Concern about privacy, integrity, and security of online transactions hampers absorption of e-commerce technologies as a normal way of doing business. To gain acceptance and trust of their participants, all organizations must achieve control or expectations equilibrium---a state where participants choose to do what others expect of them. Establishing control in e-commerce requires us to expand the traditional view of internal control to encompass the activities of customers, suppliers, and other "outside" users of their electronic platforms. We present a framework for analyzing control in online auctions. Privacy, authentication, and denial-of-service attacks are three classes of risk especially prevalent in e-commerce. Using the control practices of eBay as an illustrative example, we suggest possible ways of controlling these risks. Privacy, integrity, and security of online transactions demand new types of assurance services in e-commerce. We analyze assurance services available in 2002 and discuss challenges and opportunities facing existing services such as WebTrust. The merits of developing proprietary versus industry standards, and simple operational verification of client-specific policies for e-commerce assurance services are also discussed.

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The accounting standardization project, kicked off by the passage of US securities laws in the 1930s, has steadily gained momentum over seven decades. Today, written standards dominate accounting thought, practice, regulation, instruction, even research. Generally accepted accounting principles—originally a mere description in its plain English meaning—have since been capitalized into a proper name—Generally Accepted Accounting Principles—and the phrase now describes rules and regulations issued by authorities with power to inflict punishment on those who do not choose to accept them. How and why did financial reporting get caught in the standardization project, replacing social norms of corporate and professional behavior by written rules and standards? What are the consequences of this transformation? What alternative courses are available to accounting and corporate governance? I argue that heavy reliance on the codification of financial reporting has been a wrong path. A shift from rules towards norms of behavior may yet help accounting and corporate governance recover a better balance.

to the present study, and are gratefully acknowledged. The authors alone are responsible

J. Account. Public Policy journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/jaccpubpol Adverse effects of uniform written reporting standards

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