Accountants for the Public Interest: strategy implementation and performance measurement for a nonprofit organization

This case describes strategic issues and the operations of Accountants for the Public Interest (API), a national organization that is dedicated to making volunteer accounting services available to financially disadvantaged individuals and nonprofit organizations. API is a well-known nonprofit organization that receives financial support from the accounting profession. In addition to discussing strategic decisions facing API, the case covers performance measurement topics commonly integrated in managerial and cost accounting courses. API's Board of Directors (BOD) must make important strategic planning and implementation decisions during a period of change. One Board member has suggested using performance measures to assess API's progress in implementing strategy and achieving goals. Students are asked to develop financial and nonfinancial measures relevant to API's strategy and to show how their suggested measures would appear in a balanced scorecard. Whether CPAs should be obligated to provide volunteer accounting services to the community is another issue that the case requires students to address.     

A management control system to support corporate sustainability strategies

This paper outlines a management accounting system, based upon cost variance analysis, which supports the pursuit of environmental and traditional financial goals within a decentralized organization. The framework decomposes inefficiencies into two parts. The first consists of what might be considered a natural outcome of pursuing the traditional economic goal of efficiency through cost-minimization, a “waste” variance. The second part consists of sustainability gains that produce societal benefit but may be incongruent with short-term economic goals, a “sustainability” variance. While elimination of waste variances can be encouraged using a traditional performance evaluation and reward structure, elimination of sustainability variances requires re-design of performance evaluation tools and reward structures. We demonstrate that differing production functions across operational units within organizations can impact the relative magnitude of the two variances. The failure to recognize and incorporate these differences can lead to inefficient allocation of resources and/or only partial fulfillment of the strategic environmental goals of the organization.     

保险公司经营模式的比较、选择与变动——基于企业边界理论的分析

本文基于企业边界理论,考察了保险公司专业经营模式、单一经营模式、保险集团模式以及金融控股公司模式等不同的经营模式的选择与变动问题。研究发现,在充满不确定性的经济系统中,保险公司对不同经营模式的选择,应该是在竞争机制下演进的结果,而不应该由人为的政策约束来限制其选择集合的空间。保险公司要实现可持续发展,必须不断培育自身的核心能力,增加能力边界的深度,拓宽能力边界的广度。为此,保险公司要重视知识的创造、共享、转化和运用,努力将自己打造成学习型组织,增强对外界知识的吸收能力。     

An Experimental Examination of US Individual Donors’ Information Needs and Use

This paper adopts an internet‐based experiment to investigate whether and how individual donors use nonprofit organizations’ financial and nonfinancial information when making their donation decisions. Using undergraduate students in the United States (US) to proxy for individual donors, our results indicate that individual donors are more likely to acquire nonfinancial information, such as nonprofit organizations’ goals, outcomes, programs and missions, than financial information. Donors integrate nonfinancial information into their decisions as their actual donations are significantly correlated with such information. Our results also indicate that while individual donors acquire financial efficiency measures, including the program expense ratio and fundraising expense ratio, they do not seem to integrate such information into their decisions as their actual donations are not significantly correlated with the efficiency information. This study contributes to the nonprofit literature and research domain focusing on charitable giving and donor preferences.     

PHYSICIANS AND RESOURCE MANAGEMENT IN HOSPITALS: AN EMPIRICAL INVESTIGATION

Recent concern has been expressed over the reluctance of physicians in hospitals to take 'resource management to their hearts' (Pollitt et al. 1988, p. 232). This is important as physicians are increasingly becoming organization members with considerable economic and managerial involvement in hospitals. This paper provides some empirical evidence of differences which occur in physician behaviour once they become integrated into hospital management structures. Differences in physician managers' orientations to goals which focus on the organization as a system are compared to senior physicians in the same setting. In addition, a comparison is made between the attitudes and use of budgeting systems, a resource management strategy. The results indicate that changes in physician managers' orientation to management-related goals and organization obligations are reflected in their budgeting behaviour.     

The new work of the nonprofit board

Too often, the board of a nonprofit organization is little more than a collection of high-powered people engaged in low-level activities. But that can change, the authors say, if trustees are willing to discover and take on the new work of the board. When they perform the new work, a board's members can significantly advance the institution's mission and long-term welfare. Doing the new work requires a board to engage in new practices. First, the board must go beyond rubber-stamping management's proposals and find out what issues really matter to the institution. It can do that by making the CEO paint the big picture of the organization's strategic concerns, by understanding key stakeholders, by consulting experts, and by deciding what needs to be measured in order to judge the institution's performance. Second, a board doing the new work must take action: the board must not only set policy but also work with management to implement it. Third, the board must go beyond strictly functional organization: the new work requires flexibility and encourages ad hoc arrangements. Finally, board meetings--where boards underperform most visibly--should be driven by goals, not by processes. The authors give many examples of boards that have successfully embraced the new work. The stakes are high: if boards demonstrate that they can change effectively, the professional staff at the institutions they serve just may follow suit.     

Should nonprofits seek profits?

Twenty years ago, it would have been shocking for a children's choir to sell singing telegrams or for an organization serving the homeless to dabble in property management. Today, it seems routine. Nonprofits increasingly feel compelled to launch earned-income ventures--not only to appear more disciplined and businesslike to stakeholders but also to reduce their reliance on fundraising. There's plenty of hype about the value of earned-income ventures in the nonprofit world, but such projects account for only a small share offunding in most nonprofit domains, and few of the ventures make money. Moreover, when the authors examined how nonprofits evaluate potential enterprises, they discovered a pattern of unwarranted optimism. The potential financial returns are often exaggerated, and the challenges of running a successful business are routinely discounted. But the biggest downside of such ventures is that they can distract nonprofits' managers from their core social missions and, in some cases, even subvert those missions. There are several reasons for the gap between the hype and the reality. One is that an organization's nonfinancial concerns-such as a desire to hire the disadvantaged-can hamper it in the commercial marketplace. Another is that nonprofits' executives tend to overlook the distinction between revenue and profit. For example, a youth services organization that had received funding to launch a food products enterprise hired young people and began making salad dressing. The nonprofit believed it spent $3.15 to produce each bottle of dressing that was sold for $3.50. But when expenses such as unused ingredients and managers' salaries were factored in, the cost per bottle reached a staggering $90. Earned-income ventures do have a role in the nonprofit sector, the authors say, but unrealistic expectations are distorting managers' decisions, wasting precious resources, and leaving important social needs unmet.     

Web disclosure and the market for charitable contributions

Nonprofit organizations face intense competition in the market for charitable contributions. Increasingly, donation decisions are made online, and organizations have responded by implementing substantive Internet disclosure and reporting regimes. We posit here that the voluntary disclosure of financial and performance information inherent in these regimes provides additional relevant information to a broad array of market participants, and thus has a positive impact on the receipt of charitable contributions. We test our hypotheses on a random sample of 400 US nonprofit organizations by building on the well established economic model of giving (Weisbrod and Dominguez, 1986), in which donations serve as the proxy for demand. Our central research question is thus: Are donors willing to “pay” for Web disclosure? Results indicate a positive relationship between the level of charitable contributions and the amount of disclosure provided by an organization on its website; however, performance and annual report disclosure are more important than financial disclosure, and performance disclosure has the biggest impact in organizations that are less reliant on donations.     

从宁波近十年的经济发展看金融对经济增长的促进作用

金融发展主要是指通过利率和汇率杠杆,刺激储蓄和投资,并提高资金的使用效率,推动经济增长.本文首先分析了宁波金融发展对促进全市经济增长的重要作用.然后,指出了宁波市金融发展存在的问题:金融体系不够完善,实际融资渠道单一;资金配置效率不高,资金使用效益下降;金融服务产品不够丰富,业务创新能力不足;国有银行管理层次较多,组织结构有待优化等.最后,提出了相应的政策建议,包括:积极完善地方金融组织体系,提高金融服务水平;结合区域经济特点,加大金融创新力度;适应宁波经济发展需要,增加信贷有效投入;发展多层次证券市场,完善资本市场体系等.     

The Asset Management Industry in Asia: Dynamics of Growth,Structure, and Performance

We examine the industrial organization and institutional development of the asset management industry in Asian developing economies—specifically in China, Indonesia, Korea, Malaysia, Singapore, Philippines, and Thailand. We focus on the size and growth of the buy‐side of the respective financial markets, asset allocation, the regulatory environment, and the state of internationalization of the fund management industry in its key components—mutual funds, pension funds, and asset management for high net worth individuals. We link the evolution of professional asset management in these environments to the development of the respective capital markets and to the evolution of corporate governance. We find that the fund management industry occupies a very small niche in domestic financial systems that are dominated by banks. At the same time, we find that its growth has been very rapid in the early 2000s and we suggest that this is likely to persist as the demand for professional management of financial wealth in the region develops and as the pension fund sectors of the respective economies are liberalized to allow larger portions of assets to be invested in collective investment schemes.     

经济周期、宏观调控与银行监管

本文在分析中国经济周期特征和成因的基础上,认为政府主导下的投资和信贷波动是导致中国经济波动的主要因素。目前,中国平滑经济波动的金融宏观调控手段主要包括信贷控制和指导、存款准备金制度、利率和汇率政策及公开市场业务等措施。随着中国经济的开放化、法治化和市场化,需要进一步发挥银行监管在金融宏观调控中的作用,在实践中主要就在于建立和完善以资本充足率为核心的监管调控体系、以透明独立为特征的监管组织体系和以准确快捷为目标的风险预警和测试体系。     

Die Balanced Scorecard als Kennzahlensystem für Krankenkassen

The management options for sickness funds in Germany have been clearly extended over the last few years. However, apart from economic efficiency sickness funds are legally required to provide sufficient and effective health services. This complex system of strategic goals requires a comprehensive controlling system which is not implemented by many sickness funds yet. In this article a controlling system is developed which similar to the Balanced Scorecard concept incorporates quantitative as well as qualitative performance measures. Taking the legally defined system of strategic goals of sickness funds into account four partially interdependent financial goals are derived and further disaggregated into performance measures on three different levels. The article reveals that in spite of the complex system of strategic goals the development of a comprehensive controlling system for sickness funds is possible.     

An emerging partnership: AFS and the CFP board

The past 20 years have witnessed growth in personal financial planning-as a profession and as a separate body of knowledge worthy of attention by the academic community. The Certified Financial Planner Board of Standards is a private, nonprofit, regulatory organization that has emerged as the group bringing these new practitioners and the personal finance academics together in the quest towards an independent body of knowledge developed exclusively for personal financial planning. The CFP Board has funded its own research, through job analyses and market surveys and academic research through grants and monetary awards for seminal articles and research papers.     

国有商业银行分支机构调整战略及规划探析

我国国有商业银行在分支机构管理上存在着分支机构总量过于庞大、人员过多、布局缺乏地区定位以及管理链条较长等问题,导致的结果就是管理成本高、市场反应速度慢,这将不利于其在日益激烈的同业竞争中获胜.据此,结合我国区域经济发展的特征和金融资源的分布情况,参照国际商业银行分支机构管理的经验,作者提出了国有商业银行分支机构调整战略目标以及"一个重心,三条主线"的战略规划,"一个重心"主要是指以中心城市行为发展重心;"三条主线"包括纵向的组织结构扁平化、横向的网点区域布局调整以及按业务流程对组织架构进行整合.     

非营利组织财务制度问题及构建对策研究

当前,我国非营利组织已暴露出许多财务问题,致使社会公益事业在某种程度上陷入了信任危机.在此现实背景下,本文依据新制度经济学,对我国非营利组织财务制度进行探讨,并提出相应的构建对策.非营利组织财务制度是用于规范组织财务活动、处理组织财务关系的一套行为规则.尽管我国非营利组织财务制度历经变迁,但依然难以有效指导和规范非营利...     

信用风险防范视角下的数字金融探析

随着科学技术在金融领域的飞速发展,数字金融正在逐渐取代传统金融模式而成为经济社会的主要金融服务方式,然而,数字金融是一把“双刃剑”,给我们带来便利的同时也带来了信用风险。在对数字金融与传统金融进行比较分析的基础上,总结数字金融信用风险的形成原因和重要特征,梳理了数字金融信用风险评估的理论与模型,最后结合我国数字金融发展的实际情况,就数字金融信用风险管理提出完善法律法规、建立信用风险评估体系、健全个人征信体系、实行“沙盒”管理、转变监管模式、强化知识教育的对策。     

Impediments to Communication in Financial Institutions: Implications for the Risk Management Organization

This article investigates the question of how risk management should be embedded in a financial firm’s hierarchy. We answer this question by combining capital market theory with game-theoretic thinking. We develop a theory for the integration of risk management into an organization, based on private information and differences in preferences. Our model compares the payoffs from uninformed decision-making, solo decision-making, joint voting decision-making, and coordinated decision-making when information about a project’s expected return and risk is dispersed in the organization. Our findings have a number of implications for the organization of risk management.     

加快金融企业社会责任转型的对策建议

十七届五中全会和中央经济工作会议明确了低碳经济发展战略.我国金融业正围绕社会责任和赤道原则为主线,从组织架构、客户结构和经营模式等方面转型布局.本文从责任管理体系建设、赤道原则的指导原则出发,结合我国金融业公司治理机制现状,论述了我国金融机构在治理机制和业务发展上,必须贯彻低碳发展思路,企业市场责任必须与环境、社会责任...     

Microfinance institutions,financial intermediation and the role of deposits

Microfinance institutions (MFIs), widely regarded as bankers to the poor, have extended their financial functions beyond lending to managing deposits. We empirically examine the influence of MFI deposit-taking on MFI financial performance. Using data of 1,301 MFIs worldwide, we find that an MFI's deposit level is an important determinant of its financial viability. However, the relationship is influenced by MFIs’ institutional type (for-profit or nonprofit) and the legal environment (common law or civil law). The results suggest that the positive financial impact of deposits has not been fully realised, reflecting the need to further improve cost management and revenue generation.