ACC5216 ACCOUNTING THEORY

SEMESTER 2,

Assignment 1

Important Information

Thecoursespecificationrequiresthatyoursubmissionisyourownindividualwork . You are strongly urged to complete this assessment yourself to receive clear feedback about your level of understanding of the course material. You will find information regarding plagiarism and academic misconduct, such as collusion and cheating in the course specification and on the USQ website.

The course specification also contains information about:

• Assignment late policy
• Assignment extension policy

Please ensure that any ideas or data that you provide in your answer, other than your own original thoughts are properly referenced using the Harvardreferencingstyle.

The bibliography in not included in the word count.

Instructions

This assignment is a research based essay where you are required to relate a real world case study to accounting theory. Below you will find a news article relating to the announcement by the National Australia Bank (NAB) indicating a very high profit, and also announcing the losses of 6,000 jobs. Whilst this article provides the context for this assignment, you need to ensure that you also refer to other sources. You also need to incorporate both academic and non-academic articles but must have at least 10 academic references from which you will refer to theoretical issues. (Please make sure that you know what an academic reference is).

Using the news article provided below as a base, and referring to other appropriate literature, discuss and critically evaluate the following:

• Determine the facts of the case.
• Identify and discuss why the NAB is planning to remove 6,000 jobs. What are the possible issues faced by the banks?
• Describe the main stakeholders who will be affected by the job cuts? Describe each stakeholder, their concerns and how they are likely to be effected.
• Using Stakeholder Theory, explain the likely motivations for the each stakeholder group (basing your discussion on your application of Stakeholder Theory).
• Using a second accounting theory, explain how your chosen theory applies to the NAB case, and what each group should do as a result of following the theory. (Make sure you relate your discussion to the NAB case and each of the affected groups under your chosen theory).
• Compare and contrast the different theories and identify which of these theories is most important from the banks perspective and explain reasons why you think your chosen theory is the most important.
• YOU MUST relate your answers to the link between theory and practice
• Finally, you may apply a third accounting theory that you believe may also be relevant to this case study. You may do this if you feel it will help you to compare and contrast the similarities and differences between the theories.

The relationship between accounting research and professional practice has been discussed in the literature (Parker, Guthrie & Linacre 2011). This article needs to inform your arguments.

The essay should include an abstract, introduction, body, conclusion and bibliography. Maximum word count is 1400 words not including the abstract or bibliography.

The article will appear as a file below this task sheet.