I was interested to see if there were any statistically significant differences in political ideology between Master's of Accountancy students (MACC) and Master's of Taxation students (MTax) at Arizona State University. I hypothesized that the MACC students would tend to be more liberal or less conservative than the MTax students, while the MTax students would tend to be more conservative or less liberal than the MACC students. Scholars have found ways that conservatives and liberals differ, including differences in personality traits of conscientiousness and openness, as well as the types of careers they are drawn to. Scholars have also performed personality tests on accountants, accounting students, and accounting faculty to show how they differ. I distributed a voluntary online survey to students to discern their political beliefs. Most of the questions I asked did not reveal any statistically significant differences between students from the two programs, but the questions that did reveal some statistically significant differences showed that MACC students were more likely to be liberal or less conservative on certain issues, while the opposite was true for the MTax students. The statistically significant differences tended to appear for questions related to social policy rather than economic policy. This finding supports previous studies that show how social policy tends to be more divisive than economic policy.

The Balanced Scorecard (BSC) is a strategic planning and management system that causally links actions and subsequent financial and nonfinancial outcomes. The primary goal of the BSC is to motivate actions that are congruent with the organization's long-term strategy. A secondary purpose of the BSC is to facilitate the performance evaluation of managers charged with advancing the corporate strategy. To serve this second purpose the BSC must include a time dimension. Specifically, the strategic plan must recognize time lags between actions taken, lead outcomes (often nonfinancial in nature) and lagged outcomes (usually financial success measures). If an evaluator is not provided with timeline information a subordinate may be evaluated based on inappropriate performance metrics; that is, a subordinate may be held accountable for an outcome beyond the subordinate's time span of control. This study evaluates the effect on performance evaluations and bonus allocations when evaluators are provided (or not provided) with a strategy implementation timeline. This issue has not been previously examined in the literature. This study also examines the moderating effect of experience, management buy-in to the corporate strategy, and affect on performance evaluations and bonus allocations. Results from an experiment conducted with evening MBA students show that inclusion of a strategy implementation timeline leads to more normatively correct performance evaluations, but only for experienced participants. Higher levels of both positive and negative affect were found to result in choice avoidance behavior. Buy-in to the corporate strategy was not found to have an effect.