Mere Accounting Research Articles

Rethinking enterprise flexibility: a new approach based on management control theory

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to draw attention to a void in the literature on enterprise flexibility: The Management Control Systems’ (MCS) role in the enterprise flexibility and stability discussion. MCS can be instrumental in securing an organization’s strategic performance objectives, far beyond the mere managerial control and accounting perspectives of traditional MCS’ roles. Design/methodology/approach This study is qualitative in nature, and presents a theoretical approach with a conceptual model to address enterprise flexibility and stability jointly; arguing that both should be part of the MCS’ design and implementation with a distinct strategic outlook. Several theoretical and practical arguments are presented which reinforce this thesis. Findings To operate optimally, enterprises must be able to manage their limited resources in efficient and effective manner. This is especially so when dealing with uncertainty and contingencies on an ongoing basis, while following a defined strategic choice. Such choices are expected to mirror enterprise flexibility types and measures without neglecting enterprise stability requirements, linking both to strategic performance measurement indicators. Research limitations/implications Further work is needed to explore not only how different types of enterprise flexibility and stability measures can bring additional benefits to the firm but also how best to apply such types in accordance with business and operations strategies, organizational stability requirements and management control strategies. Practical implications MCS can and should take part of an organization’s strategic performance measures but these are to be understood from a systemic design perspective of the enterprise system’s metacontrollability, addressing flexibility and stability jointly. Social implications There is a need to reevaluate the role of MCS and their strategic potential. The approach presented can have valuable potential ramifications and insights for management and information sciences as well as for the enterprise management practitioners as a whole. Originality/value This paper provides original research on enterprise flexibility and stability analysis, covering all aspects of MC and its role on the enterprise’s metacontrollability. Design and coordination of the seven basic elements which comprise MCS are analyzed, as well as how they influence one another. The paper includes two tables to illustrate the approach being proposed. Table I presents a classification of the literature reviewed in the paper while Table AI presents the choice of the theoretical lens on enterprise flexibility from other authors which contrasts with the model proposed. The role of MCS in the enterprise is also included.

Sobre las formas de evaluación de las revistas científicas

En la actualidad hay un enorme interés y amplias discusiones en el medio académico para encontrar métodos eficaces de evaluación del impacto del trabajo de los científicos. Se argumenta aquí que el impacto de la información generada por los investigadores tiene relevancia más allá de una mera contabilidad de citas a los productos académicos. Sin embargo, sigue existiendo la necesidad de valorar de una manera más inmediata el efecto o la influencia del trabajo científico. El argumento central de esta contribución es que el número de citas generado por el motor Google Scholar (GS) representa una medida más precisa y completa del trabajo de los investigadores individuales que el Factor de Impacto FI. Asociado a GS existe el concepto del Índice h5. Para ver si hay alguna regularidad en la proporción de citas entre las dos bases de datos, se hizo una búsqueda de citas para artículos de autores considerados representativos para Madera y Bosques: Williams-Linera et al. y Yáñez-Arancibia et al. por ser de los más citados. El valor del coeficiente de determinación demuestra la extraordinaria regularidad de esta relación. Para el caso de la valoración de las revistas, se argumenta que el índice h es más apropiado que el JCR. Reiteramos que el impacto real del trabajo de investigación rebasa el ámbito del trabajo académico y se refleja en el uso de la información en áreas alejadas de los círculos académicos, pero que tienen amplia repercusión en la sociedad como por ejemplo, la información requerida para definir las áreas naturales protegidas.

Going Beyond Mere Accounting: The Changing Role of India's Auditor General – ADDENDUM

Going Beyond Mere Accounting: The Changing Role of India's Auditor General – ADDENDUM

Going Beyond Mere Accounting: The Changing Role of India's Auditor General

In early 2013, India's then comptroller and auditor general (CAG), Vinod Rai, while delivering a speech at Harvard University's Kennedy School, wondered whether his office should be confined to being “mere accountants.” That this question could be raised in a public forum, and that too outside India, spoke to the transformation in recent times of Rai's stature and the office that he held. The winds of change were reflected in the Indian Supreme Court's rejection in 2013 of a public interest litigation challenging the authority of the auditor general, who is a constitutional authority, to conduct performance audits of the government. Significantly, the Court ruled, the “CAG is not a munim [accountant] to go into the balance-sheets. The CAG is a constitutional authority entitled to review and conduct performance audit on revenue allocations . . . and examine matters relating to the economy and how the government uses its resources.”

Financial and Economic Evaluation of Off-Shore Wind Projects: A Case Study

This paper tries to shed some light on the financial and economic details of an evaluation of re-newable energy projects. Different approaches of evaluation criteria, exceeding a mere accounting exercise, will be discussed, based on a German off-shore wind project (and a short addition of a similar project in China). How can an appropriate discount rate be found, which is of crucial significance for the assessment of such long-term projects? What are differences between financial and economic evaluation and how can subsidies be isolated from sustainable income? How can we evaluate externalities, in particular the value of greenhouse gas savings, but also the achievement of learning curve improvements? Even though for many of these questions a definite solution cannot be found yet, estimations for such effects are identified and it is pointed out, how the present level of subsidies compares with the estimated outcomes of such a project. The paper constructs also a framework to further evaluations of renewable energy projects.

A Dimensão Política do Orçamento Público: os Conselhos de Direito como espaço de debate plural e coletivo

A consolidação da dimensão política dos Conselhos de Direitos está vinculada à sua compreensão como espaços públicos plurais, da divergência e de constante disputa de ideias. A sua dimensão política torna-se determinante, em especial, no processo de definição e gestão do orçamento público tanto para o planejamento quanto para ampliação do debate sobre o destino de recursos financeiros para a implementação de políticas públicas. É nesse espaço que os diferentes interesses se manifestam, tornando-se um campo de disputa política para apropriação dos recursos públicos na garantia dos direitos e proteção social dos segmentos mais vulnerabilizados da sociedade. O orçamento público nos espaços dos conselhos ganha uma dimensão política, superarando a perspectiva de mero instrumento contábil.

Calling in the Met: serious crime investigation involving Scotland Yard and provincial police forces in England and Wales, 1906–1939

The paper analyses the scheme whereby provincial chief constables, encouraged by the Home Office, could call in the help of Scotland Yard's experienced detectives to investigate serious cases, especially murder, that were considered to be beyond the capacity of the local force to solve on its own. While the scheme was on balance successful in that more than 50% of such call-outs between 1919 and 1928 resulted in convictions, it is suggested that its significance extended beyond the mere profit and loss accounting approach. For the arrangements cast a mirror on many of the conflicts and some of the developments in policing during this period. Thus they illuminated the tension between respect for local, even if inexperienced, police autonomy, on the one hand, and efficiency and expertise on the other; or, more broadly, between constitutional localism and central governmental direction of policing in England and Wales. But with the press campaigning for more efficient use of the scheme, its arrangements actually attested to the favourable prospects, in the late 1920s and 1930s, for inter-force cooperation in the form of national crime prevention schemes (such as that designed to intercept cross-country ‘motor bandits’). It was thus one of the unacknowledged elements in the forcing house for organisational change experienced by British policing before the war.

A review on the role of activity-based costing information and costs structure integration in supply chain and operations

In recent times, activity-based costing (ABC) has been evolving to a managerial and cost accounting system rather than a mere cost accounting. The popularity of integration of the ABC in the mathematical models of supply chain management (SCM) for decision support further emphasises the managerial scope of ABC. In this paper, we review the significant role of ABC information and cost structure integration in supply chain mathematical decision support modelling, with the aim of comparing its applicability at different managerial hierarchy levels. The presented literature provides a framework for evaluating the suitability of ABC into different SCM decision making processes.

Will Debt Relief Make a Difference? Impact and Expectations of the Multilateral Debt Relief Initiative

The Multilateral Debt Relief Initiative (MDRI) is the latest phase of debt reduction for poor countries from the World Bank, the IMF, and the African Development Bank. The MDRI, which will come close to full debt reduction for at least 19 (and perhaps as many as 40) qualifying countries, is being presented as a momentous leap forward in the battle against global poverty. However, the analysis in this paper suggests that the actual gains may be more modest and elusive. This is not because, as some anti-debt campaigners fear, that the initiative is a mere accounting trick. Rather, the limited short-term financial impact of the MDRI on affected countries is because the debt service obligations being relived were themselves relatively insignificant. For example, in 2004 the average African country in the program paid $19 million in debt service to the World Bank, but received 10 times that amount in new Bank credit and more than 50 times as much in total aid. Just as importantly, finances are rarely the binding constraint on poverty and other development outcomes. This is not to say that the MDRI is futile. Indeed the impact could be considerable over the long-term, especially on the ability of creditors to be more selective in the future. But most of the impact of the MDRI will be long-term and difficult to measure. As such, expectations of the effect on indebted countries and development indicators should be kept modest and time horizons long.

Been There But Going Where?: Assessing Old and New Agendas in Security Research and Study

Essays in this collection are focused on assessing the developments in research and study in the past 20 years. They will likely provoke some new thoughts about what we believe we have accomplished so that we can have markers for our forward progress. By design, the authors can afford to contribute only general perspectives since space is limited. The exercise is a welcome opportunity to summarize perspectives from folks who have laboured to push the fi eld to back up its self-provided label of ‘ profession ’ with a commitment to and fulfi lment of a key ingredient in the label: research and study based on scientifi c methods. True professional status cannot be invoked in the security fi eld until evidence-based decision-making is fully accepted and practiced by the vast majority of the fi eld ’ s practitioners. The questions addressed to authors immediately bring to mind two particular interests. First, can we accurately summarize the pathways that have brought us to this point in security ’ s evolution toward true professionalism? Second, what dreams do we have to fi re the imaginations of practitioners and budding scholars? This discussion should be anchored, therefore, in visions about new agendas that are built on the successes and distractions of the past. On one level, then, this essay serves as one observer ’ s mere accounting. On another level, it is intentionally provocative. By itself, mere accounting rarely stimulates new pathways. Provocations springing from evidence of past misadventures may, however, invite challenges and thereby encourage imaginative thinking beyond defenses of the status quo.

Material Flows in a Social Context: A Vietnamese Case Study Combining the Materials Flow Analysis and Action‐in‐Context Frameworks

SummaryMaterials flow analysis (MFA) is one of the central achievements of industrial ecology. One direction in which one can move MFA beyond mere accounting is by putting the material flows in their social context. This “socially extended MFA” may be carried out at various levels of aggregation. In this article, specific material flows will be linked to concrete actors and mechanisms that cause these flows—using the action‐in‐context (AiC) framework, which contains, inter alia, both proximate and indirect actors and factors. The case study site is of Tat hamlet in Vietnam, set in a landscape of paddy fields on valley floors surrounded by steep, previously forested slopes. Out of the aggregate MFA of Tat, the study focuses on material flows associated with basic needs and sustainability. The most important actors causing these material flows are farming households, politicians, traders, and agribusiness firms—of which local politicians turned out to be pivotal. The study shows the value of combining MFA with actor‐based social analysis. MFA achieves the balanced quantification of the physical system, thus helping to pinpoint key processes. Actor‐based analysis adds the causal understanding of what drives these key processes, leading to improved scenarios of the future and the effective identification of target groups and instruments for policy making.

An Ambitious Counter-Interpretive Tale: Class and American Late Capitalism

In this review essay we are particularly intrigued by the New Jersey m Dreaming's theoretical and historical arguments relation to its mode of ethnographic representation and writing. We admire the book's enormous ambition-to sketch the history of the second half of the twentieth century the United States-and we are interested examining how this project is achieved through ethnographic writing. The strengths and failings of New Jersey Dreaming are ones that should be of great interest to a very wide readership-to all of us who struggle with the articulation of political economy and persons, and more specifically to those engaged with the complexities of race, ethnicity, class, gender, and place the contemporary United States. In this essay we aim to sketch the work's contributions, and to think about its rougher edges and spottier patches as well-edges and patches that speak eloquently to the costs of particular modes of ethnographic representation and ambition. Class and History Ortner's is a capacious project indeed, both theoretically and historically. Ortner's class project for the of 1958 (rendered as capital the book's title) is huge. Against the invisibility of American popular culture and discourse (see also Ortner 1991), Ortner is determined to render visible, to read class. Ortner's ambition begins with her numerical quest-to account for the of 1958. Her efforts to locate her 303 classmates of Newark, New Jersey's Weequahic High School are simply indefatigable-we marvel at her tenacity and creativity this pursuit. Ortner's own review of these efforts-and the account offered Appendix 1, Finding People, by her classmate Judy Epstein Rothbard whom she hired to assist her-is a wonderful lesson how articulates with people's ability to be reached. Revealingly, the relatively dispossessed are significantly over-represented among those who have somehow fallen off the social map. In Appendix 4, Ortner lists the vitals (or their lack) of every single classmate. One senses that hers is an offering to perpetuity: a local data set fine-tuned to matters of and social mobility that an array of future scholars might find very handy-and perhaps quite remarkable. Ortner's numerical ambition, however, is larger than a mere accounting for the whole class. The book offers nearly two dozen fourfold tables (i.e., 4 squares) designed to consider the interaction between capital (i.e., class) on the left axis and the axis which gauges some kind of personal agency (205). One of Ortner's guiding premises is that the agentive axis is the culturally hegemonic one the United States-namely the idea that it is grit and determination that determines the course of people's lives. Against this cultural grain, Ortner joins those determined to bring back in (263). Much of the book then aims to explore the workings of class, not only terms of outcomes, but practice-in the fabric, feeling, and narration of daily life. Ortner's is a tough job as she aims to combine objectivist moments (a term she takes from Bourdieu, 264) which she is compelled to make an axis or grid of with all its intersections and complexity so as to be true to the cultural or discursive turn the human sciences (263). In bringing back in, Ortner means to tell two (and fact many more) historical stories: that of the upward mobility of Weequahiq High's Class of '58, and more broadly that of the changing configuration of the United States the second half of the twentieth century-a reconfiguration that Ortner considers a signpost of late capitalism. The story closer to the ethnography's home, Weequahiq High's Class of '58, is about the remarkable entry of Jewish men (and secondarily of African American men) into the PMC, the professional managerial class, which Ortner describes as the fat top of today's hourglass (273). …

Exchange Rate Reform in China: An Experiment in the Real Targets Approach

Evolution of China's exchange rate policy in the reform years provides a prime example of a reform that transformed the role, adjustment rules, and the institutional arrangement of the exchange rate in a country where once the exchange rate was arbitrarily set, functioned as a mere accounting device, and lay in fixed rigidity. The reform is essentially an experiment in the real targets approach to exchange rate policy that has afforded a realistic exchange rate, allowed freer access to foreign exchange, and introduced market forces in exchange rate decisions. Such a reform has laid foundation for China to pursue a realistic exchange rate policy. Its success derives in the main from a sensible sequencing, the consistent and strong emphasis placed on boosting supply, carefully handling the inflationary pressure with an appropriate policy assignment, and viewing the credibility issue in its broad effects.

Comment on Banking in Transition Economies: Does Efficiency Require Instability

Transition economies have been a very interesting laboratory of financial reform. While obviously some differences existed among these economies at the start of transition, there was, in terms of financial sector development, much commonality. Under central planning, banks were the passive recipients of household savings, since bank deposits were often the only asset households could hold. Banks were mere accounting agencies, keeping track of the financial transactions that resulted from planned allocations. Normal banking skills, including risk management, project screening and selection, and a diversified menu of instruments to attract savers, were absent. The other components of a financial system were rudimentary, and in most countries nonbank finance simply did not exist. Initially, one bank performed all lending. Early attempts at market reform in most countries saw this divided into a two-tier system, comprising one central bank and a number of commercial banks, often specialized by sector. But this had very little effect on banks' behavior. Since then, transition economies have pursued quite different financial reform paths, and have adopted and experimented with a range of reform approaches for the financial sector, with, at least at face value, quite different outcomes. There is thus potentially much to be learned from the outcomes for financial reform in these countries and in general. So far, much of the learning has been done without the benefit of an analytical model. This paper is therefore very useful as it can help provide this and thus guide the analysis of outcomes and further policy making. The paper is one of the first attempts to apply some of the recent models of financial intermediation for developed countries to transition economies and as such it provides much insight. My comments on the paper are in three parts: the description of the banking systems and reform in transition economies; the model, its assumptions, and applicability to transition economies; and the lessons for policy and empirical work. The descriptive part of the paper provides useful background for the issues at hand. It provides the macroeconomic, financial, and institutional development context in which financial reform took place. It highlights the unique linkages between enterprise restructuring and financial reform in transition economies, and the large differences in macroeconomic developments among countries since the onset of transition.

Égalité, équité. Les catégories idéologiques des politiques publiques

Equallty, Fairness : The Ideologlcal Categories of Public Policy. Noëlle Burgi [47-76]. Forced to recognize the inefficiency and failure of all the technical measures implemented to curb the new (inevitable?) poverty, mass long term unemployment, and the «impossible task of reinserting unqualified youth into the labor force» over the past decade, the French elites could not remain indifferent to the country's social disaster. By the end of the 80's, they came to the conclusion that the root of the problem was philosophical. Prior to any fiscal and social reform which would hopefully be both fair and efficient, time was therefore needed to redefine the notions of equality and fairness, and adapt them to the inflexible constraints of globalization. This, they hoped, would allow for social egoism to be dampened and would legitimize the sacrifices demanded from the «privileged», that is job holders. This paper engages in a close examination of the ideological discourse of these elites, and the assumptions underlying their (good) intentions. It seeks to make clear according to which ultimate criteria they now intend to produce fair social judgments. The quest proves to be elusive because this central issue is permanently brushed aside in favor of mere accounting preoccupations. But the analysis nonetheless bears fruit because it throws light on the limits of this kind of thinking, imprisoned within its categories, fascinated by the cage in which it locks up its own representations.

Comment

THE extraordinary general meeting of January 6 1982 called upon the LA Council to commission an independent management audit into the association's finances. This was to go much further than a mere accounting check. Since the LA already employs a firm of auditors, the same firm for sixty years, at a cost of £4590 in the year ended December 31 1980, many might have questioned the need for an additional audit.