Ethnographic Accounting Research: Field Notes from the Frontier

Ethnographic fieldwork in accounting is scarce and remains a “frontier” methodology, unfamiliar to most accounting researchers. Building on our field research project on corporate accountability and stakeholder engagement, set in the Canadian Arctic, we illustrate in this article the use and explanatory power of ethnographic methods for studying social groups and individual actors in the broader accounting universe. We share our fieldwork strategies and provide a few practical tips for conducting ethnographic research in both corporate and community environments. We then argue that ethnographies provide accounting researchers with untapped opportunities to discover vast reservoirs of knowledge inaccessible to other research methods, and offer a path to humanize accounting research.     

中国通货膨胀与通货膨胀不确定性的非线性关系

本文利用1983年1月~2007年1月CPI月度数据,应用Hamilton提出的能同时发现数据线性和非线性关系的随机场回归模型,对中国通货膨胀与通货膨胀不确定性的非线性关系进行实证研究。实证的结论支持了Friedman-Ball假设和Cukierman-Meltzer假设。前者呈现U型的非线性关系,这意味高的通货膨胀和通货紧缩都将导致高的不确定性,这一发现补充了Friedman-Ball假设;而对于后者,呈现出更为复杂的N型非线性关系。本文的结论对中央银行控制通货膨胀不确定性具有一定的借鉴意义。     

The Use of Management Accounting Techniques by Small and Medium‐Sized Enterprises: A Field Study of Canadian and Australian Practice

Small and medium‐sized enterprises (SMEs) represent a large and important part of developed economies. However, little is known about the extent to which SMEs use contemporary management accounting (MA) techniques such as costing systems, budgets, responsibility center reporting, and analysis for decision making. To address this gap in the literature, we conducted in‐depth field interviews at 22 SMEs to: (1) determine the extent to which common MA techniques and tools are being used by SMEs; and (2) explore the underlying reasons why specific MA techniques are not being used. We find that of the 19 common MA techniques covered in our interviews, a very small number are moderately or highly used by our respondent companies. Moreover, we find that manufacturing companies in our study are more likely to use a broader set of techniques such as costing systems, operating budgets, and variance analysis and that smaller, early‐stage SMEs are the lightest users of MA tools overall. We identify three main factors affecting the adoption and use of MA techniques: (1) the perceived decision‐usefulness of the technique; (2) the complexity of the SMEs’ operating environment; and (3) the age of the SME. We discuss the contributions of our study and its potential implications for MA educators, developers of professional education programs, designers of SME control systems, and textbook authors.     

Subtle discrimination in the rental housing market: Evidence from e-mail correspondence with landlords

We find that landlords practice subtle discrimination in the rental housing market through the use of language associated with describing and viewing a unit, inviting further correspondence, making a formal greeting, and using polite language when replying to e-mail inquiries from a white name more often than to an African American name, they also send longer e-mails and respond quicker to white names.     

The effect of smileys as motivational incentives on children’s fruit and vegetable choice,consumption and waste: A field experiment in schools in five European countries

To assess whether smiley stamps work as a motivational incentive to promote fruit and vegetable eating among children, we conducted a field experiment in ten primary schools in five European countries using one control and one treatment school per country. The six-week experiment was split into three two-week phases before, during and after the smiley was implemented. During the smiley phase, the children received a smiley stamp for choosing a portion of fruits or vegetables. We find an increase attributed to the smiley stamp on children’s fruit and vegetable choice and consumption, but also waste. Comparing the effects across countries, we observe significant variations in the smiley effect. This study thus demonstrates, in general, that a low-cost, easy-to-implement incentive such as a smiley stamp has the potential to motivate school children to increase their fruit and vegetable consumption; the study simultaneously underscores the high relevance of context for the effects of incentives.     

Disseminating new farming practices among small scale farmers: An experimental intervention in Uganda

We used a randomized control trial to measure how the free distribution of hybrid seeds and chemical fertilizers for maize production affected their adoption by small-scale farmers in the subsequent seasons. Information on their demand for the same inputs for two years after the initial trial revealed that the demand of the free-input recipients was significantly higher than that of non-recipients; that of the neighbors of the recipients fell in-between. The initial treatment assignment has a persistent influence on the farmers’ demand whereas the difference between the free-input recipients and their neighbors has been reduced over time. The reduction of their gap in the demand for fertilizers is partly driven by social learning through information networks. However, there was no clear evidence on learning effects from peers on the demand for the hybrid seeds.     

稻壳循环流化床热风炉的炉膛结构设计

作者在循环流化床锅炉传热理论和设计研究的基础上，提出一种稻壳流化燃烧的热风炉的计算方法，以60万大卡热风炉为例，主要介绍了流化床锅炉炉膛的几何尺寸确定、布风板及风帽的选型设计等，为其他系列稻壳循环流化床热风炉设计提供依据。     

Is Beauty in the Aisles of the Retailer? Package Processing in Visually Complex Contexts

Visual appeal is an important consideration in the design of brand packages because attractiveness guides behavior. The visual complexity of a context (i.e., the quantity, irregularity, detail, and dissimilarity of objects) in which a retailer displays a package may impact its attractiveness by influencing attention and processing fluency. Employing consumer samples, and stimuli ranging from the abstract to the realistic, three studies provide evidence that people process a package more fluently, thus increasing its attractiveness, when it is presented in a low rather than high complexity context. This effect is more pronounced with inherently appealing packages, and with people who are more field-dependent or pursuing utilitarian shopping goals. Study 1 establishes effects by employing psychometric measures and abstract stimuli; study 2 corroborates findings with another product category and realistic stimuli; and study 3 complements psychometric measures with eye tracking data to demonstrate that visually more complex contexts divert viewer attention, hereby lowering processing fluency and target attractiveness. The authors discuss the theoretical contribution and strategic insights the research provides for retailers, brand managers, and designers.     

水溶性涂料使用性能研究

<正> 1997年7月初爆发的东南亚金融危机,已历经数月,至今仍余波不断,这不仅使东南亚各国的经济发展面临重大挫折,而且也触发了香港、纽约等世界性股票市场掀起急剧大幅下挫浪潮,从而引起各有关国家政府和国际货币基金组织等的高度关注。应当说,这次发生在亚太地区的金融危机的程度和涉及面都远远超过了几年前发生在墨西哥的金     

What's inside matters: The impact of ingredient branding on consumers' purchasing behaviours in services

Ingredient branding has been widely used as a marketing strategy to create added value and enhance market competitiveness in a variety of durable and non-durable product categories. Despite its prevalence in practice, current research into ingredient branding offers little guidance for the services sector and is, in any event, limited to studies that analyse intentions rather than actual behaviours. This paper contributes to the literature by using scenario-based and field experiments to examine the impact of ingredient branding on consumers' purchasing behaviours in a service context. The scenario-based experiments highlight the mediating role of quality perception on willingness to pay, which increases by up to 9 % for a food item that is ingredient branded. The results of the field experiment show that the actual sales of an item increase by 40 % when it is ingredient branded. Consequently, this paper provides both theoretical and managerial insights into the favourable impact of ingredient branding on consumers’ purchasing behaviour. This paper concludes by proposing an agenda for future research.