Exploring (false) dualisms for environmental accounting praxis

This paper focuses on the political nature of the linguistic dualisms or ‘false antinomies’ that inhere in environmental accounting practice and environmental accounting research. These dualisms, ‘subject–object,’ ‘man–woman,’ ‘mind–body,’ and ‘culture–nature,’ the paper argues, need to be ‘ambiguized’ if the politics inherent in these dualisms are to be resisted. Two strategies for the ‘ambiguization’ of these dualisms are suggested: ‘performative parody,’ which is a strategy intended for environmental accounting practitioners, and ‘democratic reflexivity,’ which is a strategy intended for environmental accounting researchers. In taking this linguistic focus, the paper challenges common sense constructions of the environment and the potentially elitist and anti-democratic nature of environmental accounting research. By offering these two strategies, the paper provides a means of environmental accounting praxis, or means of resisting global ‘environmental’ domination.     

Men, children and the future of the family in the third millennium

This paper examines the effects of demographic change on the foundations of the family. The “first” demographic transition — the massive declines in fertility and mortality — is shown to have undermined the traditional male–female relationship based on parenthood. This has led to the gender revolution in the public sphere. The “second” demographic transition — the increases in divorce and cohabitation — is shown to have undermined the father–child relationship, reflecting women's control over children, a control that increased continually during the first demographic transition. This paper argues that the gender revolution needs to be brought into the family, increasing women's ability to compete in employment and men's ability both to choose whether to assume parental responsibility and to maintain active parental roles with their children.     

Accounting and the examination: A genealogy of disciplinary power

Historical elaboration of Foucault's concept of “power-knowledge” can explain both the late-medieval developments in accounting technology and why the near-universal adoption of a discourse of accountancy is delayed until the nineteenth century. It is the disciplinary techniques of elite medieval educational institutions—the new universities and their examinations—that generate new power-knowledge relations. These techniques embody forms of textual rewriting (including the new “alphanumeric” system) from which the accounting advances are produced and “control” is formalised. “Double-entry” is an aspect of these rewritings, linked also to the new writing and rewritings of money, especially the bill of exchange. By the eighteenth century accounting technologies are feeding back in a general way into educational practice (e.g. in the deployment of “book-keeping” on pupils) and this culminates in the introduction of the written examination and the mathematical mark. A new regime of “objective” evaluation of total populations, made up of individually “calculable” subjects, is thereby engendered and then extended — apparently first in the U.S. railroads — into modern comprehensive management and financial accounting systems (systems of “accountability” embodying Foucault's “reciprocal hierarchical observation” and “normalising judgement”), while written examinations become used to legitimate the newly autonomous profession of accountancy.     

Beyond the mundane: reconciling breadth and depth in futures enquiry

For some time there has been a need within Futures Studies (FS) to develop methods which go beyond the dominant empirical tradition. For many years there has been a near-exclusive emphasis on understanding the external world ‘out there’. But as time has gone by, so it has become clear that our ability to understand the world ‘out there’ crucially depends on an underlying world of reference that is ‘in here’. Understanding the near-future environment calls for a combination of ‘inner’ and ‘outer’ views which, for example, give as much credence to judgment as to calculation. This paper considers a way of considering these very different ‘ways of knowing’. Overall, the aim is to go beyond what might be termed ‘mundane’ analysis, i.e. that which is preoccupied with surfaces, and to open out a broader arena for futures enquiry.     

The accounting of “The Meeting”: Examining calculability within a “Fluid” local space

This study traces events in an empirical setting where a key local space, “The Meeting”, was made calculable. Building on field data from interviews and documentary sources at ABB Industry/Finland, the study theorizes in the interpretive genre, elaborating on the notion of the calculable space. It argues the following: Accounting can be extended into un-formalized and more elusive local spaces – into “fluid” spaces which are not clearly mapped within the organizational hierarchy, and which lie beyond recognized responsibility units or physically distinct cells at the factory floor. By opening visibility into the discretion of these “fluid” local spaces, a tighter alignment between programmatic ideals and real action at the organizational grass-root can be achieved. Self-devised non-financial measurement, mediating local tensions and the interests of “autonomous” actors, becomes the technology of government in this process of normalization – which is, however, not to be acknowledged as being unproblematic.     

Learning and the monetary policy strategy of the European Central Bank

This paper examines the welfare implications of alternative inflation targeting proposals for the monetary policy of the European Central Bank. We assume that policy makers have to “learn” the laws of motion of inflation in an economy characterized by “stickiness” in domestic price setting behavior and subjected to recurring shocks to productivity, exports and foreign price. We find that a switch from an “asymmetric” inflation targeting strategy to an “symmetric” makes little difference in welfare payoffs, but it comes at a cost of much higher interest-rate variability. We also find that there are practically no welfare gains from switching from an inflation-targeting strategy based on the Harmonized Index of Consumer Prices (HICP) to a strategy based on the domestic price component of the HICP.     

Transferring knowledge across sub-genres of the ABC implementation literature

In the last decade, a continuous stream of empirical articles has investigated how various implementation process factors (including, top management support, adequate resources, and ABC training) influence ABC implementation success. However, at the same time, a growing number of researchers have criticised this ‘mainstream approach’ for, among other things, neglecting issues of power and politics and for viewing ABC implementations as something inherently positive. Based on Lukka and Granlund's [Lukka, K., Granlund, M., 2002. The fragmented communication structure within the accounting academia: the case of activity-based costing research genres. Acc. Organ. Soc. 27, 165–190] call for communication between various streams of ABC research, the purpose of this paper is to discuss how the ‘mainstream’ implementation literature may benefit from insights made in the politically oriented literature. A key conclusion is that such an analysis not only provides us with enriched explanations of the relatively strong and coherent findings in the ‘mainstream’ ABC implementation literature, but has also the potential to explain ‘unexpected’ and ‘contradictory’ results found in this stream of research. Based on these observations, a number of directions for future research are proposed.     

The external organizational environment and its impact on management information systems

It is argued in this paper that organizations are “living purposeful” or “adaptively rational” systems whose survival depends on their ability to interact successfully, on a continual basis, with the surrounding environment. Three states of the external organizational environment — controllable, partially controllable and uncontrollable — are identified, and the information characteristics of each state are discussed. The approaches that organizations can adopt to collect information on the environment are also discussed; these approaches use externally-based data sources and modeling and/or analytic techniques. On these bases, we consider effective strategies and methodologies which organizations can adopt for processing, evaluating and communicating information about the external environment to satisfy decision-making requirements.     

An “American Dream” theory of corporate executive Fraud

In this paper, we first describe a “Broken Trust” theory that was introduced by Albrecht el al. [Albrecht, W. S., Albrecht, C. C., & Albrecht, C. O. (2004). Fraud and corporate executives: Agency, Stewardship and Broken Trust. Journal of Forensic Accounting, 5, 109–130] to explain corporate executive Fraud. The Broken Trust theory is primarily based on an “Agency” theory from economic literature and a “Stewardship” theory from psychology literature. We next describe an “American Dream” theory from sociology literature to complement Albrecht el al.'s (2004) Broken Trust theory. Like the Broken Trust theory, the American Dream theory relates to a “Fraud Triangle” concept to explain corporate executive Fraud. Finally, we provide some anecdotal evidence from recent high profile corporate executive Fraud to explore the American Dream theory. We conclude our thoughts on corporate executive Fraud from a teaching perspective.     

Monetary policy, ‘dollarization,’ and parallel market exchange rates: The case of the Dominican Republic

Excessive money creation may give rise to inflation tax revenues and to a depreciation of the domestic currency. this in turn leads to a shift away from the domestic currency into a foreign currency (e.g., the US dollar, hence the term ‘dollarization’). From the domestic monetary authority's point of view, ‘dollarization’ is an unwelcomed phenomenomn, thus the monetary authorities will attempt to arrest the ‘dollarization’ phenomenon while maintaining the excessive money growth. This paper develops and tests a model which analyzes the effects of monetary policy on dollarization and the ‘parallel’ market exchange rates.     

The average hospital

In 1998, the UK government introduced the National Reference Costing Exercise (NRCE) to benchmark hospital costs. Benchmarking is usually associated with “excellence”; the government emphasised the raising of standards in the 1997 White Paper “The New NHS: Modern, Dependable” that heralded the NRCE. This paper argues that the UK “New Labour” government's introduction of, and increasing reliance on, hospital cost benchmarking is promoting “averageness”. Average hospitals will be cheaper to run and easier to control than highly differentiated ones; they may also score more highly on certain measures of service improvement. The paper aims, through empirical investigation, both to demonstrate how the activities and processes of hospital life “become average” as they are transformed to comply with the cost accounting average and to indicate how the “average” is being promoted as the norm for hospitals to aspire to. To benchmark to average costs, comparisons are necessary. To compare hospital costs involves the creation of categories and classification systems for clinical activities. Empirical evidence shows that as doctors, patients and clinical practices are moulded into costed categories, they become more standardized, more commensurate and the average hospital is created.     

Dispersion trading: Empirical evidence from U.S. options markets

This paper develops empirical evidence on the viability of a form of volatility trading known as “dispersion trading.” The results shed light on the efficiency with which U.S. options markets price volatility.Using end-of-day implied volatilities extracted from equity option prices for the stocks that comprise the S&P 500, the implied volatility of the S&P 500 is computed using a modification of the Markowitz variance equation. This Markowitz-implied volatility is then compared to the implied volatility of the S&P 500 extracted directly from index options on the S&P 500. These contemporaneous measures of implied volatility are then examined for exploitable discrepancies both with and without transaction costs. The study covers the period October 31, 2005 through November 1, 2007.It is shown that, from a trader's perspective, index option implied volatility tended to be more often “rich” and component volatilities tended to be more often “cheap.” Nevertheless, there were times when the opposite was true; suggesting that potential dispersion trades can run in either direction.     

On Accounting-Based Valuation Formulae*

This paper considers accounting-based valuation formulae. Its initial focus is on two problems related to residual income valuation (RIV). First, insofar valuation depends on theresent value of expected dividends per share, applying RIV requires clean surplus accounting on a per share basis. Awkwardly, equity transactions that change the number of shares outstanding generally imply eps ≠ Δ bvps − dps. A clean surplus equality holds only if one “re-conceptualizes” either end-of-period bvps or eps as a forced “plug”. Second, one cannot circumvent the per share issue by evaluating RIV on a total dollar value basis unless one introduces relatively subtle MM-type restrictions. In light of RIV’s unsatisfactory aspects, the paper proposes an alternative to RIV. This new approach maintains a strict eps-focus. It derives by replacing bvps _t in RIV with eps _{t +1} capitalized (i.e. divided by r). One obtains a formula such that the current market price equals next-period expected earnings capitalized plus the present value of expected abnormal earnings growth, referred to as AEG. A number of propositions then demonstrate the advantages of the AEG approach as compared to RIV. These results follow because eps _t+1 capitalized generally approximates market price better than bvps _t .*An earlier version of this paper was titled “Residual Income Valuation The Problems”.This revised version was published online in August 2005 with a corrected cover date.     

Mediating instruments and making markets: Capital budgeting, science and the economy

We examine in this paper how certain instruments link science and the economy through acting on capital budgeting decisions, and in doing so how they contribute to the process of making markets. We use the term “mediating instruments” to refer to those practices that frame the capital spending decisions of individual firms and agencies, and that help to align them with investments made by other firms and agencies in the same or related industries. Our substantive focus is on the microprocessor industry, and the roles of “Moore’s Law” and “technology roadmaps”. We examine the ways in which these instruments envision a future, and how they link a multitude of actors and domains in such a way that the making of future markets for microprocessors and related devices can continue. The paper begins with a discussion of existing literatures on capital budgeting, science studies, and recent economic sociology, together with the reasoning behind the notion of “mediating instruments”. We then address the substantive issues in three stages. Firstly, we consider the role of “Moore’s Law” in shaping the fundamental expectations of an entire set of industries about rates of increase in the power and complexity of semiconductor devices, and the timing of those increases. Secondly, we examine the roles of “technology roadmaps” in translating the simplified imperatives of Moore’s Law into a framework that can guide and encourage the myriad of highly uncertain and confidential investment decisions of firms and other agencies. Thirdly, we explore one particular and recent example of major capital investment, that of post-optical lithography. The paper seeks to help remedy the empirical deficit in studies of capital budgeting practices, and to demonstrate that investment is much more than a matter of valuation techniques. We argue, through the case of the microprocessor industry, for greater attention to investment as an inter-firm and inter-agency process, thus lessening the fixation in studies of capital budgeting on the traditional hierarchical and bounded organization. In addition, we seek to extend and illustrate empirically the richness of the notion of “mediating instruments” for researchers in accounting, science studies, and economic sociology.     

Galton's Error and the under-representation of systematic risk

Science progresses by improving its measurement apparatus. This holds true in finance too. The new methodology of “complete identification”, using simple algebraic geometry, throws new light on Galton's Error in finance and economics and the resulting misinformation of investors. Mutual funds conventionally advertise their relative systematic market risk, or “betas”, to potential investors based on incomplete measurement by unidirectional bivariate projections: they commit Galton's Error by under-representing their systematic risk. Consequently, far too many mutual funds are marketed as “defensive” and too few as “aggressive”. Using the new methodology it is found that, out of a total of 3217 mutual funds, 2047 funds (63.7%) claimed to be defensive based on the current industry standard methodology, but only 608 (18.9%) actually are. This under-representation of systematic risk leads to inefficiencies in the capital allocation process, since biased betas lead to mispricing of mutual funds. Complete bivariate projections produce a correct representation of the epistemic uncertainty inherent in the bivariate measurement of relative market risk and provide a new CAPM taxonomy. Our conclusions have also serious consequences for the proper “bench-marking” and recent regulatory proposals for the mutual funds industry. Extension of the new methodology to multivariate systematic risk measurement by Asset Pricing Theory (APT) is suggested.     

How can IMF policy eliminate country moral hazard and account for externalities?

Costly crisis prevention has positive external effects, which leads to free-riding of governments on each other's efforts. “Ordinary” IMF loans aggravate existing externalities, reinforcing the under-investment problem. We consider the reform proposals of the “Meltzer commission” in both loan and insurance models and show how the IMF can eliminate country moral. The efficiency-ensuring loan policy accounts for given externalities and involves effort-contingent discounts on interests or the extension of credit volume. Similar results hold for the insurance framework. Ex ante participation requires that smaller countries be “subsidized” by large ones, or that IMF policy consider distributional aspects in addition to efficiency.     

World on fire: two scenarios of the destruction of human civilization and possible extinction of the human race

This paper examines the foundation for two scenarios of the future depicting how human civilization might destroy itself and possibly bring about the extinction of the human race in the process. The scenarios are based upon the two human-generated “fires” deeply ingrained within industrial civilization: (1) the nuclear “fire” of tens of thousands of nuclear weapons and their automated “launch on warning” alert systems and (2) the slow burning “fire” of global warming and runaway climate change. This paper also examines obstacles that are currently preventing the necessary first steps towards solving these problems.     

Information Uncertainty and Expected Returns

This study examines the role of information uncertainty (IU) in predicting cross-sectional stock returns. We define IU in terms of “value ambiguity,” or the precision with which firm value can be estimated by knowledgeable investors at reasonable cost. Using several different proxies for IU, we show that (1) on average, high-IU firms earn lower future returns (the “mean” effect), and (2) price and earnings momentum effects are much stronger among high-IU firms (the “interaction” effect). These findings are consistent with analytical models in which high IU exacerbates investor overconfidence and limits rational arbitrage.This revised version was published online in August 2005 with a corrected cover date.     

Professional accounting development in Nigeria: threats from the inside and outside

Over the years several, sometimes conflicting, theories attempting to explain the development of professions have emerged. The “functionalist” and “interactionist” theories have since lost the spotlight to a more critical approach based on the Weberian concept of closure. Limitations in the concept and practice of this neo-Weberain concept have led to suggestions that research into the sociology of professions, should also include historical analyses of professionalism that capture historical specificities with the aim of generating theory that sees beyond “just massive historical variation” [Collins, R. (1990). Changing conceptions in the sociology of the profession. In R. Torstendahl, & M. Burrage, The formation of professions: Knowledge, state and strategy. London: Sage Publications]. Such research should also investigate the structural conditions under which the professionalisation process takes place [Johnson, T. (1977). The profession in the class structure. In R. Scase, Industrial society: Class, cleavage and control. London: George Allen and Unwin.]. In order to achieve this, there is the need to critically study the relationship of the State and the profession [Klegon, D. (1978). The sociology of professions: an emerging perspective. Sociology of Work and Occupations, 5, 3, 259–283.] and to document more extensively, the process, rather than the product, of closure [Chua, W. F., & Paullaos, C. (1993). Rethinking the profession-state dynamic: the case of the Victorian Charter Attempt, 1885–1906, Accounting, Organizations and Society, pp. 128–691; Chua, W. F., & Paullaos, C. (1998). The dynamics of “closure” amidst the construction of market, profession, empire and nationhood: an historical analysis of an Australian Accounting Association. Accounting, Organizations and Society, 23 (2), 155–187; Ramirez, C. (2001). Understanding social closure in its cultural context: accounting practitioners in France (1920–1939), Accounting, Organizations and Society.]. Such is the approach of this article, which focuses on the development of the accounting professions in Nigeria. It critically examines the profession/ State dynamics that have helped shape the outcome of the various episodes in the history of the accounting profession in Nigeria. An important influence in this dynamics is the nature of government in place (i.e. military or civilian).     

Revisiting the ‘Court of Generations’ Amendment : A conversation

In 1991, futurist Bruce E. Tonn proposed a ‘Court of Generations’ Amendment to the US Constitution. His proposed ‘Court of Generations’ lacked punitive powers but, hopefully, would have sufficient legitimacy to counteract extreme present-minded thinking evident in US political processes and institutions. Although Tonn's ‘Court of Generations’ Amendment has been well received in the futures community, who else has heard of it? Otherwise, has it made any difference? How can the cumbersome and nonfuturistic amendment procedure in the US Constitution generate a futures-oriented ‘Court of Generations’? And for those who sincerely look forward to a ‘Court of Generations,’ precisely what kind of tactically savvy visionary leadership will give the ‘Court of Generations’ any chance of being approved? During 1997, Vincent Kelly Pollard engaged Dr. Tonn in an Internet conversation aimed at clarifying these issues.