Convergence Of Practices Research Articles

How Audit Practices Got Muddled in the US and UK

This paper considers how auditing practices became muddled in the US and the UK to create muddled corporate governance principles. The US 1933 law that required corporations to appoint an auditor was based on the prospectus provisions in the UK 1929 Companies Act to protect investors from fraud. However, this is not the purpose of UK statutory audits whose legal role is to protect the company and provide shareholders with intelligence for voting on the election and remuneration of directors whether or not the company issues shares or whether it has shares publicly traded. The UK statutory auditor only reports to the shareholders who approve his appointment and remuneration. The US auditor is appointed by the directors and reports to both directors and shareholders to subrogate the reason for having an auditor to identify conflicts between them. The establishment of audit committees with independent directors cannot remove the conflicts. These are exacerbated by the Sarbanes-Oxley Act and the UK Combined Code that require audit committees to provide oversight of the auditor. Some European countries avoid these conflicts by the auditor being controlled by a shareholder committee or “watchdog board”. Audit practices got muddled by corporations not establishing a shareholder audit committee as provided in the model constitution attached to the UK 1862 companies Act. Compelling arguments are presented to conclude that convergence of audit practices on those found in the US or UK is not in the best interest of directors or auditors in reducing their conflicts or safeguarding: investors, the proprietary rights of shareholders or self-governance.

Annual report IC disclosures in The Netherlands, France and Germany

PurposeThis paper replicates and extends the Bontis research on intellectual capital (IC) disclosures in Canadian companies and also elaborates on the Beaulieu et al. research on disclosures by Swedish firms.Design/methodology/approachThe paper studies IC disclosures by French CAC‐40, Dutch AEX and German XETRA‐DAX publicly‐listed companies for the years 2000 and 2001. The paper also discusses country‐specific arguments in favour of and against voluntary disclosure by such companies and searches both the annual reports and financial statements for IC hits.FindingsApplying the Gray‐scale to categorise countries, the paper finds not only that voluntary IC disclosure significantly differs between these countries, but also that this difference can be explained by country‐specific regulation and auditor conservatism.Research limitations/implicationsThe paper only studies Dutch, French and German IC disclosures in annual reports and financial statements. These three countries are European Union member states but “differ” significantly from one another. The differences discussed in this paper, however, are by no means exhaustive, nor do they picture the “European situation” in full.Practical implicationsThe paper recognises that the intangible nature of IC creates tension with current country‐specific legislation and strongly calls for convergence of applicable accounting standards and practices because of the increasing importance of IC and because of the improvement of corporate governance and policy making.Originality/valueThe paper not only extends (or fine‐tunes) previous research, but also links with the literature that discusses the consequences of country‐specific characteristics for accounting standards and practices.

Diffusion of HRM to Europe and the Role of US MNCs: Introduction to the Special Issue

There has been considerable debate both among scholars and policy makers concerning the extent to which national systems of industrial relations (IR) and human resource management (HRM) systems are converging. In Europe this debate has concerned both convergence within Europe and convergence between European systems and those of non-European states, most notably the USA. The convergence thesis rests essentially on the notion of competitive isomorphism: that is as firms are increasingly faced with similar competitive environments globally, they will adopt similar (optimally efficient) management practices. For example, a significant part of the European convergence debate concerns whether, in Europe, collective employee relations, mediated by representative institutions are being replaced by HRM management systems designed to establish a direct and individualised relationship between organization and employee. Some commentators have attributed this trend to the influence of a model of HRM derived from practices in the USA and increasingly adopted in Europe. Multinational companies (MNCs) have become of particular importance to this thesis. First, they are often seen as an important channel for the transmission of management practices from one country to another, in particular from the USA to Europe. Second, the transferability of management practices from one national context to another is a matter of considerable practical importance for managers in MNCs. Third, the economic importance of large MNCs and their border spanning nature means that their activities have particular salience to legislators and regulators. This special issue addresses these concerns in three ways. First reviews of the development of HRM in the USA and in Germany and evidence on convergence of HRM practices in Europe help us consider both what may be being transmitted from the USA and the evidence for its transmission. Second three papers, provide different kinds of evidence on the convergence or barriers to convergence of HRM practices between Europe and the USA and the role of MNCs in that transmission. Finally, the special issue concludes with three reviews of in all six books each of which are relevant to the concerns of this special issue.

Digital Library Use: Social Practice in Design and Evaluation

The contributors to this volume view digital libraries (DLs) from a social as well as technological perspective. They see DLs as sociotechnical systems, networks of technology, information artifacts, and people and practices interacting with the larger world of work and society. As Bruce Schatz observes in his foreword, for a digital library to be useful, the users, the documents, and the information system must be in harmony.The contributors begin by asking how we evaluate DLs -- how we can understand them in order to build better DLs -- but they move beyond these basic concerns to explore how DLs make a difference in people's lives and their social worlds, and what studying DLs might tell us about information, knowledge, and social and cognitive processes. The chapters, using both empirical and analytical methods, examine the social impact of DLs and also the web of social and material relations in which DLs are embedded; these far-ranging social worlds include such disparate groups as community activists, environmental researchers, middle-school children, and computer system designers.Topics considered include documents and society; the real boundaries of a "library without walls"; the ecologies of digital libraries; usability and evaluation; information and institutional change; transparency as a product of the convergence of social practices and information artifacts; and collaborative knowledge construction in digital libraries.

Privatisation Of Education In Canada: A Survey Of Trends

The construct of ‘neo-liberalism’ well defines privatisation within a global convergence of educational policy discourses and practices. This study analyses initiatives for and processes of privatisation in Canadian education from K–12 to post-secondary levels. In considering how privatisation is affecting public education systems in Canada, the authors focus on the commodification and marketisation of education. They also examine issues of equity and the viability of universally accessible and publicly funded education systems. Finally, the study highlights two main interrelated trends: the intrusion of market discourse into education at all levels on one hand and on the other a growing tension between contrasting conceptions of education as a tradable commodity and as a social right.

Global corporate governance: debates and challenges

Modern day business is beset with changing operating paradigms. Economies with efficient economic policies and stable political systems are a big draw among the investors. Countries that have opened themselves to world markets and that have good legal systems in place, providing protection to investors have attracted more capital in the process of globalization. As the demand for capital is growing in both the developed and the developing economies, the need to establish good governance practices has gained momentum. Governance practices however, are not uniform across nations. This diversity may be particularly because of the different legal structures and cultural settings adopted by different nations. This paper tries to explore the arguments on convergence and divergence of corporate best practices, keeping in view the various governance models currently in practice. Explaining the rationale behind the emergence of corporate governance as a movement, this paper attempts at discussing the various prevalent systems of governance. In the end an attempt is made to address the challenges to corporate governance in the context of globalization of best practices. Given the cultural settings of different nations it is argued that it would never be possible for corporate laws to converge universally. New models of corporate governance are likely to emerge given the large‐scale experimentation done by transition economies.

The persistence of national differences in a globalizing world: the Japanese struggle for competitiveness in advanced information technologies

This paper represents a critique of that aspect of globalization theory that predicts the convergence of national economic institutions and practices toward some single optimal model. This is done through the examination of the innovative practices of Japanese firms and government within the context of US–Japanese competition in high-technology industries. A profile of Japanese innovative competencies is developed through an overview of competition in consumer electronics and personal computing and the emerging wireless Internet industry. The paper argues that different national systems of innovation result in levels of competitiveness that vary according to the technological profile in a given industry, thus undermining one of the basic premises of convergence theory.

How US and UK Auditing Practices Became Muddled to Muddle Corporate Governance Principles

This paper considers how auditing practices became muddled in the US and the UK to create muddled corporate governance principles. The US 1933 law that required corporations to appoint an auditor was based on the prospectus provisions in the UK 1929 Companies Act to protect investors from fraud. However, this is not the purpose of UK statutory audits whose legal role is to protect the company and provide shareholders with intelligence for voting on the election and remuneration of directors whether or not the company issues shares or whether it has shares publicly traded. The UK statutory auditor only reports to the shareholders who approve his appointment and remuneration. The US auditor is appointed by the directors and reports to both directors and shareholders to subrogate the reason for having an auditor to identify conflicts between them. The establishment of an audit committee with independent directors cannot remove the conflicts. These are exacerbated by the Sarbanes-Oxley Act and the UK Combined Code that require audit committees to provide oversight of the auditor. Some European countries avoid these conflicts by having the auditor controlled by a shareholder committee or watchdog board. Audit practices were muddled by corporations not establishing a shareholder audit committee as provided in the model constitution attached to the UK 1862 Companies Act. There are compelling arguments to conclude that convergence of audit practices on those found currently in the US or UK are not in the best interest of directors or auditors in reducing their conflicts or safeguarding investors, the proprietary rights of shareholders or self-governance.

The Cognitive Science of Religion

Cognitive scientists seek to explain the kinds of perceptual and con ceptual representations—including representations—which the mental processing of sensory input allows, the memory, transmis sion, and transformations of these mental representations, and the rela tionships, historical and potential, among them. Although a cognitive science of religion was first proposed in 1980 (Guthrie), it was not until the following decade that systematically cognitive theories of religion began to be proposed. These theories focused largely on religious rit ual (Lawson-McCauley 1990), religious ideas (Guthrie 1993; Boyer 1994), religious persistence (Whitehouse 1995; 2000), and the relation ship of these practices and ideas to evolutionary theory (Mithen 1996). These theoretical proposals have produced—and are continuing to pro duce—a large number of works that now firmly establish this new field of inquiry as an exciting new approach to the study of religion, (e.g., Barrett 2000, 2004; Boyer 2001; Pyysiainen 2001; McCauley-Lawson 2002; Atran 2002; Pyysiainen-Antttonen 2002; Martin 2003; Slone 2004; Malley 2004; Whitehouse 2004). One of the cognitive theories of religion that has generated a significant amount of commentary and research—and that is the primary focus of this special issue of Method & Theory in the Study of Religion—is that of divergent modes of religiosity, proposed by the British anthropolo gist Harvey Whitehouse (and summarized in this journal by him, 2002). Briefly stated, Whitehouse has identified two different clusters of vari ables that tend to be selected for in processes of religious transmission (Whitehouse 2004). He terms these two modes of religiosity imagis tic and doctrinal. It need be emphasized at the outset that the imagistic mode does not refer, in Whitehouse's description, to reli gious traditions that trade in images—a trait of virtually all religions. Rather, imagistic is Whitehouse's designation for a convergence of analogical precepts and practices that are transmitted through infre quently performed rituals and are rendered especially salient and mem orable through intense sensory pageantry and heightened emotionality. The dramatic, often traumatic, means of transmission (e.g., by some ini tiation rites) typically occasions a personal and spontaneous exegesis of that knowledge among its recipients as well as an enduring cohesion

An institutional approach to election campaigning in Taiwan

This article analyses trends in election campaigning in Taiwan with particular reference to the landmark 2000 presidential election, when the Kuomintang's 50-year monopoly on power finally ended. It examines the growing professionalism in election campaigning that stands alongside, and is shaped by, the systemic and institutional features of Taiwan's electoral landscape, such as the path dependency of the parties and the electoral system used. The article challenges us to reconsider the notion of how identity is shaped and communicated; globalisation has given birth to a spurious catch-all notion of ‘Americani sation’ that is invoked by many modern election observers. It is said to describe a trend towards a global convergence of electoral practices based on the adoption of election campaign techniques developed in the United States. The discourse on Americanisation resonates with the pejorative vocabulary more associated with cultural imperialism, suggesting the displacement of the indigenous by the foreign. The article is a warning against using this discourse too liberally. The flows of influence and information are in fact multi-directional, with the United States absorbing cultural effects as well as supplying them. Newly democratising systems have not undergone a blanket Americanisation because, as the Taiwan example clearly demonstrates, traditional methods of voter mobilisation remain important; the foreign coexists with the indigenous.

Convergence and Divergence in Personnel Selection Practices: Evidence from Israel and Slovenia

Based on a survey of managers in Israel and Slovenia regarding the use of eleven personnel selection techniques, it appears that there are both similarities and differences in the propensity to use particular techniques. Interview and reference/background checks are the most common methods of selecting employees in both countries. Use of drug and alcohol tests is less common and so is reliance on headhunters. There were also significant differences in usage based on size of firm and nature of industry in each of the two countries. These and related findings are examined in the context of the global convergence-divergence construct of human resource practices.

Industrial Relations and Human Resource Management Practices in Australian and Overseas-Owned Workplaces: Global or Local?

This paper compares human resource (HR) and industrial relations (IR) practices in the workplaces of predominantly Australian and predominantly overseas-owned organisations. It advances understanding of HR/IR in Australia and elsewhere by considering two questions. First, whether Australian-owned workplaces have different HR/IR practices from overseas-owned workplaces. Second, whether there has been a convergence or divergence of practices between the two groups in recent years. The analysis is conducted using the Australian Workplace Industrial Relations Survey data from the years 1990 and 1995 (AWIRS 90/95). The main findings are that there are significant differences in HR/IR practice between Australian and overseas-owned workplaces. Both groups have increased their use of sophisticated HR/IR practices, but the overseas-owned workplaces have increased their usage at a faster pace. On the basis of these findings, we suggest caution in accepting the argument that globalisation pressures necessarily lead to a uniform convergence of HR/IR practices across the globe. While it appears that globalisation has stimulated local and overseas-owned firms to move in qualitatively similar directions, they are doing so at rates sufficiently varied for the gap to be increasing when measured quantitatively. In this sense, the locals might best be described as lagging behind the overseas firms in the adoption of HRM practices.

Corporate Governance, Corporate Ownership, and the Role of Institutional Investors: A Global Perspective

We examine the relation between corporate governance and ownership structure, focusing on the role of institutional investors. In many countries, institutional investors have become dominant players in the financial markets. We discuss the theoretical basis for, history of, and empirical evidence on institutional investor involvement in shareholder monitoring. We examine cross-country differences in ownership structures and the implications of these differences for institutional investor involvement in corporate governance. Although there may be some convergence in governance practices across countries over time, the endogenous nature of the interrelation among governance factors suggests that variation in governance structures will persist.

Literacy Lessons: The Convergence of Expectations, Practices, and Classroom Culture

This paper examines the experiences that construct classroom culture in one sixth-grade language arts classroom and adolescent girls' negotiation and responses to their experience as class members. Over the course of the year, data were collected through classroom observations, monthly videotapes of class, interviews with the girls as they viewed their participation in class, and a teacher interview. Emergent themes based on analysis of observations and interviews with the girls included the girls' perceptions of their language arts experiences, their sense of themselves as students, being good, and boredom and disengagement. Findings revealed a classroom culture based primarily on procedures in which the purposes of literacy learning centered on the skills required for state-mandated testing. The girls' responses to this classroom culture suggested that they were adopting an orientation to literacy similar to their teacher's, even as they expressed a desire for a more personally meaningful curriculum. They were often bored and developed ways to manage their disengagement to avoid trouble with the teacher. Implications for ongoing research are discussed.

Convergence of national science and technology policies: the case of Finland

It is a commonly held view that differences in national histories, cultures, political contexts, and the timing of a country’s entry into the industrialization process are reflected as diversity among countries in their goals, priorities, boundaries, directions, ranges, instruments and also in the performance of science and technology policy. This article, which examines development processes of Finnish science and technology policy, concludes that instead of divergence there is such startling convergence of organizational forms and practices. Finland has largely adopted its policy doctrines and instruments from the countries, which from the Finnish perspective, have been considered legitimate and successful.

What factors drive and which act as a brake on the convergence of financial statements in EMU member countries?

The results of recent macroeconomic studies have consistently reflected economic convergence among the Economic and Monetary Union (EMU) countries. In this paper, we propose to analyse financial measures to discover whether or not the business structures of the EMU countries have grown any closer together. The study is based on a non‐linear principal components analysis in order to achieve a double objective. In the first place, the aim is to find out which factors have been significant for the joint evolution of financial variables over a ten‐year period (1990 to 1999). In the second place, it is to examine the performance of firms in each of the EMU countries in order to assess business convergence between them. The results of the study indicate high levels of convergence in the profitability vs. leverage dimension, while structural differences between countries in the labour productivity vs. sales efficiency dimension have hindered convergence in business practices.

The effects of convergence: internationalization and the changing distribution of net value added in large German firms

The paper examines whether and how the increasing internationalization of firms impacts on the operation of a co-ordinated market economy. Following the tenets of agency theory, it assumes that an emerging market for corporate control changes the monitoring mechanisms that oversee management. Since Anglo-American forms of monitoring are usually associated with a higher return for investors compared with Continental European firms, a change in the distribution of the net value added of firms is expected. Using financial data on fifty-nine large German companies, the paper shows that the emerging convergence of German corporate governance practices to Anglo-American standards has had a weak, but significant, impact on the distribution of net value added. This is in contrast to the impact of the internationalization of firms on product markets, which does not have an effect. Since the market for corporate control is, however, still underdeveloped in Germany, the main effects remain to be seen.

Human resource practices and discrimination in South Africa: overcoming the apartheid legacy

While there is some level of isomorphism and convergence in HRM practices, country-specific differences remain, notwithstanding globalization and the influence of increasingly powerful multinationals. Much work has occurred on diversity management and cultural aspects of management in South Africa (SA). This analysis finds that local institutional context in labour relations and particularism in practices remain important, although the influence of convergent forces such as globalization, information technology and increased competition has become much more prominent in post-apartheid SA. Human resource practitioners in SA see the most important workplace challenges as performance improvement, employment equity, training and development and managing trade union expectations. This article critically evaluates the effects of recent legislative measures, particularly labour court and arbitration awards aimed at addressing the adverse impact of past unfair discrimination on pay practices and skills development. The latter are found to be interrelated, sensitive and difficult areas of discrimination in respect of legal proof.

International mergers and acquisitions in the UK 1985-94: a comparison of national HRM practices

The paper investigates HRM practices adopted by companies from the USA, Japan, Germany and France in UK companies that they have acquired. UK/UK acquisitions are used as a control. The research is based on a survey instrument applied to 201 companies and interviews with forty. It notes that there is some convergence of HRM practices, in that, for example, all countries researched employ performance-related pay and increase the amount of training in their new subsidiaries. It finds, however, that there is a distinct difference in the HRM practices employed by companies from each of the countries, influenced by the characteristic HR practices common to companies in the country of origin of the parent.

Harmonization of Voluntary Disclosure Practices by Japanese Companies

The costs and benefits of harmonization of international accounting and disclosure practices by firms is an important policy issue. This paper investigates the extent of harmonization or convergence of voluntary disclosure practices by Japanese firms since the collapse of Japan's financial 'bubble' of the late 1980's. Convergence or increased harmonization of voluntary disclosure suggests that Japanese firms respond to environmental and market pressures to harmonize reporting practices. Our findings suggest that for our sample of Japanese firms, there was neither more, nor less, harmonization or convergence in selected voluntary disclosure practices over the sample period, although the average level of disclosure did increase.