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1.
Yuan Ding Thomas Jeanjean Hervé Stolowy 《Advances in accounting, incorporating advances in international accounting》2008,24(1):145-156
Historically, the format of financial statements has varied from one country to another. Recently, due to the attractiveness of their capital markets, the strength of their accounting professions and the influence of their institutional investors, Anglo-American countries have seen a steady increase in the impact of their accounting practices on other nations, even influencing the actual format of financial statements. Given that French accounting regulations allow a certain degree of choice in consolidated balance sheet format (‘by nature’ or ‘by term’) and income statement format (‘by nature’ or ‘by function’), this study examines a sample of 199 large French listed firms in an attempt to understand why some of these firms choose not to use the traditional French formats (‘by nature’ for the balance sheet and ‘by nature’ for the income statement), instead preferring Anglo-American practices that we call ‘alternative’ (‘by term’ format for the balance sheet and ‘by function’ format for the income statement). We first analyze the balance sheet and income statement formats separately using a logit model, then combine the two and enrich the research design with a generalized ordered logit model. Our results confirm that opting for one or two alternative formats is related to internationalization, influenced by several factors: size, international auditor, accounting standards, foreign listing and international sales. When distinguishing the decision to adopt at least one versus two alternative-format financial statements, our findings also provide evidence that not all variables play the same role: ‘Accounting standards’ and ‘Foreign listing’, which are important in explaining the use of at least one alternative format, are irrelevant in explaining the use of two alternative-format financial statements. 相似文献
2.
Simon Bell 《Futures》2011,43(5):525-539
In the 1990s Castells analysed ‘the rise of the network society’ but this remains an ever-changing phenomenon. It throws up new concepts and issues. For example, no one foresaw what Mark Zuckerberg would create in terms of on-line social networks with the FaceBook project. Predicting the functionality and utility of the Internet is a mug's game and yet it can be extremely profitable for those who ‘guess right’ and are able to influence the future applications and organisational forms of the network society.Next Generation Access (NGA) broadband is promoted strongly by policy makers as underpinning future economic growth. NGA can be thought of as a potential future placeholder, the content and structure of which, while remaining tantalizing, is occupying many contemporary minds. In this paper we describe a process (Imagine/Triple Task Method) and an event structure IBZL (or Infinite Bandwidth Zero Latency), which explores potentially novel applications of NGA and provide some ideas as to the key components of the future inter-networked landscape.In this paper we present the context of the IBZL initiative, review the ‘Imagine’ process as an effective method for ‘futurescaping’ and present some initial outcomes of the project. 相似文献
3.
Riccardo Cinquegrani 《Futures》2002,34(8):779-783
This article analyses the concept of epistemic community focusing the attention on two aspects, which contribute to define this ‘actor’: knowledge and capacity of acting under the conditions of uncertainty. The link between these two issues and the ‘nature of future studies’ is considered and the possibility of considering some organisations and institutions as future epistemic communities is explored. The case of the World Futures Studies Federation is examined in detail.In 1992, Peter Haas defined an ‘epistemic community’ as follows: “an epistemic community is a network of professionals from a variety of disciplines and backgrounds, they have a shared set of normative and principled beliefs, which provide a value-based rationale for the social action of community members; shared causal beliefs, which are derived from their analysis of practices leading or contributing to a central set of problems in their domain and which then serve as the basis for elucidating the multiple linkages between possible policy actions and desired outcomes; shared notions of validity—that is, inter-subjective, internally defined criteria for weighing and validating knowledge in the domain of their expertise; and a common policy enterprise—that is a set of common practices associated with a set of problems to which their professional competence is directed, presumably out of the conviction that human welfare will be enhanced as a consequence” [1].In ancient Greek, the term ‘episteme’ has a meaning which belongs to the philosophical sphere; ‘community’ is a concept which comes from the religious tradition and, more recently, has been the objective of sociological studies. Epistemic community links the two terms to indicate a ‘new’ and in some aspects, atypical political actor. At etymological level we already have a first sort of indication with respect to what is meant: politics as a synthesis of religion (faith), sociology (the decisions taken by policy makers have consequences on the whole society) and philosophy (intended as Weltanschaung). The German term Weltanschaung means the idea, concept or the ‘vision’ of the world and life. It is the way in which an individual or a social group considers the position of the human being in the world and the attitudes and actions they develop on the basis of a particular vision of the cosmos.In addition to this formal definition, Haas identifies other characteristics: “members of an epistemic community share inter-subjective understandings; have a shared way of knowing; have shared patterns of reasoning; have a policy project drawing on shared causal beliefs, and the use of shared discursive practices and have a shared commitment to the application and production of knowledge” [1].This definition could be analysed in several ways with particular attention to one or more of the indicated criteria. We could assume that the expression ‘possible policy actions and desired outcomes’ is to be understood as the ‘long term implications, expected, possible, probable and desired’ of a decision taken or that which will be taken, and this would already represent a linkage between the policy, the futures studies and an epistemic community; moreover, usually ‘the policy choices concern consequences, which can only be partially anticipated’ [2]. This gives rise ‘to the desire for information, which is not so much based on purely technical knowledge but rather information, which is the product of human interpretation’ [1]. Epistemic communities, national or trans-national, are one possible provider of such information.At this stage, and considering only this aspect of the whole definition, we could argue that a network of experts active in the field of future studies would represent the perfect portrait of what we are looking for: a multi-person actor able to ‘anticipate’, using knowledge, various backgrounds and expertise. To anticipate, in this context, might be specified as to understand or comprehend global and local changes. In general, futurists work within the framework of complexity and uncertainty, try to re-define problems in broader context and attempt to comprehend ‘change’ using knowledge.An example could be helpful: the change we are experiencing in Eastern European countries appears as multi-dimensional: in less than 15 years those countries have moved from a
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- socialist economy (closed and planned), to a
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- ‘Western economy’ (the so-called market economy), to a
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- technological one as a consequence of globalisation and, lastly,
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- to the learning economy.
4.
Ivana Milojevi? 《Futures》2008,40(4):329-345
This article deals with feminist engagement with the futures studies (and vice versa) and analyses the uneasy relationship that exists between the two. More specifically, it investigates the feminist theorizing of ‘patriarchal time’ and efforts to both decolonise and ‘reconstruct’ time based on feminist epistemological frameworks. Feminism is here understood as a social movement, ideology, theory, philosophy, worldview and a way of life. As such this term overlaps with, yet represents a distinct category from terms such as ‘women’, ‘gender’, ‘femininity’ and ‘women's movements’. Thus, feminism itself is historicized and spatially contextualised as is the notion of non-patriarchal ‘women's/feminist time’ developed by feminists. 相似文献
5.
Since 2001, the regulatory authority of the Chinese stock market has required the independent directors of listed firms to disclose their opinions on important board decisions. Using a novel dataset of independent directors’ opinions, this study examines the effectiveness of that mandatory disclosure requirement. We find that the stock market reacts negatively to announcements of independent directors saying ‘no’. Firms with more severe agency problems are prone to experiencing independent directors saying ‘no’. Independent directors are also more likely to say ‘no’ when they have multiple directorships, longer tenure, financial expertise, or live in places other than where the firms they serve are located. Consequently, firms with independent directors who say ‘no’ tend to experience cuts in inter-corporate lending, a lower propensity to pay dividends, reduced bank loans, and greater turnover of top executives. In addition, these firms are more likely to receive a modified audit opinion, obtain ‘special treatment’, or be subject to regulatory enforcement action in the year after independent directors say ‘no’. Overall, the results indicate that independent directors saying ‘no’ can help to protect the interests of outside investors, and thus lend support to regulations mandating the disclosure of independent directors’ opinions. 相似文献
6.
David Turnbull 《Futures》2010,42(2):149-153
In the context of a wider discussion on ‘integral futures’ this paper reconsiders the openly integrative tendency of some moral-hermeneutic agendas. In relating a story that includes a personal failure to bring about ‘integrality’ despite having the best of intentions, a third space is opened as a way to rethink moral futures. 相似文献
7.
John Hutnyk 《Futures》2002,34(1):15-31
The anthropological project, tired and exhausted after years searching for ‘methodological absolution’, remains mired in a spiral of self-doubt and self-indulgent ‘crisis’. Anthropological teaching continues the very complicities that a self-critical reflexivity professed to avoid. Co-option and incorporation, even at the best of times. This essay asks just what would break the cycle of ‘suicidal rejoicing’ for an ‘end of anthropology’ that never comes, that continues to be taught anew, over and over? Nietzsche once suggested that what is falling down should be pushed. A reconfigured anthropology would be a different discipline, perhaps reinvesting the tasks of knowledge production with a purpose that was not wholly slave to the same interests of power. There is much to be cleared away. 相似文献
8.
Jerome R Ravetz 《Futures》1997,29(6):533-539
An appropriate response to the new challenges to science will require more than new explicit goals and social organisation. New leading questions will be appropriate. The traditional questions of ‘what/how?’ for research and ‘how/why?’ for the design fields, will be supplemented by ‘what-if?’. This previously had its place in exploratory phases of all research; now it will become an essential component of ‘post-normal’ science. Its form precludes the dogmatic and exclusive styles which have hitherto been dominant in science as applied to policy problems; and it lends itself to open enquiry and public participation. 相似文献
9.
Kurt Richardson 《Futures》2005,37(7):615-653
Traditionally the natural sciences, particularly physics, have been regarded as the Gatekeepers of Truth. As such the legitimacy of others forms of knowledge have been called into question, particularly those methods that characterise the ‘softer’ sciences, and even the arts. This paper begins with an extended discussion concerning the main features of a complex system, and the nature of the boundaries that emerge within such systems. Subsequent to this discussion, and by assuming that the Universe at some level can be well-described as a complex system, the paper explores the notion of ontology, or existence, from a complex systems perspective. It is argued that none of the traditional objects of science, or any objects from any discipline, formal or not, can be said to be real in any absolute sense although a substantial realism may be temporarily associated with them. The limitations of the natural sciences is discussed as well as the deep connection between the ‘hard’ and the ‘soft’ sciences. As a result of this complex systems analysis, an evolutionary philosophy referred to as quasi-‘critical pluralism’ is outlined, which is more sensitive to the demands of complexity than contemporary reductionistic approaches. 相似文献
10.
Kristin Asdal 《Accounting, Organizations and Society》2011,36(1):1-9
It often seems to be taken for granted that numbers produce effects and that practices of accounting enhance authority. This also goes for accounting and the environment. This paper shares this belief and argues that practices of accounting have been a crucial technology for taking nature or ‘the environment’ into account in the post-war era. Nevertheless, the ‘constitutive turn’ in the studies of accounting should not tempt us to leave unexplored the limitation of accounting practices and the inabilities to govern by numbers. With a point of departure in a pollution control agency, the paper explores the making of a non-authoritative office. It points to the emergence of what is labelled ‘accounting intimacy’ rather than the exertion of government at a distance. The paper also points to the ways in which the agency, rather than building a separate and distinct authority, came to reproduce the actor subjected to being governed, i.e., the polluting factory, within its own office. The author argues that this can be related to the investment in a shared ‘technical interest’ and the belief that the right (emission) number in itself would be sufficient to move the factory. The paper then explores the conditions for which numbers nevertheless came to have effects. The argument is that this should be seen as inextricably linked to the emergence of an ‘interesting object’, i.e., ‘the environment’ and an environmental interest, within the office. Thus, we need to pay attention to the formation of interests, and as accounting scholars turn to ‘the environment’, the latter should not be taken for granted. 相似文献
11.
Stephen Healy 《Futures》2011,43(2):202-208
Post-normal science (PNS) was a herald of postnormal times. For Functowicz and Ravetz contemporary issues in which ‘facts are uncertain, values in dispute, stakes high and decisions urgent’ necessitate PNS. PNS deals with the postnormal character of contemporary challenges by bringing the contextualised insights of non-scientific stakeholders to bear through the formulation of ‘extended facts’. However, while the contextual content of ‘extended facts’ caters to the indeterminate character of postnormal issues this remains in tension with an implicit assumption that outcomes reflect the quality of the ‘facts’ informing them. This paper takes the claim that postnormal times involves ‘that we abandon…ideas of ‘control and management” seriously by arguing that science should be the servant of outcomes framed in, primarily, societal terms, rather than the other way around. This argument is illustrated using the example of fashioning an effective response to climate change. 相似文献
12.
The government of a small open economy trying to manage its exchange rate faces a ‘time consistency’ problem. If markets expect implementation of the optimal linear intervention rule, the government will be tempted to ‘defect’: knowing this, markets will expect less activism; and, in the discretionary equilibrium, this is what they get. How far this credibility problem can shift discretionary policy towards a free float is shown in two popular models of floating rates. One way of offsetting the ‘laissez faire’ bias of discretionary policy is to appoint a relatively ‘conservative’ central banker: but, as the time period of policy action and precommitment shrinks towards zero, the required conservative bias is found to go towards infinity. Other institutional features — such as central bank reputation, contracts and intermediate targets — may be crucial for successful exchange rate management. 相似文献
13.
This paper examines the ‘modernising government’ initiative in the UK, and the ‘flexibilities’ – lead commissioning, integrated provision, and pooled budgets – introduced in the Health Act 1999. This policy reform, and the associated tools to operationalise it, placed ideas of cooperation and partnership at the heart of inter-organizational relations in the domain of public administration, and gave prominence to the roles of management control practices in facilitating cooperation. We consider how the ideals of cooperation and partnership were discursively articulated, how professional and administrative boundaries were given visibility in particular legal cases, and what happened when local practitioners sought to make these ideals operable. We demonstrate how cooperation initially emerged as a ‘local’ phenomenon, both prior to and subsequent to the Health Act 1999. We then examine how those delivering services sought to mediate pragmatically between legal and policy injunctions to engage in formal cooperation, and the imperative to provide services across organizational and professional boundaries. Finally, we consider the limits of cooperation across organizational boundaries in settings with strongly developed professional enclosures. The paper draws on both archival material and fieldwork to examine what are termed ‘regulatory hybrids’ – those inter-organizational processes, practices and expertises that are formed from two or more elements that previously existed separately, and that emerge in part out of regulatory or judicial interventions rather than simply the imperatives of voluntary coordination. The paper seeks to build on suggestions for developing the links between the accounting and public administration literatures, and it draws on ‘governmentality’ studies to analyse the phenomenon. This argues for the importance of considering three distinct and interrelated layers or levels of analysis: the programmatic or discursive, the practices and processes to which such discourses are intrinsically linked, and the professional ‘enclosures’ that can emerge in some domains. While drawing on governmentality studies, we also suggest extending them by paying greater attention than is customary in such writings to localised processes and practices. In particular, we propose the concept of ‘mediating instruments’ to explain how management control practices link the larger political culture with the ‘everyday doings of practitioners’. 相似文献
14.
Ali Tekin Author Vitae 《Futures》2005,37(4):287-302
Should or can Turkey join the European Union (EU)? This paper argues that there are three alternative scenarios of the EU decision to grant membership to Turkey: ‘privileged relationship offer,’ ‘wait and see attitude,’ and ‘start of full membership negotiations.’ It then gauges each alternative path, and argues that the most likely scenario is a decision to start the negotiations, followed by the scenario of ‘wait and see.’ The EU decision will be conditioned by its future vision of global governance and the role foreseen for Turkey inside, outside or at the margin of it. The paper concludes that the EU decision will have significant implications for the future of relations between Europe and Turkey on the one hand, and Europe and the Islamic world on the other. 相似文献
15.
Studies of ‘futures’ have hitherto focused on those that are predictable and ‘tame’, and on those that are unpredictable and ‘wild’. Here we consider a new class, the ‘feral’; which are expectations that things might be made worse by risk-based actions. The type case is the nuclear accident at Three Mile Island, where operatives assumed that what was unfolding was of a sort described in their manual, and discovered too late that responses based on that assumption were making the situation worse. In this paper we review the idea of ‘feral’ and how it applies to futures, and discuss the different modes of engagement (or non-engagement) with feral futures. To make feral futures manageable, we suggest two ideas from other spheres of activity. Zen is a practice and philosophy which enables us to drop our preconceptions and thereby to respond to emerging, unprecedented situations. Aesthetics articulates a particular way to sense and appreciate realities intuitively, again enabling a direct response. The combination of Zen and aesthetics with scenario practice in the tradition of Pierre Wack provides a promising mode of response to emerging feral futures. 相似文献
16.
Joseph Voros Author Vitae 《Futures》2008,40(2):190-201
This paper sketches the broad outlines of the philosophical and methodological foundations of an emerging approach to inquiry—‘integral inquiry’—and how this form of inquiry may be applied to futures studies, leading to an approach which has come to be called ‘Integral Futures’. 相似文献
17.
This article analyses visions of the future articulated by proponents of ‘biotechnology for the poor’, those who claim that an embrace of transgenic technology in agriculture is critical to alleviating poverty in developing countries. Specifically, we analyse how such ‘biotechnology for the poor’ proponents represent a future with or without transgenic crops. Such representations include visions of a beckoning (promising) future, where much is to be gained from an embrace of transgenic technology in agriculture, and an onrushing (threatening) future, where much will be lost if the technology is not embraced. The article shows that claims about a beckoning or onrushing future by ‘biotechnology for the poor’ proponents are based upon unexamined or problematic assumptions about the poor and poverty. As such, poverty becomes merely a moral backdrop against which visions of a future are articulated. Furthermore, ‘biotechnology for the poor’ writings do not engage in dialogue with alternative voices in articulating their perspectives on the future, losing a key opportunity to democratize debate about this crucial issue. We conclude by considering the policy consequences (in regulatory and institutional terms) of ‘biotechnology for the poor’ depictions of the future, particularly for the global South where such consequences will be felt. 相似文献
18.
Gert Goeminne 《Futures》2011,43(6):627-636
In this article, I develop a constructive critique of ‘post-normal science’ by challenging the underlying conception of ‘normal science’. Invoking Bruno Latour's constructivist approach, I change focus from a representationalist understanding to a practice-inspired account of science in which the composition of a matter of fact necessarily implies a politically significant differentiation between internalities and externalities. Contending that science has never been normal in that it has always already been political, I further elaborate on this political dimension by connecting Latour's concepts of matters of fact and matters of concern with Rudolf Boehm's distinction between logical and topical truth. Whereas logical truth is a measure of the validity of matters of fact, topical truth is a measure of the relevance and adequacy of scientific knowledge regarding a particular matter of concern. This allows me to argue that any attempt to install a new ‘post-normal science’ with a higher topical truth vis-à-vis sustainability issues neglects the irreducible political moment situated at the point of determining who and what we should be concerned about. Finally, I draw on the notion of ‘forms of life’ to suggest a ‘politics of the imaginable’ that takes socio-material practices as primary matters of a concern for sustainability. 相似文献
19.
Scholars have described how rankings can be consequential for the shaping of the economy. The prevailing argument is that they wield influence through encouraging ‘mechanisms of reactivity’ amongst market actors. We ask the question as to whether there are additional agential aspects found within rankings that extend ‘social’ accounts. We suggest that ‘sociomateriality’ is also a significant aspect of a ranking’s influence. Through developing the notion of a ‘ranking device’, we examine how the “format and furniture” of a ranking can mediate and constitute a domain. Drawing on a detailed study of a prominent graphical performance measure from within the information technology (IT) arena, we provide evidence to show that IT markets can be as much a product of the affordances and constraints of ranking devices as any other (non-material) aspects of the ranking. The article integrates literature from Accounting research and Science and Technology Studies to contribute to our understanding of how material things and the economy mutually constitute one another. It also offers one of the first empirical accounts of the sociomaterial construction of a graphical ranking. 相似文献
20.
Ariel Salleh 《Futures》2009,41(4):201-209
This essay addresses postmodern feminist statements on ‘women’ and ‘nature’, as expressed in the influential work of US theorist Donna Haraway and some of her European followers like Braidotti, Bryld and Lykke. It makes a critical reading of epistemological postures adopted by these postmoderns, revealing a number of internal incoherencies. And it finds their substantive analyses as unhelpful to radical political action in the here and now, as it is to utopian prefiguration of a just and sustainable future. The author argues from the perspective of an ‘embodied materialist ecofeminism’ and makes two claims. First, the postmodern preoccupation with methodologies of discourse analysis becomes counterproductive by deflecting attention from activism. Secondly, Haraway's quasi-celebration of capitalist patriarchal technoscience with it iconic cyborg, presents a dystopia that confuses the political focus of feminists, just as an aggressive neoliberal form of globalisation colonises and consumes the support systems of all life on earth. 相似文献