Can Employees Be Used to Overcome Independent Audit Limitations?

Independent financial statement auditors are appointed by shareholders to provide reasonable assurance on the reliability of financial statements published by management of reporting entities. However, in the last two decades questions have been raised concerning the credibility of external audits due to their apparent failure, especially following the spate of corporate collapses. This paper applies a critical review of literature and a multi‐theoretical governance perspective to examine the inherent limitation of independent external audits and argues that employees can contribute to reducing the limitation gap by strengthening governance through a structure that incorporates a board and employee management representation. It is argued that through this arrangement, auditors can benefit as they will be privy to additional information from employees about issues such as irregular matters that impact upon shareholders and other stakeholders, and control weaknesses across governance levels, allowing auditors to establish a broader understanding of organisational information that may otherwise be less readily available. Thus auditors can base their judgements in terms of audit risks, and develop audit plans based on more reliable information. The theoretical proposition emerging from these findings is that the traditional governance model should be refined to include employees as an additional component of governance.     

Learning before the storm: Modeling multiple stakeholder activities in support of crisis management,a practical case

The severe consequences of a Critical Infrastructure (CI) crisis demand continued research directed toward proactive and reactive management strategies. Despite the best efforts of governments and communities, the diversity of stakeholders, conflicting demands for resources, and a lack of trust among organizations create complexities that limit the effectiveness of the response. This paper identifies four specific problems that appear to reoccur when CIs are challenged: heterogeneity, multiple and inconsistent boundaries, resilience building and knowledge transfer and sharing. A combination of collaborative modeling and software simulation methodologies is proposed in order to identify the interrelationships among diverse stakeholders when managing the preparation for and reaction to a CI crisis. This approach allows experts to work together and share experiences through the modeling process which can lead them to a better understanding of how other organizations work and integrate different perspectives. In addition, simulation models enable domain experts to understand the consequences of certain policies in the short and long terms, thus improving the crisis managers' knowledge for future crisis situations. This paper presents a practical case of a hypothetical crisis in the CI sector and the approach used in order to deal with the four problems identified above.     

You’re dead to me,but should you be? Using a retail database to classify American malls by occupancy and sales and an extended analysis of dead and dying malls

ABSTRACT

The study uses a shopping center database to classify malls by occupancy and sales. A factor analysis is conducted and reduces the large number of variables to a smaller number of mall constructs. The constructs are used to predict mall group membership by occupancy and sales. The results indicate that population and income are important variables towards mall occupancy and sales. An analysis of dead malls follows in order to produce more novel information for the growing interest in dead and dying malls. It is found through a second discriminant analysis that the prototypical characteristics of dead malls include; smaller in size, less population and lower income market areas. There were varying effects of renovation dates, competition and market age. Overall, the study benefited from examining dead malls more closely and provides more groundwork for future dead mall studies.     

Commodifying the Commodifiers: The Impact of Procurement on Management Knowledge

Current conceptualizations of the commodification of management knowledge prioritize the agency of knowledge producers, such as consultancies, but downplay the role of other actors such as intermediaries. Using a qualitative multi‐method study of the role of procurement in sourcing consultancy knowledge, we demonstrate how intermediaries also commodify management knowledge, thereby limiting the exchange value of that knowledge. Through our analysis we develop a more sophisticated model of the processes and consequences of knowledge commodification. This model clarifies and extends prior research by highlighting the role of commensuration, comparison and valuation, as well as the related tactics that consultants and client managers use to resist procurement's attempts to commodify management knowledge.     

Collaborative Marketing in a Regional Destination: Evidence from Central Florida

This paper aims to explore a collaborative approach to regional destination marketing. Research questions were constructed for empirical data collection via documentary analysis and semistructured interviews with senior executives of destination marketing organizations (DMOs) in the Central Florida region. The research findings suggest that collaboration among DMOs is beneficial in terms of cost reduction and market penetration. Several issues emerge as inhibiting factors to their collaborative destination marketing efforts. Discussions and implications are provided both from a theoretical and practical perspective on the basis of the findings of the study. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

中国《经济》发展联盟《企业诊断》系列讲座之一德西蒙公司如何帮跨国公司改进质量管理?质量创造价值——全球顶级航空制造企业的质量改进案例

项目准备最高管理层全情参与质量改进无论在哪个行业,企业的最高执行官参与产品单件设计的现象都非常少见;而最高执行官参与供应商选择以及基层的其他改进工作的做法更是少之又少。我们只是最近才在航天领域的知名企业通用电气(GE)和霍尼韦尔(Honeywell)公司见到这种由上而下进行“管理层承诺”的做法。本文中提到的这家全球知名的制造业巨头(以下简称B公司)旗下拥有一家大型飞机制造公司和一家大型人造卫星制造公司,两家公司的管理层都以突出的领导能力著称。在他们的带领下,公司的各部门保持了高度的步调一致,为企业的总体战略目标——…     

Dividend Forecast Biases in Index Option Valuation

Since the early days of option pricing theory,the assumption that the dividends on the underlying stock or index over the life of the contract are known has not been challenged. We examine the sensitivity of index option prices to the assumption of dividend uncertainty. We consider a number of issues related to the forecasting of dividends and build a dividend forecasting model that passes several rigorous tests for unbiasedness. We then generate option prices using contemporary market levels and interest rates. We find that prices generated with the actual dividends are unbiased with respect to those generated using the forecasted dividends. The magnitudes of the forecast errors, however, are sufficiently large to suggest a concern, but the percentage errors are consistently small, typically amounting to less than two percent of the option price. We conclude that the convenient assumption that the stream of future dividendsis known is probably innocuous. This revised version was published online in November 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

Treasury auctions: Uniform or discriminatory?

There has been much discussion of the relative merits of selling government bonds using a uniform-price auction rather than the traditional discriminatory-price auction. Arguments in favor of the former have won the day in respect of the newly instituted auctions of index-linked bonds in the USA and UK. This short paper assesses the evidence and concludes that the advantages of uniform-price auctions have been oversold. Received: 28 May 1999 / Accepted: 27 September 1999     

Investment and Productivity in Canadian and U.S. Food Manufacturing

A restricted cost function model of Canadian and US. food manufacturing shows that productivity growth rates in Canada have remained well below those in the United States for the past decade and a half_: At mean factor prices, output, and capital quantities, processing costs would be 22% lower in the U.S. than in Canada. Technical change in both countries has been labor-saving and material-using, although slightly more so in the US. than in Canada. The labor-saving bias of technical improvements puts Canada at a disadvantage to its southern neighbor, since food manufacturing wages in Canada tend to be lower and material prices higher than in the United States. Enhancing its competitiveness will require that Canada reduce raw food and packaging costs or invest more in research and development .
L'estimation d'une function constraint de coût démontre que le taux de productivité du secteur de la transformation des aliments et boissons au Canada est demeuré inférieur à celui des Etats-Unis depuis une quinzaine d'années. En effet, à la moyenne du prix des intrants, du stock de capital et de la quantité produite, le coût de production américain est de 22 % inférieur à celui du Canada. Dans les deux pays, le changement technologique a permis de substituer le matériel à la main-d'oeuvre, et ceci de façon plus prononcée aux Etats-Unis. En bout de ligne, ceci désavantage le secteur canadien des aliments et boissons puisque les salaires sont généralement inférieurs au Canada alors que le matériet est plus coûteux. Le Canada pourrait améliorer sa compétitivité face aux Etats-Unis en réduisant le prix des denrées et des entrées intermédiaires ou en augmentant l'investissement dans la recherche et le développement .