Janek Ratnatunga

• MBA, PhD (Bradford)
• Professor at Institute of Certified Management Accountants (Australia) & Swinburne University

False advertising, characterized by misleading or deceptive claims about products or services, poses significant ethical and legal challenges in marketing. This paper examines the case of Bunnings, a leading Australian hardware retailer, focusing on its price-beating guarantee and exclusive home-brand products. Bunnings promotes a slogan promising...

The current global stock market volatility, described as a "Kangaroo" market due to its erratic fluctuations, is largely driven by the unpredictable trade policies of the United States under President Donald Trump. These policies, including the imposition and subsequent reversal of tariffs, have led to significant economic uncertainty, adversely af...

In recent weeks, the term "trade war" has emerged as a central theme in global economic discourse, particularly due to the imposition of tariffs by U.S. President Donald Trump. This paper explores the complexities of trade wars and their implications for management accountants, emphasizing the importance of understanding these dynamics for effectiv...

This article posits 7 reasons why there is significant consumer and employee dissatisfaction regarding the bad behaviour of corporates across most industries globally. These reasons are discussed at length with case examples. The reasons are: (1) consolidation of the industry players resulting in lack of competition; (2) charging more for less due...

Because of the enormous effects that humans have on the ecosystem, there is a chance that the planet will no longer be friendly to humans but rather be hostile. Scientists have proposed nine Planetary Boundaries (PB) — the global environmental limits within which the risk of disrupting the current climatic and ecological equilibriums of the planet...

In 2023, Australia reclaimed the title of attracting more net millionaires than any other country-and there was a big reason they all wanted to live here. However, by mid-2024, Australia had slipped to fifth place. This article sets out to discuss what underlying conditions that had changed in this period, and what the societal impact of this drop...

Modern GenAI systems are capable of many amazing behaviours, with responses that are (sometimes) quite human-like and intelligent. This has led to the view that these GenAI systems might soon be conscious. This paper asks if current and future iterations of AI have the potential to develop a sense of ‘self’. If so, as these platforms replace huma...

It has been an explosive start to 2024 in terms of the share market performance. Driven by a wave of enthusiasm for tech heavyweights like Meta and Nvidia, USA’s S&P 500 index of large American firms is up 5% and has crossed the 5,000 mark for the first time ever. On February 22, Japan's Nikkei 225 broke its own record – which it had established in...

This article covers the implications of mishandling a faulty accounting system and the false reports it generated, using the case 'Mr. Bates vs. The Post Office'. The wider social implications that arise from such faulty information is considered in detail. The impact it had on the lives of hundreds of innocent sub-postmasters and their families wh...

A senior accounting professor acknowledged that several false claims were made using Google Bard AI to gather data for a submission to an Australian parliamentary investigation into the practices of the Big 4 consulting firms. The submission itself is a commendable attempt to address an important issue in accounting practice with practical recommen...

The rapidly changing business environment described above, the emphasis on uncontrolled growth, and the impending climate disaster demand that a philosophical approach to sustainable value creation that connects economic, environmental, and social outcomes within a circular economy be adopted immediately. A wider range of stakeholders must be engag...

In many countries, especially in the West, this faith in higher education appears to have begun to waver. Disenchantment is rising as tuition costs climb but graduation incomes remain flat. The value of a degree is now being seriously questioned in the USA, where a 'college degree' means having to take massive loans. Clearly, the value proposition...

The rapid development of information and communication technology (ICT) means that on the one hand, information gathering gets cheaper and easier, and on the other, the cost of making mistakes based on poor or late information tends to grow. For example, a costly project implementation program may spell trouble for a company if the project fails du...

Our globe is faced with a formidable challenge: producing enough high-quality, diversified, and nutrient-rich food within the confines of our planet to feed a growing population. This entails considerably decreasing the global food system's environmental impact. Climate change may seriously affect our ability to produce enough food in a world with...

In the PwC tax scandal, a former PwC advisor, signed confidentiality agreements with the Australian government on proposed stricter multinational tax legislation. Instead, he emailed his PwC colleagues so they could warn clients about impending events. PwC partners then created "a global team" to think about how this information may be exploited fo...

Governments all across the world, including those in Australia, utilise the service of consultants. Since the 1990s, commercial companies that provide advice and assistance to government and non-government organisations have played an increasing role in the political scene. The global consulting services industry was estimated to be worth between U...

Business and financial forecasting helps management accountants to develop the best strategies for current and future trends and events. Today, artificial intelligence, forecasting software, and big data are supposed to make business forecasting easier, more accurate, and personalised to each organisation. However, forecasting does not promise an a...

The term "quiet quitting" refers to employees who put no more effort into their jobs than absolutely necessary. The cost-of-living crisis, and workers ending up feeling short-changed have heightened the risk of employees quietly quitting. Quiet quitting is gaining attention lately as a workplace strategy for some employees and a challenge for some....

Everyone leaves a data trail behind on the internet. Every time someone creates a new social media account, they provide personal information that can include their name, birthdate, geographic location, and personal interests. Customers understand that their personal information is used to create relevant experiences for them. This is allowing mark...

Consumers increasingly expect brands to have not just functional benefits but also a social purpose. Brands increasingly use a social purpose to guide marketing communications, inform product innovation, and steer investments toward social cause programs. For the management accountant there are also resource allocation concerns when considering ‘so...

This article deals specifically with the stereotypes people have, the role of western charities in creating and feeding these racial stereotypes, how this benefits charity fundraising performance, and the impact these racial stereotypes have on the larger community – especially in the implicit biases formed that lead to acts of racial discriminatio...

There are numerous financial metrics available in the academic and commercial world to estimate real estate value. Appraisers often use such metrics when advising on the purchase or sale of real estate at a point in time. The first part of this paper proposes a new metric, based on the capability approach, to make an ex-post single period valuation...

At first Europeans believed that black swans did not exist. When they sighted a black swan for the first time in Australia, it was seen as an extremely rare but perhaps predictable event. Today, a 'black swan event' is one that whilst being extremely rare and of severe impact, is nevertheless characterised by the widespread insistence they were obv...

The Australian arm of one of the world’s biggest and most prestigious accounting firms, KPMG, has been fined A$613,000 by the US accounting watchdog, the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board (PCAOB), after a review found widespread cheating by staff on training tests over a four-year period. The PCAOB report revealed that more than 1,100 staff...

Newspapers and other media outlets have reported stories on corrupt activities involving casinos, money laundering, foreign influence, tax avoidance, offshore companies, tax havens, anti-corruption bodies, lax regulation, quantitative easing, and young families being shut out of overheated real-estate markets. Are these disparate issues, or do th...

In early August 2021, payments fintech Square announced its intention to acquire Buy Now, Pay Later (BNPL) firm, Afterpay, for A$39 billion (US$29b) in an all-stock transaction. The deal, which is expected to close in the first three months of next year, is the biggest ever merger and acquisition agreement in Australian history. However, the paper...

Money laundering is the process of making illegally gained proceeds ("dirty money") appear legal ("clean"). In a number of legal and regulatory systems, however, the term money laundering has been extended to other forms of financial and business crimes, and is sometimes used more generally to include the misuse of the financial system (involving t...

The Covid-19 pandemic taught policy makers in Australia some important lessons in meeting its climate challenge. Australian federal and state leaders put aside ideology and listened to the scientists and the economists. Australia’s conservative leaning government instituted policies that did not come to it naturally – rules that impeded personal fr...

New bitcoins need to be mined by solving a cryptographic problem. Other miners already on the Blockchain network, confirm the solution, and the new coins are registered in the blockchain ledger. For those interested in investing in bitcoins, first compare the terminology of a cryptocurrency account as against traditional bank account. Then, before...

The world is transitioning into to clean energy rapidly. With the significant demand for Australian-mined lithium, nickel and other metals needed to make batteries, its political and business leaders have an opportunity to make Australia a renewable energy superpower by re-focusing from exporting planet-warming fossil fuels to exporting the mineral...

Intellectual capital (IC) is increasingly seen as an integral part of a firm’s value-creating processes and an essential strategic asset in creating corporate sustainable competitive advantage (Bukh, 2003; Chen, Cheng & Hwang, 2005). Nevertheless, reporting on IC is currently inconsistent, incomparable, and incomplete because of a lack of consisten...

A strategic cost audit is an in-depth review to determine whether a company is meeting its organizational objectives in the most efficient way. Additionally, it examines whether the company is utilizing its resources fully and in an environmentally sustainable manner. A successful strategic cost audit is beneficial to any company. It ascertains the...

Prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, significant changes were already happening that altered our view of the world, such as: The Rise of Populism; Brexit; Tension in South China Seas; Golden Arches Theory; State Based Hacking; Huawei and TikTok; #MeToo; WOKE; Censored; Cancelled; Black Lives Matter; Defacing Historical Statues; Defund the Police; Blockc...

‘Woke’, is now increasingly used as a byword for ‘social awareness’; especially when people “call-out” things on social media. Such social media driven awareness has resulted in previously published literary and artistic works being either ‘censored’ on a piece-meal basis; or the entire works of that author, director or entertainer being ‘cancelled...

Despite its theoretical superiority, the Activity-Based Costing (ABC) model has had only moderate success in replacing the traditional volume-based absorption costing models in complex organizations worldwide. Even in organizations that have launched ABC projects, the implementations often do not sustain. In response to this general lack of enthusi...

Industry was for a long time production-centred. This meant that a product was created, and then the selling function was given the job of getting the customer to want what the company had. This worked well in earlier times because: (a) sources and supply of goods were limited; (b) customer demands were relatively unsophisticated; and (c) limited c...

This paper advances some issues related to an accountor's evaluation of the worth of a corporation. By 'accountor' it is meant a body of persons who the future worth of the corporation. It is therefore argued that several more dimensions of the firm have to be audited or evaluated by accountors, not just the accuracy of the worth of the firm based...

A 5-STAR Reporting Index TM which rates the quality and comprehensiveness of economic, environmental, social, governance and empowerment frameworks in 50 publicly listed Australian companies. A good corporate reputation can be a strong company asset, increasing corporate worth and providing competitive advantage. Yet measuring reputation can be a t...

The concentrations of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere have risen dramatically leading to the possibility of costly disruption from rapid climate change. This calls for greater attention and precautionary measures to be put in place, both globally and locally. Governments, business entities and consumers would be impacted by the extent to which s...

Over the past decade, corporate social responsibility (CR) has moved from the fringes of the business world to being a significant boardroom agenda. What began largely as an extension of public relations reporting where organisations disclosed basic health and safety monitoring, and environmental impact results has now grown to a wider set of gover...

A marketing accounting reporting system is one where managerial accounting information and reports are provided to marketing executives for decision making and control purposes. The objective of a descriptive model is to describe such an existing system, whilst a normative model is developed to improve the system. Obviously, the former model will b...

Many of today's Wall Street champions are built upon a platform of efficient Supply Chain Management (SCM). However, although SCM often integrates supply and demand management within and across companies; managers within such companies find it difficult to allocate and invest the organization's limited resources to meet the demands of the channel n...

Under various carbon emissions trading schemes proposed around the world (including the United States), organizations will need to implement carbon management schemes to meet carbon ration targets, earn revenue and reduce costs. Emission Trading Schemes will impact the accounting profession significantly; however, discussions on how to report these...

Corporate financial performance, measured in terms of profitability or return on capital invested (ROI) have been viewed as inadequate as firms began focusing on shareholder value as the primary long-term objective of the organisation. Subsequently, value measures were devised that explicitly acknowledged that both equity and debt have costs, and t...

Practitioners perpetually ponder whether they are spending the right amount of money on the right marketing activities to optimize sales, profitability and shareholder value. This perennial problem applies as much to Integrated Marketing Communications as it does to practically any other organizational function. In fact, it is perhaps even more sal...

Many countries are using quantitative easing to virtually print money and hand it out to the general populace to keep the population placated during severe ‘lockdowns’ due to the COVID-19 pandemic. [See related article in this issue of JAMAR titled ‘Pandemic Financing’]. In Australia, A$135 Billion was pledged by the Australian government. However,...

As we face the current global pandemic from COVID-19, many world leaders are stating that they are fighting two wars. One is an epidemic prevention war to avert the healthcare systems from collapsing under a surge of infections and critical illness, leading to dramatic rises in mortality and morbidity (War 1), and the other is the war to save the e...

The Institute of Certified Management Accountants (Australia) commissioned a research study to evaluate the response and leadership shown in each country and to develop a Global Response to Infectious Diseases (GRID) index to indicate how efficient and effective the leadership of the country and the preparedness of its health system were in tacklin...

As the COVID-19 pandemic hit, many Federal and State governments around the world, including in Australia, stopped all tourists and other non-citizens from entering their respective countries, put their own citizens returning into forced quarantines, and put entire communities under lockdowns, and in some cases curfews. It became illegal to wander...

In normal times the governments like to ‘balance the budget’, i.e. balance incoming money from tax collections and other government revenue streams with outgoing spending on welfare, health services, education, security, etc. When government spends more money than it raises in a year it is called a ‘deficit budget’, and conversely, a ‘surplus bud...

In 2011, Australia introduced a Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme (or CPRS) that was a cap-and-trade emissions trading scheme for anthropogenic greenhouse gases. It clearly indicated to companies that polluting the environment with carbon emissions will no longer be free. Companies subject to carbon caps under a carbon trading scheme can either inv...

Buddhism stresses three kinds of relationships—those between humans and nature, those between human beings and the relationship with oneself. Buddhism considers human beings and the environment to be interconnected at the deepest level, inextricably linked and interdependent. This interconnectedness of all life, is starkly visible in global problem...

A fierce debate raged during the Australian federal election campaign over the cost of taking meaningful action on climate change. On one side of the political spectrum were macro-economic models with assumptions made to suit the client who commissioned the work. These competing models predicted wildly different outcomes for the economy resulting f...

The audit report of financial statements uses the term ‘True and Fair’ to express the condition that financial statements are truly prepared and fairly presented in accordance with the prescribed accounting standards. As such, an unqualified audit opinion of the financial statements states that the audited financial statements are true and fair vie...

Money laundering is the process of making illegally-gained proceeds ("dirty money") appear legal ("clean"). In a number of legal and regulatory systems, however, the term money laundering has been extended to other forms of financial and business crimes, and is sometimes used more generally to include the misuse of the financial system (involving t...

The Australian Banking Royal Commission’s recent final report into the banking and financial services industry makes 24 referrals to the regulators to take action over misconduct. It also made 76 recommendations for how the problems can be fixed and contained scathing criticism of executives. Bankers were not named and shamed, but the Commission la...

The cost-benefit analyses that management accountants perform, that compares quality-cost relationships, profits and market share vis-à-vis the risks associated with failure, can be traced to why corporations prematurely launch products that they know to be faulty to the unsuspecting customer market. This article looks at the management accounting...

Reparation is not a new word in the dictionary. The giving of money to compensate the wrong doings by someone or something, the act of taking responsibility for that and to give a token of feeling sorry is what the word “reparations” stands for. In a global context, ‘Reparations’ is a term used when one country is asked for compensation to repair d...

The International Ethics Standards Board for Accountants (IESBA) recently released the Non-Compliance with Laws and Regulations (NOCLAR) amending standard to the Code of Ethics for Professional Accountants (the Code) to redefine the accountants’ role when laws or regulations are broken. NOCLAR is supposedly an international ethics standard for audi...

The case for the need for CSR has two motivations. The first is that it is good for society – i.e. the wider community of stakeholders, the Earth itself, and the future generations to sustain its needs. The second motivation is that potential shareholders will reward companies that are run on an environmentally and socially responsible manner by de...

The Financial Reporting Council (UK) in a 2014 report on the subject of True and Fair gives the following guidelines to preparers of accounts and those charged with governance and audit: (a) always to stand back and ensure that the accounts as a whole do give a true and fair view; (b) provide additional disclosures when compliance with an accountin...

The external audit is supposed to be a ‘trust’ mechanism installed to persuade the public that capitalist corporations and management are not corrupt and that companies and their directors are made accountable. In an uncertain world, corporate audits are expected to produce comfort by reassuring the stakeholders that there has been an external and...

There is a growing evidence that significant changes in the global economy require new types of “measurements” for meeting the challenges at the corporate, national and international levels. Therefore, the accounting profession globally must look upon such demands as “opportunities”, by identifying those “new” types of measurements, and devising wa...

Instead of being rewarded, private sector whistleblowers in Australia currently have few protections and take large risks in speaking out. The issue that is raised in this article is; “What exactly can one whistle-blow about?” Clearly issues of corporate corruption, fraud, workplace harm, tax evasion and insider trading are areas where safe whistle...

There is good evidence that corporates pick ethics best suited for them; and get away with it, as there is no auditing done of what they claim in their CSR reports. In fact, 93 per cent of Fortune 250 companies report how well they treat the environment. They promise that they care about our community, our future. But too often, these CSR reports a...

In modern companies, both white-collar and blue-collar workers are paid salaries or wages for doing their job. Some say that all workers should also get a share of the profits. Now many companies have employees profit sharing schemes where an employee receives a certain percentage of the annual profits, and a share of profit if business is sold; or...

Governments believe that, ethically, corporations should pay taxes in the country in which a profit is made; whilst corporations believe that they must act in a manner to maximise value to their shareholders. Thus, they believe it is ethical to transfer price profits to low-tax (or even no-tax) regimes in a legal manner. Tax avoidance is ethically...

In the interest of eliminating bureaucracy, overhead, middlemen and waste, individuals are turning themselves into mini-diversified corporations. Besides being a taxi company, an individual can become a rental-car company by giving a stranger to use his/her car; a restaurant by cooking a meal for a stranger and a hotel by renting out a spare room i...

The established conventional wisdom is that organisations like to see competitor organisations in trouble, especially if a product or service failure in the competitor may result in more market share for one’s own offerings. Samsung’s batteries catching fire in their Galaxy G7 phones, did significantly increase sales of Apple’s iPhone. However, som...

In 1942, in the middle of the second world war, Joseph Schumpeter (an economist) published his only bestseller, Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy. The book was popular for a good reason. It was a tour de force of economics, history and sociology. It coined memorable phrases such as "creative destruction". But it was a notably dark book. At a time...

In today's economy, both large shareholder investment groups and ordinary (retail) shareholders depend of the information provided in the audited financial statements for managing their portfolios. The problem is that Audited Financial Reports, that have not changed in their presentation format, or in their method of delivery, since the dawn of the...

The financial statements prepared and audited in today’s economic environment can be traced to the industrial era, or the age of the corporation (about 1850), when tangible assets such as machinery were the engines of growth. In this era, financial accountants endorsed or invented rules based on the historical cost doctrine that yielded values whic...

This paper sets out to value the total public financing needed to somewhat alleviate the economic, environmental and social losses of an unprecedented human disaster using a mixed-valuation method, termed 'Contingent Loss Assessment' that integrates the economic loss assessment of the disaster with a contingent valuation of the environmental and so...

This paper seeks to advance the understanding of the relevance of management accounting (MA) as a profession by examining societal role expectations of MA professionals in Australia. Findings of the study show that Australian MA professionals are expected to have skills in cost management, corporate social responsibility, carbon accounting, risk ma...

Factories at home or in a small business (3D Printing); costless travel over long distances (Maglev); generators powering all energy requirements (Fuel Cells); a farm in a high-rise building (Hydroponics); driver-less taxis (Robotic Vehicles) are all technologies that are already with us, and only a few years away from commercialisation.

Purpose – This study aims to examine the effects of balanced scorecard (BSC) usage on performances in the context of four contingent variables in Singaporean manufacturing firms. The results show that firms are more likely to adopt BSC if they are large in size, have products at an early product lifecycle (PLC) stage, operate in highly uncertain en...

In more recent times we have come to know that ‘profit’ alone, ignoring all other ‘externalities’ (such as the needs of the environment and society) is not enough. There is no point earning large profits if it damages the rivers, pollutes the air and underpays the labour that toils to produce the goods and services demanded by our consumerist socie...

Air, Water and Food, are the fundamental requirements for life to exist on this Earth. However, emitting greenhouse gases into the atmosphere is not only causing climate change, but also air pollution. Management accountants can provide policy related decision information on investments and other actions taken to mitigate the impact of greenhouse g...

The concentrations of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere have risen dramatically leading to the possibility of costly disruption from rapid climate change. This calls for greater attention and precautionary measures to be put in place, both globally and locally. Governments, business entities and consumers would be impacted by the extent to which s...

Purpose The key purpose of this paper is to examine the causality and long‐run relationship between CO2 emission and agricultural output for an agriculture‐dependent developing country, namely Bangladesh. Design/methodology/approach In order to attain the objective, this study has used long‐time series data and employed advanced econometric techni...

This study investigates the causality and long-run sustainability between carbon emission and agricultural output in Japan using the long time series data and employing advanced econometric techniques of unit root test, nonlinear least-square estimation, vector error correction estimation, and Granger causality test. The results reveal that Japan's...

This paper explores the perceived gap between accounting research and practice, by determining both 'attitudinally' and 'behaviourally' if accounting research: (1) has failed to lead practice in contrast to medical research; (2) lacks innovation; (3) has failed to arrive at solutions to the fundamental issues in accounting practice; and (4) has no...

Despite its theoretical superiority, the activity-based costing (ABC) model has had only moderate success in replacing the traditional volume-based absorption costing models in complex organizations worldwide. Even in organizations that have launched ABC projects, the implementations often do not sustain. In response to this general lack of enthusi...