Project Aim
The major criticism of the SOX Act 2002 comes from its high compliance costs which companies have to incur. The most contentious SOX Section 404 requires companies to assess and report on the effectiveness and completeness of internal controls (Edison, 2009).
This requires companies to hire a team of accountants and lawyers and restructure that accounting and reporting systems that certainly add high costs to business. SOX Section 404 places different obligatory requirements which utility companies have to foresee particularly about risk management that requires companies to ensure adequate reporting (Fielden, 2006). Companies in the utility sector are increasingly feeling the pressure to prove that their governance and control procedures are sufficient and effective enough to eliminate risks of accounting manipulation and identify any deficiencies and discrepancies if still exist.
Reasons for Proposed Research
The proposed study would surely assist in forming grounds for assessing benefits from compliance with SOX 2002. The proposed research interests the researcher as this would allow assessing the impact of SOX on utility-providing companies. Various researches and reports have provided major highlights of SOX and its implications for different businesses however the current research would be unique in a way that it would provide a depth analysis of the utility companies and how compliance with SOX has affected their accounting and reporting structures and determine the cost factors which derive the cost of services provided by these companies.
The overall cost implications would be weighed against the benefits of compliance and a measure would be developed to determine its significance on the value of utility services these companies provide. The proposed research would provide its users a thorough understanding of the implications of SOX on utility companies based on the differentiation between publicly and privately owned utility companies.
Proposed Research Areas
The overall objective of the proposed study would be served better by delving into the following research areas pertinent to research regarding the cost of SOX compliance for utility companies.
- To analyze the cost implications of compliance with SOX for federally owned and privately held utility companies and assess its impact on the services they provide.
- To analyze whether benefits overweigh costs of compliance and compare and contrast the extent of its impact on the cost of utility services in publicly and privately owned utility companies.
Proposed Research Approach
The research would be based on a Phenomenological paradigm which is based on qualitative data. The alternate approach referred to as the qualitative approach deals with in-depth study and analysis of the subject in review. This is subjective and follows humanistic and interpretative methods. Qualitative research sets out by establishing a hypothesis rather than testing existing ones (McBride & Schostak, 2004).
The reason for selecting this approach is to draw upon the responses and experiences of utility companies as they struggle to become compliant with SOX and in particular Section 404 of this Act which requires management and external to provide an assessment report on the company’s internal controls. This analysis would be supplemented by costs data collected from utility companies and an attempt would be made to develop any correlation between the cost of compliance with SOX and the price charged by these companies for their services.
References
Edison, A. (2009). Exploring the Impact of Sarbanes-Oxley. Web.
Fielden, S. (2006). Managing Market Data & Sarbanes Oxley Compliance for U.S. Utility Companies. Chicago: Logical Information Machines.
McBride, R. & Schostak, J. (2004). Research issues. Web.