The Big Four is the name given to the top four professional consultancy firms of the world namely Pw C(Price Waterhouse Coopers), KPMG, Ernst and Young and Deloitte. These firms provide audit, accounting, taxation, fi...The Big Four is the name given to the top four professional consultancy firms of the world namely Pw C(Price Waterhouse Coopers), KPMG, Ernst and Young and Deloitte. These firms provide audit, accounting, taxation, financial and other professional consultancy to the clients(being businesses and companies). The paper discusses the reasons for the formation of the Big Four and the future aspects of the big four. It was found that the current market structure and the existing status of the Big Four will not change in the near future and there is near to impossible chances of new entrants in the auditing and accounting markets because of barriers to entry established by the Big Four in the existing market.展开更多
To promote sustainability, it has become increasingly vital to properly account material and energy flows in industrial production processes. Therefore, a generic process-level input-output （IO） model was developed ...To promote sustainability, it has become increasingly vital to properly account material and energy flows in industrial production processes. Therefore, a generic process-level input-output （IO） model was developed to provide an integrated energy （material） accounting and analysis approach for industrial production processes. By extending the existing processlevel IO models, the production, usage, export and loss of by-products were explicitly considered in the proposed IO model. Moreover, the by-products allocation procedures were incorporated into the proposed IO model to reflect individual contributions of products to energy consumption. Finally, the proposed model enabled calculating embodied energy of main products and total energy consumption under hierarchical accounting scope. Plant managers, energy management consultants, governmental officials and academic researchers could use this input-output model to account material and energy flows, thus calculating energy consumption indicators of a production process with their specific system boundary requirements. The accounting results could be further used for energy labeling, identifying bottlenecks of production activities, evaluating industrial symbiosis effects, improving materials and energy utilization efficiency, etc. The model could also be used as a planning tool to determine the effect that a particular change of technology and supply chains may have on the industrial production processes. The proposed model was tested and applied in a real integrated steel mill, which also provided the reference results for related researches. At last, some concepts, computational issues and limi- tations of the proposed model were discussed.展开更多
文摘The Big Four is the name given to the top four professional consultancy firms of the world namely Pw C(Price Waterhouse Coopers), KPMG, Ernst and Young and Deloitte. These firms provide audit, accounting, taxation, financial and other professional consultancy to the clients(being businesses and companies). The paper discusses the reasons for the formation of the Big Four and the future aspects of the big four. It was found that the current market structure and the existing status of the Big Four will not change in the near future and there is near to impossible chances of new entrants in the auditing and accounting markets because of barriers to entry established by the Big Four in the existing market.
文摘To promote sustainability, it has become increasingly vital to properly account material and energy flows in industrial production processes. Therefore, a generic process-level input-output （IO） model was developed to provide an integrated energy （material） accounting and analysis approach for industrial production processes. By extending the existing processlevel IO models, the production, usage, export and loss of by-products were explicitly considered in the proposed IO model. Moreover, the by-products allocation procedures were incorporated into the proposed IO model to reflect individual contributions of products to energy consumption. Finally, the proposed model enabled calculating embodied energy of main products and total energy consumption under hierarchical accounting scope. Plant managers, energy management consultants, governmental officials and academic researchers could use this input-output model to account material and energy flows, thus calculating energy consumption indicators of a production process with their specific system boundary requirements. The accounting results could be further used for energy labeling, identifying bottlenecks of production activities, evaluating industrial symbiosis effects, improving materials and energy utilization efficiency, etc. The model could also be used as a planning tool to determine the effect that a particular change of technology and supply chains may have on the industrial production processes. The proposed model was tested and applied in a real integrated steel mill, which also provided the reference results for related researches. At last, some concepts, computational issues and limi- tations of the proposed model were discussed.
