UNAIR NEWS – Faculty of Economics and Business Universitas Airlangga (FEB UNAIR) held an International E-Seminar Series entitled The Dark Side in Management Practice for Research Project. The first session of the E-Seminar discussed “The Dark Side from Financial and Management Accounting Side” on August 14, 2020.
Dr. Fathyah Hashim was a speaker and she discussed the dark side of Financial Accounting. The Senior Lecturer in Financial Accounting graduated from the University of Malaysia Business School, emphasized the objectives of accounting. According to her, the main objective of accounting is to provide information to interested parties in the process of making business decisions for the company.
“Meanwhile, the main objective is to prepare financial reports accurately,” she explained.
The quality of financial reporting, she continued, is a global problem and has remained a topic of discussion among academics for decades. The quality of financial reporting is divided into two, High-Quality Financial Reporting and Low-Quality Financial Reporting.
Dr. Fathyah explained that High-Quality Financial Reporting provides useful information in assessing company performance and prospects. Meanwhile, Low-Quality Financial Reporting contains inaccurate, misleading and / or incomplete information.
“Financial reporting that contains overstatement and / or understatement on the balance of financial statements made on purpose can be indicated as fraud,” she added.
Furthermore, Prof. Dr. I Made Narsa continued the discussion about the dark side of Management Accounting. According to him, paradigm is a way of seeing and not seeing. There are four dark side paradigms (dark side) based on Burrel and Morgan’s theory.
They are Radical Humanists, Radical Structuralists, Functionalists and Interpretivists. Moreover, he continued, based on the Bedrock assumption, theory is always built within the framework of fundamental assumptions and theoretical assumptions.
“Matters outside these assumptions are the dark side,” he explained.
In contrast to Financial Accounting, the application of Management Accounting in companies is very flexible and does not have basic assumptions. The main rule is management needs.
“It becomes an obstacle in quantitative research as well as a challenge and an opportunity to carry out alternative research,” he concluded.
In the end, Prof. Narsa also explained that there were four opportunistic behaviors: accounting aggressiveness, tax aggressiveness, budgetary slack, and audit scandals. (*)
Author: Sandi Prabowo
Editor: Khefti Al Mawalia
