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KPMG/University of
Illinois Business Measurement Case Development and
Research Program
The
KPMG/University of Illinois Business Measurement Case
Development and Research Program is designed to be a
catalyst for the academic community to innovate the
content and pedagogy of university auditing and assurance
education. National and ultimately global in scope, the
program is focused on strategic-systems auditing and
empowers faculty to:
- develop rich
state-of-the-art educational materials
- construct a
context within which newly developed audit approaches
can be subjected to scholarly research.
For some time,
accounting and auditing educators have expressed concern
that courses may be too narrowly focused on testing
transaction details, without sufficient attention to the
role of knowledge of the client's business, industry and
business environment. In recent years, such a broader
framework increasingly has been embraced by practicing
auditors, but auditing educators have found it difficult
to keep up. Faculty expressed concern about the high costs
of developing teaching materials to provide students with
meaningful experiences in obtaining and using business
knowledge for audit purposes.
To address this
need, The University of Illinois and KPMG established a
program to empower the academic community to develop and
use materials more relevant to information-age business
practices in their audit and accounting classes. The
program is facilitating and accelerating the academic
community's development and dissemination of new
educational materials to meet changing educational needs
for the 21st century. To date, program elements include:
- Publication
in 1997 of a monograph (Auditing Organizations Through A
Strategic-Systems Lens) outlining the principles of the
strategic-systems approach to auditing.
- Establishment
of a program to fund scholars, working collaboratively
with practitioners, to develop cases and teaching notes
founded on the principles presented in the monograph.
- A first-round
awarding of eight grants totaling $246,400 in 1998.
- A
multi-faceted system for wide, proactive
dissemination-by the program administrators-of the cases
and materials developed.
- An
expectation that grant recipients who complete cases
successfully will request and receive additional funding
for follow-on research arising from the initial work.
More than 35,000
scholars and practitioners, including all members of the
AAA, have received copies of the monograph. In 1998, 32
teams of scholars submitted proposals; eight were selected
for funding. The eight recipients are now actively
developing their cases; three of the eight are being
tested in classrooms. An Internet web site (www.cba.uiuc.edu/kpmg-uiuc)
has been created to disseminate the cases and information
about the program. Several academic conferences, colloquia
and symposia have been focused on the concepts presented
in the monograph and on the program's emerging case
development, including a standing room-only presentation
of two of the cases at the AAA Auditing Section's Mid-Year
meeting in January 1999.
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