015; Pathways Commission 2012) have called for the development of integrated accounting curricula to better prepare students for successful long-term careers. This paper recognizes accounting program leaders as important agents in the curricular-change process. Its goal is to provide accounting leaders ideas and tools that can be used to manage the process of implementing change to an integrated accounting curriculum. Using a life-cycle planning approach, we identify major stages in the curricular-change process and describe the characteristics and challenges associated with each stage. We then propose a framework for managing the curricular-change process based on the life-cycle approach, encompassing a comprehensive integration process and including spreadsheet formats to facilitate management of an institution's curricular-change initiative. While needed in an effort to develop an integrated curriculum, the approach is generalizable and can be used in any major revision of a curriculum. Appendix A of the paper contains a checklist of issues to be considered during each stage of the curricular-change cycle.
