Although our LDA approach is much more advanced than mere word count or word cloud methods, it still models documents using a bag-of-words representation. Third, we included articles uploaded to the SSRN database as well as published articles in ranked journals. We are aware that the peer-review process is accepted as a proxy for the quality of published works, especially with respect to academic journal articles (Hart, 1999; Massaro et al., 2015). However, we believe that, given the speed of new knowledge development, especially in the areas of disruptive technologies like blockchain, papers from SSRN added an important contribution to the topics identified. Finally, the validity of the results can only be considered at the time of the analysis, as literature reviews “are not a panacea” (Massaro et al., 2015, p. 546).
Keywords
Once clarified, researchers will be able to study the taxation policies applicable to this can you work 60 hours & not get paid overtime new class of assets in detail. One related research question for the future involves whether blockchain-based instant tax allocation helps to decrease the cost of tax compliance for companies or not (Karajovic et al., 2019). As the role of external contexts and legal frameworks is highly important to blockchain development (Allen et al., 2020; Stratopoulos and Calderon, 2018), researchers may study the differences in blockchain implementation in environments that are (and are not) “crypto-friendly”. Papers on this topic are mostly written from the perspective of a company implementing blockchain.
- Therefore, we assume that automating data collection and storage using blockchain will not mean the auditing profession disappears.
- Comprehensive work by regulators and policymakers may help implement and spread these technological innovations further, opening new sources of financing for companies.
- Because you’re going to have a lot of different, probably permission-based blockchains, private blockchains, where people will potentially do some transaction work or supply chain work.
- Further, if blockchain is implemented on a broad scale, accountants will not only have more information for planning and control, they may be required to synthesise it.
How Blockchain Will Support Accountants
This is occurring in virtually every industry and in most jurisdictions globally. Our deep business acumen and global industry-leading Audit & Assurance, Consulting, Tax, and Risk and Financial Advisory services help organizations across industries achieve their various blockchain aspirations. With the ability to autonomously execute some audit procedures based on blockchain, smart contracts will provide stakeholders with already partly verified information (Rozario and Vasarhelyi, 2018).
Applications of Blockchain in Financial Accounting
Moreover, with an increase in the number of cryptoassets and initial coin offerings (ICOs) accountants may also need to develop their skills as advisors and consultants on how to report these kinds of assets and transactions. Further, if blockchain is implemented on a broad scale, accountants will not only have more information for planning and control, they may be required to synthesise it. This, too, will change the role of accountants, particularly management accountants.
Nor can individuals collude to override controls or illicitly change or delete official accounting records (Wang and Kogan, 2018). Companies that incorporate blockchain into their accounting systems therefore may reduce their risk of fraud (Dai et al., 2017). Using blockchain might also mean more transactions can be automated, less data are lost, transactions can be tracked better and users’ needs throughout the process can be detected more easily (Fullana and Ruiz, 2021; Bonsón and Bednárová, 2019). However, the primary and most valuable difference between traditional databases and blockchain is its novel solution to control whereby transactions cannot be deleted or changed (Coyne and McMickle, 2017; Dai et al., 2017).
Research shows LDA to be a relevant and useful tool for statement of comprehensive income – overview working with both big and small literature corpora (e.g. Li, 2010; Asmussen and Møller, 2019; El-Haj et al., 2019). Asmussen and Møller (2019, p. 16) highlight that applying LDA to even small sets of papers provides “greater reliability than competing exploratory review methods, as the code can be rerun on the same papers, which will provide identical results”. For these reasons and more, the LDA method is currently one of the most commonly employed topic identification methods that does not simply rely on a static word frequency measure (Blei et al., 2003). Moreover, El-Haj et al. (2019, p. 292) recommend employing machine learning methods and high-quality manual analysis in conjunction as they “represent complementary approaches to analyzing financial discourse”. We followed this advice, applying a hybrid approach that comprised LDA analysis, citation analysis and a manual review.
Decentralized, Distributed Ledger Technology
Lev and Gu (2016) argue that blockchain may reduce information asymmetry and lead to more effective decision-making. The results of Table 4 allow us to confirm our choice define government grants of the topics for further analysis. The top 10 papers with the highest citations per year belong to one of the four research topics that have the marginal distribution over 10% represented in Table 2 and account for more than a half of the overall distribution.