An investigation of certain interactions between large CPA firms and accounting educators

Some accounting educators have questioned whether selected interactions between the “Big Eight” accounting firms (Firms) and accounting educators might affect the academic freedom and independence of accounting educators. This study compares the current and normative attitudes of accounting professors about certain areas of these interactions and concludes that a significant difference exists between the attitudes of the current and the normative groups. The implications of this finding are discussed.     

The Metamorphosis of Australian Industrial Relations

This article outlines the current processes of change in Australian industrial relations - processes whose ultimate direction and effects are unforeseeable. The traditional dominance of conciliation and arbitration tribunals is giving way to more devolved arrangements. Some protagonists of change envisage a move towards collective bargaining, with trade unions having a pervasive and secure role; others believe the place of unions is in question. The impulse for change comes partly from market-oriented ideology, but this is not extensively discussed, A second source is the desire of the Australian Council of Trade Unions and the Labor Government to determine wage policy jointly, with the role of the Australian Industrial Relations Commission being essentially that of implementation. Also important is a widely held view that reform of industrial relations is a path to better productivity performance. The paper discusses the justification for that view. Various questions remain to be answered. These include the possibility for enduring wages policy; the legal framework necessary for bargaining; the nature of the industrial relations system of non-union enterprises; and the congruence of enterprise bargaining with the structure of trade unionism.     

PRIOR ACCOUNTING EDUCATION AND PERFORMANCE IN A FIRST-LEVEL UNIVERSITY COURSE IN NEW ZEALAND

This New Zealand study examined whether prior accounting education at school had a positive effect on performance in the corresponding first-level university course. The research question was tested using an ANCOVA. Proxies for academic ability were used as covariates so as to eliminate systematic bias in the samples. Prior study at the Bursary level carried a positive benefit. The findings were in agreement with the thesis that the level of conceptual accounting thought acquired at school, rather than the ability to manipulate figures in accordance with mechanical bookkeeping procedures, affected subsequent performance at university.     

Winners, Losers, and the Nuclear-Waste Dilemma

This paper explores how property-right assignment affects social efficiency when a public program has both “public good” and “public bad” components. We show that when willingness to accept a public bad exceeds the willingness to pay, the net benefit is unambiguously lower when the property right supports the status quo institutional structure. Thus, Kaldor–Hicks efficiency tests tend to favor public programs and mitigation over the status quo even when mitigation negatively affects another group. To illustrate the result, we develop social-cost estimates for moving nuclear waste from current temporary-storage facilities to a permanent central repository at Yucca Mountain, NV, USA. For a representative city with a population of 226,195, the present value of the external cost of shipping waste is $1.42 billion when those living near temporary nuclear-waste storage facilities are assigned the property right to “health and safety.” That number swells to $5.95 billion when those living near the transport route are assigned the property right. Thus, property-right assignment affects the efficient level of nuclear-waste, and thus nuclear energy, produced.     

The impact of grand strategy and planning formality on financial performance

An empirical study involving 97 manufacturing firms that averaged $20 million in annual sales yielded a strong positive correlation between the degree of planning formality and firm performance. Additionally, interactive analysis disclosed that this relationship pervaded various grand strategies; the implication being that formalized strategic planning was consistently a positive factor associated with high levels of organizational performance.     

Reputation and corporate strategy: A review of recent theory and applications

A corporate reputation is a set of attributes ascribed to a firm, inferred from the firm's past actions. While the intuition behind reputation-building is hardly new, recent research has formalized the concept. We review this research and then, using examples, illustrate some of the strategic behavioral implications of these formal models.