The Impact of Lean Accounting Principles on Mitigating Black Box Accounting Practices - A Field Study on the Opinions of Employees at the Bank of Baghdad

The utilization of the accounting profession involves a range of questionable practices, including fraudulent activities and deceptive maneuvers, aimed at manipulating financial information for personal or institutional advantage. These procedures are frequently intricate and challenging to grasp, with the intention of obscuring financial information from recipients and stakeholders of financial institutions. In order to address and minimize such activities, financial institutions elect to implement lean accounting concepts. Hence, the primary objective of this study is to examine the influence of lean accounting principles, namely lean planning, performance metrics facilitating the shift towards lean practices, timely information dissemination, and improved internal accounting control, as an independent variable on the reduction of black box accounting practices as a dependent variable within the Bank of Baghdad. In order to accomplish the research objectives, the researcher established an extensive theoretical framework and methodological framework. Additionally, a questionnaire was devised as a means of data collecting, utilizing pre-existing scales. The questionnaire consisted of (30) questions that encompassed the research variables. The researcher utilized a descriptive methodology by conducting a comprehensive literature review, and employed an analytical technique by testing and analyzing the hypotheses of the study. A theoretical framework was constructed to depict the research variables and their interrelationships, accompanied by a series of hypotheses to be examined using suitable statistical techniques with the aid of the SPSS software. The study sample comprised (91) individuals who were employees of the Bank of Baghdad, including managers, accounting department managers, and auditors. The study found a statistically significant and relevant association between the implementation of lean accounting principles and the utilization of black box accounting techniques inside the Bank, as evidenced by the correlation coefficient at the aggregate level. The researcher additionally offered a number of suggestions, one of which emphasizes the importance for the Bank of Baghdad's management to prioritize the implementation and incorporation of lean accounting principles as a means to address and mitigate opaque accounting practices.