INTERPRETING THE DYNAMICS OF PUBLIC SECTOR BUDGETING: A DIALECTIC OF CONTROL APPROACH

Developing a dialectic of control theoretical framework, the paper shows how the theory may be applied to explain turbulence in public sector budgeting. Applying the framework to fieldwork research in two large UK local authorities, the study explores the knowledge and intentionality of actors engaged in budgeting. Focusing on a crisis in educational funding, cognitive issues based around unreliability of cost and planning data were significant factors behind tactical successes for local budgetees. Central government, however, was able to exert power through its ability to change the rules, leading to new structures for public education provision. The dialectical framework avoids the reductionism and functionalism that characterises some of the budget gaming literature and also has potential implications for interpreting step changes in public funding.     

A practical solution to the problem of ultimate ruin probability

Abstract

It was the Swiss actuary Chr. Moser who, in lectures at Bern University at the turn of the century, gave the name “self-renewing aggregate” to what Vajda (1947) has called the “unstationary community” of lives, namely where deaths at any epoch are immediately replaced by an equivalent number of births. It was Moser too (1926) who coined the expression “steady state” for the stationary community in which the age distribution at any time follows the life table (King, 1887). With such a distinguished actuarial history, excellently summarized by Saxer (1958, Ch. IV), it behoves every actuary to know at least the definitions and modus operandi of today's so-called renewal (point), or recurrent event, processes.     

How Internet technologies impact information flows in R&D: reconsidering the technological gatekeeper

Previous studies have firmly established the technological gatekeeper to be a key node in the innovation process – acquiring, translating, and disseminating external information throughout the R&D unit. However, the gatekeeper concept has received modest attention in recent times. We argue that the concept needs to be re‐examined in light of the recent advances in Internet technologies that have dramatically altered how knowledge workers source and share their information. Drawing on social network analysis and interview evidence from a medical devices R&D group, we find that the gatekeeper role is still vital, but no longer needs to be performed by a single individual. Instead, the modern R&D group can keep abreast of the latest technological advances through a combination of Internet‐enabled internal and external communication specialists. This study makes a number of important contributions. The gatekeeper theory is extended through the development of an updated conceptual framework. We also discuss the practical implications of our findings and advise R&D managers on how to organise resources to maximise optimal information flows.     

The probability of decrements from a population. A study in discrete random processes

Abstract

The statistician, whether he be biologist, actuary, or worker III the social sciences, often requires to measure the intensity of some decremental force, or forces, acting on an observed body of individuals. The latter may be human beings, animals, or even inanimate objects (e. g. aircraft), and the decrements considered may range from marriage to‘write-off’. N evertheless the assumptions made are, for the most part, analogous and the technique adopted is broadly the same in every case: the decrements are assumed to be random (in the technical sense) and they are related to the body in which they have occurred (the so-called‘exposed to risk’) in order to obtain a relative frequency, or‘rate’, of decrement.     

Indian Ocean Rim: Assessing the prospects for cooperation and integration

This article assesses recent events leading to the establishment in 1997 of a regional organisation for the Indian Ocean Rim, subtitled an Association for Regional Cooperation (IOR‐ARC). This is a case of ‘open’ regionalism of the functionalist kind. New members may be admitted in 1999 and, as trade integration has not been ruled out, the openness of the design may lead to the changeover from regional cooperation to regional integration after 2004. By 2003 the members of the Association for South‐East Asian Nations (Asean) of the IOR‐ARC will have free‐trade arrangements in that region and by 2004 the SADC members of the IOR‐ARC will be similarly structured, making a free‐trade scenario within the IOR almost irresistible. This will create new problems, making it very difficult for the less competitive nations to endorse their continued membership of this bloc unless project cooperation now under way makes complementarity more meaningful, equipping states and market sectors to cope better with the more competitive nature of free trade that always applies in market integration. This will pose great challenges for South Africa.     

Management accounting and corporate governance: An institutional interpretation of the agency problem

Challenging the dominant economic agency theory of corporate governance with a new discourse drawn from institutional theory, the paper analyses how management accounting is implicated in corporate governance. The proposed institutional theory of agency links the micro-institutions of the organization that are informed by the practices of management accounting with external institutional players and stakeholders. The paper identifies emerging narratives in which the management accounting profession has recognised a distinctive, post-Enron set of sensibilities. Although techniques drawn from strategic management accounting can be adapted to embed better corporate governance practices, the institutional theory of agency identifies tensions between the heroic CEO narrative and the routinization of strategy implicit in strategic management accounting.     

Accounting and Competitive Tendering in UK Local Government: An Institutionalist Interpretation of the New Public Management

The paper applies institutional theory to analyse the changing role of accounting and contracting in UK local government as the compulsory competitive tendering (CCT) regime was extended to white-collar activities such as housing management, finance, legal services and information technology. Employing an organizational fields model, accounting changes were seen to be influenced by a combination of legal coercion, normative and competitive forces, the resistance and manipulation of the large local authorities together with the facticity of the new accounting and contracting regimes. The theoretical framework is applied to field-work carried out in a large metropolitan authority in the north of England where CCT methodologies directly affected housing management but not other services such as finance. Although resisting CCT for finance, the authority subsequently introduced a radical scheme of voluntary competitive tendering for selected finance processes. The paper examines how accounting and contracting may be adapted to emerging trends in the New Public Management associated with Best Value policies.