Rhetoric or Reality? Do Accounting Education and Experience Increase Weighting on Environmental Performance in a Balanced Scorecard?

We are nearing the end of the United Nations' Decade of Education for Sustainable Development (2005–2014). There has been substantial rhetoric in education and business forums, and many universities have integrated sustainability into their accounting curricula, but what effect is accounting education having? This study considers whether the rhetoric of sustainability is manifest in a greater emphasis on environmental performance by students and practitioners. In an evaluation task using a balanced scorecard we found that third-year accounting students in Australia and Germany recognised lead performance indicators, and penalised poor environmental performance, more than did first-year students. Experienced accounting controllers, however, placed less emphasis on environmental performance than did third-year accounting students. This suggests that the rhetoric taught in universities regarding the strategic importance of environmental performance exceeds the reality of organisational priorities, at least for now.     

Patientenversorgung mit „Rundum-Konzept“

Case Management praktisch umgesetzt - Case Management tr?gt dazu bei, Versorgungs- und Behandlungsleistungen überprüfbar und bewertbar zu machen. Qualitative M?ngel in der Versorgung und Behandlung aber auch der Dokumentation und Organisation k?nnen zeitnah aufgegriffen, bearbeitet oder gar verhindert werden. Denn durch die konsequente überprüfung und Auswertung der Prozesse wird ein kontinuierlicher Verbesserungsprozess in Gang gesetzt.     

Residents’ perceptions of community tourism impacts

This study investigated residents’ perceptions of tourism’s impact on communities. Data were collected via a statewide survey, using social exchange theory; results suggest residents recognize many positive and negative consequences. Those who feel tourism is important for economic development, benefit from it, and are knowledgeable about the greater positive impacts, but do not differ from others with respect to perceptions of tourism’s negative consequences. It is becoming clear that broad-based education and awareness campaigns may be a step toward increased understanding of the industry and, ultimately, greater support of the benefits to a community.     

Exploring differences between central located test and home use test in a living lab context

The concept of Living Labs (LLs) has evolved to support the creation of experience‐based development of innovations in real‐life, user‐driven and open environments. Two types of consumer product tests used generally are central location tests (CLT) and home use tests (HUT) where the acceptability or liking of a product or group of products is determined together with the view of whether one product is preferred over other products. This article explores the similarities and differences between CLT and HUT test results in a LL context. In both settings, the acceptance of five flavoured chocolate bars was evaluated for appearance, odour, taste/flavour, texture and overall liking. Apart from the mean values of liking in the two tests, data were analysed to identify consumer segments. Qualitative data were also collected by asking for consumer comments on the tested samples. The results show that independent of test method the bars were evaluated equally and all accepted by the consumers. A clear difference between CLT and HUT testing was that CLT consumers significantly differed from the HUT consumers, giving the test samples lower scores. For example, the mean values of the overall acceptance scores given by HUT consumers varied between 6.0 and 6.6, while for CLT consumers the corresponding values varied from 5.4 to 5.9. Another difference was the number of comments from consumers. CLT consumers richly commented on the products in a verbose way, while HUT consumers used the opportunity to comment very sparingly. Considering the cluster analysis as yet another difference between the testing methods, clusters from the CLT were more distinct and the number was higher with five clusters in CLT and four in HUT. Clusters where consumers liked all the products in both test settings were twice as many for HUT than in CLT. Applying the LL approach, there is a need for methods and approaches that capture a rich picture of consumers during test performance without being intrusive or obstructive of activities and context. The approach offers the opportunity for companies to have consumers not only test products but also offer input that can stimulate new innovations and give consumers more power and influence.     

Markups and export-pricing strategies

We analyze empirically export-price strategies across export destinations using detailed firm-product data. Most recent studies using disaggregated data to investigate why firms charge different prices for the same product on different markets focus on the cost component of prices and neglect the markup component. In this paper, we concentrate on the markup component and examine how variations in firms’ export prices may reflect price discrimination by comparing the markup of firms with different pricing strategies. We make use of detailed firm-level data for exporting firms in the Swedish food sector consisting of both manufacturing and intermediary trading firms. The paper documents the export-price variations within the two sub-sectors and explores how different price strategies correlate with markups. The results offer new information beyond the fact that exporters tend to have a higher markup. In particular, we find that firms in the food-processing sector with a greater ability to discriminate across markets mark their products up even more. This result points to the importance of underlying firm decisions in order to explain differences in export premiums across firms. In addition, the results reveal that markups are a complex function of firm and destination characteristics, and that the relationship between markups and pricing strategies in the manufacturing sector is not necessarily observed in other sectors of the supply chain.     

Serial solidarity: the effects of experiences and expectations on the co-operative behaviour of employees

Two contrasting theoretical perspectives are frequently mentioned in discussions concerning the effects of temporary employment relationships on the co-operative behaviour of employees. According to the first perspective, temporary employees show less co-operative behaviour than permanent employees because they have a narrowly defined exchange relationship with the organization. The other approach holds that temporary employees are motivated to achieve a permanent contract and hence show more co-operative behaviour than permanent employees. In this paper, we argue that both theoretical approaches can be incorporated by focusing on the ‘temporal embeddedness’ of the relationships employees have with their co-workers. Temporal embeddedness refers to the experiences employees have had with co-workers in the past and the likelihood of future encounters with co-workers. We use two studies – a survey and a vignette study – to examine these temporal effects. The findings show that the co-operative behaviour of employees can indeed be explained by the temporal embeddedness of the relationships they have with their co-workers.     

Having two bosses: considering the relationships between LMX,satisfaction with HR practices,and organizational commitment

This study went beyond previous research on leader–member exchange (LMX) by examining employees who are supervised by more than one boss. Using data from 122 PhDs from a Dutch university, this study had three research objectives. First, to examine the effects of PhDs' LMX with both their promoter and their assistant promoter on affective organizational commitment (AOC). Second, to examine the mediating role of satisfaction with human resource (HR) practices in the two LMX–AOC relationships. Since the promoter as the higher level boss has more influence on different HR practices the third objective was to examine whether the LMX–AOC relationship is stronger for the promoter than for the assistant promoter. The results showed that both promoter LMX and assistant promoter LMX were positively related to PhDs' AOC, and both relationships were fully mediated by PhDs' satisfaction with HR practices. As expected, these effects were significantly stronger for the promoter than for the assistant promoter.     

Perceived organizational support and knowledge sharing: employees’ self-construal matters

Abstract

HR professionals are expected to become more involved in knowledge management and facilitate knowledge sharing among employees in the knowledge economy. In this study, we investigated the relationship between perceived organizational support and knowledge sharing by taking account of employees’ interdependent and independent self-construal. Our hypotheses were examined using a 2-wave survey data-set from 145 teachers working at 4 Dutch vocational education and training schools. The results showed that perceived organizational support was positively related to knowledge sharing for employees either with a high interdependent self or with a low independent self. However, this positive relationship disappeared for employees either with a low interdependent self or with a high independent self. Overall, the moderating effect of self-construal revealed a new avenue towards a better understanding of the relationship between organizational support and employees’ knowledge sharing. It provided a tentative answer to the question of why organizational support does not often succeed in motivating employees to share their knowledge in the workplace.     

The practicalities of a Learning Tourism Destination: a case study of the Ningaloo Coast

The complex and dynamic nature of tourism, and the need to address triple bottom line sustainability, has encouraged a search for adaptive tourism management approaches based on organisational learning. In this paper, the authors discuss a practical approach for the implementation of a Learning Tourism Destination (LTD), a new concept derived from the theory of learning organisations. Preliminary results from a case study undertaken at the Ningaloo Coast in Western Australia are discussed. The conducted surveys indicate that the LTD forms a useful framework for fostering consensus building, dialogue and collective learning processes among stakeholders. The proposed approach has the potential to improve decision‐making within the concept of sustainable tourism development by facilitating participative planning processes. The overall strategy of this paper is to explore the practicalities of the LTD implementation process, and to spark further conceptual and practical debate, based on the analysis of the Ningaloo case study. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.