Reference no: EM132433624

Environmental Accounting Assignment -

Task 1 - Convergence Initiatives

The following are the key initiatives that the FASB has undertaken to further the goal of international convergence.

- Liaison IASB between FASB

- Policies and procedures for FASB and IASB

- The Short-Term Convergence aspects

- Other joint projects being conducted with the IASB and FASB

- Explicit consideration of convergence potential

As a result of these and other initiatives, the Board expects to make significant progress toward international convergence in the next few years. However, because of the volume of differences and the complex nature of some of the issues, many differences will persist well beyond 2005.

Required: Differentiate principally between IASB and FASB focusing on convergence and harmonization. (400 words).

Task 2 -

"A successful environmental management system should have a method for accounting for full environmental costs and should integrate private environmental costs into capital budgeting, cost allocation, process/ product design and other forward-looking decisions ... Most corporate information and decision systems do not currently support such proactive and prospective decision making." (EPA, 1995a)

Environmental accounting is a term with a variety of meanings. In many contexts, environmental accounting is taken to mean the identification and reporting of environment specific costs, such as liability costs or waste disposal costs. For the purposes of this analysis, a much more general definition is used. "Environmental accounting" is more than accounting for environmental benefits and costs. It is accounting for any costs and benefits that arise from changes to a firm's products or processes, where the change also involves a change in environmental impacts. As will be shown, improved accounting for non-environmental costs and benefits -- input prices, consumer demand, etc. -- can lead to changes in decision-making that have environmental consequences. Thus, we will de-emphasize any clear demarcation between "environmental" accounting and accounting generally.

Environmental accounting information need not be the product of accountants, nor need it be used by accountants. Instead, it is any information with either explicit or implicit financial content that is used as an input to a firm's decision making. Product designers, financial analysts, and facility managers are equally likely to be the users of environmental accounting data. Almost any type of information collected and analyzed by firms will qualify. Examples include input prices, technical and scientific studies that relate production processes to physical outputs, and legal, marketing, and financial analyses.

Required: Deliberate and substantiate (prove) how best the environmental accounting measures the shareholder's wealth and corporate world.

(Hint: Identify a company of your choice and relate your discussion based on its reports) (400 words).

Task 3 -

The American Association of Accountants (AAA) defines HRA as follows: 'HRA is a process of identifying and measuring data about human resources and communicating this information to interested parties'.

Human resources are considered as important assets and are different from the physical assets. Physical assets do not have feelings and emotions, whereas human assets are subjected to various types of feelings and emotions. In the same way, unlike physical assets human assets never gets depreciated.

The valuations of human resources along with other assets are also required in order to find out the total cost of an organization. In 1960s, Rensis Likert along with other social researchers made an attempt to define the concept of human resource accounting (HRA).

Required: How best you can justify that human resource accounting is significant in the today's world. Arguments in favor and arguments in against should be equally reflected in your discussion and presentation.

(Hint: Reference to the Sector/industry/company/product/service is equally required. (400 words).

Format -

Title Page

Contents

Conceptualization and its importance and Analysis (Comparison among the different companies)

- Task 1

- Task 2

- Task 3

Limitations

Conclusion

References.