Question

What role do forensic accountants/fraud examiners, leaders play in the development, execution and enforcement of these programs?

Answer 1

Role of Forensic Accountants in Development and Execution

The main role of forensic accountants is to assist the courts, solicitors and clients understand the complex financial and accounting issues and presenting that information in a manner that all users can understand. An important addition to that is that the opinions or results are supported by evidence that will hold up under cross examination or scrutiny.

Forensic accountants, help at a number of different levels in the litigation process including:

• Assisting in initial discovery - helping solicitors ask for the right information the first time that will provide them with the greatest level of information. As a note, ask for top level information first and then work down to source material. The level of information available will depend on the complexity of the business and the nature of the claim.

• Applying commercial knowledge and expertise - Financial statements and income tax returns tell a story of a business. Forensic accountants can translate that story and apply it to the other information in the business. When the stories do not match, finding the evidence and clues that will support or disprove the claim for damages is one of the important roles of forensic accountants.

• Providing expert evidence both written and oral - Forensic accountants are able to provide expert evidence in written form and where necessary support those opinions and calculations in cross examination. Extensive experience in cross examination is vital, as the strategies used by counsel varies considerably from case to case.

• Independence - The expert evidence rules mean that an expert must give an objective, unbiased opinion. This provides a stronger argument for acceptance by the Court. Where reports are normally prepared by internal ‘experts’ on behalf of the either party, there can often be questions concerning the independence of these ‘experts’ as they are typically long-term employees of the body concerned.

Role of Leaders in Development and Execution

Leadership plays a vital role in the Development and Execution of strategies/Programs. It is considered as a link that relates the strategic management process with the organization’s vision. It starts up the strategic thinking by providing vision then it establishes a culture in which everyone knows what to do, what are the values of the firm. Basically values provide the direction. It is the duty of leadership to introduce the values or a corporate culture. It is the vision of leader that provides base line for strategy formulation and its commitment ensure the implementation of strategy. Formulated strategies can’t be implemented without the involvement of every one. Everyone should understand the need of change and should contribute their effort to efficiently implement the strategies. And only leadership can inspire and motivate the people to bring change because people always resist change. Leadership works to find out the gaps by carefully scan the environment both internal and external. And develop plans to fill these gaps by implementation of plans. Various roles of leadership are as:

Leader as an innovator: ensure innovation within whole organization is the key task of leadership. It is the duty of leadership to bring innovation in the strategic management process, from strategic thinking to performance evaluation to ensure competitive edge.

Leader as a care taker: leader should be able to look after the whole organization. Leader should care about every aspect that can ensure the effectiveness in the organization. It should carefully develop and execute strategies because strategies are the stairway towards the vision and mission.

Leader as an analyst: in the strategic management process it is the responsibility of leader to analyze the situation to find the gap between current and desired state. Further it is the duty of leader to formulate the plans to overcome the gaps according to the requirement of situation. Strategies based at the analysis of leaders so we can say that an important task of leadership is to scan the organization’s environment carefully.

Leader as an organizer: it is the basic function of leadership to organize or streamline the whole organization’s working especially the planning and executing of strategies. Because once they organize the system the change management is no more difficult. Leaders cannot lead efficiently till they can’t organize. Leader should work as a controller.

Leader as a guide: leaders are responsible to provide strategic direction to the organization. They show the way to followers and tells them what to do and how to do. It provides the guide lines to achieve the strategic vision, and work as a role model for others. It finds the way for others to move towards strategic mgt.

Leader as strategist: it is the vision of the leader that provides the purpose of existence to organization. It is the leadership that enables the organization to achieve its goals by formulating and implementing the effective strategies.

Leader as a motivator: strategies are nothing if they can’t get implemented efficiently. And it is the responsibility of leadership to motivate the subordinates to understand the need of strategic change and make it possible to achieve the desired state, because without motivation people’s involvement is less effective.

Leader as a developer: leaders play an important role to develop the structure or culture of the organization. It is the key role of leader to develop a culture in the organization that matches with the organizations objectives. As we know human resource is the most important asset of organization so leadership is responsible to make a team of key players that helps to implement the strategies. Further it is the responsibility of leadership to provide the required resources to be capable as per need. Competitive strategies are purely based at capabilities of leadership.

Leader as a change enabler/ change driver: the basic role of leadership is to facilitate the strategic change process in the organization. It is only the leadership that can stimulate the organization to achieve the goals by following formulated plans. Mostly people hates the change and do not like to move from status quo. In this situation leadership help to create the environment that is feasible to change. It is the duty of leadership to identify the need of change then establish the culture and formulate strategies for change management. So we can say that whole process of change management is worthless without the involvement of leadership because leaders are considered as change agents. The leaders who successfully implement the change are called the strategic change champions.

Leader as a decision maker: Leaders make decisions that help to achieve vision so the most important role of leadership is to make decisions. Leaders are responsible for proper functioning of the organization. So they have to decide what to do, how to do and by whom. Whole strategic management process depends upon the decision making of leader. Leaders decide how to achieve goals. What type of strategies should be and how they should implement.

Leader as a collaborator/ ally/ aligner: leadership provides the basis for strategy formulation. And to implement the strategies efficiently there is a need of resource collaboration. It is the responsibility of leader is to provide all the required resources. To fulfill the demand of organization leaders have to collaborate with other. They make alliances with other organizations. The key task they perform is to create networks that align the organization with environment both internal and external, also locally and globally.

Leader as a debtor: in an organization it is the responsibility of leader to ensure effectiveness of strategies by proper implementation. So leaders are considered as debtors in the process of strategic management. If they don’t consider responsibility of strategy formulation and implementation as debt they can’t be successful.

Leader as a risk analyst: leaders scan the environment to identify the key opportunities so it knows what are the risks and returns of a particular change. And as a decision maker it formulates the strategies by evaluating the risks. Leader knows what would be favorable strategy according to this analysis. And what should be the best measure to manage the risk. Leader performs the role of a disturbance handler by analyzing the risks involved in the strategy implementation.

Leader as an evaluator: performance evaluation is the most important task of strategic management process, and to execute this task leader performs the role of an evaluator. Generally evaluation describes that how well the strategies are formulated and executed and what are the remaining gaps that need the concentration of leader to be fulfill. Basically evaluation provides the basis for continues improvement in the strategic mgt. it facilitates to revise strategies according to need of situation. It not only evaluates the organization’s strategic process but also the performance of people to ensure effectiveness of rewards and punishment systems.

Conclusion :

Leadership is all about responsibility. Responsible leadership ensures the effectiveness of strategic management process. It provides the base line for strategic thinking and by providing vision it directs the organization towards strategy formulation. In the strategy formulation process it tries to align the organization with the required change of environment. Then its attention shifts towards the strategy implementation. In which leadership’s main focus is to achieve the vision by execution of formulated strategies. The most important task of leadership is to align its vision with the organization’s goals and objectives so that organization can compete with dynamic environment efficiently and too trained and motivates the people to achieve the vision. At the end leadership has to evaluate the whole process to make sure the efficiency of whole process, this will help to find out the flaws as well as helps to refresh the strategies according to change. Further this evaluation facilitates the continuous improvement in the organization. We can say that leadership is the hub of the organization and it should serve as the blood and brain so that fruits of the success can be ensures and be shared. High sentiments always win in the end, the leaders who offer blood, toil tears, and sweet always get more out of their followers then those who offer safety and good times when it comes to the pinch, human being are heroic.