The financial accounting system of the disclosure of going concern information has been introduced in Japan since the fiscal year after March 1st, 2003. The top management has to evaluate the notes of her/his company’s going concern. Moreover, she/he must explain its situation in the annotation of the annual security reports if any important questions arise in order to continue to exist her/his company. The auditor must audit its evaluation and notes of the top management. The objective of this paper is to clarify how the disclosure of going concern information based on a segregation of responsibility affects the turnaround or discipline of the management. As a result of my experimental analysis, it was proved that the disclosure of going concern information motivates many companies to promote turnarounds and contributes to improve the financial performance of the disclosed companies after three years have passed. Consequently, it’s contemplated that the disclosure of going concern information gives the management the chance to consider and practice countermeasures for its turnaround.

According to Resource-Based theory, corporate competitive advantages are created from managerial resources firms own. Firms which enjoy competitive advantages tend to have characterized managerial resources different from typical companies in a same industry. Those characteristics appears in firms’ investment activities both to intangibles such as R&D and advertising expenditure and to tangibles such as plants and equipments. In this paper we defined those as discretionary investments, and tested a relationship between discretionary investments and corporate competitive advantages in three aspects such as sustainability, trend, and average investment level. Results of our empirical analyses showed that discretionary investments had significant impacts on competitive advantages of the firms. Discretionary investments have synergisms and interactions, both total volume of discretionary investments and distortion of each investment influence on firms’ competitive advantages.

This paper was written for describing the key note presentation presented at the annual meeting of Japanese Association of Management Accounting held in Asia University from August 28 through 30, 2009. The theme of the presentation was intangibles and reputation management. The contents of presentation were naturally added to the original paper.

The subjects of this research are such intellectual intangibles as human assets, information assets and organizational assts which are off -balance intangibles, and brand and corporate reputation. Thus, they do not include on-balance intangible properties which are researched mainly by researchers on financial accounting. This research does not focus on valuation of intangible assets, but on how to manage them.

This paper discusses the potential of management accounting tool that supports to estimate the profitability of CSR(corporate social responsibility) rerated activities. Every firm hopes to estimate the effects or influences of these activities on their economical performance, since they must reach a consensus on the activities to their stake-holders and secure the sustainable execution of CSR. The contents of CSR rerated activities, however, are put on various, and the domain that management accounting could contribute is limited. This paper focuses on material flow cost accounting(MFCA) with which many firms are hoping for a marked improvement in environmental preservation that is the most critical activity of CSR, and identifies the significance and problems of MFCA. In addition, the paper investigates a case of Nihon Unisys Supply Co. as a innovative application of MFCA

Corporate reputation has two aspects, a source of competitive advantage and corporate value itself. Measuring corporate reputation must be based on the line with the clear definition of corporate reputation. Once corporate reputation is measured, it is useful information for reputation management by comparing the past data or the benchmarking against competitors. To demonstrate correlation or causal relationship between corporate reputation and financial performance, it is necessary to perform regression, path or covariance structure analysis for the purpose of building of the theory of reputation management. The balanced scorecard based on the stakeholder approach is a good framework for reputation management. It is expected that the developing of theory of reputation management will be supported by the empirical research in Japan.

The brand is an important, intangible asset of a company’s value and should be managed strategically. In other words, how the brand is perceived must be properly managed. Although it has become easier to form the reputation of the company due to the growth of the Internet, managing how the brand is perceived by the public has become more complex. It is because the reputation influences the context of the brand.

The brand and reputation must be understood separately and strategically. Only then, can both brand and reputation be managed comprehensively. The reputation scorecard is an effective method for this.