Case Studies of Accounting Concepts and Methodologies

Instead of the traditional honors thesis that is written during a winter internship and communicated to the dean throughout the course of work, the following alternative thesis is composed of twelve individual case studies that were drawn from the course Accountancy 420. The course, led by Dr. Victoria Dickinson, was scheduled in a way that the cases were worked on in conjunction with professional meetings and presentations, in which members of accounting firms or various other businesses would discuss topics relating to the current state of accounting, their specific industry, and how the two intertwine. The case studies all required, in some form or another, analysis of a company’s financial statements and a certain level of critical thinking to reason out how a certain accounting principle applies to the figures and line items presented. As is evident from the attached case studies, the companies examined are from a wide range of industries and have greatly varying revenue streams. Additionally, there are even foreign companies explored in some of the case studies which offer a unique look into the International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) that is not usually covered in the undergraduate accounting courses I have completed thus far