Browsing by Author "Lindstrii, Emma"

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Intellectual Capital Statements - The New Guideline - Framtidens intellektuella rapportering
(2009-03-16T10:23:41Z) Blom, Pontus; Lindstrii, Emma; Persson, Oskar; Göteborg University/Department of Business Administration; Göteborgs universitet/Företagsekonomiska institutionen
The Danish Guidelines on Intellectual Capital Reporting Towards A European Perspective on Human Resource Disclosures?
(2004) Persson, Oskar; Lindstrii, Emma; Blom, Pontus; Rimmel, Gunnar; Department of Business Administration
Currently, many academics assert that although several companies proclaim their employees as the company’s most valuable resource only a few companies have utilised models and concepts of measuring human resources in their corporate annual reports. Various studies of the users of such information indicate a substantial difference between the type of information that corporations issue in their annual reports and the type of information that is demanded by the users of such reports. Since the concept of intellectual capital became a hot topic for management and accounting practitioners, the interest in reporting voluntary information about corporations’ human resources has increased. In the early days of the IC movement the interest in reporting intellectual capital was widely driven by individual corporate attempts. Denmark might be an exception to the rule as the Danish Ministry of Science, Technology and Innovation sponsored a joint project by accounting researchers and corporations to develop guidelines to report intellectual capital. The focal point of this paper derives from a case study of five Danish corporations that issue intellectual capital statements that are prepared according to this reporting guideline. The paper discusses how these five corporations actually report intellectual capital and how such reports can be used for comparison over years within as well as across corporations. As there is currently a lack of standardisation on reporting intellectual capital and voluntary disclosure about human resources, the paper provides a discussion of the opportunities and threats for European member states were they to apply the Danish guidelines for intellectual capital reporting.
The Swedish Management Audit - Could It Have Influenced the Enron Collapse?
(2003) Lindstrii, Emma; Korpi-Nilsson, Jenny; Göteborgs universitet/Företagsekonomiska institutionen
The large accounting scandals that have taken place mainly in the United States have created an international debate on the roles of accounting and auditing and how they should be designed to protect the stockholders. In Sweden, the auditor shall, besides the examination of financial reports, also conduct an audit of the President’s and the Board of Directors’ management of the company. This Management Audit is mandatory for all stock corporations and underlies the decision whether to recommend the annual meeting of stockholders to grant the President and the Board discharge or not. This practice is not applied in the US where there is no time limit for their responsibility. Our starting point is the Swedish Management Audit. To analyze its usefulness, we chose to compare Sweden with the United States whose auditing practices looks a bit different. We chose to use the Enron scandal to illustrate the possible advantages of utilizing a Swedish-type Management Audit. The main research question is whether the Swedish Management Audit could have influenced the lapse or the outcome of the Enron scandal. To determine whether the Swedish Management Audit could have influenced the Enron scandal, we applied each of the eight steps a Swedish auditor carries out when performing a Management Audit to the Enron case. Our study shows that there were several problems in the control and management of Enron, which the auditor could have observed by conducting a Swedish Management Audit. Some of the interviewees pointed out that the auditors should also have noticed these problems under the American system if they had only done their job properly. However, the use of the Swedish Management Audit might have mitigated the outcome of the scandal by making the stockholders aware of the company’s financial situation earlier.