The interaction between a standard time incentive payment scheme and a simple accounting information system

Under a standard time incentive payment scheme, workers “manage” their recorded job times. A job cost accounting system allocates labour costs and sometimes overheads on the basis of the recorded job times. By simulating the interaction of two such systems at a medium sized engineering firm, it is found that the direct labour costs for a product could be over-estimated by up to 35%. Further, these over-estimates occur on those products on which the workers earn their highest bonuses and, hence, whose discontinuation could damage industrial relations.     

Induced Institutional Change in the Trade and Environment Debate

Because of the assumption of constant emission factors, economy-environment models often show that free trade has negative environmental consequences. However, this pessimistic view ignores the possibility of trade strengthening the demand for regulatory institutions. An `institutional optimism hypothesis, stating that the net environmental result of trade liberalization is benign, is thus formulated in this paper. The hypothesis is examined with a CGE model that treats institutional change as an endogenous process dependent on income. Application to NAFTA, using a broad range of scenarios, provides some support for the institutional optimism hypothesis. The net pollution effect of trade liberalization is in many cases beneficial or low, even for the country specializing in polluting industries. The implication is that in many cases environmental interests are served better by a focus on institution building in trading partners, than on the process of trade liberalization itself.     

Delivering the goods at TNT: the role of the performance measurement system

This paper explores the characteristics of the performance measurement system atTNT (UK) Ltd.which facilitate the translation of strategy into action.TNTis a successful and growing service organization and a market leader in the overnight distribution of parcels within the U.K. The performance measurement system and how it is used atTNTare described in detail. The authors then draw on the management accounting literature to provide an analysis framework which answers three central questions for performance measurement systems: whatdimensionsof performance to measure, how to setstandardsfor those measures and whatrewardsare to be associated with the achievement of those standards. The performance measurement system atTNTis appraised against this framework. AtTNTthere are five properties of the performance measurement system which have facilitated the translating of strategy into action. Three of these relate to the framework above; the company measures the right things in that dimensions are consistent with corporate strategy, it provides standards for performance through internal benchmarking, and adopts a mixture of financial and non-financial based rewards. In addition, however, there are two further properties of the system; the use of league tables to report the relative performance of the depots, and the presence of a strong corporate champion who drives the message and importance of the performance measurement system from the centre to the depots.     

Estimating the Impact of Displays and Other Merchandising Support on Retail Brand Sales: Partial Pooling with Examples

With the advent of scanning data, methodological issues have arisen, in particular as they relate to the reliability of parameter estimates in regression models. This study deals with the reliability of the coefficients of promotion-type dummy variables (e.g., display, leaflet, bonus pack,). Due to a lack of passthrough of trade deals to the end consumer, those coefficients can be typically unidentified or unstable when estimated at the store level and even at the chain level. Assuming that the individual-level coefficients of the dummy variables are draws from a common but arbitrary distribution, the authors suggest to "pool" the data for those variables (partial "pooling") across stores and across chains. They show with three real-life examples the increased reliability (with a correct sign) of the "pooled" coefficients as compared with the store-level or chain-level individual coefficients.     

Magic bullets and the nutrition agenda

This article is a rejoinder to Berg and Austin's paper. The authors have no quarrel with Berg and Austin's conclusion that ‘progress’ has been unspectacular and patchy, or that there is much worthwhile work to be done. However, the authors argue that what Berg and Austin have described is not a ‘new paradigm’, but more of the same — more magic bullets.     

Perceived changes in holiday destinations

Small samples of tourists visiting Greece and Morocco were studied intensively to see whether tourists' post-travel images of these countries were different from pre-travel images. An adapted form of Kelly's repertory grid was used to assess the images. It was established that both travelers to Morocco and to Greece changed their images of the visited locations when compared to a control group of non-travelers. In addition, the tourists' country of origin (Britain), and countries similar to the visited destinations, were also seen somewhat differently after the holiday. While these findings apply only to a limited number of tourists of a particular type, this kind of study paves the way for more research on tourists' attitudinal changes.