This course provides an overview of the various approaches to accounting theory and analyses their impact on financial reporting. The course will help students to understand how accounting theories develop and will provide students with a critical overview of the different approaches to research in financial accounting.

 

The course aims to explain and understand the evolving nature of accounting theory and its potential for continuing evolution, and to provide an overview of the various approaches to accounting theory, analysing their impact on financial reporting. The course will help students to understand how theories develop and will provide students with a critical overview of the different approaches to research in accounting. The course considers a variety of theories that may help to explain different types of voluntary reporting decisions and practices; the development of a variety of normative theories of accounting; and recent developments and emerging research areas.

Intended Learning Outcomes of Course

By the end of this course students will be able to:

1. Explain the evolving nature of accounting theory and to distinguish between, and appraise critically, different approaches to theory development

2. Discuss a variety of theories that may help to explain different types of voluntary reporting decisions and practices

3. Evaluate critically a range of normative theories of accounting

4. Evaluate critically a range of positive theories of accounting

5. Use academic literature that utilises selected theoretical frameworks to appraise critically contrasting opinions and the clustering of communities of research thought

6. Search for, and locate, relevant literature in order to write an essay in which research papers are critically evaluated through using independent judgment in deciding the focus of analysis.