Stability,pseudo-stability,information and pseudo-information

This paper takes issue with Kuhner (1997) on four main points:

? the implications of accounting conventions, principles and valuation conventions;

? the role of Notes to the accounts;

? the relationship between distributable profits and liquidity;

? the significance of the efficient markets hypothesis.

Kuhner's desire to make (page 749) ‘published data on companies as informative as possible’ is strongly supported, but we differ on what this may mean in practice.     

物流中心作业成本通用模型研究

为了实现流通企业物流中心的精细化成本管理,在分析作业成本法原理的基础上,结合流通企业物流中心的业务流程及其生产成本构成特点,本文构建了物流中心作业成本通用模型,并对通用模型中资源池的建立、作业池模型设计、确认成本核算对象、成本动因模型设计四大主要环节的成本核算过程和方法进行了研究和阐述,最后通过实例说明了作业成本法的应用。     

Human resource management and organizational strategies in German- and US-owned companies

The development of the international economy over the past twenty years has bred considerable diversity in the form and substance of employment relations (labour-management relations, human resource management practices) throughout the world. Cases of ‘social partnership’ are today found in the ‘free market’ United States economy; some companies operating in Germany's ‘social’ market economy are rejecting traditional forms of social partnership in the name of more unilateral strategies.

This paper examines (a) the extent to which ‘strategic diversity’ – variation in human resource strategies and policies – is possible within the heavily institutionalized, co-operative and codeterminative German economy, and (b) how managers perceive the effects of different kinds of HR approaches on organizational change and industrial adjustment. It is based on empirical evidence drawn from seven large chemicals companies operating in Germany – three of them US-owned firms and four German-owned.

The main conclusions are that considerable strategic diversity is possible within the German context, and that managers perceive distinct costs and benefits to specific aspects of the typically American ‘unilateral’ style and the more German ‘negotiated’ approach to structuring the relationship with human resources. The paper concludes with a discussion of the implications of these trade-offs for the transferability of HR strategies across international borders, giving special attention to policies to avoid some of these potential costs.     

基于作业成本法和会计法的成品油物流成本核算研究

文章用成品油物流活动界定成品油物流成本范围,用会计和作业成本法相结合的方法进行成品油物流成本核算。以现有的成品油生产企业商品流通费用报表数据为基础,根据作业成本法的原则将成品油物流成本按运输、仓储等成品油物流功能活动进行成本分类,用会计核算法从基础数据中提取属于物流成本的部分,并补充报表中遗漏的属于计算范围的成品油物流成本。计算出的成品油物流成本也能够比较忠实地反映成品油物流活动的真实状态。     

Voluntary adoption of non-local GAAP in the European Union: A study of determinants and consequences

Abstract

This study examines the determinants and consequences of voluntary adoption of non-local accounting principles (non-local GAAP) by firms listed and domiciled in the European Union (EU). We restrict ourselves to the two predominant internationally accepted sets of accounting standards: International Accounting Standards (IAS) and United States generally accepted accounting principles (US GAAP). We have used various sources to identify EU firms that use non-local GAAP. We examine the 1999 annual reports of all these firms, because accounting standard choices in more recent years may be affected by the announcement of the proposal by the European Commission in February 2001 to mandate IAS usage from 2005 on. The maintained hypothesis is that firms that voluntarily adopt IAS or US GAAP expect to experience net benefits from adoption. The finding that 133 non-financial firms in the EU voluntarily used non-local GAAP in 1999 suggests that the majority of listed EU firms does not expect to benefit from non-local GAAP adoption. By studying the characteristics of non-local GAAP adopters this study provides insight into the determinants of non-local GAAP adoption. We find that firms voluntarily using non-local GAAP are more likely to be listed on a US exchange, the EASDAQ exchange in Brussels, and have more geographically dispersed operations. Furthermore, they are more likely to be domiciled in a country with lower quality financial reporting and where IAS is explicitly allowed as an alternative to local GAAP. We also study whether non-local GAAP adopters have lower levels of information asymmetry, a much cited benefit of using more transparent financial reporting, than non-adopters. We examine three proxies for information asymmetry: analyst following, cost of equity capital, and uncertainty among analysts and investors (forecast dispersion and stock return volatility). We document a positive effect of non-local GAAP adoption on analyst following, but fail to find evidence of a lower cost of capital for non-local GAAP adopters. Contrary to expectations, uncertainty among analysts and investors appears to be higher for firms using IAS or US GAAP than for firms using local GAAP. However, by comparing ‘early’ and ‘late’ adopters, we find some evidence that suggests that benefits take some time to fully materialise.     

Accounting,economics and management in France: the slow emergence of an 'accounting science'

The relationship (or what might be better described as the absence of a relationship) between accounting, economics and management is an important feature of a French tradition built on a society in which accountants have been regarded as the ‘poor relations’ of the business community. This pattern is presented in the second part of the title of this article as ‘the slow emergence of an accounting science’. French business traditions have influenced accounting mainly through the property rights established by the French Revolution. The French bourgeoisie's concern with inheritance gave rise to a form of accounting which emphasized the balance sheet and inventory valuation, rather than cash flow analysis. Throughout the 19th century accounting in France was taught as a technical subject, secondary to the ‘noble’ disciplines such as engineering, law and later, economics. In the mid-20th century, the state, via the ‘Conseil National de la Comptabilité’ (the National Accounting Council) laid down accounting principles under the ‘Plan Comptable’. The separation between financial accounting and cost accounting reflected that between entrepreneurs or owners on the one hand and engineers or administrators on the other. Unlike the Anglo-Saxon countries, France did not recognize accountancy as a profession in its own right until recently. Recent years have seen a radical transformation of French accounting policies and conventions under the combined influence of the emerging requirements of financial markets, the globalization of business and the growing independence of the accountancy profession.     

研究型大学ABC学生培养成本核算模式——基于M大学的案例分析

本研究以2011年M大学的学生培养成本核算为例，运用作业成本法对学生培养成本进行归集与分摊，设计了一套适合于研究型大学的学生培养成本核算模式和应用机制。案例分析表明，基于ABC的学生培养成本核算能够根据资源动因和作业动因将学生培养和科研工作的大量共享费用进行分摊，对学校的费用支出实现合理分解和适当调整，进而提高生均成本核算的准确度。     

The measurement of the economic performance of the US Nonfinancial Corporate Business Sector 1946–1990: an application of the shareholder value creation concept

This paper is based upon a juxtaposition of the cash flow-market value performance (alias SVC performance) and historic cost accounting (HC) performance of the US Nonfinancial Corporate Business sector 1946–90. It has two principal objectives: 1. To determine whether, judged on return and variability dimensions, the HC accounting model is an operationally acceptable surrogate for a multiperiod market-based accounting model. 2. To analyse the consequences of HC income-based distributions, i.e., corporate tax, interest and dividend payments based on conventionally-measured corporate income. Three principal conclusions are drawn: i. Notwithstanding their common cash flow component, HC performance indices are not reliable surrogates for SVC performance criteria. The former apparently do not accurately capture changes in corporate valuation and generally understate the variability of market-based returns. ii. The multiperiod HC income of a going concern characteristically overstates its coterminous multiperiod cash flows to a considerable degree. Contrary to common supposition, the former does not therefore constitute a ‘normalized’ or ‘smoothed’ version of a firm's ‘primitive’ cash flows in the sense that the cumulative (multiperiod) values of the two measures tend to converge. iii. As a consequence of ii, HC income and its near relation, taxable earnings, are dubious bases for measuring interest-paying, tax-paying and dividend-paying capacities. Corporate income-distribution decisions based on HC accruals-based profit measures frequently trigger external financing which may cause shareholder wealth losses and wealth transfers from shareholders to lenders. However, ‘fiscal drag’ appears to be the most serious consequence of HC accruals-based income distribution decisions.     

From psoriasis to a number and back

This paper will argue that accounting can be understood as a special kind of Latourian Actor – a ‘space/time/value machine’ [Frandsen, A. -C. (2004). Rum, tid och pengar – En studie om redovisning i praktiken. Doctoral Thesis, Göteborg: BAS]. It starts conceptually by seeing accounting and its references as a ‘chain of translations’ [Latour, B. (1998). Artefaktens återkomst. Stockholm: Knowledge and Society; Latour, B. (1999). Pandora’s hope. Essays on the reality of science studies. Cambridge: Harvard University Press]. Empirically it follows a puzzling set of such references, from a psoriasis clinic where accounting is unfamiliar – so part of what [Tuan, Y. -F. (2001). Space and place, 8th ed. London: University of Minnesota Press] would call a ‘space’ – to a central finance function where it is taken for granted embodied knowledge, and so part of ‘place’, and then back, to observe how these references become integrated into medical everyday work and its embodied ways of knowing, establishing the clinic as an accounting ‘place’ for those who work there.. It then argues that as these references become more taken for granted, accounting acts as a special Actor because of the way it circulates inside and outside both human and non-human ‘actants’, as a machine which always names and counts, so constituting space, time and valuing through its flexible ‘named numbers’.. It tracks how accounting moves to becoming familiar and expands its reach through four categories: ‘the character of the associations’, ‘the integration of associations and the delimitation of movement’, ‘order and its relation to change; and ‘the production of other spaces’. This illuminates how accounting draws actants into its chains or circuits of value, thus extending its ability to construct both facts and acts. Here the paper supplements the actor-network approach with ideas drawn from the work of Hoskin and colleagues [e.g. Ezzamel, M., & Hoskin, K. (2002). Retheorizing the relationship between accounting, writing and money with evidence from Mesopotamia and ancient Egypt. Critical Perspectives on Accounting, 13, 333–367; Hoskin, K. (1981). The history of education and the history of writing, Unpublished paper. Department of Education, University of Warwick; Hoskin, K., & Macve, R., (1986). Accounting and the examination: A genealogy of disciplinary power. Accounting, Organisation and Society, 11, 105–136] which see accounting as a visible sign system naming and counting from before the invention of writing, and so having a special priority in settings concerned with coordinating action in space and across time. In modern managerial worklife settings, its named numbers circulate as paper and electronic texts which are strategically central to both financial and non-financial coordination of resources and actants. This helps clarify why accounting should be such a special Actor, as well as how it functions as machine.     

Measuring strategic environmental performance

It is now widely acknowledged that environmental issues will increasingly affect the performance of firms in western countries, both in the short and in the long run. Environmental issues can act on revenues and on costs. They can influence revenues when a firm follows a ‘green strategy’, i.e. it enhances the characteristics of environmental compatibility of its products or it promotes a credible image of a ‘green company’, that employs only clean technologies. They can influence costs as, on the one hand, more limiting environmental standards can result in higher manufacturing and non manufacturing costs and, on the other hand, programmes focused on improving environmental performances can result in less spoils and wastes, hence in lower costs. Hence, environmental performance should be a structured part of the management control system of an industrial firm. Unfortunately, it is not completely clear how accounting information can be structured in order to obtain this result. This paper is aimed at developing a set of information that can be used for a managerial control focused on the environmental performance of an industrial firm. This paper is organized in three main sections. Section I describes the conceptual requirements of a management control system based on accounting information for monitoring the environmental performance of an industrial firm (completeness, long term orientation, external orientation, measurability and cost). Section II analyses different classes of Environmental Performance Indicators (EPI) used in practice. Both accounting measures (prevention costs and investments; operating environmental costs; contingent environmental liabilities) and non financial measures (physical indicators; compliance) are considered. Section III suggests an integrated approach to the design of a management control system focused on environmental issues, where different classes of indicators are used jointly. More specifically, two integrated systems, one mostly based on physical measures and aimed at external communication, the other focused on accounting measures and supporting managerial decision making, are suggested.     

The effect of lot-sizing on workload variability

Lot-sizing models which group demand requirements for one or more consecutive time periods into a single production run have received considerable attention in recent years. Material Requirements Planning (MRP) systems must, for instance, make a lot-size decision for each planned order release. Existing decision models attempt to minimize the sum of setup plus inventory holding costs. However, lot-sizing tends to increase the work center load variability, and, consequently, the costs associated with changing production levels from period to period should be incorporated into the economic analysis. This study is concerned, first of all, with analytically describing the relationship between dynamic lot-sizing models and workload variability. Secondly, in order to account for production level change costs we propose a simple modification to existing heuristic models. Lastly, we employ a simulation model to empirically extend these results to a typical MRP multiechelon production environment. An example is included to show clearly that with cost premiums for overtime and severance or guaranteed minimum costs for undertime the traditional lot-sizing techniques significantly underestimate actual costs and can lead to very costly policies.Mean, variance and coefficient of variation of period work time requirements are derived as a function of several algorithm characteristics. Average cycle time (number of periods covered by a single batch) is found to be the most influential factor in determining workload variability. Variance grows approximately in proportion to this cycle time with the proportionality constant being the square of average period workload. Cycle time and demand variability also contribute to workload variability. Results indicate that for a given average cycle time, the EOQ method will minimize workload variability. When N products utilize the same work center, the coefficient of load variation will be reduced by a factor of N^{?$\text{1}\text{2}$} unless requirements are positively correlated. Positive correlation would result when products have similar seasons or parent items. In this case grouping such products cannot help reduce variability.In order to incorporate production level change costs into existing heuristics we may simply introduce a term consisting of a penalty factor times average cycle time. The penalty factor represents the costs of period by period production level changes. Several popular heuristics are extended in this fashion, and it is found that solutions are still readily obtainable, requiring only modifications to setup or holding cost parameters.The effects of level change costs are examined via simulation for a specific yet typical environment. It is found that when setup costs are significant, traditional lot-sizing heuristics can provide cost savings and service level improvements as compared to lot-for-lot production. However, whereas for our model the obtainable profit improvement from lot-sizing was 25% in the case of freely variable capacity, actual improvements were only one half as large when reasonable hiring and firing practices and overtime and undertime costs were considered. Consequently, management needs to consider carefully labor costs and work center product relationships when determining a production scheduling method.     

Who pays for whom? Elements of a macroeconomic approach to income inequality

National income is generated through national production in the form of ‘value added’; it is expended on goods and services in the form of ‘disposable’ or ‘net’ income. In this paper, I investigate what happens in between. The circuit of income flows generated in this way is comparable to the circuit of product flows, in its complexity. It can be analysed, so the tenet of the paper, in a similar way, by means of well-known tools of input–output (IO) analysis; this on the pre-condition, however, that you draw out the institutional framework of an economy in similar detail as is now customarily done for production units in IO analysis. Existing data do not suffice for the purpose, at present; this paper shows, by way of some exemplary calculations, what insight into the mechanism of national income distribution is gained if the necessary data, normally in the form of a large social accounting matrix, are provided.     

Is Prestige Only Beneficial? A Cost of Perceived External Prestige Among Accounting Employees

Abstract

Perceived external prestige (PEP), which is an employee’s belief of how outsiders view his or her organization, has a positive effect on multiple employee job outcomes. However, we posit that PEP also carries costs that arise due to increases in the perception of coworker competitiveness that negatively affects some job outcomes. Prior research has not yet examined negative outcomes of PEP. Using structural equation modeling with survey data from a sample of 477 accounting professionals employed in public accounting firms, we find that PEP is negatively related to job satisfaction and positively related to turnover intentions through its relationship with perceptions of the competitiveness of coworker environment, thus documenting a cost of PEP. Overall, though, we find that the net effect of PEP on job outcomes remains positive. Additionally, we find these relationships hold with 383 accounting professionals in industry. Implications for research and practice are discussed.     

物流企业在ERP系统中实施作业成本法的应用研究

从ERP系统中成本核算和控制的角度出发,探讨了物流企业在ERP系统中实施作业成本法的可行性,并提出ERP系统下利用作业成本法核算产品(服务)成本的基本思路以及具体的实施步骤。     

The Tracking of Environmental Costs: Motivations and Impacts

Abstract

Most accounting systems separately capture and accumulate one portion of the overall environmental costs of firms, while the remainder is embedded in other cost pools, such as general overhead costs or administrative costs. Little empirical evidence has been provided to explain the impacts of cost accounting systems that make a larger portion of firms' total environmental costs visible. The aim of this study is to conceptually and empirically examine the relationships among the tracking of environmental costs (TEC) by firms, their environmental motivations, and the impacts in terms of environmental and economic performance. Using survey data from a large sample of manufacturing firms, the results suggest two main conclusions. First, the TEC has an indirect influence on economic performance through environmental performance. Second, this indirect effect is influenced by the environmental motivations of the firm. More specifically, this indirect effect is greater (lesser) for firms whose motivations are predominately business-oriented (sustainability-oriented).     

基于RCA法的供应链企业间成本核算研究

文中对作业成本法在供应链成本核算中的应用提出质疑,提出适用于供应链成本核算的资源消耗会计方法。具体核算流程为先对企业成本项目中的材料成本和管理费用进行细分,再对明细项目进行资源消耗种类的分析,为每一种资源类型建立资源结集点,将消耗同种资源的成本归入同一结集点,最终实现企业间成本的核算目的。     

Mobilizing consent: paternalism and cellular manufacturing

In this paper we explore the dynamics of the introduction of New Systems and Structures of Work Organization (NSSWO) in the context of the forces impacting upon organizational change in the unionized sector of manufacturing industry throughout the Thatcher period. This we do by way of a detailed case study of a major UK auto-components manufacturer. We explore a number of changes in work organization, including the introduction of a cellular-based system of manufacturing, from its initial strategic conception through to its implementation; the delegation of responsibility for quality to shop-floor operators and the use of more flexible working practices. In doing so, we reconsider the context of change, the detailed processes of change and the pattern of accommodation between labour and management. Drawing upon our previous work on the nature of paternalism (Ackers,and Black, 1991), we explore its significance in terms of management’s constant drive for more economic work practices and patterns of organization. Specifically we explore the significance of paternalism as a relevant concept in interpreting the case, and hence, also, as a relevant concept in understanding HRM. The case challenges the prevailing ideology that the ‘successful’

economic organization requires (a) a de-regulated labour market and (b)

a trade union free environment, or, failing this, that management needs to

develop an individualistic approach towards the work-force, moving from the

more pluralist‘industrial relations’approach towards an essentially ‘unitarist framework, as found in certain interpretations of ‘uman resource management’(Guest, 1987)

The paper is thus a contribution to the continuing analysis of those ‘tensions and struggles through which the open ended potential of labour power have been managed, through shifting patterns of coercion, accommodation and compliance into profitable forms of production’(Elger and Smith, 1994: 12; Thompson, 1990). By means of this case we attempt to explore this issue with respect to three interconnected

themes:

The place of paternalism as a relevant concept in the age of HRM.

The extent to which organizations may be better advised to look towards ways

to build upon their existing organization culture, rather than seeking solutions

from overseas models.

Linking with previous work on the ‘Joint Process’in the US (Black and Ackers, 1994), the paper raises issues concerning the ‘strategic issue . . . which managers have to face . . . the balance between joint regulation and joint consultation’(Storey and Sissons, 1993: 221), and hence the role of trades unions in organizational change programmes.     

企业的物流成本会计核算问题研究

物流成本越来越受企业所重视,企业物流成本管理随着经济的飞速发展越来越凸显着自身的重要性,理论界对其的探讨从来没有停止。近年来,西方各国学者和专家更是把作业成本法应用在企业物流成本的核算管理当中并获得了成功,从物流管理的转变和发展打破企业成本管理的枷锁,拓展企业的利润空间,提高企业的生产运营质量,增强企业的核心竞争力。本文在对企业物流成本理论分析的基础上,对物流成本的会计核算问题进行了研究,建议在企业原有的财务核算体系中,通过增设明细科目的方法,引入作业成本法来核算企业的物流成本。     

Unpacking the Fluidity of Management Accounting Concepts: An Ethnographic Social Site Analysis of Enterprise Risk Management

Abstract

This study offers new insights into what renders management accounting concepts (MACs) fluid. Extant literature depicts how fluidity is an effect of heterogeneous associations among actors, which translate and mobilize them in situated and variegated forms. This focus on heterogeneous arrangements, however, tends to neglect the role of practices and how these practices render MACs fluid. Hence, the study investigates how practices, together with arrangements, which Schatzki (2002. The site of the social: A philosophical account of the constitution of social life and change. University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press) refers to as ‘site’ (i.e. a mesh-work of practice-arrangement bundles), are implicated in MACs’ fluidity. To do so, an ethnography of the MAC ‘Enterprise Risk Management’ (ERM) at the largest division of a multi-national manufacturer was conducted. By analyzing attended risk meetings, the paper shows the ways in which the ERM site prefigures multitudinous paths for carrying on and carrying out risk management activities, which in turn, render the ERM site into a fluid space of intelligibility. These findings indicate that MACs’ fluidity is associated with multidimensional prefigurements that the site produces. With these insights, the paper contributes to understanding how the situated functionality of management accounting comes about, and reveals nuances and multiplicities amid the enabling and constraining space for actions that practiced MACs as mesh-work engender.     

中小微集成电路设计企业成本核算的优化方法探讨

近年来,企业之间的竞争日趋激烈,企业要想获得长远发展,除了需要不断地开发新产品来创造更多的价值,还需要有效控制企业各个环节的经营成本。论文对目前大部分中小微集成电路设计企业在材料成本核算与产品成本核算方面存在的问题进行了探讨,重点分析了材料流转各环节与各类成本核算方法存在的问题,对存货流转环节的成本核算与产成品的成本核算的优化对策进行了探讨,以期为中小微集成电路设计企业高质量开展存货流转环节的成本核算与产成品的成本核算提供帮助。