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Biography

Andy Lymer's interest in the Internet began with his first degree in Computer Science and Accountancy (University of Wales, Aberystwyth) and continued through his research degree and into his teaching career, first at the University of Wales and then at the University of Birmingham. He has now been teaching and writing about the Internet in Business and in Education for a number of years. He has taught in Asia, Europe, Central and Northern America and been published in journals such as Issues in Accounting Education, British Accounting Review, Accounting Education and ACCOUNT.

He was one of the authors of the recent ACCA research report entitled "The Impact of the Internet on SMEs" and contributed to a Deloitte & Touche study on the implications of corporate reporting online. He is currently Director of the SUMMA project (the European Accounting Research Web site) and he is Webmaster of the British and the European Accounting Associations. He is also on the Editorial Boards of the International Journal of Accounting, the New Review of Applied Expert Systems, the Journal of Information Technology Cases and Applications and the Journal of Financial Information Systems.

Why Use the Web to Study Accounting and Finance?

The modern business world is all about information handling: information gathering, synthesis and analysis. Successful modern business people are those who function best in this "information rich" environment. The use of the Internet in MBA education is a critical part of this learning process. Some students will have experience of this tool already, others will be approaching it for the first time. All will need to be familiar with the Web to get the most from an MBA.

Business information is particularly well covered by the Internet. The business resources at their fingertips astound new users. The ability to sift through the poorly organised mass of data on the Web to find the one piece that is of vital importance to a current problem is a difficult skill to grasp, but a necessary one.

Students of accounting and finance at MBA level will be asked to gain an understanding of the environment in which a business operates. They will need to comprehend the methods and mechanisms for recording activity and monitoring performance. They need to study long established principles that continue to be applied to very modern businesses in flexible ways. They need to become familiar with financial terms and language and be able to apply them to abstract situations from real ones when problem-solving.

The Web is rapidly becoming one of the key tools for operating a business and understanding what is going on in the business world. The need to filter information and distinguish the important from the interesting is a key skill in a good business person. Without knowledge of the Web when studying accounting and finance students will be missing much of the most exciting current debate in the subject and the opportunity to have access to the very latest business information.

This chapter aims to provide a taste of the range of information the Web can give access to, to help students through MBA studies and beyond. It only touches the tip of the resources available, but will give users an excellent launching point from which to discover the Internet in accounting and finance. This chapter briefly describes Web sites relevant to the study of financial accounting, finance, audit, taxation, government, the accounting profession and accounting firms, SMEs and banks. There are also sections on publishers and accounting and finance related news and information, with further references for independent study.

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