Pitching research: ‘qualitative cousins’ and the ‘extended family’

This study has two related goals – one very specific and one more general. The specific goal is to constructively engage with Lodhia (2017) on the issue of whether and to what extent ‘qualitative cousins’ are well served by Faff's (2015) original pitching research (PR) template. Using this ‘cousins’ focus as a primer, the more general goal is to update the agenda created by Faff (2015) and in so doing, explore the ‘extended family’ of PR work/resources now available.     

Longitudinal modeling of insurance claim counts using jitters

Modeling insurance claim counts is a critical component in the ratemaking process for property and casualty insurance. This article explores the usefulness of copulas to model the number of insurance claims for an individual policyholder within a longitudinal context. To address the limitations of copulas commonly attributed to multivariate discrete data, we adopt a ‘jittering’ method to the claim counts which has the effect of continuitizing the data. Elliptical copulas are proposed to accommodate the intertemporal nature of the ‘jittered’ claim counts and the unobservable subject-specific heterogeneity on the frequency of claims. Observable subject-specific effects are accounted in the model by using available covariate information through a regression model. The predictive distribution together with the corresponding credibility of claim frequency can be derived from the model for ratemaking and risk classification purposes. For empirical illustration, we analyze an unbalanced longitudinal dataset of claim counts observed from a portfolio of automobile insurance policies of a general insurer in Singapore. We further establish the validity of the calibrated copula model, and demonstrate that the copula with ‘jittering’ method outperforms standard count regression models.     

Good cop,bad cop: Complementarities between debt and equity in disciplining management

We demonstrate an inherent conflict between ex ante efficient monitoring and liquidation decisions by outside claimholders. We show it can be useful to commit to inefficient liquidation when monitors fail to produce information: this provides stronger incentives to monitor. The implication for firm capital structure is that more information is generated about firm prospects – and hence firm value increases – when a firm’s cash flow is split into a ‘safe’ claim (debt) and a ‘risky’ claim (equity) compared to when a single claim is sold. We also derive the optimal allocation of control rights between safe and risky claims. This partially resolves the Tirole (2001) puzzle as to why firms issue multiple securities that generate ex post conflicts of interest.     

The Use of Budget Reforms to Modernize Governance in German Local Government

This article provides early results from a long-term evaluation of the turnaround strategies by poorly-performing local authorities in England. The history and theory behind central government interventions into local government is reviewed, focusing on the Comprehensive Performance Assessment (CPA). The journeys taken by 10 local authorities, after being labelled as ‘poor’ or ‘weak’, are described and these responses are located within the literature on theories of turnaround and public sector service improvement. The authors conclude by setting out a research agenda for the future.     

Agenda Entrance Complexity in International Accounting Standard Setting: The Case of IFRS for SMEs

Features of rational decision making (such as agenda entrance criteria and statement of jurisdiction) barely conceal the complexity of international accounting standard setting. In 2003, when the International Financial Reporting Standard for Small and Medium‐sized Entities (IFRS for SMEs) project achieved agenda entrance, the International Accounting Standards Board's (IASB) jurisdiction was to develop, ‘a single set of … accounting standards … to help participants in the world's capital markets’. Drawing on interviewees' recollections and other material, this study of how the project achieved agenda entrance finds within‐IASB opposition to the project, arguing it was outside the IASB's jurisdiction that dissolved with the realisation that the IASB's jurisdiction would be changed to encompass the project.     

Are wildcard events on infrastructure systems opportunities for transformational change?

Infrastructure systems face a number of pressing challenges relating to demographics, environment, finance and governance pressures. Furthermore, infrastructure mediates the way in which everyday lives are conducted; their form and function creating a persistence of unsustainable practice and behaviour that cannot be changed even if change is desired. There is a need to find means by which this obduracy can be broken so that new, more sustainable futures can be planned. This paper develops a methodology, taking concepts from both engineering and social science. Wild cards, or physical disruptions, are used to ‘destructively test’ complex infrastructure systems and the multi-level perspective is used as a framework for analysing the resulting data. This methodology was used to examine a number of case studies, and with focus groups consisting of a range of different infrastructure providers and managers, to gain a better understanding of systems’ socio-technical characteristics and behaviours. A number of impactful ‘intervention points’ emerged that offered the opportunity to promote radical changes towards configurations of infrastructure systems that provide for ‘less’ physical infrastructure. This paper also examines the utility of wild cards as enablers of transition to these ‘less’ configurations and demonstrates how a ‘wild card scenario’ can be used to co-design infrastructure adaptation from with both infrastructure providers and users.     

The construction of accountant identity in a transitioning economy: the case of Vietnam

This study investigates the complex and multi‐faceted ways in which Vietnamese accountants have (re)constructed their occupational identity within a context of ongoing socio‐political and economic development. The concept of ‘identity work’ and Bourdieu's notions of field, habitus and capital guide the investigation, with the evidence base comprising a series of interviews with Vietnamese accountants. Three interpretive schemes are identified as ‘operating principles’ that characterise accountants’ identity construction. These patterns are outcomes of the negotiations of accountants with their respective institutional environment in which accountants’ negotiating power is fuelled by their experience (habitus) and capital (economic, social and cultural capital).     

Bridging the academic–policy-making gap: practice and policy issues

How policy-makers engage with academics is both a current ‘hot’ topic and a perennial problem. Policy initiatives such as the Research Excellence Framework's (REF) so-called ‘impact agenda’ have ‘pushed’ academics towards seeking more such engagement, whilst others ‘pull’ towards it, such as ‘open policy-making’. Apart from some biographical accounts and case studies, surprisingly little is known at a more general level about how policy-makers do actually engage with academic research and expertise. Analysis of these policies, as well as empirical evidence from the British civil service, suggest these engagements may be generating more ‘endarkenment’ (to use Weiss's term) than enlightenment.     

Cold,warm, warmer,hot! Locating financial literacy hot spots

One of the key challenges of the financial literacy agenda involves resource allocation decisions. Given competing priorities, an approach to identifying areas of greatest need is required. It is argued that such prioritisation may be determined by assessing vulnerability, referred to as ‘hot spots’ of vulnerability. This article examines the specific vulnerability ‘hot spot’ of financial fraud. Vulnerability is defined as those areas that have experienced comparatively greater concentration of financial fraud cases. Drawing on criminological theory, in particular aspects of the operational practice of ‘hot spots’ policing, a framework for resource allocation decision making within the financial literacy context is presented. Analogous with hot spots policing, concentration of resources to ‘known’ areas of vulnerability is likely to result in more impactful financial literacy outcomes.     

The customer knowledge journey

Customer relationship management (CRM) is the hot topic for many organisations at the moment. this could produce significant returns on investment and deliver the objective of a one-to-one relationship with customers, but it also puts a greater onus on companies to actually deliver their ‘brand promise’. For CRM to be sustainable it has to embed the learning from its relationships with customers within a clearly defined customer strategy and deliver tactics that fulfil that common goal of true CRM.     

The future imagined: Exploring fiction as a means of reflecting on today’s Grand Societal Challenges and tomorrow’s options

European science policy (so-called Horizon 2020) is guided by Grand Societal Challenges (GSCs) with the explicit aim of shaping the future. In this paper we propose an innovative approach to the analysis and critique of Europe’s GSCs. The aim is to explore how speculative and creative fiction offer ways of embodying, telling, imagining, and symbolising ‘futures’, that can provide alternative frames and understandings to enrich the grand challenges of the 21st century, and the related rationale and agendas for ERA and H2020. We identify six ways in which filmic and literary representations can be considered creative foresight methods (i.e. through: creative input, detail, warning, reflection, critique, involvement) and can provide alternative perspectives on these central challenges, and warning signals for the science policy they inform. The inquiry involved the selection of 64 novels and movies engaging with notions of the future, produced over the last 150 years. Content analysis based on a standardised matrix of major themes and sub-domains, allows to build a hierarchy of themes and to identify major patterns of long-lasting concerns about humanity’s future. The study highlights how fiction sees oppression, inequality and a range of ethical issues linked to human and nature’s dignity as central to, and inseparable from innovation, technology and science. It concludes identifying warning signals in four major domains, arguing that these signals are compelling, and ought to be heard, not least because elements of such future have already escaped the imaginary world to make part of today’s experience. It identifies areas poorly defined or absent from Europe's science agenda, and argues for the need to increase research into human, social, political and cultural processes involved in techno-science endeavours.     

Mediating Interests: The Accountancy Bodies' Responses to the McFarlane Report

There is now a considerable literature on the significance for accountants of their being accepted as a profession. The claim that they have regard to ‘the public interest’ in their activities is a central feature of the accountancy bodies’ claims to being accepted as a ‘profession’. This, they argue, distinguishes them from trade associations and trade unions. The claim is significant for both their economic and symbolic value. This paper examines the accountancy bodies’ claims by examining their responses to the 1992 publication of a discussion document The Future of Auditing by the Auditing Practices Board. Responses by four major professional bodies are analysed in detail. It is concluded that most of them do not attempt to redeem the claim to have regard to the public interest. Instead, they are mainly concerned to promote their members' private interests, frequently by advocating policy measures that will advance their own members' interests at the expense of those of other accountancy bodies. The significance of the contradiction between the transparency of this advocacy and the considerable effort expended in claiming to act in the public interest is discussed.     

Individualization revisited: global family developments,uncertainty and risk

Abstract

As part of our special issue appreciating the work of Ulrich Beck, this article introduces and rearticulates his concept of individualization for an audience beyond those engaged with sociological theory. It is argued to be the ‘forgotten half’ of Beck’s approach that is in particular need of both restatement and reaffirmation of its contemporary relevance. It does so by firstly contextualizing and explaining its comparatively limited impact before elaborating the stages of the individualizing process and how his key notion of ‘disembedding without re-embedding’ is distinct from traditional sociological understanding of the individualizing dynamic within modernity. Its relevance and utility is then indicated through surveying developments in family and affective relations in China and America, two of Beck’s ideal types of individualization pattern. Both demonstrate a pattern of radical ‘disembedding’, and a conscious and partial ‘re-embedding’ in the case of the ‘neo-traditional’ American middle-class family. Following this, the article suggests a stronger potential connection between the risk and individualization dimensions of his approach than was drawn out by Beck himself, through focusing upon the uncertainty created by disembedding. The uncertainty that follows from individualization suggests precautionary retreat into security and the construction of risk as a means of embodying and managing uncertainty. Recognition of this social dynamic is potentially more useful in understanding risk than the better-known but very general theory of reflexive modernization that is the other half of Beck’s contribution to risk research.     

Sustainability + Accounting Education: The Elephant in the Classroom

Despite the growing importance of sustainability and the sustainable development agenda, and despite the growing presence of papers recognising the critical interaction between sustainability and accounting and finance (and, indeed, with all social science), there has been a relatively muted response apparent within the accounting education literature itself. This relative lack of literature may well be unexpected but what is not unexpected is the difficulty that accounting and finance teachers have in developing such demanding new ideas with accounting and finance students in the classroom. Without in any sense gainsaying the considerable impediments to innovation, this explicitly polemical essay seeks to address a more fundamental difficulty: that of the way in which sustainability is approached and represented in both the literature and the classroom itself. The contention is that, unless sustainability is ‘keeping you awake at night’, you do not understand it. The paper seeks to support this contention and then offers an example of one undergraduate course that is explicitly designed to stop students sleeping peacefully.     

Employee stock options as warrants

Previous studies ignore the fact that employee stock options are warrants because these options have been an insignificant component of firms’ capital structures. I show that this assumption is no longer correct. For example, for more than 36% of my sample firms, employee stock options represent a more significant claim on firm value than the firm’s debt and preferred stock combined. Moreover, in contrast to the suggestions of previous research, I show that employee stock options are a significant claim on firms throughout the economy, including larger firms, older firms, and firms in “Old Economy” industries. Finally, I show that the presumption in prior studies that employee stock options are not warrants causes a potential misunderstanding of the risk-shifting interests of securityholders and biases the analysis of capital structure issues.     

Agenda formation and accounting standards setting: lessons from the standards setters

There are many studies on lobbying of accounting standards, but the technical agenda of regulators is taken as ‘given’ and why a particular topic was admitted to the agenda is not investigated. Agenda formation is important as control of the agenda determines which topics get regulated and the form of the regulatory response. A few studies have explored agenda formation across regulatory institutions but are largely silent on the role of individual decision makers and technical staff. However, the standards setters have sought to explain their agenda processes. This paper reviews statements by the members of accounting standards setting agencies about their experiences of agenda formation. It identifies insights gained from standard setters and makes some suggestions for future research.     

Assessing bank competition for consumer loans

Based on frontier analysis, we derive inferences of bank consumer loan competition from estimating a revenue-cost ‘competition efficiency’ (CE) frontier. The competitiveness of the $400 billion U.S. bank consumer loan market is then assessed by comparing results from our frontier CE measure with other competition measures, such as HHI, Lerner Index, and H-Statistic. These measures are weakly related to one another and only half of them identify banks with the highest loan price as also being the least competitive. This is the opposite of what is expected. Using the frontier CE measure, the most and least competitive banks are not located in the most populous states and the largest banks are underrepresented. Overall, the HHI should not be used to indicate competition.     

Cutting to the core? A reflection upon recent education policy debates within the Institute of Chartered Accountants in England and Wales

Knowledge is widely regarded as a characteristic of professions, but given the ever-increasing knowledge base, professional accountancy bodies have begun to question whether professional examinations can continue to cover all areas relevant to the work of accountants. At the heart of the debate about how the professional knowledge base is to be defined lie questions about how chartered accountants are ‘made’. This paper discusses the introduction of a ‘core and options’ model for professional accountancy education as a possible means of ‘making the chartered accountant’. Using Porter's (1981) theory of historical explanation, it discusses an episode in the recent history of education policy at The Institute of Chartered Accountants in England and Wales (ICAEW) which illuminates aspects of the core and options model. The paper concludes that, while the introduction of core curricula in accounting education can be justified on educational grounds, the rejection of core curricula by ICAEW suggests that educational debates were strongly influenced by the wider political, economic, social and professional environments and the resultant educational policy can be viewed as the product of a variety of competing agendas.     

Metropolitan vision making – using backcasting as a strategic learning process to shape metropolitan futures

The need for new forward-looking tools in urban planning is immense: new functional relations and structures are now stretching beyond our capacity to ‘rationally’ capture modern metropolitan spaces (Neumann & Hull, 2009). At the same time, cities struggle to find tools to help manage their long-term transition towards a low-carbon, resource-smart economy.In 2006–2007, the municipalities in the Helsinki metropolitan region organised an international competition for ideas titled “Greater Helsinki Vision 2050.” It drew a good number of entries in the competition stage and later helped bring together the awarded participants with local planning professionals and citizens.This paper explores the process behind the vision-making exercise and evaluates its success in providing new tools for the long-term transition to a low-carbon, resource-smart Helsinki metropolitan region. The theoretical framework used in this paper is ‘incrementalism with perspective’ (Ganser, Siebel & Sieverts, 1993) and its ideas on using long-term visions in the integration and coordination of incremental activities in various institutions. We perceive the backcasting scenario method (Dreborg, 1996) as a tool for implementing this approach and hence interpret the case example’s results through the framework of this method.The Greater Helsinki Vision 2050 competition was an example of a vision-oriented planning process that provided new tools for bringing the ‘unmanageable’ metropolitan region within the scope of the manageable. The backcasting approach was deployed as a tool for emancipating stakeholders to imagine alternative futures for metropolitan spaces.The backcasting scenario method should be considered a viable tool when managing vision-oriented planning processes: longer than usual time horizons help initiate strategic learning among stakeholders. However, in addition to civil servants, citizens and other stakeholders should be widely engaged in order to secure sustainable results.