‘RESILIENCE’ IN ORGANIZATIONAL ACTORS AND REARTICULATING ‘VOICE’: Towards a humanistic critique of New Public Management

Assumptions of resilience are frequently made about organizational actors, both by scholars and practitioners. It is argued that resilience is unlikely to be the usual outcome from the trauma routinely confronted in organizational life. It is suggested that ‘assumptions’ of resilience stem from either a reification of what is perceived to be a highly desirable trait in organizational actors or a lack of acknowledgement of what, if recognized, would be regarded as an ‘unthinkable’ aspect of organizational life. Managers are unlikely to recognize and admit that the pain they inflict on others in the name of efficiency, organizational down-sizing and out-sourcing will contribute to long-term changes in organizational actors. It is also likely that, while coping skills and resources may be sufficient to equip individuals for the myriad problems they routinely face, even the ‘successful’ actor may not remain unscathed. Some of the negative organizational outcomes of this unthinking ‘assumption’ of resilience are canvassed and suggestions are made as to what strategies may ameliorate the situation. A rearticulation of actors' ‘voice’ in formal organization, at a time of a hegemonic dominance of economic rationalism, is especially overdue.     

Accounting change in Norway

During the last twenty years, a change from a continental towards what can broadly be characterized as an Anglo-Saxon perspective of accounting has taken place in Norway.

This paper discusses whether the new Norwegian Accounting Act of 1998 and the accounting standards issued by the Norwegian standard-setting body represent a further focus on the Anglo-Saxon perspective. Important parts of Norwegian accounting regulation, particularly the Norwegian Conceptual Framework, are highlighted and compared with the positions of European (EC Accounting Directives) and international (IASB) accounting.

The findings indicate that the Anglo-Saxon perspective of accounting appears to be strengthened by the new Norwegian law. Even if the findings indicate that the IAS solutions are generally accepted under the new regulation, the flexibility of the regulation seems to indicate that other solutions are accepted as well. These ‘specific Norwegian’ accounting solutions may generally lead to balance sheets which are less prudent than the balance sheets set up under IAS.

If one accepts that a characteristic of Anglo-Saxon accounting is that it is, historically, generally less prudent than continental European accounting, it can indeed be concluded that Norwegian financial reporting has become more Anglo-Saxon than Anglo-Saxon countries in general. One factor seems to weaken this conclusion: Norway does not allow the revaluation of fixed assets.     

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.     

How does economic integration influence employment and wages in border regions? The case of the EU enlargement 2004 and Germany’s eastern border

This paper considers the (short-run) employment and wage effects of the 2004 EU enlargement on firms located close to Germany’s eastern border. We use a 50% sample of Germans plants and apply difference-in-differences estimators combined with a matching approach. We evaluate changes in total employment, the employment shares of low-skilled and East European workers and the wages for low-skilled, skilled and high-skilled workers in various sectors. Our results suggest basically no short-run employment effects of the EU enlargement except for firms active in wholesale and retail trade, hotels and restaurants. We also find some evidence for a stronger employment of East European workers in almost all border firms, although the effects are quantitatively small. Negative wage effects are only found for skilled workers in consulting, research and related activities.     

The Use of the Repertory Grid for Collaboration and Reflection in a Research Context

The Repertory Grid (RepGrid) technique has been used extensively in Management Sciences research, including Information Systems research, in order to reveal the personal views of individual research subjects regarding the issue being studied. These individual constructs are then used to propose criteria for success amongst other things. This paper uses a distinctly different form of RepGrid, renamed a Reflection Grid, as a collaboration tool. Members of a research team use this new technique to probe their individual understanding of what happened and what was achieved during a research event and then to share these insights. Hence, not only is the application new (reflection and construction of shared meaning rather than the analysis and synthesis of personal constructs) but the original grid technique has evolved.     

Neutrales Geld und Wirtschaftssystem

Ohne Zusammenfassung     

Portfolio choice with internal habit formation: a life-cycle model with uninsurable labor income risk

Motivated by the success of internal habit formation preferences in explaining asset pricing puzzles, we introduce these preferences in a life-cycle model of consumption and portfolio choice with liquidity constraints, undiversifiable labor income risk and stock-market participation costs. In contrast to the initial motivation, we find that the model is not able to simultaneously match two very important stylized facts: a low stock market participation rate, and moderate equity holdings for those households that do invest in stocks. Habit formation increases wealth accumulation because the intertemporal consumption smoothing motive is stronger. As a result, households start participating in the stock market very early in life, and invest their portfolios almost fully in stocks. Therefore, we conclude that, with respect to its ability to match the empirical evidence on asset allocation behavior, the internal habit formation model is dominated by its time-separable utility counterpart.