Research into ambidextrous R&D in product development – new product development at a precision device maker: a case study

Through research into new product development processes at a precision device maker, this paper discusses the skilful management of knowledge boundaries that lie between various organisations, and between specialised human skills and functions that make up a project organisation, and presents the ways in which new organisational capabilities are brought about for the development of new products as exploratory activities that dynamically merge and integrated the various knowledge within a company. This paper describes some of the implications derived from analysis and observations of the new organisational forms of the company's ambidextrous R&D management which the company uses to engage in both ‘uncertainty management (exploration)’ and ‘existing product management (exploitation)’, through the partnering of its existing formal organisations and dynamic structuring of diverse multifunctional teams formed as projects spanning different specialisations and capabilities.     

Behavioral changes following the collaborative development of an accounting information system

This research examines physician response to implementation of an activity-based costing (ABC) system developed and designed with physician input. We analyze changes in resource utilization for treatment of cataract patients and find changes in practice patterns, where physicians redeployed resources toward more severely ill patients and decreased average length of stay. We also find preliminary evidence of improvement in financial performance. We contribute to research investigating the influence of user participation on accounting system success, ABC system success, and hospital accounting information systems.     

How enterprise strategies are related to innovation and productivity change: an empirical study of Japanese manufacturing firms

This study analyzes the total factor productivity of 1067 Japanese manufacturing firms. In production estimation, we employ the directional distance function and Luenberger productivity indicator. Research and development strategy survey data are used to analyze the determinant factors related to improvements in innovation and productivity. Our results indicate that increasing technology and knowledge through a ‘black box’ process is related to an increase in productivity. Furthermore, the protection and management of production knowledge and expertise is a valid method of increasing global technical change.     

Tourism survey research in sub-Saharan Africa: problems and challenges

This paper examines the challenges encountered when conducting tourism-related research in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA). Using socio-demographic and infrastructure information as a backdrop, aspects of market research and their attendant challenges are examined. Issues of functional equivalence, conceptual equivalence, and translation equivalence are discussed, together with challenges relating to sampling, data collection, and analysis. The paper highlights some critical issues that need to be addressed when conducting consumer tourism-related surveys, in general, and community tourism-related research, in particular, in SSA countries and concludes with a discussion of the ways in which research and data gathering could be improved. Recommendations are offered in the spirit of encouraging consumer tourism-survey research and data gathering in Africa.     

Integrated evaluation: A synthesis of approaches to the evaluation of broad-aim social programs

Integrated evaluation is intended to serve decision makers who are responsible for broad-aim social programs by providing information based on evaluation which can aid both ongoing decisions and long-term strategic decisions. It integrates elements of diverse evaluation traditions in a complementary manner: monitoring—in order to inform what has been done by the program; implementation analysis—in order to understand how decisions are being made and carried out; economic evaluation—including both cost-effectiveness and assessment of distributional effects; and goal achievement evaluation—in order to present the program outcomes from the point of view of the various parties who produced the program and/or were affected by it. The article presents these four components of integrated evaluation and discusses its advantages as well as its difficulties and pitfalls.     

A preliminary investigation of factors affecting seafood consumption behaviour in the inland and coastal regions of Victoria,Australia

This paper examines whether there are any substantial differences in factors influencing seafood consumption (at‐home) behaviour of consumers from two different regions of Victoria, Australia. We have used the logit modelling procedure and found that there exist noticeable regional differences in seafood consumption behaviour. In the case of the inland region, it is found that the variables price, distance, taste, quality and season are significant at the conventional level. For the coastal region, the factors quality, age and number of persons employed (at the 5% level) and size of households (at the 10% level) significantly influence the seafood consumption behaviour.     

Executive compensation and non-financial risk: An empirical examination

Executives face potentially severe (non-financial) personal risks if firm environmental performance is below industry best practice. We examine the relation between CEO compensation and the non-financial risk associated with environmental exposure, and how use of environmental performance as an explicit determinant of compensation affects this relation. We find evidence that CEOs are compensated for exposure to environmental risk, even after controlling for financial risk. We also find that this premium is reduced when the CEO has greater opportunities to improve the firm’s environmental performance.     

The interaction among disclosures,competition, and an internal control problem

This paper studies the effect of an internal control problem on a firm's disclosure policy where firms compete in non-cooperative investment game, with each firm deciding to invest in its current technology or to invest in a non-proprietary innovation. By adopting the innovation, a firm earns higher revenues at the expense of its non-adopting rival. Each principal decides on a disclosure policy for its firm that entails releasing an agent's internal cost report of the firm's current technology to the rival firm. The agent has private information about the current technology's cost and an incentive to overstate the cost. An effect of disclosures is to increase coordination between the firms, which, without a control problem, increases firm profits. However, under the same conditions that disclosures were beneficial without the control problem, disclosures may be harmful to the principal with the control problem because increased coordination between the firms allows the agent to earn higher rents. Competition substitutes for commitment to an investment policy that limits the agent's rents and this disciplining role of competition is diminished with disclosures.     

Measuring corporate environmental performance

As shareholders, government regulators, consumers, employees, and the general public pay more attention to companies' environmental performance, measurement issues are becoming increasingly important and demand is growing for relevant information to assist stakeholders in making key decisions. Despite the enhanced interest in and attention to companies' environmental activities, the accounting profession has been slow to take on the role of defining, measuring, and controlling this broad corporate domain. Thus, measures of environmental performance have proliferated in the absence of clear, generally accepted guidelines as to what constitutes good and bad environmental performance. As a result, the public is becoming increasingly confused and cynical about interpretation of such data. In this paper, we use theoretical and empirical approaches to define corporate environmental performance and consider how well existing measures operationalize the construct. Interestingly, some popular environmental rating schemes seem to rely more heavily on public reaction to environmental events than on more precise and measurable outcome or process dimensions. Our findings suggest a need for explicit environmental performance metrics in order to provide stakeholders with more reliable, consistent, and accurate information for comparing companies and making key strategic decisions. We argue that the accounting profession is an obvious candidate for establishing such metrics since the domain of accounting typically includes measuring, communicating, and regulating information about company performance. Expanding accountants' domain to include environmental performance can greatly contribute to the usefulness of environmental performance metrics.