BIBM702 Advanced Financial Accounting

Business education literature and the accounting profession strongly advocates that students are involved in the gaining of both technical knowledge and generic skills. This assignment aims to foster that requirement by providing students the opportunity to engage with the following activities

• Problem solving
• Written communication and editing
• Situational analysis and problem identification
• Literature review with referencing
• Reflective practice

The assignment also provides the opportunity for soft skill development. It is important you are aware that employers also seek graduates with ‘soft skills’. These are the personal traits and interpersonal skills required in sound relationships with other people. Examples include

• Courage
• Initiative, creativity and enterprise
• Conscientiousness, personal drive and motivation
• Dedication
• An ability to deal with complexity, uncertainty and pressure
• Adapting and responding to change
• Networking

Many of the skills required here, scaffold as skills required of the Professional Project (the work integrated learning module required of students completing the Bachelor of Applied Management)                                                                     

Assignment Requirements: This assignment consists of THREE parts.

Part A:         The Proposal

Select a contemporary financial accounting issue. This should be a current accounting issue that has some prominence in the accounting media. It does not have to be limited to the New Zealand environment. The topic of leases is not available to research.

Submit the proposal as an outline of why the issue is current and outline the debate that exists. The debate will generally exist where alternative or new accounting methods are proposed.

An initial investigation of current issues could involve a review of recent accounting journals; in particular note the XRB issues. By their nature, all exposure drafts of NZIFRS’s are current issues. IASB information can be obtained from the IASPlus Deloitte website below.

http://www.iasplus.com/index.htm

This proposal should be no longer than 250 words.

At this early stage, your proposal is not expected to be exhaustive. The purpose of the proposal is to focus your thinking on contemporary issues and to engage in dialogue with the examiner. Your proposal may need to be revised and resubmitted in light of the comments made by the examiner.

You must submit your proposal through Turnitin (a hard copy is not required). Instructions for Turnitin are attached at the end of this document.

Part B: Reporting - Report format

A report on the findings of your study.

In particular, you should structure your report to include:

• A historical review of the issue giving a brief literature review outlining the boundaries of the topic
• Current debate
• Future directions and conclusions you may draw
• References APA style

In particular, the examiner wishes to see evidence of self-directed learning. That is, the author has explored and understands the nature of the issue investigated.

Be careful to ensure the document is edited so it does not appear as two individual reports.

The report should be typed in Arial, 1.5 spacing, 12-point font, with one-inch margins. The word length should be approximately 2,500 words. You must submit your report through Turnitin (a hard copy is not required). Instructions for Turnitin are attached at the end of this document.

Part C: Individual Self Reflection

Here you are required to reflect on your learning and experiences.

It is important that you grasp the concept that reflection is an important part of being a professional (professionals regard reflective practice as an essential aspect of the job)

The aim is that through reflective practice you change behaviours (transformative process). Hopefully you develop a greater level of self-awareness and a sense of providing best practice.

Some tips to help you (student) around reflection:

• Become structured and disciplined. Set up a digital journal for your reflections from the start of the experience.
• Try to write up reflective events as soon as possible e.g. that night when you are home from work or Wintec.
• A useful structured approach for a journal entry is to consider a reflective event as three aspects.
  1. State briefly the situation you are reflecting upon (such as an event that has happened at work that day).
  2. This event will be memorable in some way. A memorable even will may have an emotional content. Recall your feelings (emotions are the trigger for a memorable reflective event).
  3. Critically evaluate. This is where you reflect and think why you have had this emotional response to an event. You will have to move from feeling emotions about the event to thinking and applying a critical analysis to the event. You will have to place the event in a theoretical context.

This individual self-reflection should be no more than 250 words. Each student must complete this section. It can be private and confidential and will not count towards the numeric assessment. It must, however, be completed and handed in before the final assessment grade is allocated.