ANTHONY H. CATANACH JR. is an associate professor in the School of Business at Villanova University, as well as the Cary M. Maguire Fellow at the American College Center for Ethics in Financial Services. His professional experience includes five years as an audit manager with KPMG and six years in the financial services industry. Dr. Catanach has received numerous awards for his publication, teaching, and curriculum innovation efforts. He has authored numerous articles on a variety of accounting, finance, and management issues, as well as several business education texts..
Approximately ten years ago, the truth emerged about Enron, that once snappy company with a different business model. As the world learned, we should have focused on the ethics, culture, strategy, and business model of the firm, which unfortunately is a very old story.
Oct 242011
As the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board considers changes to the audit reporting model, we must ask: is the report really the problem, or is it the audit behind that report.
For several years battles have raged in several courtrooms concerning whether accounting firms have a legal obligation to pay junior accountants overtime. We are sympathetic to the position of the accounting firms, but worry about the soundness of their legal reasoning and conclusions. Do accounting firms have to be consistent in different domains? For example, [...]
Oct 032011
Cheating is all around us. Athletics provide a never ending series of ethical disappointments whether it be the use of performance enhancing drugs in bicycling, baseball, and football, the bout fixing in Sumo wrestling, or the recent NCAA rule violations by Ohio State’s football program.
Recently, the Investor Advisory Group (IAG) of the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board (PCAOB) noted two diametrically opposed viewpoints that prompted us to wonder where the accounting profession’s leadership has gone. Not surprisingly, almost three years after the largest global financial crisis, the IAG confirmed what most of us have known: The recent financial crisis [...]
J. EDWARD KETZ is an associate professor of accounting in the Smeal College of Business at Pennsylvania State University. He has a bachelor’s degree in political science, a master’s degree in accountancy, and a Ph.D., all from Virginia Tech. Professor Ketz has been a member of the Penn State faculty since 1981. He also has taught at the University of Connecticut and the University of Maryland. Professor Ketz has authored and edited 17 books including Hidden Financial Risk (Wiley, 2003) which examines the corporate culture and the institutional setting that engendered recent accounting scandals. Dr. Ketz has been cited in the popular and business press, including The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, The Washington Post, Business Week, and USA Today. He also has appeared as an accounting commentator on CNN, National Public Radio, and Bloomberg Radio.