Editorial
Authors: Waniak-Michalak Halina 
Published: September 2017

Editorial

Issue 93 (149) of „Zeszyty Teoretyczne Rachunkowości” (ZTR) was entitled „Histor-ical and theoretical determinants of contemporary accounting”. It is the sixth fully-English issue of this journal which the editorial team decided to publish. We believe that this volume will contribute both to the presentation of the results of the scientific work of researchers from different countries and to a better understanding of the backgrounds of contemporary accounting – its theoretical and historical contexts. The main purpose of this issue was to present the link between the development of con-temporary accounting and its theoretical and historical bases. The articles concern different topics of accounting and different aspects of historical and theoretical deter-minants, current and near future regulations, and accounting practices in three coun-tries. The articles cover the following topics: accounting regulations and practices, international standards or changes in national accounting, tax regulations important for companies or budgetary units, disclosure on corporate social responsibility, integrated reporting, the development of cost and management accounting concepts and methods. We accepted thirteen papers from three countries. All of them went positively through two independent and blind reviews, one of which was conducted by a foreign reviewer. The accepted papers of the volume present the results of research conducted by scientists in the area of accounting research and practice in Europe, both historical and contemporary. Different research methods were used, such as: content analysis, statistical analysis, literature analysis, and interviews. Four papers concern the education of accountants and the business ethics of profes-sionals. Natalja Gurvitsh, Jaan Alver, and Lehte Alver try to indicate to what extent business ethics is important in today’s business world. In further articles from Ewelina Zarzycka and from Kaidi Kallaste and Jaan Alver, the following questions appear: What is crucial for the profession of accounting? Do job advertisement requirements concern ethical attitudes? Does CPD guarantee that an accountant will behave in an ethical way while providing a service? Michał Mijal and Adam Chmielewski invent-ed a game to teach accounting with respect to the ethical issues which have become even more important as a result of recent economic crises that have led to the deterio-ration of public trust in accountants. Przemysław Kabalski, Joanna Cewińska, Ewa ISSN 1641-4381 print / ISSN 2391-677X online Copyright © 2017 Stowarzyszenie Księgowych w Polsce Prawa wydawnicze zastrzeżone http://www.ztr.skwp.pl DOI: 10.5604/01.3001.0010.3186 8 Editorial Kusideł, and Lena Grzesiak consider how the different personalities of accountants may influence their choices and behavior in business life or in learning. Małgorzata Macuda and Justyna Fijałkowska try to answer the question if companies that behave ethically and contribute to sustainable development, measure and disclose a value of socially responsible business activities. Two papers, one from Poland, from Alicja Brodzka, and the second from Ukraine, from Tetiana Paientko and Kateryna Proskura, concern tax avoidance problems and tax control. The first paper describes the motives of implementing the international country-by-country initiative in order to increase the transparency of the biggest multinational enterprises. The second paper presents the problem of forecasting tax flows from the point of view of government bodies. Management accounting is a topic of two papers from Poland. Anna Szychta and Justyna Dobroszek conducted research to verify if Polish academics perceive differ-ences between the terms management accounting and controlling. Piotr Waśniewski presents a framework of performance measurement system for small enterprises. Alfreda Sapkauskiene and Sergej Orlovskij search for an answer to the question whether we can use fair value estimates for financial decision making, and if we can rely on the values presented in financial reports when we consider the human „factor” in fair value estimations. The aim of the paper from Tomasz Zimnicki is to evaluate the usefulness of seg-ment reports for decision makers. He assessed the change of segmental reporting standards from IAS14R to IFRS8 in the context of feature relevance. IFRS were also the topic of the last paper, written by Magdalena Janowicz. She concludes that a sepa-rate standard is necessary for business combinations under common control, because regulations in national GAAPs don’t guarantee that all requirements of information quality are fulfilled. The editorial team takes the opportunity to thank all the supporters of the English issue of ZTR. We appreciate very much the involvement of the reviewers, the com-mitment of the authors of the papers, as well as the help of other academics and friends engaged in the preparation of the issue. We also encourage you to visit our website www.ztr.skwp.pl which presents the latest information on our projects as well as all the procedures needed to submit a paper to the journal.