Encouraging group skills in accountancy students: an innovative apporach

This paper evalutes a three year programme in a UK university which recently won the Partnership Award from Cooper & Lybrand, Deloitte for innovation in higher education. The programme aims to encourage student to work in groups and to reflect upon the processes and the group dynamics involved. The first part of the paper provides the context for the paper and the context in which the programme runs. n example of a case study used in the programme is described in detail and the way in which it draws together subject areas within the degree is illustrated. Finally the programme is evaluted in terms of its successes and its problem areas.     

试论对各类就业困难群体的指导与帮助

本文通过对高校就业困难群体种类的界定,分析了目前高校就业困难群体的成因,并就今后如何进一步加强对就业困难群体的指导与帮助提出了对策。     

Nested identities as cognitive drivers of strategy

Research Summary: Organizations face tensions to conform to industry norms for legitimacy yet differentiate for competitive advantage when implementing strategies. We suggest this tension is due to and resolved through organizations’ cognitive negotiations of multiple levels of identity. Through an inductive study in the recreational vehicle industry, we find that organizations concurrently draw on identities at the organizational, industry, and strategic group levels to formulate and enact specific competitive actions. Specifically, we find that organizational identity relates to decisions on product offerings; industry identity relates to downstream strategy; and strategic group identity relates to upstream strategy, firm boundaries, and expansion mode. Our findings highlight the importance of strategic group identity and inform a grounded model describing how organizations draw upon different levels of identity to influence strategy. Managerial Summary: Many managers experience tensions of differentiating their firms’ competitive actions from rivals, while conforming with industry norms and practices. In this article, we argue that a manager can navigate these tensions by understanding their firm, strategic group, and industry identities and how these identities interrelate. Through a qualitative case study of the U.S. recreational vehicle industry, we show that each level of identity influences different competitive actions, with firm identity connected to product offerings, industry identity related to managing downstream distribution, and strategic group identity related to firm boundary and acquisition strategies. Overall, strategic group identity is the most critical for managers as this level filters how they view competitors and provides the rules of competition.     

高校学困生转化探析

随着时代的发展,人们越来越关注教育中的每一个个体,越来越重视教育质量整体的提高。文章分析了高校学困生的现状及产生原因,并对学困生转化提出了几点思考。     

民间集资现象透析

本文总结了民间集资的成因,现状和困境,并针对其规范和发展提出了相关政策性建议。     

Impacts of Asynchronous Learning Networks on Individual and Group Problem Solving: A Field Experiment

An Asynchronous Learning Network (ALN) is a Computer-Mediated Communication System designed to support "anytime/anywhere" interaction among students and between students and instructors. A field experiment compared groups and individuals solving an ethical case scenario, with and without an ALN, to determine the separate and joint effects of communication medium and teamwork. Dependent variables include quality and length of the reports, and subjective perceptions of learning and satisfaction. The results indicate that that an ALN enhances the quantity and quality of the solutions to an ethical case scenario. The combination of teamwork with ALN-support increases the students' perception of learning. Although the perception of collaborative learning was similar between ALN-supported and unsupported groups, participants in computer-mediated groups reported lower perceptions of discussion quality than participants in manual groups.     

Reasons To Be Ethical: Self-Interest and Ethical Business

This paper examines the self-interested reasons that businesses can have for ethical behaviour. It distinguishes between economic and non-economic reasons and, among the latter, notes those connected with the self-esteem of managers. It offers a detailed typology of prudential reasons for ethical behaviour, laying particular stress on those to do with avoiding punishment by society for wrongdoing and, more particularly still, stresses the role of campaigning pressure groups within that particular category of reasons. It goes on to suggest that because of their occupation of the moral high ground, campaigning groups are well placed to damage the self-esteem of managers and that this is why those groups seem able to exert an influence that goes beyond their somewhat limited capacity to inflict economic damage upon businesses. The paper concludes with the suggestion that we may be witnessing a virtuous spiral whereby rising public expectations of morality in business lead to ever increasing moral commitments by business that then cause those expectations to rise still further.     

Foreign affiliates of the world largest financial groups: Locations and governance

This paper has two objectives. The first is the documentation of the relative importance of the largest financial groups in the world. The list of top 50 financial groups ranked by total assets in 2003 is compared to a similar list available for 1986. The second objective is to examine where financial firms are expanding their operations and to document some of the factors that may explain the most-favoured locations of these financial groups.The results of this study have two important implications. First, they indicate that location-specific advantages such as size, human capital and cultural distance, do provide an explication of the internationalization of financial firms. Second, they show that good governance has a strong impact on the choice of countries by firms.     

Trade Credit, Corporate Groups, and the Financing of Belgian Firms

We investigate the role of trade credit as a source of financing. Using a sample of 661 large non-financial Belgian firms for the 1989–1991 period, we find that the amount of trade credit a buyer takes is determined by his need for funds and the internally available funds. Trade credit is primarily used to finance short-term assets. As such, it seems to be an important alternative not only for short-term bank debt but also for long-term financial debt, including intragroup debt. We find no evidence that the amount of trade credit taken is influenced by affiliation with the supplier.     

Entry Facilitation by Environmental Groups

We consider a model of vertical product differentiation where consumers care about the environmental damage their consumption causes. An environmental group is capable of increasing consumers’ environmental concern via a costly campaign. We show that the prospect of such a campaign can induce entry by a firm that is able to employ a cleaner technology than the one used by the incumbent. We further demonstrate that the subsequent competition can lead to an adverse effect on aggregate pollution, i.e. the decline in average industry pollution per product is offset by the increase in aggregate production.