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Notes

In this review, I employ some Italian terms that may cause the reader to reflect on the way in which such phrases can encapsulate precisely those things we cannot express readily in English. These terms are either in common use or are employed by English speakers in more specialized contexts (see Le Mot Juste, Kogan Page, 1980). For instance, musicians will know the meaning of con brio (with spirit and force, with great life and vivacity), but the rest of us may not have it at our fingertips. Therefore, the following lexicon is provided at the editor's request: cognoscente: connoisseur, one who knows a subject thoroughly; con brio: (in music) with spirit and force, with great life and vivacity; dilettante: amateur, one who approaches subjects without application or serious study; economia aziendale: business economics; glissando: (in music) sliding from one note to another; illuminati: possessing special knowledge or enlightenment, sometimes used satirically; lingua franca: common tongue, used for communication between people from different countries; literati: educated and well read, the learned class; politico: political opportunist, with bad connotation; Risorgimento: the movement which led to the unification of Italy as an independent state in the nineteenth century; uomo universale: a person who excels in the major fields of learning and action, Renaissance man; vedutista: painter specializing in realistic scenes, especially one belonging to the genre represented by eighteenth-century Italian artists such as Canaletto and Piranesi; virtuoso: a skilful person of great ability and fine technique.

Some of the major accounting investigations involved Adelphia, AOL/Time Warner, Bristol Myers Squibb, Computer Associates, Enron, Global Crossing, Merck, MicroStrategy, PeopleSoft, PNC Financial Services, Qwest, Tyco, Waste Management, WorldCom and Xerox (Business Week, 10 June 2002).

Benston et al. (2003, p. 1) define the American system of corporate disclosures as ‘the combination of accounting and auditing standards, the professionalism of auditors, and the rules and practices of corporate governance that are designed to ensure timely dissemination of relevant and accurate corporate financial information’.