The Wild West is a lawless and dangerous place to be! At any wrong turn, you could find yourself in pretty sticky situations. Per the writings ofGary Cokins forTRG International, I can understand his comparisons to the Wild West in the world of managerial accounting. Contrast that with financial accounting, where it is more closely governed and full of very strict and rigorous policies. Financial accounting had to adapt to such degrees thanks to situations like Enron and World Com. I chose to focus on the section of the blog titled "No laws. No jail." where Cokins (2013) states that "Some accountants are lazy." In this section, Cokins mentions that cutting corners and falsifying numbers can lead to jail time in financial accounting, but this is not the case for managerial accountants. There is far less governing and each accountant may have a different idea or opinion than another, which leads to discrepancies between each firm, but not to jail time. If there could be something even close to as concrete asFASB orIFRS in this field, then it would be a much safer place.

References

Cokins, G. (2013, March 04).Cowboy Accountants - The Lawless Frontier. trg International: https://blog.trginternational.com/bid/172474/Cowboy-Accountants-The-Lawless-Frontier

Please provide a brief and comprehensive response with IN-TEXT Citations as well as credible references.