Designing a bridge program for internationally educated accountants in an era of resource constraints

Internationally educated professionals (IEPs) encounter significant barriers to entry to their professions upon immigrating. Obtaining education in the new country is an effective means of improving their positions. While universities emphasize the need to attract and serve adult learners and a more diverse clientele, the specific needs of immigrants are rarely reflected in institutional policies. I discuss our pilot program for internationally educated accountants (IEAs), its elements, and best practices. Our program was very successful, but may be beyond the reach of many universities due to financial or personnel constraints. I therefore include a cost/benefit framework to analyze each program feature. With this information, institutions may be able to partially implement a program, maximizing the benefit given their resources. Furthermore, some of the program elements could also be useful for international students, domestic students who will work alongside international colleagues, or domestic students who will work internationally themselves.     

Design of legal audits for utilization management

Liability for managed care risks, the enactment of detailed state regulation of utilization management and the process requirements of accreditation agencies and managed care customers all create the need for new approaches to legal auditing. Concepts from industrial quality management theory can be used to define process elements that serve the legal adequacy of the utilization management process. The information systems that record information gathered and judgments made by reviewers and generate basic notices of certification can be designed so as to produce data relevant to compliance and liability management. These key process elements then can be analyzed statistically to develop plans for preventive counseling.     

Designing management control in hybrid organizations: The role of path creation and morphogenesis

Path-creating change in organizational form is proposed as an important element in achieving management control in hybrid organizations. Using case examples from large-scale projects in the architectural, engineering, and construction industry, as well as from joint ventures in the oil and gas industry, we highlight the role of mindfully synthesizing new organizational forms in the design of management control systems. A series of paradoxes is disclosed, in which attempts to achieve control through mimetic adoption of established management control techniques lead to reduced control. On the other hand, path-creating deviations from institutionalized practices, resulted in improved project and venture performance. It has been argued that the design of inter-organizational management control systems seeks to enable organizations to compete for resources and efficiency, and also to obtain institutional legitimacy. Institutional theory proposes that isomorphism permits organizations to obtain that legitimacy and explains their design. In this paper, we propose that path creation and morphogenesis, which deviates from isomorphism, is an additional consideration in explaining management control system design.     

Auditing and accounting for program efficiency and management efficiency in not-for-profit entities

A measure of efficiency for not-for-profit entities - developed by the authors in association with Edward Rhodes - is explained and illustrated by data from Program Follow Through, a large scale social experiment in U.S. public school education. A division into Follow Through and Non-Follow Through participants facilitates a distinction between “program efficiency” and “managerial efficiency” which is also illustrated and examined for its use in evaluating such programs. Relations to comprehensive audits and other possible uses are explored.     

Designing a Countercyclical Insurance Program for Systemic Risk

This article proposes a framework for measuring and managing systemic risk. Current solvency regulations have been criticized for their focus on individual firms rather than the system as a whole. We show how an insurance program can be designed to deal with systemic risk through a risk charge on participating institutions. The risk charge is based on the generalized co‐conditional tail expectation, a conditional risk measure adapted from conditional value‐at‐risk. Current regulations have been criticized on the grounds that their capital requirements are procyclical. They require extra capital in periods of extreme stress thus exacerbating a crisis. We show how to construct a countercyclical risk charge and illustrate the approach using a numerical example.     

Designing trust

The decision making process in technological development, with its underlying suppositions of certainty and controllability, contributes to fomenting social resistance to technology rather than trust among social actors. Those underlying suppositions are in disaccord with values and world views expressed by the new social movements. These movements, which form part of today’s civil society and are critical of many modern technologies, tend to hold an implicit view of technology as a social experiment under uncertainty. The tendency of the current design activity of basing design decisions on criteria, like engineering efficiency, defined as objective, is contributing to this lack of trust in the very process of decision making, which many social actors are currently demonstrating. Technology, however, depends on sustained public trust. Future technology design has therefore to take into account, as one of its basic functions, the creation of trust among actors.     

Energy and habitat: Designing a sustainable urban ecosystem

As the world's cities grow so new ways of satisfying their demands for food and fuel resources will have to be found, especially in the third world where total fuel demands are expected to expand several fold in one generation. An ecological model for a future complex urban community is presented to illustrate the place of energy in a growing system and how habitat—the physical component—possesses life cycles interdependent with living species. Recycling, biomass fuels, telecommunications, marine living and the propagation of viable organizations are all elements that will enable the globe to sustain future expanding metropolises.     

深信服科技携“金融风险管控方案”亮相金融展

2009年9月2日至5日,2009中国国际金融展（以下简称“金融展”）在北京展览馆顺利举办。深信服科技作为前沿网络产品供应商亮相本届金融展,向广大金融用户展示了名为“新金融、新风险、新管控”的网络风险管控解决方案,受到了与会代表的高度关注。在展会期间,多家商业银行、保险公司的领导和信息部门的负责人莅临深信服公司的展位,     

Designing Effective Graphs

Abstract

Actuaries, like other business professionals, communicate quantitative ideas graphically. Because the process of reading, or decoding, graphs is more complex than reading text, graphs are vulnerable to abuse. To underscore this vulnerability, we give several examples of commonly encountered graphs that mislead and hide information. To help creators design more effective graphs and to help viewers recognize misleading graphs, this article summarizes guidelines for designing graphs that show important numerical information. When designing graphs, creators should:

• (1) Avoid chartjunk

• (2) Use small multiples to promote comparisons and assess change

• (3) Use complex graphs to portray complex patterns

• (4) Relate graph size to information content

• (5) Use graphical forms that promote comparisons

• (6) Integrate graphs and text

• (7) Demonstrate an important message

• (8) Know the audience.

Some of these guidelines for designing effective graphs, such as (6), (7) and (8), are drawn directly from principles for effective writing. Others, such as guidelines (3), (4) and (5), come from cognitive psychology, the science of perception. Guidelines (1) and (2) have roots both in effective writing and in graphical perception. For example, the writing principle of brevity demonstrates how eliminating pseudo three-dimensional perspectives and other forms of chartjunk improve graphs. As another example, the writing principle of parallel structure suggests using small multiple variations of a basic graphical form to visualize complex relationships across different groups and over time.

To underscore the scientific aspect of graphical perception, we examine the process of communicating with a graph, beginning with a sender’s interpretation of data and ending with a receiver’s interpretation of the graph. In keeping with scientific tradition, this article discusses several studies in the literature on the effectiveness of graphs.

We conclude that the actuarial profession has many opportunities to improve its practice, making communication more efficient and precise.     

Designing electricity auctions

Motivated by the new auction format in the England and Wales electricity market, as well as the recent debate in California, we characterize bidding behavior and market outcomes in uniform and discriminatory electricity auctions. Uniform auctions result in higher average prices than discriminatory auctions, but the ranking in terms of productive efficiency is ambiguous. The comparative effects of other market design features, such as the number of steps in suppliers' bid functions, the duration of bids, and the elasticity of demand are analyzed. We also consider the relationship between market structure and market performance in the two auction formats.     

Designing high-performance jobs

Tales of great strategies derailed by poor execution are all too common. That's because some organizations are designed to fail. For a company to achieve its potential, each employee's supply of organizational resources should equal the demand, and the same balance must apply to every business unit and to the company as a whole. To carry out his or her job, each employee has to know the answers to four basic questions: What resources do I control to accomplish my tasks? What measures will be used to evaluate my performance? Who do I need to interact with and influence to achieve my goals? And how much support can I expect when I reach out to others for help? The questions correspond to what the author calls the four basic spans of a job-control, accountability, influence, and support. Each span can be adjusted so that it is narrow or wide or somewhere in between. If you get the settings right, you can design a job in which a talented individual can successfully execute on your company's strategy. If you get the settings wrong, it will be difficult for an employee to be effective. The first step is to set the span of control to reflect the resources allocated to each position and unit that plays an important role in delivering customer value. This setting, like the others, is determined by how the business creates value for customers and differentiates its products and services. Next, you can dial in different levels of entrepreneurial behavior and creative tension by widening or narrowing spans of accountability and influence. Finally, you must adjust the span of support to ensure that the job or unit will get the informal help it needs.     

A Study on Designing a Financial Supervisory Institution in Taiwan

This paper investigates world trends in financial supervision, including the separation of treasury and finance and the shift from departmental regulation to functional regulation. Based on the trend toward integration in financial supervision and examination, this paper proposes the adoption of a functional approach to financial supervision and the problems that may occur when we restructure the financial supervisory framework in Taiwan. This paper also discusses various financial supervisory institution models and weighs their advantages and disadvantages. Finally, it advances other issues concerned with the restructuring of the financial supervisory system, including the repositioning of the Central Deposit Insurance Corporation (CDIC), and adjustments in the powers conferred upon the Central Bank to conduct examinations.     

Designing a public procurement strategy: lessons from local governments

Public sector procurement faces competing priorities, such as cost-efficiency, legal conformity, the advancement of environmental protection and the promotion of innovation. In addition, procurement departments are moving away from being mere organizational servants to having a strategic function. This paper looks at current public procurement strategy research, revealing neglected aspects. The authors propose a new analytical framework and suggest avenues for future research.     

Designing a linear pension scheme with forced savings and wage heterogeneity

This paper studies the optimal linear pension scheme when society consists of rational and myopic individuals. Myopic individuals have, ex ante, a strong preference for the present even though, ex post, they would regret not to have saved enough. While rational and myopic persons share the same ex post intertemporal preferences, only the rational agents make their savings and labor supply decisions according to these preferences. Individuals are also distinguished by their productivity. The social objective is “paternalistic”: the utilitarian welfare function depends on ex post utilities. We examine how the presence of myopic individuals affects both the size of the pension system and the degree of redistribution it operates, with and without liquidity constraints. The relationship between proportion of myopic individuals and characteristics of the pension system turns out to be much more complex than one would have conjectured. Neither the impact on the level of pensions nor the effect on their redistributive degree is unambiguous. Nevertheless, we show that under some plausible assumptions adding myopic individuals increases the level of pension benefits and leads to a shift from a flat or even targeted scheme to a partially contributory one. However, we also provide an example where the degree of redistribution is not a monotonic function of the proportion of myopic individuals.      

Designing action based scenarios

Are scenarios carrying actors’ projects or on the contrary are they disconnected from action? To answer this question, the paper first outlines how action and actors’ projects structure foresight foundations. Such a perspective suggests to design scenarios as action processes to anticipate new rules to be played in prospective futures. In a second part, the results of two action research processes are discussed to analyse the interaction between actors’ projects and scenarios. These two case studies exert that actors have to navigate through rule shifts rather than to oppose alternative scenarios. To conclude, further research is discussed to introduce individual actions in scenarios, as well as the design of relations of dominance between actors in the analysis of rule shifts.     

Designing the sustainable enterprise

Visions of the future informed by sustainable development couple the long-term survival of humanity with a qualitative improvement in the human experience of life on earth. While the future cannot be designed explicitly, the artifacts that we create today will partially constitute the future that is tomorrow. Design is a way of organizing those artifacts, both human activity systems and technologies, so that they may contribute to an envisioned future. A design science of sustainable enterprise seeks to marry scientific and practitioner knowledge to guide the creation of enterprises (a meso-scale social artifact) that will contribute to a future consistent with the vision of sustainable development. This article addresses the question of what constitutes a sustainable enterprise by examining its essence and its purpose. Through this process two organizing principles of sustainable enterprise are identified. These organizing principles are integrated into a model of sustainable enterprise design, which provides useful insights both for advancing a design science of sustainable enterprise, and for those leaders of enterprise dedicated to making the sustainable enterprise a reality. In so doing, enterprises are positioned to contribute to the co-creation of a future of sustainable human development.