A research agenda for improving national Ecological Footprint accounts

Nation-level Ecological Footprint accounts are currently produced for more than 150 nations, with multiple calculations available for some nations. The data sets that result from these national assessments typically serve as the basis for Footprint calculations at smaller scales, including those for regions, cities, businesses, and individuals. Global Footprint Network's National Footprint Accounts, supported and used by more than 70 major organizations worldwide, contain the most widely used national accounting methodology today. The National Footprint Accounts calculations are undergoing continuous improvement as better data becomes available and new methodologies are developed. In this paper, a community of active Ecological Footprint practitioners and users propose key research priorities for improving national Ecological Footprint accounting. For each of the proposed improvements, we briefly review relevant literature, summarize the current state of debate, and suggest approaches for further development. The research agenda will serve as a reference for a large scale, international research program devoted to furthering the development of national Ecological Footprint accounting methodology.     

Accounting practices of the St. Joseph Lead Company: 1864-1900

This paper presents the results of an inquiry into the accounting practices of the St. Joseph Lead Company during the nineteenth century. For several decades following its incorporation in 1864 the St. Joseph Lead Company maintained a very crude double-entry bookkeeping system that lacked detailed cost accounting records. In fact, there is little evidence of any type of industrial accounting prior to 1890 when a direct cost responsibility accounting system was established. Thus, the industrial accounting procedures of the St. Joseph Lead Company appear to have lagged far behind the practices of the contemporary British and American mining firms which have been the objects of recent studies. The investigation thereby reveals considerable diversity in the industrial accounting practices of the American mining industry during the second half of the nineteenth century.     

A metaphorical analysis of The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock by T. S. Eliot

Using the theory of conceptualisation of metaphor, this study analyses the imagery created by accounting metaphors of The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock. The paper applies a typology of metaphors as the basis of metaphorical analysis for the detection of accounting in Eliot’s poem. The results of the study suggest that the poem relies on accounting metaphors that use either unstated vehicle concepts, unstated tenor concepts or both to convey dense messages of accounting. An implication arising from the results is that considerable transfers of meaning from one epistemic element to another are needed to unlock Eliot’s accounting messages.     

Retirement Reforms: Occupational Strain and Health

A concurrent increase in the demand for state age pensions and health care has led to reforms in delaying retirement. We employ thirteen waves of longitudinal data to examine the mental and physical health effects of Australian men and women at “early” and “traditional” retirement. We use before and after propensity score matching (PSM) estimates between treatment and control groups of retired and not retired individuals aged 60 and 65 years. The results indicate a negative health effect according to occupational strain for both genders but a positive mental health effect for retirees with access to self‐funded retirement.     

INTRA‐HOUSEHOLD EXPERIMENTS: A SURVEY

Experiments with family groups are rare, but since many decisions are taken at the household level or occur within the household it is an important area to investigate. This paper provides a survey of the recent experimental work on intra‐household decision‐making. I discuss some of the challenges involved in doing experiments with couples and families and consider major areas that remain yet to be explored. While general themes from the research are still emerging, four results repeatedly occur: (1) the absence of efficiency in intra‐household decisions; (2) joint decisions that are not a convex combination of individual decisions; (3) individual behaviour is affected by opportunities for hiding actions from spouses and (4) deviations from standard models of microeconomics in line with those seen in the anomalies literature of individual decision‐making.     

IMag[in]ing annual reports

Visual images are integral elements within corporate annual reports. Yet, these visual images have been largely ignored in accounting research. We begin to explore the significance of selected visual images appearing in U.S. annual reports during the late 1980s and early 1990s. Our intent is not to produce a general survey of images, but rather to offer different “ways of seeing” images and through these “ways of seeing” to encourage a critical dialogue that focuses upon the representational, ideological and constitutive role of images in annual reports. Our first way of seeing views the image as transparently conveying an intended corporate message. The second way of seeing draws upon neo-Marxist aesthetic literature and considers the ways in which images in annual reports may be mined for their ideological content and may also reveal society's deep structures of social classification, institutional forms and relationships. Finally, we employ critical postmodernist art theory to see images in terms of their constitutive role in creating different types of human subjectivities and realities. We argue that this way of seeing creates the potential for new voices to be heard and the possibility to subvert the dualisms typical of the totalizing theories of modernity.     

The Navajo documents: a study of the economic representation and construction of the Navajo

In the mid 1930s, surveyors and other agents from the Bureau of Agricultural Economics and the Soil Conservation Service descended on the Navajo Reservation in the southwest USA. During their short stay, the surveyors produced detailed reports on the extent of overgrazing and soil erosion on the reservation. The reports, which contained maps, tables of numbers, accounts, and photographs claimed to depict and represent the real. As part of social survey research, popular in the UK and US from the turn of the century until World War II, the Navajo documents, as we refer to them, used a form of family budget or income and expenditure report to construct the Navajo economically. Indeed, Navajo families were referred to as consumption units or groups. The economic construction of the Navajo permitted the construction of an economic solution to the Navajo problem. In effect it was demonstrated economically, that the impact of stock reductions, thought necessary to prevent further soil erosion, could be offset by increased agriculture. In contrast to the economic claims, the stock reductions were an economic and social disaster for the Navajo. We approach the economic construction of the Navajo in and through the notion of representation. We draw upon the heightened discussion of this term in art theory in the 1970s and 1980s. We frame our analysis in terms of three relationships — namely, the relationship between representation and depiction, the relationship between representation and the copy and the relationship between representation and the real.     

Reporting issues challenging the National Roads Authority of Papua New Guinea: the case for using local indigenous mechanisms

For many years, considerable resources have been expended on the National Roads Authority of Papua New Guinea to help build up and maintain the road assets for the economic and social development of Papua New Guinea. Evidence from the audit reports of the auditor-general of Papua New Guinea suggests that there appears room to improve the reporting and accountability of this authority through local indigenous mechanisms. The paper is an important warning for donor organizations about opportunism and how to prevent it (and worse).