By: Patrick Thompson
Award Nominee
At first glance, accounting appears to be a structured, uniform discipline. However, when analyzing how accounting has developed in different countries and economies, it becomes evident that there is more in play that simply fact-based rules. A country’s history and culture greatly affect how an accounting structure is formed and operates in an economy. The following podcast will attempt to highlight how these accounting systems are affected by culture by analyzing two major economies: United States and Japanese economies. And hopefully, this demonstration will give insight to the challenges that lay before the global accounting world and their push to universalize accounting standards world-wide.
*4 stars*
This podcast on cultural influences on accounting provided timely information and comparisons, along with in depth explanations of all pertinent information to the topic. This is a very interesting topic to me because I am very interested in the effects of culture on all sorts of topics, and yet, this is an area I had never really considered in relation to cultural differences, so it especially intrigued me. Overall, the information provided and the images used were relevant and well-placed. I really only have two criticisms of this podcast, and they are relatively minor. First, the podcast started off pretty slow, with only a constant picture and no music or other way of capturing the audience’s attention. Second, there were several points in the podcast where the speaker’s voice trailed off and became hard to hear, but it was at a very good volume for most of the podcast. Overall, it was a well thought-out and professionally presented podcast.
I rate this podcast four stars. The podcast was very interesting, and provided relevant and useful information on today’s accounting environment. The speaker organized the podcast very well, first describing the situation between the lack of trust in the United States Generally Accepted Accounting Principles as a result of accounting fraud, and then going on to introducing the idea of the International Financial Reporting Standards. He did a very good job at comparing the United States and Japan’s business cultures. He also did very well at pronouncing the names of the Japanese companies! The visuals were also good, changing frequently to keep the watcher’s attention. Overall, the podcast was very informative, and interesting to watch.