Student accounts for scholarship

UWA PhD student Ann Tarca has been awarded one of five part-time scholarships by the Accounting Association of Australia & New Zealand (AAANZ).

Funded by the two professional accounting bodies, The Institute of Charted Accountants in Australia and CPA Australia, the scholarship is worth $7500.

Ms Tarca says those in the accounting profession will monitor her thesis closely as she tries to establishes how companies are conducting their accounting practices in the light of globalisation.

She says her thesis looks at which choices international companies are making with regard to their accounting practice and is providing empirical examples for the need to create a set of uniform regulations that are in harm-ony with accounting practices and businesses worldwide.

“A company like ERG has markets all around the world. Each of their different markets want to understand the financials,” she said.

Ms Tarca said globalisation had produced stakeholder groups in different countries and this had been a driving force for the implementation of an inter-national accounting scheme.

The current International Accounting Standard (IAS) is not being utilised by all companies and her research also analyses what choices companies are making in their accounting practice; do they choose IAS or the USGAAP model.

She said the US model was designed for US companies and may not be the best system to adopt for companies operating outside of the United States.

Ms Tarca’s research is highly sought after for what she says is a shortage of academia in the accounting and finance prof-ession.

“There is a high demand for workers in the accounting and finance field,” she said.

She says one reason for the shortfall in accounting aca-demics are the incentives provided to work in the industry, which are more lucrative then those given in the academia world.

Ms Tarca teaches full-time at UWA and says she will use the money to purchase relief time so she can provide more time to her thesis.