Sanac Inc.: From ABC to time-driven ABC (TDABC) – An instructional case

This case deals with the decision of Sanac Inc., a Belgian wholesale company, on whether to proceed with the implementation of an activity-based costing (ABC) system or switch to time-driven activity-based costing (TDABC). As a business consultant, you are hired to decide about the appropriate costing method. Your task is to decide which system the company should implement, given the desire of the president of the company to calculate profitability at the order and the customer level.     

Leadership training and organizational learning climate: Measuring influences based on a field experiment in education

Research considering the effects of leadership training and development is underresearched. However, leadership behaviour can generate greater levels of performance and satisfaction. In this study, the effect of a group reflective learning programme for school leaders is examined. The study questions whether leadership development, using a group reflective learning programme that focuses on coaching skills, can influence teacher perceptions of the organizational learning climate. Gaining a deeper insight in factors influencing organizational learning climate is important because organizational learning climate is associated with job motivation, job satisfaction, positive working conditions and the optimizing of training outcomes. Hence, a positive organizational learning climate can contribute to organizational performance, in the case of primary education delivering quality education to pupils. Based on a sample of 289 teachers, it turned out that school leaders’ participation in the group reflective learning programme resulted in a significant increase of teachers’ perceptions of the organizational learning climate. The results are inspiring for scholars, policy makers and practitioners.     

Accurate test limits under nonnormal measurement error

When screening a production process for nonconforming items the objective is to improve the average outgoing quality level. Due to measurement errors specification limits cannot be checked directly and hence test limits are required, which meet some given requirement, here given by a prescribed bound on the consumer loss. Classical test limits are based on normality, both for the product characteristic and for the measurement error. In practice, often nonnormality occurs for the product characteristic as well as for the measurement error. Recently, nonnormality of the product characteristic has been investigated. In this paper attention is focussed on the measurement error. Firstly, it is shown that nonnormality can lead to serious failure of the test limit. New test limits are therefore derived, which have the desired robustness property: a small loss under normality and a large gain in case of nonnormality when compared to the normal test limit. Monte Carlo results illustrate that the asymptotic theory is in agreement with moderate sample behaviour.     

House prices, consumption, and monetary policy: a financial accelerator approach

We consider a general equilibrium model with frictions in credit markets used by households. In our economy, houses provide housing services to consumers and serve as collateral to lower borrowing cost. We show that this amplifies and propagates the effect of monetary policy shocks on housing investment, house prices and consumption. We also consider the effect of a structural change in credit markets that lowers the transaction costs of additional borrowing against housing equity. We show that such a change would increase the effect of monetary policy shocks on consumption, but would decrease the effect on house prices and housing investment.