Winston Barquist III, a former big time corporate attorney who narrowly escaped disbarment, is now a 300 pound, moped-riding lawyer, turning his life around with a new girlfriend and a re-invented career as a sole practitioner in a flea-bag office above a Dairy Mart. Mostly, his cases consist of defending small-time hoods and negotiating simple divorces, but his life takes an abrupt new direction when a svelte society matron parks her Mercedes at his front door and hires him to investigate a large fund in which she and her business-mogul husband are both trustees. Doesn't sound too dangerous--that is, until bullets start flying and our intrepid hero finds himself in the middle of one DEADLY AUDIT.
Police auditing merits the attention of both practitioners and academicians for two primary reasons. First, police auditing meets the need of police administrators to know about the economy, efficiency, and effectiveness of their organization and operations. Second, it provides an important mechanism for the public and its elected officials to fulfill their oversight responsibilities. This book provides a comprehensive examination of theories, standards, procedures, applications, and evaluations of police audits to allow the reader to obtain a detailed understanding of different aspects and types of police audits and apply the principles of auditing and data collection to various police programs. The book is readable for different audiences as it provides a review of police auditing along with discussions of planned change and incorporates standards and procedures in police auditing into social scientific research process and methods. The book is aimed at three types of readers. First, it provides police executives and managers with a timely and necessary understanding of police auditing as they conduct budget reviews and organizational diagnoses. Second, it serves as a valuable source of information for auditors and researchers who are either charged with the responsibility to perform police audits directly or engaged in evaluating audited police programs. Third, students in criminal justice programs will benefit from this book in courses that address research methods and police accountability issues.
Begin the transformation of the Internal Audit function by applying Total Quality Management (TQM) concepts. The book, Total Quality Auditing, How a Total Quality Mindset Can Help Internal Audit Add Real Value, presents how to put TQM concepts to work in the world of Internal Auditing. The Total Quality Auditing (TQA) Six Points of Focus including Ethics and Culture, Standards of Conduct, Customer Feedback, Lean Auditing, Balance of Audit and Consulting and Internal Audit Leadership provide a framework that can be immediately applied to increase the value of Internal Audit through proactive steps to reduced risks and improved organization effectiveness. TQA is a new and refreshing approach that will change the way Internal Audit goes to work. TQA is a teachable moment for organization leaders, CEO's, CFO's, CAE's and Internal Auditors, not of how auditing is conducted today, but how it can be transformed in the future.
"Messrs. Gow and Kells have made an invaluable contribution, writing in an amused tone that nevertheless acknowledges the firms' immense power and the seriousness of their neglect of traditional responsibilities. 'The Big Four' will appeal to all those interested in the future of the profession--and of capitalism itself." —Jane Gleeson-White, Wall Street Journal With staffs that are collectively larger than the Russian army and combined revenues of over $130 billion a year, the Big Four accounting firms—Deloitte, PricewaterhouseCoopers, Ernst & Young, and KPMG—are a keystone of global commerce. But leading scholar Ian Gow and award-winning author Stuart Kells warn that a house of cards may be about to fall. Stretching back to the Medicis in Renaissance Florence, this book is a fascinating story of wealth, power, and luck. The founders of the Big Four lived surprisingly colorful lives. Samuel Price, for example, married his own niece. Between the world wars, Nicholas Waterhouse collected postage stamps while also hosting decadent parties in his fashionable London home. All four firms have endured major calamities in recent decades. There have been hundreds of court cases and legal prosecutions for failed audits, tax scandals, and breaches of independence. The firms have come so close to “extinction level events” that regulators have required them to prepare “living wills.” And today, the Big Four face an uncertain future—thanks to their push into China, their vulnerability to digital disruption and competition, and the hazards of providing traditional services in a new era of transparency. This account of the past, present, and likely future of the Big Four is essential reading for anyone perplexed or fascinated by professional services, working or considering working in the industry, or simply curious about the fate of the global economy.
Remote auditing has been thrust into the limelight given the circumstances surrounding the COVID-19 pandemic. However, remote auditing has been around for well over a decade. Its popularity has been spurred by advances in technology and the globalization of economies. There has been an uptick in multi-site companies with operations scattered across the map and more small and medium-size enterprises engaged in international commerce. The purpose of auditing is to verify the conformance of an organization's processes and management system to defined requirements. Depending on the type of audit and the objective, the conformance criteria vary. The standard against which an audit may be conducted could be an organization's own procedures and documented requirements; a management system standard such as ISO 9001, AS9100, or IATF 16949; customer-specified requirements; or government regulations. Even with the constraints of remote auditing, these results still need to be achieved. Audits help us to identify problems, risks, good practices, and opportunities to better serve our customers. This book deals with the various aspects of remote auditing, including planning, risk assessment, logistical constraints, conducting the audit, and providing an informative audit report. Chapters include: Remote Auditing Overview Identifying and Managing Risk Planning the Remote Audit Prepping for a Remote Audit Conducting a Remote Audit Writing the Audit Report Follow-Up and Future Planning
The seeds of a killer are sown as Billy Bonner suffers torture at the hands of his father and two older brothers on the family farm in Iowa. He commits his first two acts of murder when he is just twelve years old, and he spends the rest of his life avenging the abuse his family perpetrated on him. Forty-two-year-old Nick Powers, a seventeen-year veteran of the New York City Police Department, is assigned to investigate a special case. A serial killer is on the loose in New York City. Targeting victims over the age of sixty, this murderer disguises himself as a charming deliveryman, policeman, or priest. After gaining entrance to the victims homes, he hangs the women by their ankles while they bleed to death, and then he removes their eyes. The notes left at the scenes read: She should have seen. Powers vows to catch this diabolical killer who has successfully eluded twenty police departments for twenty years. But the chase becomes personal when the killer contacts Powers and threatens to harm his family
Foodborne illness is a big problem. Wash those chicken breasts, and you’re likely to spread Salmonella to your countertops, kitchen towels, and other foods nearby. Even salad greens can become biohazards when toxic strains of E. coli inhabit the water used to irrigate crops. All told, contaminated food causes 48 million illnesses, 128,000 hospitalizations, and 3,000 deaths each year in the United States. With Outbreak, Timothy D. Lytton provides an up-to-date history and analysis of the US food safety system. He pays particular attention to important but frequently overlooked elements of the system, including private audits and liability insurance. Lytton chronicles efforts dating back to the 1800s to combat widespread contamination by pathogens such as E. coli and salmonella that have become frighteningly familiar to consumers. Over time, deadly foodborne illness outbreaks caused by infected milk, poison hamburgers, and tainted spinach have spurred steady scientific and technological advances in food safety. Nevertheless, problems persist. Inadequate agency budgets restrict the reach of government regulation. Pressure from consumers to keep prices down constrains industry investments in safety. The limits of scientific knowledge leave experts unable to assess policies’ effectiveness and whether measures designed to reduce contamination have actually improved public health. Outbreak offers practical reforms that will strengthen the food safety system’s capacity to learn from its mistakes and identify cost-effective food safety efforts capable of producing measurable public health benefits.
This important and challenging volume of essays draws on insights from leading academics and public servants from Australia, New Zealand, the United Kingdom, Canada and elsewhere. It provides an excellent series of critiques of both the systemic accountabilities and the policy processes of government by drawing on meticulously researched, topical and real-world case studies of governance. Its contribution to the understanding of the applied processes of government in this way is exemplary. Topics covered include: restoring trust in government, parliamentary scrutiny of the APS, administrative law and FOI, budgetary reforms, implementation issues, competition policy, indigenous administration, collaboration with the NGO sector, educational reforms and the changes to the Auditor- General’s mandate.
Earth is teeming with animal and vegetal biodiversity. The planet's capacity to healthily feed its inhabitants is bar none. Our nest-egg's resources are incomparable. But, have we sabotaged our environment beyond the point of no return? Earth supplies us with every breath of air, freely. Water to quench our thirst. The sun for warmth. Seasons for plenteous harvests. Its landscapes for living and leisure. Its beauty for our serenity. Then, along comes humankind, greedy, leeching, pillaging, unscrupulous, slowly asphyxiating our very life-giver. We're draining it like a blood-sucking vampire taking the life out of its victim. Humanity sets up organizations, treaties, alliances, conferences for leaders and scientists. We aspire to peace and prosperity, playing the fiddle while Rome burns. We apply band-aids to what needs open-heart surgery. The survival of our planet and, consequently, our way of life is at stake. The doomsday clock is at 100 seconds to midnight. Will we pull off the rescue, and save our planet in one minute and forty seconds? Kristin, referring to The Explanation series, said, "one of a series of books that sets the stage for the secret to life." Be the eye-witness to the disturbing, destructive tendency of human nature and its counterpart, the uplifting, innovative solutions. Decide for yourself. Is the glass of peace and prosperity getting fuller or emptier? Buy Audit of the Universe, embark on the tour that leads to the secret of life.
