Accounting and budgeting systems: The issue of congruency

The importance of designing an accounting system that is congruent with an organization's budgeting system has been noted in the literature. Unfortunately, in many government organization it is common to find incompatible budgeting and accounting systems. The purpose of this study is to investigate whether gearing the accounting information system to a zero-base budgeting system increases the perceived usefulness of the budgeting process. This issue is examined under conditions of both scare and abundant resources. Based on an empirical study, it is shown that the usefulness of a budgeting system to budget recipients may indeed be dependent on the accounting information system, conditioned on the availability of resources. Given the relationship between budgeting and public policy, implications of the study for the public policy making process are discussed.     

基于网格的流程银行变革研究

网格技术是令组织或者系统的资源实现共享和协同的技术,而网格化管理就是借用网格的资源共享、协同工作的核心理念来整合组织相关资源达到资源高效利用的一种管理模式.网格不仅是一种新的信息技术,更是一种管理工具,将其应用到流程银行的变革中将为中国银行业的经营管理模式转变提供一种全新的尝试.本文从介绍网格和网格化管理的特点入手,构建了一个网格化管理下的流程银行模式,对其运作机理进行了详细阐述,进而设计了与该模式相配套的银行组织架构,以实现流程银行变革的目标.     

培训机构薪酬管理研究——以Y会计培训机构为例

随着经济新时代的来临,我国教育培训机构如雨后春笋般大量涌现。然而,发展的过程中,教育培训机构面临着人才流失严重和员工工作积极性不高的窘境。本文以Y会计培训机构为例,通过德尔菲法、PEST分析法、问卷调查法和发展能力分析对该机构薪酬管理问题进行深入研究。研究发现,企业薪酬结构设置不合理、薪酬激励机制不科学和非经济性薪酬不重视是Y会计培训机构薪酬管理方面存在的主要问题,据此提出了三点建议。期望本研究能够为新时代背景下会计培训机构的发展提供一定的借鉴作用。     

环境信息披露制度、公司治理和环境信息披露

企业环境信息披露体现了上市公司对环境信息披露制度的遵守和执行,同时增加了公众对上市公司行为的了解;反过来,这将促使上市公司改变他们的一些行为。本文在给出企业环境信息披露制度定义的基础上,采用我国重污染行业上市公司2006—2010年年报和独立报告中披露的环境信息进行实证研究,研究证明制度对企业环境信息披露有显著的正向关系,即环境信息披露法律法规的颁布及实施提高了企业环境信息披露水平;同时研究验证了公司治理具有增强制度对企业环境信息披露的促进作用。研究结果为《上市公司环境信息披露指南》的出台提供了证据支持、为完善企业环境信息披露制度的设计提供了经验证据。     

Clueing in customers

Leonard L. Berry and Neeli Bendapudi When customers lack the expertise to judge a company's offerings, they naturally turn detective, scrutinizing people, facilities, and processes for evidence of quality. The Mayo Clinic understands this and carefully manages that evidence to convey a simple, consistent message: The needs of the patient come first. From the way it hires and trains employees to the way it designs its facilities and approaches its care, the Mayo Clinic provides patients and their families concrete evidence of its strengths and values, an approach that has allowed it to build what is arguably the most powerful brand in health care. Marketing professors Leonard Berry and Neeli Bendapudi conducted a five-month study of evidence management at the Mayo Clinic. They interviewed more than 1,000 patients and employees, observed hundreds of doctor visits, traveled in the Mayo helicopter, and stayed in the organization's many hospitals. Their experiences led them to identify best practices applicable to just about any company, in particular those that sell intangible or technically complex products. Essentially, the authors say, companies need to determine what story they want to tell, then ensure that their employees and facilities consistently show customers evidence of that story. At Mayo, the evidence falls into three categories: people, collaboration, and tangibles. The clinic systematically hires people who espouse its values, and its incentive and reward systems promote collaborative care focused on the patient's needs. The physical environment is explicitly designed for its intended effect on the patient experience. In almost every interaction, an organization's message comes through. "Patients first," the Mayo Clinic's message, is not the only story a medical organization could tell, but the way in which Mayo manages evidence to communicate this message is an example to be followed.     

The incremental information content of employee reports for stock market investment decisions

The practice of preparing and issuing Employee Reports to an organization's work force is now well established throughout many countries. A survey of companies listed on New Zealand's stock exchange (Firth and Smith 1984, p. 5) indicated that about 22% of responding companies produced Employee Reports. These Employee Reports often contain data that are not present in the firm's Annual Report and Accounts, and this has potential usefulness to stock market investors. If Employee Reports do have usefulness to stock market investors, then this raises policy issues about current disclosure requirements to shareholders. In particular, it heightens concerns about whether the shareholders are being given timely and adequate information. In order to test whether Employee Reports do have any incremental information content, an abnormal returns analysis on 88 reports was carried out. The results showed no evidence of abnormal returns, and so the incremental data contained in Employee Reports either have no usefulness for investors and/or the information has been discounted from other sources.     

Linking environmental uncertainty to non-financial performance measures and performance: a research note

Several previous research studies have reported mixed results concerning the direct association between non-financial performance measures and performance. The presence of environmental uncertainty on this relationship has not been established. This paper makes a contribution to this area by proposing that it is in conditions of environmental uncertainty that non-financial measures are most useful in improving organizational performance. It analyses empirical data from a sample of New Zealand manufacturing organizations to test the hypothesis that non-financial measures of performance would lead to improved organizational performance under conditions of increased environmental uncertainty. Multiple regression analysis of the data suggests that performance should be a declining function of the size of the ‘mismatch’ between an organization's environment and use of the different combinations of non-financial performance measures. Further, the paper concludes that prior mixed results may be attributed to the omission of environmental uncertainty.     

An economic modeling approach to contingency theory and management control

A prominent theme in recent accounting papers on management control has been the contingency theory approach to management control system design. A recent review of this contingency theory literature noted the need for a more explicit theoretical structure as well as a more all-inclusive model of the organization's control system. This paper argues that while a more explicit theory is needed, the development of relatively simple models is an important step in the construction of an all-inclusive model of management control. Two such simple models of a firm's control system design problem are presented and compared. The two models demonstrate that relatively simple models can capture multiple features of a control system and illustrate how the effect of contingency variables depends critically on the specific context in which the firm operates. Because the logic underlying these models is made explicit, the reader can better assess their reasonableness. Simple models can provide useful building blocks for more complex management control models and can be used to evaluate the analytical validity hypotheses that might be induced from observations in complex settings.     

二元结构下的农村信用体系建设模式研究

本文从分析农村经济、农村信用的特点入手,充分考虑农村现实的金融生态环境和农村经济发展的规律,认为二元结构下农村经济、信用形式,存在着明显的有别于城市的特征。基于这些特征,本文从理论上设计了区别于一般信用体系的农村信用体系建设框架和模式,并结合山东的实践案例,为进一步开展农村信用体系建设提出了政策建议。     

基于区块链技术的互联网信用体系框架构建

互联网环境下,传统信用体系存在信息壁垒严重、信息交易不畅、信息安全堪忧等诸多不足。区块链技术在解决信息共享、信息交易和信息安全等方面的问题上具有优势。基于区块链技术构建互联网信用体系,并作为社会信用体系的重要组成部分,可以较好地解决互联网环境下传统信用体系存在的问题。构建包含政府机构、征信机构、企业和个人用户等运行主体的互联网信用体系框架,分析其运行模式,对比互联网信用体系与传统信用体系的差异,建议强化管理体制,发挥政府主导作用,创新监管制度,健全激励机制等,以促进互联网信用体系的构建。     

Conquering a culture of indecision

The single greatest cause of corporate underperformance is the failure to execute. Author Ram Charan, drawing on a quarter century of observing organizational behavior, perceives that such failures of execution share a family resemblance: a misfire in the personal interactions that are supposed to produce results. Faulty interactions rarely occur in isolation, Charan says. Far more often, they're typical of the way large and small decisions are made or not made throughout the organization. The inability to take decisive action is rooted in a company's culture. But, Charan notes, leaders create a culture of indecisiveness, and leaders can break it. Breaking it requires them to take three actions. First, they must engender intellectual honesty in the connections between people. Second, they must see to it that the organization's "social operating mechanisms"--the meetings, reviews, and other situations through which people in the corporation do business--have honest dialogue at their cores. And third, leaders must ensure that feedback and follow-through are used to reward high achievers, coach those who are struggling, and discourage those whose behaviors are blocking the organization's progress. By taking these three approaches and using every encounter as an opportunity to model open and honest dialogue, a leader can set the tone for an organization, moving it from paralysis to action.     

What it means to work here

What distinguishes a company that has deeply engaged and committed employees from another one that doesn't? It's not a certain compensation scheme or talent-management practice. Instead, it's the ability to express to current and potential employees what makes the organization unique. Companies with highly engaged employees articulate their values and attributes through "signature experiences"--visible, distinctive elements of the work environment that send powerful messages about the organization's aspirations and about the skills, stamina, and commitment employees will need in order to succeed there. Whole Foods Market, for example, uses a team-based hiring and orientation process to convey to new employees the company's emphasis on collaboration and decentralization. At JetBlue, the reservation system is run by agents from their homes, a signature experience that boosts employees' satisfaction and productivity. Companies that successfully create and communicate signature experiences understand that not all workers want the same things. Indeed, employee preferences are an important but often overlooked factor in the war for talent. Firms that have engendered productive and engaged workforces address those preferences by following some general principles: They target potential employees as methodically as they target potential customers; they shape their signature experiences to address business needs; they identify and preserve their histories; they share stories--not just slogans--about life in the firm; they create processes consistent with their signature experiences; and they understand that they shouldn't try to be all things to all people. The best strategy for coming out ahead in the war for talent is not to scoop up everyone in sight but to attract the right people--those who are intrigued and excited by the environment the company offers and who will reward it with their loyalty.     

金融组织强制性信息披露问题研究

由于规模经济的原因,作为信息劣势方——投资者公共利益代表者的政府必然成为强制性信忠披露的主体。政府按照参与约束原则和激励相容原则进行机制设计甄别金融组织,引导其确定合理的信忠披露边界,形成分离均衡,金融市场上的非对称信息转变为对称信息。但政府强制金融组织进行信息披露时,应尊重其利益追求和考虑金融市场发育程度等。     

Integration of Intelligent Systems and Conventional Systems: Requirements for Co-ordinating Multiple Agents for Diagnostic Decisions

This paper describes the development of an integrated intelligent (expert) system and conventional information system to support decision making of a diagnostic decision in a multi-agent environment. It argues that many a priori requirements for the information system can be elicited by accounting for the specific nature of the diagnostic decision and for the single/multiple-actor environment. This finding is generalized to a framework that indicates that a priori requirements take into account the basic theories on which the information system supporting the decision task is ultimately based. In particular, attention is focused on the nature of the task (e.g. diagnostic), whether the application is for a single- or multiple-agent situation and the nature of the multi-agent structure (e.g. product or functional form of organization).     

Is your vision consistent?: A method for checking, based on scenario concepts

Common sense tells us that the future is an essential element in any strategy. In addition, there is a good deal of literature on scenario planning, which is an important tool in considering the future in terms of strategy. However, in many organizations there is serious resistance to the development of scenarios, and they are not broadly implemented by companies. But even organizations that do not rely heavily on the development of scenarios do, in fact, construct visions to guide their strategies. But it might be asked, what happens when this vision is not consistent with the future? To address this problem, the present article proposes a method for checking the content and consistency of an organization's vision of the future, no matter how it was conceived. The proposed method is grounded on theoretical concepts from the field of future studies, which are described in this article. This study was motivated by the search for developing new ways of improving and using scenario techniques as a method for making strategic decisions. The method was then tested on a company in the field of information technology in order to check its operational feasibility. The test showed that the proposed method is, in fact, operationally feasible and was capable of analyzing the vision of the company being studied, indicating both its shortcomings and points of inconsistency.     

ACCOUNTING FOR BIODIVERSITY: A PILOT STUDY

This exploratory paper investigates the concept of a natural inventory. Three stages are envisaged. In stage one, an organization's acreage and habitats would be established and one of six levels of natural inventory undertaken. In the second stage, the organization's non-critical habitats would be valued either at a market or at an amenity valuation, complemented by an ecological grading. Finally in stage three, the results would be aggregated and published in summary form in the organization's annual report. Levels 1, 2 and 5 of natural inventory are applied to an actual real-world organization. Further research is called for to apply the concept to a large land-owning corporation and to involve accountants in the preparation and, particularly, in the communication of the results.     

Information environment and earnings management of dual class firms around the world

This study examines the information environment and earnings management of dual class firms. Motivated by the pronounced entrenchment phenomenon at dual class firms due to divergence between voting and cash flow rights, we are interested in whether dual class firms adopt corporate disclosure choices that imply greater opacity as well as employ judgment in financing reporting to misguide the outside shareholders about the firm’s true performance. Based on a sample of 12,672 firms from 19 countries during 1994–2010, we find that dual class status is associated with poorer information environment and increased accrual-based earnings management, consistent with the notion that managers of dual class firms exhibit incentives to conceal private control benefits from the outside shareholders. Results further suggest that dual class ownership structure weakens the mitigating impact of investor protection on earnings management. Following unification, firms experience an improvement in information environment and a decrease in earnings manipulation.     

Reporting on software development projects to senior managers and the board

It is contended that the scale of some in-house software projects (and the potential impact of project failure on an organization's operating capabilities and reputation) is such that the progress of those projects warrants the concentrated attention of senior managers (and possibly, the Board). The article utilizes a case study to illustrate how the adoption of key proposals outlined in the business information systems and software engineering literatures for the management of these projects may not necessarily be effective. This work augments Walker and Oliver (2005 ), which examined the options when accounting for software expenditure and recommended expensing for consistent treatment. This article then reviews the 'information needs' of senior managers, and presents a set of six reporting templates to facilitate the effective monitoring of progress of software projects (including post-migration expenditure on system enhancements and maintenance, and efforts to capture planned benefits). In some circumstances, the scale and risks associated with software development projects warrant oversight of these projects by the Board, possibly through the establishment of specialist 'IT governance' subcommittees. Accordingly, a model charter for an IT governance committee is presented in an appendix.     

Transforming the structure of a health system

In starting the planning process for an organization's transformation or restructuring, healthcare finance leaders should: Identify strategic imperatives for the organization and physicians, Remember the organization's core area of business, Define the starting point and create clear objectives, Develop a strategy that engages front-line employees to change the culture of the organization.     

Exploring a `non-financial' management accounting change

Many normative calls have appeared for including strategic non-financial measures into management accounting systems. This paper explores the emergence of non-financial measures in the organizational context of Lever Industrial-U.K., a service-oriented British chemicals company. Tracing the mechanism of this management accounting change, the study identifies the dynamic forces which are driving it. The paper points at the systematization of non-financial measures as an essential phase of the change process. However, the paper also suggests that non-financial measures become a powerful vehicle for focusing interactive management control into the organization's strategic uncertainties. This interactive `Focus Potential' of non-financial measures goes beyond their diagnostic role as strategic controls.@e$g0