ACCT304 Accounting Theory

10 cp
Prerequisites ACCT209 Financial Accounting B
Teaching Organisation 4 hours per week for twelve weeks or equivalent.

Accounting academics and practitioners have long studied the practices of accounting to make sense of them within some coherent framework. It seems generally agreed that the financial performance and position for any business are important, but views differ markedly about the way these concepts should be reported.

This unit focuses primarily on attempts made to date to provide more useful, consistent and coherent means of measuring performance, as performance is currently seen as the critical indicator of economic activity. As we shall discover though, assumptions about the nature of performance, ipso facto lead to assumptions about the nature and measurement of financial position, and the objectives of financial reporting. The unit also focuses on the methodologies employed in developing accounting policies both in Australia and overseas. It concentrates on how decision makers, both use accounting information and are involved in its development, by examining the various theoretical approaches which underpin a multi-paradigm discipline.