INTAC III - “Islam and Accounting: Towards Enhancing Accountability, Governance and Performance”

Organisers:
Department of Accounting,
Kulliyyah of Economics and Management Sciences,
International Islamic University Malaysia (IIUM)

and

The Asian Accounting, Finance and Business Research Unit (AAFBRU),
Cardiff Business School, Cardiff University, UK.

The Department of Accounting will be organizing IIUM International Accounting Conference III (INTAC III) in June 2006. This time around, INTAC III will be in collaboration with the Asian Accounting, Finance and Business Research Unit (AAFBRU), Cardiff Business School, Cardiff University, United Kingdom. The theme of the conference will be “Islam and Accounting: Towards Enhancing Accountability, Governance and Performance”.

INTAC III provides a venue for scholars both from Muslim and Non-Muslim countries to share their ideas and empirical findings on the major issues in accounting research reflected in the theme of the conference. In addition, the link between Islam and accounting can be possibly explored in accommodating the demands and opportunities as a result of the changes in economic, political and social climates in which accounting operates.

The demands for greater accountability and governance were the results of the failure of existing mechanisms to ensure management of enterprises work for the interest of stakeholders. Recent corporate governance scandals in developed countries that led to the collapse of Barings, Enron, WorldCom and Tyco posed a serious question about the existing mind set among academicians and practitioners on the premise that accounting in governance is upheld. Despite numerous claims about the strengths of the accounting technology, these corporate scandals reflect the flaws in existing accounting set ups, thus would make people seek alternative ways for a sustainable and reliable system. As corporate governance needs to be further strengthened, this has made universal values and ethics as its core foundation.

The needs for greater accountability and performance are also permeated into the public sector. Introducing the New Public Management (NPM) in the public sector's organisations has brought forward the critical role of accounting to ensure the effectiveness of the reform agenda. Accounting based reforms include accrual accounting, devolved budgeting, responsibility accounting and results based performance measures. However, there are lacks of empirical evidence about the success of these reforms to improve performance and accountability of government organisations particularly in developing countries. Thus, vast opportunities for research are provided in this area.

For the past two decades, the rapidly developing field of Islamic financial market and institutions, culminating in the growing interest in Islamic banking, finance and insurance provides another platform to appreciate the role of accounting as a language of business. This provides needs to develop sound Islamic accounting theoretical framework to support the demands to achieve the maqasid ( objectives ) of Syari'ah with which the implementation of those instruments and banking system is supposed to achieve. Similarly, this highlights the needs to understand the role of accounting can play for these organizations and institutions to achieve the Syari'ah‘s objectives and requirements. Nevertheless, there is still lack of critical evaluations of these developments. Research in these areas is needed to ensure that not only accounting meets the Syari'ah requirements but also to understand the role of accounting in promoting greater performance and accountability in these organizations.

Research in accounting had uncovered that accounting is not only perceived as technically static providing relevant financial information to managers, but there has been a dynamic interaction between accounting and its environment. Nevertheless, there is still a marked lack of understanding about the interplay between cultural, political and social impact on accounting in organizations. Therefore, there is an urgent need for the accounting academics and practitioners to undertake studies that attempt to understand the influences of human and socio-cultural values, and ideologies on accounting practices. As in the case of a Muslim society, accounting is expected to be influenced by the way the economic system is organized and the philosophy underpinning its system.

Attempts to embrace all potential research areas to support the theme of the conference recognize the fact that exploring relationships between Islamic teachings and accounting in post modern era is a relatively new endeavor. Therefore, you are invited to submit your papers to INTAC III to enable greater dialogue between scholars across the globe particularly on accounting research issues in Muslim countries.

The following objectives are selected to support the theme of the conference:

* Provide a forum for academics, professionals, students and others who are interested in understanding the interaction between Islam and Accounting in promoting accountability, good governance and performance.

* Promote and encourage accounting related research to further enrich the development of accounting towards improving accountability, governance and performance of both private and public enterprises.

* Cater for the specific educational and professional accounting needs of Muslim countries and Islamic institutions.