William E. McCarthy

Department of Accounting and Information Systems

Michigan State University

TEL: 517-432-2913 EMAIL: mccarthy@bus.msu.edu

short resume, long resume, recent pictures , teaching material , office hours

Recent Updates on REA Work

· Proceedings, presentation slides, and pictures are available from the 2^nd International REA Technology Workshop, held at Santorini Island, Greece in June of 2006

· The REA-25 Conference will be held at the University of Delaware in June 2007, hosted by Guido Geerts

· The Journal of Information Systems is sponsoring a special issue for REA papers

· There are a number of REA books now available for use:

1. A text for a course in Enterprise Information Systems by Cheryl Dunn

2. A text for an accounting information systems course by Janie Chang and Laura Ingraham (http://he-cda.wiley.com/WileyCDA/HigherEdTitle/productCd-0471450871,courseCd-AC0400.html )

3. An advanced REA text for specifying REA patterns in an OO and UML environment by Pavel Hruby

The REA Accounting Model and the REA Enterprise Ontology

This page contains most of the seminal and continuing research papers associated with the development of the REA (Resources-Events-Agents) model. The REA Enterprise Information Architecture covers the "value chain" and "supply chain" classes of enterprise system as noted in this classification. REA is described in its most basic form in this PowerPoint presentation. A good theoretical overview with links to papers is my UTS seminar schedule from January 2004.

REA Standards Activities

At the present time, I am involved with REA-oriented standards work with the United Nations (CEFACT), ISO (Open-edi), and some others. In ISO at present, I have a final committee draft of 15944-4 – the Open-edi Business Transaction Ontology -- that I can send to people upon request. For UN/CEFACT, we have reoriented the UMM which means that REA's use has changed in the BRV level. We have a TMG working session scheduled in late July 2007 in Kansas City, and some important documentation will emerge there for this new approach.

A good overview is the Ontolog speech mentioned below.

REA-Basic Bootcamp for Undergraduate Accounting Information Systems (AIS) Teachers in June 2006.

For the fifth straight year in 2006, Michigan State University and the American Accounting Association ran a week-long school for AIS teachers who want to re-orient their courses away from a traditional bookkeeping perspective and toward the types of enterprise-wide and e-commerce classes of accounting systems characterized by REA semantics (see personal profiles for 2006 class). Here is the proposed set of take-home quizzes for that school. Here are personal profiles of our 2002 and 2003 and 2004 attendees. The profiles for the 2005 class are here . Here are group pictures for the 2002, 2003, and 2004 classes taken with the MSU mascot "Sparty." Here is a story and a group picture for the 2002 school in the MSU departmental newsletter (go to page 5 of linked pdf file).

Ventura papers for AAA school

Readings for 2006 school

Ontolog Presentation of REA integration with SUMO -- 17 March 2005

On 17 March 2005, I gave a networked presentation to the Ontolog Forum of the latest changes in the REA ontology and a summary of possible integration efforts within the IEEE Suggested Merged Upper Ontology (SUMO). A recording of this presentation along with the presentation slides are available on the Ontolog site:

http://ontolog.cim3.net/cgi-bin/wiki.pl?ConferenceCall_2005_03_17

When you go to this location, you need to scroll down to the bottom. Once there, I suggest that you download the slides and the recording, then use both together simultaneously. There is a 2-3 minute gap where noise on the line makes things impossible to follow, but try to bear with us through that short interlude. The entire speech last almost two hours and a reader can fast forward at will. The audience for the talk includes many of the top ontologists in the world, so the give-and-take is quite extensive. For accounting only people, this might seem like an intimidating forum, but it can be followed quite easily. It serves as a gradual introduction to many REA concepts, and I am very grateful to Peter Yim and other members of the forum for the chance to air these ideas in such an interactive manner.

Information from potential referees – The Accounting Review.

I have been appointed as an Editor for The Accounting Review by Senior Editor Dan Dhaliwal of the University of Arizona. As I announced at the IS and AI/ET business meetings at the AAA annual meeting in San Francisco in August 2005, I am trying to compile a list of possible reviewers for AIS topics in particular and accounting in general. From each potential reviewer, I would like to receive:

· a list of your methodological skills;

· a list of your subject area skills; and

· a copy of your vita.

Potential reviewers can send these to me at the email address given above.

American Accounting Association Innovations in Accounting Education Award

This award was presented in August 2003 at the AAA meeting in Hawaii (MSU alum Julie David was a co-winner). There is a paper in Issues in Accounting Education that is available here. The Broad College website at MSU has a picture and story on the award.

REA Papers

Some of the fundamental REA papers are available below. Some of the papers have been scanned in from the original sources, so they are large Acrobat pdf files. Others are in HTML or MS-WORD format. This list is volatile, and for those papers that have only an abstract, a full electronic or paper version can be obtained by email request from Bill McCarthy at mccarthy@bus.msu.edu. I realize that this list of papers is far from complete, and I am trying to make access to all of the REA work easier. The available papers below constitute a very good representative set; readers who would like a more comprehensive overview may consult my UTS seminar schedule through which many papers are linked. For those of you who work through them and still have questions, please feel free to contact me via email or telephone. In mid-2005, the best way to understand where the REA work has been and where it is going is to read the design science summary paper published in the IS Section Research Monograph of the American Accounting Association.

Visitors interested in a more focused REA ontology page may see it here.

Additionally, I have a case study called Ventura Vehicles (written by Julie David and me in MS-ACCESS) that I can send people who want to see how REA works for a small example company. Ventura is a proof-of-concept, and it does show how interesting ideas like the materialization of account balances (aka, the virtual close) can be accomplished computationally. For many of my students and for some practitioners, Ventura Vehicles is often the key to understanding how REA actually runs. Please note that I only send the solved Ventura version to non-students, so identify yourself as such in your email.

As a result of the Copenhagen REA workshop in April 2004, we will be building a new version of Ventura with commitment and type images plus modules for service acquisition/consumption, and transportation. My ACC-825 class will build this with UML and Java during 2004-2006. I hope to have it ready by mid 2006.

Since 1995, Julie David and I have been running the Semantic Modeling of Accounting Phenomena Workshop (aka SMAP) which features both teaching and research ideas for REA and related materials. SMAP-2002 was in Phoenix at ASU in February 2002, SMAP 2003 was in Hawaii in August 2003, SMAP 2004 was held in Florida on 8 January 2004, and SMAP 2005 was held in New Orleans in January in conjunction with the IS and AI/ET Section mid-year meetings. SMAP 2006 will be held on Thursday the 5^th of January 2006 in Phoenix in conjunction with the IS mid-year meeting. Contributions are due to Julie Smith David in late November.