Article Summary Assignment
Understanding Fraud in the Accounting Environment
(Article Summary)
A study by Riahi-Belkaoui and Picur (2000) establishes a framework to identify the situations that most encouraging accounting fraud in businesses. The Authors depend on criminological theories and models in presenting their framework. The used theories are: The conflict and consensus theories, the ecological theory, cultural transmission theory, and anomie theory.
The consensus and the conflict approaches:
The consensus theory is a criminology theory that examines the integration of values in society. However, the conflict theory studies the conflicts of social groups’ interest in society. The study relies on the conflict approach to claim that accounting interests group assisted in increasing fraud through their assertion that they can control fraud and scams in accounting work. This situation led to less effective regulation in regard to fraud and white-collar crimes. Moreover, the inequality that might result from different interests conflict may lead to aggressive fraudulent behavior. The authors, on the other hands, use the consensus theory to understand accounting fraud by referring to people’s reaction to fraud comparing with other crimes. The study indicates that people have indifferent response to …show more content…
Anomie theory focuses on the confusion that is resulted from the incompatibility between values and norms in the society. The authors indicate the American dream as an example of the lack of fit between cultural goals and the ways to achieve them that might be confused. The difficulty of accomplishing standard means in a society may make people attempting to reach them through illegal ways. According to the study, the incompatibility between economic success and the ways to achieve it explains the widespread of fraudulent accounting and white-collar