Accounting, network complementarities and the development of inter-organisational relations

Networks of formally independent firms are interesting because they claim to be able to build competencies, exploit complementary resources and redesign strategies faster than firms can change. By networking, firms are said to get access to resources in a flexible way and typically by interacting with other firms non-hierarchically, directly and based on trust. Accounting and management control would appear counter-intuitive to such an arrangement. However, based on empirical observations from three horizontal networks where firms rally around projects, it appears that controls create durability and predictability. Self-regulation and orchestration mechanisms establish the network as a network enterprise seeking to develop and exploit complementarities in the diversity of network competencies and resources in different ways. Structural and functional approaches such as transactions cost economics are weak in explaining the ways in which relations are constructed and governed. We propose that accounting can be conceptualised as an actor helping to mediate, shape and construct inter-organisational relations through self-regulating and orchestration mechanisms. Self-regulating mechanisms allow interaction and exchange to occur unobtrusively, while orchestration mechanisms involve structuring these interactions. Both mechanisms are organised around various kinds of accounting—such as transfer prices and intellectual capital statements—and around the construction of segmentation in the network that provide it with a topology of centres and peripheries. Trust, it appears, is not a property of such a situation. Trust is a problematising devise. It is raised as a concern in the networks when trusting is absent.     

Harmonization of Accounting in France and Britain: Some Evidence

The European Community's accounting harmonization initiative is intended to create harmonized reporting by Community companies. If the Community's programme is successful, measurement practices in each member state should be such that the same transactions receive broadly comparable treatment irrespective of the country where the accounts are prepared. This study sets out to test whether this is the case in France and Britain and the application of the Fourth Directive, and whether in practice there is any consensus even within each jurisdiction. An empirical test for harmony and uniformity is made by asking accountants within each jurisdiction to compile financial statements from a common set of data.
The results of the test show that in this sample there is relatively little harmony within each national group, let alone between one jurisdiction and another.     

Stock market regulations and international financial integration: the case of Spain

International financial integration effects on the Spanish stock market are studied, both for the conditional mean and conditional variance. New institutional regulations in Spain are taken into account and their efficiency consequences are addressed. Results suggest an increasing international integration but nontrivial opportunities for financial diversification may still be relevant.     

Governmental Accounting in Spain and the European Monetary Union: A Critical Perspective

During the last twenty-five years, the changes in Spanish accounting have been radical and significant, especially since 1986 when Spain joined the European Union. Those changes were first introduced in business accounting, following the patterns of the Fourth Directive, but governmental accounting has also been affected by structural reforms that have modified the financial reporting system, the accounting standards and the accounting principles to be applied. However, the governmental accounting system needs further improvement, particularly given the EMU framework and the relationship between governmental accounting and national accounting.     

Wealth from creativity: Insights and strategies for the future of international cultural relations

Regardless of frontier, the creative community has begun to benefit financially from the democratisation of creative production and distribution opened up via the Internet, a place where planetary plurality and diversity is implicit. Artists are major ambassadors for their cultures operating in a collaborative environment that recognises the distinctive differences between cultures without threat to indigenous expression.

The cultural ecology may have changed but the response of government has been obstructive. Until the second Iraq war cultural diplomacy seemed to have replaced gunboat diplomacy and there was a growing movement to foster cultural relations in an environment being characterised as mutual. In parallel, at national level, governments were seeking to recognise the strong economic value of the cultural industries sector in the new globalised technology. This has now all been thrown into reverse gear by the practice of public diplomacy, a policy of unreformed imperialist hubris that seeks to influence policy in other nations by using domestic producers of intellectual, scientific, creative or economic content to promote selected values and so dominate the international relations agenda.

What if one were to integrate into the activities of international cultural relations the dynamic ways of working and thinking of the creative industries? A more beneficial model emerges if creators are given centre-stage and the values of the creative community applied to the management of international cultural relations. A series of insights borne of many years work in the creative industries could lead to a new set of strategies that would call the bluff of those currently seeking to promote the advantages of liberal democracy. For these strategies demonstrably uphold the rights of individuals to creative expression and to enrich their local economies. This does require the managers of international cultural relations to live more dangerously than at present and it is to them that this paper is addressed.     

Accounting standards and value relevance of financial statements: An international analysis

Using 17,743 firm-year observations of industrial companies in 21 countries from 1991 to 1997, this paper finds that the use of accrual accounting (versus cash accounting) negatively affects the value relevance of financial statements in countries with weak shareholder protection. This negative effect, however, does not exist in countries with strong shareholder protection. These findings are consistent with the belief that shareholder protection improves the effectiveness of accrual accounting, and suggest the importance of considering shareholder protection when formulating accounting policies related to accruals.     

Industrial Cost Accounting Developments in Britain to 1830: A Review Article

Haydn Jones's Accounting, Costing and Cost Estimation (1985) uses the surviving records of numerous Welsh companies, engaged principally in metal manufacture between 1700 and 1830, to demonstrate the use made by managers of accounting data, as the basis for planning, decision making and control. This article relates the results of Jones's research to existing views regarding the development of industrial cost accounting, particularly because his findings call into question ‘single variable’ explanations for the development of management accounting, such as the level of industrialisation, the relative impact of fixed and variable costs, and the organisational structure of business activity. Jones's findings also require a reappraisal of established ideas concerning the relative sophistication of financial and management accounting procedures in use in earlier times, and our perception of the contributions of accountants and their techniques to business developments.     

西班牙和比利时注册会计师行业考察报告

西班牙 西班牙注协的组织管理西班牙注册会计师协会(IACJCE),成立于1945年,是由多个审计组织合并而成。协会的最高权力机构为会员代表大会。代表大会下设理事会,理事会为决策机构。理事会下设教育培训委员会、质量监督控制委员会、职业道德委员会等几个执行委员会。注协秘书处是日常工作机构,共有工作人员50人。注协现有会员5600人,其中执业会员3000多人,非执业会员2000多人。西班牙注协是国际会计师联合会、国际会计准则委员会及欧洲会计师联合会的成员。西班牙作为欧盟成员,在遵守本国的法律、法规和国际组织规则的同…     

Accounting for Accountability and Management in NPOs. A Comparative Study of Four Countries: Canada, the United Kingdom, the USA and Spain

Financial and non–financial information are developing issues in the NPO field. Countries such as Canada, the UK, the USA and Spain have recently updated their accounting systems for NPOs through the implementation of full accrual basis to enhance their accountability and the usefulness of accounting information for decision–making purposes. The information provided by accrual accounting will be incomplete until performance indicators are developed. The performance indicators are essential for making budgets, for planning and forecasting, for evaluating the financial needs, for carrying out benchmarking with other NPOs or governmental entities, and for explaining the welfare activities realised to donors.     

An other view of integral futures: De/reconstructing the IF brand

This paper points to some limitations of the narrow version of integral futures (IF) as represented in the recent special issue of Futures (2008, vol. 40, issue 2). I also propose several ways that the IF brand could be refreshed through a broader and deeper approach to integral futures by way of a scholarly engagement with other kindred discourses. The main focus of this paper is to open out beyond the “myth-of-the-given” in relation to the notion of integral and in this way broaden and deepen possibilities for integral futures.     

Public Sector Managers Handling Accounting Data: A UK Framework Validated in Spain

A group of Spanish researchers wanted to understand how public sector managers were affected by the accounting systems that provide their data and how such managers used the data at a time when Government policy sought to reduce cash expenditures. The group, who interviewed the managers of seven Galician Business Schools, found that the data was not used but further explanations were difficult. It turned to an Original Framework of 8 UK Issues for public sector managers handling data (Purdy, 1993a). This paper takes the Original Framework, discusses its bases, considers areas for research then introduces the concept of a Continuum of learning related to handling data. Successive amendments to the Framework are made until an Extended Framework of 19 Spanish Issues is produced. These Frameworks are discussed with the interview material. The findings show that the Issues were generally well covered by managers and in the direction anticipated by the Extended Framework indicating some relevance to this Framework. The independently collected material had a close correspondence with the Original Framework and was sufficient for that Framework to become a general research instrument for examining the handling of data by its recipients.     

中国国际经贸关系的历史经验和启示

经贸合作是国际关系中最重要内容。随着全球经济一体化发展,经贸合作在国家核心利益中的权重增加。政府以经贸为己任的市场主体行为越来越突出;企业以政治为考量的国家利益意识越来越明显。新中国经贸发展经历了政治主导和市场主导两大阶段,新时期对外经贸关系需要坚持政府与企业互动、政治与经贸结合。“一带一路”是新时期对外经贸关系的顶层设计。它应该不是指具体的工程项目和交通路线,而是一种以基础设施合作建设为重要内容的新型务实国际关系构架和倡议。这种构架和倡议继承和发扬了“和平共处五项原则”,体现了创新和务实精神。通过“一带一路”合作平台,以互利共赢为目标,共同推进合作项目、合作领域,为不同经济体提供不同的合作模式,不断提升中国在国际贸易新格局和国际规则中的话语权,促进区域均衡和持续发展,促进中国对外经贸由大国向强国转化,为加快国家现代化服务。     

Accounting research and researchers of the nineteenth century and the beginning of the twentieth century: an international survey of authors, ideas and publications

At the beginning of the nineteenth century the former glory of Italian accounting was overshadowed by its decline during the eighteenth century, and literature from France, England, Germany, America and other countries took centre-stage. 'Theories of accounts' (rather than 'accounting theories') dominated not merely the early but also the later part of this century when Italian accounting had regained a prominent position beside other countries. The relation of those theories to the 'charts of accounts'-which later became so prominent in Continental Europe is historically important. The controversies over personalistic versus materialistic accounts and that between entity versus proprietary theories, as well as the emergence of other theories are discussed with reference to individual authors. Diverse topics from railroad accounting and auditing to various aspects of cost accounting are investigated. Particularly important are the pioneering efforts of this period that anticipated further developments. These manifested themselves in the following ideas: entity theory, flow of funds statement, matrix accounting, different aspects of valuation, allocation and depreciation, price-level adjustments and indexation, current values, exit values, residual income valuation, managerial control, the emergence of competing accounting (and Bilanz) theories, the separation of fixed from variable costs, fixed and flexible budgeting, zero-based budgeting, PERT, transfer prices, break-even charts, variance analysis, job-order costing, labour and machine hour rates, standard costing, price determination, integrating financial and cost accounting, clean surplus theory, agricultural accounting, holding gains, and other topics. Appendix A offers an overview of Nineteenth century scholars concerned with accounting history (together with one representative work of each), and Appendix B lists the nationally (and often internationally) prominent names of accounting authors born in the nineteenth century but also or exclusively active during the twentieth century. The paper integrates approximately 400 publications of which less than half are of the English tongue.     

Earned/contributed capital, dividend policy, and disclosure quality: An international study

We examine the agency cost version of the lifecycle theory of dividends by taking advantage of cross-country variations in disclosure environments. The outcome hypothesis posits that transparent disclosure environments lead to higher dividend payouts because shareholders can more accurately measure (and therefore demand) excess cash flows. In contrast, the substitute hypothesis argues that opaque disclosure environments lead to higher payouts because managers have stronger incentives to establish their reputation for fair treatment. Our empirical results confirm both hypotheses and contribute to the literature in two primary ways. First, we confirm that the lifecycle theory of dividends explains dividend payout patterns around the world. Second, and more important, we show that the firm’s disclosure environment plays a significant role in dividend payouts through its effect on agency costs; that is, we confirm an agency cost-inclusive lifecycle theory of dividends.     

National Accounting, Government Budgeting and the Accounting Discipline

National accounting and government budgeting include two kinds of financial reporting that are not influenced by, but have an increasing influence on, the accounting discipline. The government budget has changed, over the last sixty years, from a financial statement that was recognisably part of the accounting discipline to one in which national accounting and government budgeting have the dominant influence. There were early attempts to reconcile national accounting and the discipline but these have largely disappeared. Although the three forms of accounting measure the same phenomena, each is different in fundamental ways, in terms of both relevance and reliability.     

Accounting for deferred tax in Japanese Banks and the consequences for their international operations

In recent years, financial reporting has changed in Japan towards the requirements of internationally recognized accounting standards. At the same time, banks suffered significant bad debts on their loans and it became difficult to maintain capital adequacy ratios at the level required for international operations. In this context, using as case studies the five major banking groups in Japan from 2002 to 2004, we address four related research questions concerned with the importance of deferred tax for the maintenance of regulatory capital. The responses of the government, regulatory agencies and auditors to problems with deferred tax accounting are also considered. We find that, without deferred tax assets, the five major banking groups would not have been allowed to operate internationally. We also suggest implications, and conclude that the solutions to these problems lie not just with the accounting profession but also with the government and regulatory agencies, as part of wider financial, rather than accounting, reform.