Editorial

This issue of Cuadernos de Contabilidad puts scientific articles that allow advancement to be observed in diverse felds of the accounting subjects at disposal of the readers. As in previous occasions, the possibility of publishing non-formal research derived articles has been given, but these articles meet the requirements of the journal. All the documents included are non-published works approaching interdisciplinary issues related to the Accounting Sciences.

Writing, producing or generating documents onaccounting topics has not been a tradition in the accounting community. However, it is possible to find interesting proposals from individuals and institutions presenting efort and advancement. It may seem insufcient for some people, but this is the path that has been gradually leveled. There is still plenty to follow. Notwithstanding, keeping the journal in a continuous pace since 1995 is a proposal that deserves to be supported.

This issue is comprised by five articles originated from original scientific-research projects that show meaningful advancement in the feld of accountancy: Strategic direction management accounting as a business development opportunity in SMEs by Professor María Angélica Farfán Liévano explains how SMEs operate by means of creating opportunities to endogenize techno-productive capabilities and taking advantage of the space and potentiality it can generate to companies. It is crucial for SMEs facing unequal conditions and bigger systemic risks. Flexibility and innovative processes are generators of dynamics and

eficient combinations of immaterial factors that develop possibilities of industrial grow and economic development in these firms. For those reasons, these companies require the use of an accounting model of strategic direction that allows them to gather information owned and from the competitive environment. Besides including this strategy into their accounting information, it may generate information about the competitive environment in order to take convenient operational or management decisions.

Professors Nydia Marcela Reyes and Fernando Chaparro present the article Proposal to publish financial and social information of institutions providing microcredit services, and state there is an apparent contradiction between the purpose of poverty reduction and the reality locating microcredit financial costs as the highest among the formal market. However, it is microcredit what has incidence in life quality when liberating resources to grow businesses, improving feeding quality for poor people or allowing children to access education and health services. Thus, it becomes necessary to broaden knowledge on the activities to improve microfinance techniques, to make the access to credits more efective and to optimize the use of saving resources of the society without placing them in risk. Alternatives to reduce the financial costs of microcredits without forgetting those restrictions imposed by information asymmetry and implicit risks will be studied.

This document presents a proposal to reveal financial and social information for micro-finance institutions that are expected to improve in the transparency of the processes.

The article Accounting model theory and practice for the representation of financial information by Professor José Curvelo Hassan regards the term model and the following meanings consigned in the dictionary of the Spanish language:

(From it. modello).

1. m. Archetype or reference point to imitate or

to reproduce it.

3. m. Small representation of something.

4. m. Theoretical scheme, generally presented in a mathematical form, of a system or complex reality, like the economical evolution of a country, conceived to boost understanding and studying its behavior.

Therefore, Professor Curvelo states that:

The term model has plenty of interpretations, which may lead to confusion. In order to clarify, we will regard representation models of the financial information. When it is needed to understand the process of any economy, the first step is to describe it –through the scientific method-, what may lead to a scientific description. It is precisely the application of this technique what leads us to the construction of description models or systems that must be based on particularities of the historical reality depicted. On the other hand, these models are directed by basis theoretical hypothesis that mark the route. [For that reason] some of the main schools of thought have conceived models of financial information, but they have been in-fuenced by models present in mankind long time ago indeed, even since primitivism existed, because there was organization in the struggle for satisfying basic needs. Later, slavism –characterized for the property of production means and labor- brought accumulation of land ownership and thus, gave way to another kind of organization, based on manor, political and military counter-ofersfor land and labor.

Continuing with scientific articles, Professor Flor Esther Salazar brings retirement pension to discussion -current and important topic for most of the Colombian population- with the document The impact of administrative costs and periods of unemployment in the creation of member pension benefits to the Individual Savings Plan in Colombia. It is analyzed from the perspective of the efects of administrative costs and variables over the construction of pension funds for contribution systems with individual capitalization afliates.

Finally, Professor Arnaldo Heli Solano Ruíz presents -within the already mentioned section-the article Incidence of intellectual capital in company market values. Its application to the public securities market in Colombia and proposes how Tobin's Q -an indicator that relates market price and book variables- contains value creation for the intellectual capital and its impact on market price of the organizations.

A meaningful contribution comes from the non-scientific proposals stated by Enriqueta Mancilla and Nelson JavierDueñas in the documents Transfer pricing tax auditing by Mexican multinationals and The infuence of modern ideology on the shaping of the accounting discipline: accounting as a control tool for entities in the third sector respectively.

Enriqueta Mancilla explains the way transfer pricing can be understood, based on current regulations, from the Mexican legal framework. Professor Dueñas's article revises the role performed by the ideology of modernity over accountancy from the approach of individual and organizational control. The entire team in charge of this issue of Cuadernos de Contabilidad ofers the outcome of its work and expects the documents included herein to be able to contribute in the improvement of the perspective of the accounting research, in topics as currently important as these ones.

Fabiola Torres Agudelo Director of Postgraduate Programs in Accounting Sciences