Argues that there is a significant lacuna in the accounting literature resulting from our lack of knowledge of how and why accounting is used in churches as one form of religious organization. After reviewing the limited extant accounting literature, proposes a skeletal research framework for addressing this lacuna. Following parallel themes in the organizations studies′ literature, this framework emphasizes the importance of three analytic dimensions: the centrality of religious beliefs to action in churches and a general tendency of such beliefs to act as a form of resistance to accounting; the role of organizational members and occupational groups, such as the clergy and accountants, in the construction and opposition of such processes of resistance; and the impacts of two conditions of possibility, membership size and the availability of financial resources, on the development of these relationships. Concludes with some initial suggestions for a research agenda suggested by the proposed framework, and a consideration of the potential applicability of such theorizing for our understanding of accounting as a situated practice both in other forms of religious organizations and organizations more generally.

While accounting educators have been increasingly concerned with the quality of accounting education, the accounting education literature has not proposed a coherent framework for addressing this issue. The Approaches to Learning paradigm in the education literature offers such a framework for analysing the ways in which students learn and how the learning context interacts with learning choices. Here we use this paradigm to investigate the learning approaches of accounting students from two Australian universities as compared to previously reported data for Australian arts, education and science students. In addition, we consider the impact of accounting students' approaches to learning on their academic performance. Data about learning approaches, using the Study Process Questionnaire and various attitudinal and performance variables, were collected from accounting students at two Australian universities. The comparison of the learning approach scores of accounting students with previously reported norms for Australian arts, education and science students, indicated that the former had relatively higher surface and lower deep learning approaches. In addition, higher surface approach scores were found to be associated with less successful academic performance, but no association was found for deep approach scores. The implications of these results for accounting educators are discussed and suggestions for future research into students' approaches to learning are considered.Learning Approaches Deep And Surface Learning Academic Performance Study Process Questionnaire Quality Of Accounting Education,

The present paper examines one set of potential reasons for the paradox as to why so few firms have adopted activity-based costing (ABC) despite the demonstrated benefits of this costing system. A cross-sectional survey of Australian firms is used to examine the influence of seven technological and organizational factors on firms' initial interest in ABC and their decision to adopt it or not. The organizational factors of top management support, the support of an internal champion, and organizational size were shown to be associated with initial interest in ABC. The decision to adopt or reject ABC had one organizational factor associated with it, the support of an internal champion. Copyright (c) 2004 Accounting and Finance Association of Australia and New Zealand.

Budgets are used widely but criticized, mainly for performance evaluation reasons. We find that organizations regard budgets as more important for planning and control than evaluation, thus proposing a rationale for their continued use irrespective of evaluation-based criticisms. This finding is also important, because most extant budget research focuses on evaluation, suggesting a potential disconnect between budget research and practice. We also find that rolling forecasts are used in tandem with the annual budget in most organizations, and for the same reasons. This was unexpected, as coexistence suggests their adoption for different reasons. Copyright (c) The Authors. Journal compilation (c) 2009 AFAANZ.

The purpose of this article is to provide further insights into the adoption of enterprise resource planning systems (ERPS) and the impacts on organisational performance. It aims at challenging existing claims of ERP vendors with regards to the benefits of their products and at providing evidence of the benefits of bundling ERPS with supply chain management systems (SCMS). A survey was conducted to collect data on several aspects of organisational performance in companies which adopted ERPS, SCMS and the respective control groups. Financial key performance indicators were used to measure overall firm performance and the Supply-Chain Operations Reference (SCOR) model to operationalise performance at the business process (supply chain) level. Our key results contradict the claims of ERPS vendors insofar as we found no significant performance differences between ERPS adopters and non-adopters, neither at the core business process level, nor at the overall firm level. While we could confirm that, the longer the experience of firms with ERPS, the higher their overall performance, we found no evidence of a similar effect on business process (supply chain) performance. Only those ERPS adopters which also adopted SCMS achieved significantly higher performance at the business process level.