Audit Independence Case Study Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1500 words

Audit Independence - Case Study Example This paper provides an insightful study into the role played by lack of competition in the audit marketplace in affecting auditor independence and the ways through which it can affect the audit quality. It also sheds light on the solutions actually implemented to resolve this problem as well the ones that have been proposed and yet to be implemented. Lack of competition in the audit marketplace is one of the most significant concerns among the regulators these days. Lack of competition in the audit marketplace refers to the fact that there are big four auditing firms predominantly involved in the provision of accounting services around the world encompassing approximately 78% of the total US publicly trading companies. There is a serious lack of accounting services firms in several markets and usually companies are left with no or few choices as to the selection of company auditor because of domination of these big four firms in their respective markets. For example, KMPG has a dominating position in providing auditing services to financial institutions whereas PricewaterhouseCoopers is dominant in the coal and petroleum industry (Bloom and Schirm, 2005). The events such as Enron and WorldCom led to the widespread notion of audit failure or audit incapacity to act as shareholders representatives and report any problems prevailing in the company. This lack of competition became a concern of crucial importance soon after the incidence of Enron and the termination of Arthur Andersen (Bloom and Schirm, 2005). There have been several causes behind the occurrence of such events that seriously shattered the image of auditing and accountancy service profession and directed the attention of regulators towards the notion of lack of competition in the audit marketplaces. Simunic and Stein (1995) elaborate that the market for professional accountancy services highly lacks competitiveness because of several rigid restrictions imposed by the government such as code of ethics, limit on fees and prohibition of advertisement etc. Such restrictions as well as the dominance of big four firms in the industry has been hampering the advent and success of new firms in the market leading to lack of competition. Apart from that, these firms are also involved in the provision of non-audit professional services to their client companies. Because of that fact that there happen to be a very few number of firms in the market, companies turn towards these four firms for both audit and non-audit professional services. Such involvement also contributes to concentration of a major part of these audit firms' income in the client company. This has been the major factor affecting the independence of auditors in providing an opinion on a client company's financial statements. Hence, lack of competition in the audit marketplace is considered to be acting as a threat to audit independence. Audit independence refers to the notion of complete freedom on the part of an auditor while presenting an audit opinion. Hemraj elaborate that "the function of 'public watchdog' demands that the auditor subordinates

Cognitive Problems of Bilingual Speakers Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 750 words

Cognitive Problems of Bilingual Speakers - Essay Example Aphasic in bilinguals is a complex problem influenced by internal and external factors such as localization, "switch" interaction, suppression of a native language and a specific role of the right hemisphere of the brain. Questions specific to bilingual aphasia are added to those stemming from aphasia in general, such as whether aphasia is a general cognitive deficit or a language-specific impairment; whether it is a unitary phenomenon or admits of multiple syndromes; whether it is a deficit of competence or performance; and whether modality-specific deficits are aphasic symptoms. Theoretical positions on these issues will have consequences for hypotheses about bilingual aphasia and/or the representation of two languages in one brain. Some authors, for example, argue that patients are not aphasic unless their competence is impaired. Competence is considered not to be impaired when a deficit is not equally manifested in all modalities or when a patient undergoes spontaneous recovery. Moreover, because it is assumed that competence is common to both languages, if a bilingual is agrammatic for some aspect of the grammar in one of his languages, it is predicted that she or he will be agrammatic for those same components of the grammar in the other language ( Scholes, 1984). Thus, what recovers spontaneously in unilinguals and bilinguals as well as what is differentially deficient in bilinguals is not considered a result of impaired competence but of loss of access through some defective performance mechanism. Such a position therefore holds that any bilingual patient exhibiting nonparallel recovery is not aphasic. The unstated assumption behind the argument is the role of primary education and background of a person. Whether or not teachers call students aphasic who have lost the use of one of their languages or who have differential postmorbid proficiency in each language, it is of interest to the neuropsychology of language in general and of bilingualism in parti cular to examine whether nonparallel deficits do indeed occur, and if so, to investigate the mechanisms responsible for differential, successive, selective, antagonistic, and mixed recoveries. The article is well-structured and is based on substantial research and data analysis. A researcher gives a special attention to the systemic-dynamic approach and their age, proficiency and motivation among students. The researcher uses inductive reasoning using specific examples and data. The arguments and claims are well-supported and explained. The researcher underlines that there is no a priori reason to reject the possibility that each language might be subserved by its own competence, namely, that each grammar might be separately stored and/or processed. There is indeed no clinical evidence that there is only one underlying neurolinguistic competence for both languages, that is to say, one common neural substrate for language, undifferentiated as to specific language. If it can be shown that specific alterations in competence occur in one language and not in the other, then it is not unreasonable to assume that each language is subserved by different neurofunctional substrates. Further systematic investigations, based on large numbers of successive unselected cases and