The role of accounting in the twenty-first century firm†
The role of accounting in the twenty-first century firm†
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DOI：
10.1080/00014788.2015.1035549
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发表时间：
2015-06
影响因子：
1.7
通讯作者：
J. Zimmerman
中科院分区：
文献类型：
--
作者：
J. Zimmerman
我探讨了会计信息在资本配置中不断变化的作用。会计的出现是为了控制组织中的利益冲突（管理角色）。工业革命催生了资本密集型企业和股东分散的公共资本市场，为这些企业提供融资。这些公共资本市场的监管将会计的角色转变为向投资者提供信息以做出明智的投资决策（估值角色）。随着半导体和全球竞争的出现，当今的新兴企业和上市公司在根本上与前辈有所不同。利用半导体创造的信息技术，二十世纪的企业现在更加以知识为基础，拥有更多的无形资产，更加依赖员工的人力资本，面临着日益激烈的竞争，并面临着各种利益冲突，因此与前辈相比，在获取资本方面面临着不同的挑战。为了满足二十一世纪企业的需求，私募股权（PE）市场提供了捆绑服务——资本和治理。为了提供这一捆绑服务，私募股权公司需要会计信息来控制私募股权公司内部（普通合伙人和有限合伙人之间）及其被投资人内部的利益冲突。控制这些冲突将会计的角色转变回其最初的管理根源。估值作用仍然很重要，但除非利益冲突首先得到缓解，否则就没有什么可估值的。
I explore the evolving role of accounting information in allocating capital. Accounting arose to control conflicts of interest in organizations (stewardship role). The industrial revolution spawned capital-intensive firms and public capital markets with dispersed shareholders to finance these firms. The regulation of these public capital markets shifted the role of accounting toward providing investors with information for making informed investment decisions (valuation role). With the advent of the semiconductor and global competition, emerging and public firms today differ from their predecessors in fundamental ways. Exploiting the information technologies created by the semiconductor, twenty-first century firms are now more knowledge based, have more intangible assets, are more reliant on their employees’ human capital, confront increased competition, and face diverse conflicts of interests and hence different challenges accessing capital than their forerunners. Responding to the demands of twenty-first century firms, private-equity (PE) markets provide a bundled service – capital and governance. To supply this bundle, PE firms require accounting information to control the conflicts of interest both within the PE firm (between the general and limited partners) and within their investees. Controlling these conflicts shifts the role of accounting back toward its original stewardship roots. The valuation role remains important, but there is little to value unless the conflicts of interest are first mitigated.