The sleeping watch dog: aka the Securities and Exchange Commission
Purpose - The purpose of this paper is to expose inefficient regulatory policies and organizational weaknesses at the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) that have contributed to a series of regulatory oversights that have produced some of the largest fraud schemes perpetrated on investors. Design/methodology/approach - Sources of information consisted of scholarly articles and articles retrieved from the web. Findings - Findings suggest that although weaknesses that have been exposed at the SEC may not account for any one securities fraud oversight, cumulatively, the weaknesses create negative synergy that increases the probability that a regulatory oversight will occur. Originality/value - This paper serves as a useful guide to alert and educate securities regulators and enforcement, regardless of the country they may operate in, to examine their own regulatory policies and organizational structures for weakness that may be similar to the SEC.
Debunking the Myth of the Out of Character Offense
INTRODUCTION Joseph Wells, the founder and Chairman of the Board of the Association of Certified Fraud Examiners (ACFE), observed, ―As a group...the majority of CPAs are still ignorant about fraud...for the last 80 years, untrained accounting graduates have been drafted to wage war against sophisticated liars and thieves. And as multi-billion dollar accounting failures have shown, it has not been much of a fight‖ (Ramamoorti, 2008, p. 522). Anti-fraud professionals, including academicians, may not understand the profile of white-collar criminals because they do not have a framework to conceptualize criminal thought patterns and negative behavioral traits that facilitate white-collar crime consequently perpetuating erroneous criminological and character assumptions about this offender class. Several fraud examination paradigms exist, but are inadequate for examining the complicated nature of white-collar crime. Donald Cressey‘s fraud triangle provides a framework, particularly his criminal personality trait of rationalization point, and the fraud diamond enhanced this taxonomy by incorporating a fourth point, offender capability (Dorminey, Fleming, Kranacher, & Riley, 2010). However, neither model addresses criminological components of white-collar criminal thinking traits in enough detail; thus, generations of antifraud professionals, academicians and those in the legal and law enforcement community are not taught and do not understand the major elements of the criminal personality consisting of thought
Perceived job importance and job performance satisfaction of selected clinical nutrition management responsibilities.
A nationwide survey of clinical nutrition managers was conducted to assess perceived importance of selected job responsibilities and perceived performance satisfaction of those job responsibilities. A questionnaire was developed to achieve the study objectives, validated by an expert panel, and pilot-tested prior to data collection. All members of the American Dietetic Association's Clinical Nutrition Management dietetic practice group (N=1,668) were asked to rate the importance of selected job responsibilities and their satisfaction with those responsibilities using Likert-type scales with descriptions. Results revealed that clinical nutrition managers perceived all job responsibilities listed in the questionnaire to be important (ie, the mean score of each responsibility was >3.0 of a 4.0 scale). Respondents rated regulatory-related job responsibilities as most important and were most satisfied with their performance of these responsibilities. Following regulatory-related responsibilities, clinical nutrition managers perceived patient satisfaction and staff retention to be more important than other responsibilities. In general, clinical nutrition managers were more satisfied with their job performance for job responsibilities that they ranked as more important.