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Editorial comment.

Document Cited in Related
Vincent
AuthorPrickett, Ruth

One of the most overused cliches must be that we are living (and working) in an ever-changing and increasingly global world. It's easy to mock, but over the past couple of years it has sometimes seemed as though the whole planet has been struggling with recession, fraud and financial scandals. After the dramatic collapse of Enron, companies seemed to fall over themselves to reveal that they too had been grossly negligent at best--and downright crooked at worst. Yet plummeting stock values, war and increasingly belligerent shareholders do not remove the impetus for crime, of course. Few CEOs respond to a downturn by telling their managers to forget about cost-cutting, to blow the budget and to hire extra people on generous salaries. And, if they did, the shareholders would demand a quick trip to a psychiatrist.

But even if businesses can do little to reduce the pressures that may lead managers to take dangerous risks or fiddle the books, they can ensure that they balance their recession-beating policies with tighter financial controls. Accountants, like lawyers, are always in demand when things go wrong. That's not to say that they are the ravens circling the battlefield; rather it's that they enable the champions to fight another day. This is why it's so encouraging that, at a time when everyone is watching the global economic indicators nervously, CIMA has opened its doors to its 60,000th member (page 11).

If the world itself cannot become more global, its businesses certainly can, and increasing the number of qualified, experienced management accountants worldwide should go some way towards convincing nervous...

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