Futures of the sustainable firm: An evolutionary perspective

The response of firms to sustainable development issues needs to pass through a deep re-thinking of the strategic design, encompassing the entire organization, its functions and re-shaping its business model.This contribution proposes a frame of reference for SD oriented organizations, based on three cornerstones: principles, processes and outcomes. Based on an abductive research approach, an analysis is developed on some case studies. Special attention is devoted to the dynamics of SD oriented organizations in order to understand how firms can evolve towards progressively more challenging models of business which make compatible profitability and growth with respect for the environment and – beyond mere respect – positive proactive action to improve the planet resources.     

On the emergence of strategic management accounting: An institutional perspective

Strategic management accounting (SMA) has been presented as an efficacious approach to strategy formulation and implementation. It also suggests accountants move away from purely financial concerns to give consideration to wider business issues. Management accounting change has attracted significant research attention in recent years. This case study explores the issues which surround change and which enable the adoption of SMA and the repositioning of management accountants to become more strategic. The empirical enquiry is based in one company through a prolonged series of interviews and meetings which enabled activities over a number of years to be reviewed. This revealed an increasing strategic role for management accountants in informing strategic decision‐making and how this role came into being. The research is informed by institutional theories and neoinstitutionalism in particular, to interpret the external and internal influences on the change in roles of some management accountants and the outputs of their work.     

An evolutionary and life history perspective on the role of males on human futures

Humans are currently faced with several challenges that threaten the existence of our species including climate change, increased pathogen virulence, economic instability, resource depletion, and continued state sponsored violence. At first glance, these issues are scarcely manageable independently, much less collectively. At the core of these challenges are our underlying motivations and behaviors that spawned these challenges. As a species that is numerous and active in the altering of our planet, Homo sapiens, specifically, men, have been and will likely continue to hold sway over much of the global economic and political power that will influence the outcome of these challenges. Consequently it is important to understand the underlying motivations and evolutionary underpinnings that influence the decisions of all men, especially those in positions of power. While it is impossible to predict individual behaviors or policies of succeeding generations, this paper suggests that a thorough comprehension of the core aspects of human male life history such as patterns of mortality, trade offs between reproductive effort and survivorship as well as subsequent behavioral evolution can provide some glimpse into roots of behavior, policy, and the future of our species. Alternative futures vis a vis, the role of men in shaping human evolution are discussed.     

Diversity and social progress in the next millennium: an evolutionary perspective

An evolutionary framework for speculating about some of the socio-cultural and genetic diversity issues of the next millennium is developed. Human populations (societies) are basic biological and socio-cultural units. The nature of human societies is shaped by two kinds of linked evolutionary process: biological and socio-cultural. These evolutionary processes, in turn, are driven by human interactions with the physical environment, microorganisms, other species, other human populations, and by technological innovations. Preservation of genetic and socio-cultural diversity is identified as a crucial aspect of social progress over the next millennium. The impact of these ecological and technological ‘drivers of change’ on future evolutionary processes is discussed. While the world's affluent societies will be increasingly liberated from nature's constraints and enriched by technological innovations, it is questionable, given historical experience, whether poorer ones will share in the prosperity. Significant innovations in socio-cultural evolution, including new forms of governance, will be required to harness the accelerating forces of change and to ensure future social progress for all peoples.     

Eva®*: An integrated financial management system**

Both the rise of hostile takeovers and the phenomenal success of LBOs in the 1980s can be explained in part as capital market responses to the shortcomings of the top-down, EPS-based model of financial management that has long dominated corporate America. the EVA financial management system, which presents the 1990s most serious challenge to the dominance of the EPS model, borrows important aspects from the LBO movement, particularly its focus on capital efficiency and ownership incentives. Unlike the LBO movement, however, the EVA system accomplishes such goals without the high leverage and concentration of risk that limit LBOs to the mature sector of the US economy.     

A financial-economic evaluation of insurance guaranty fund system: An agency cost perspective

Recent occurrences of financial distress to some insurers have raised questions about whether the current guaranty system is adequate to protect policyholders. Four new systems have been proposed. Using the state preference model, it was found the Stewart's national system faring the best, if it adopts uniform regulation. Based on agency theory, the pre-assessment approach and the policyholder surcharge (or premium increase) recoupment method were found to be better than the current post-assessment approach and premium tax offset method. Furthermore, uniform policy limits and regulations are recommended.     

Property shares, appraisals and the stock market: An international perspective

A severe problem facing both real estate researchers and investors is the lack of reliable real estate returns data. Property shares, the shares of companies which invest in property and manage a portfolio of real estate, have been proposed as indicators of real estate performance. Property shares exist in many countries, are publicly traded, and their returns are not inherently biased. For three countries, we investigate the relationships with common stock and appraisal-based returns which property share returns exhibit. Our results indicate that property shares are closely related to the stock markets on which they trade, thereby confirming previous findings for the United States. However, property share returns also predict appraisal-based indices.     

Organising the human world: An evolutionary outlook

Based on a concept that the evolution of man and mankind moves in successive phases, each characterised by a certain organisation determined by its scope, this study examines the relationship between external and internal evolutionary factors. It describes the basic evolutionary mechanism of human systems which alternates between stability and mutation, and is similar to that of non-equilibrium physical systems. In the human system this mutation means fluctuations towards a higher, more complex level, and—because of the designing capacity of man—increasingly conscious management of dynamic regimes. This has so far happened at the levels of ecological and social organisation. Now, with fluctuations passing to the level of cultural organisation, we can attempt to design new codes of social ethics, new social institutions, or new social systems.     

Top management adoption of a locally driven performance measurement and evaluation system: A social network perspective

This paper traces the adoption process by top management of a performance evaluation system initiated by the financial controllers at the Research And Development site of a leading multinational company. The research puts forward that the success of the change efforts depends on the nature of relationships among the organizational members involved in the process. Because performance measurement and evaluation systems have notoriety for being controversial, the notion of trust, operationalized through strong ties, emerged as pivotal to reduce uncertainty during the change process and facilitate the introduction of the performance evaluation system. The research also points out that the structural position of financial controllers within organizational networks is an important aspect in the success/failure of implementing such problematic control systems. Also, the social network analysis used in this paper has proved to be a useful methodology for studying the relational patterns that occurred during the change process.     

会计制度不完全性的经济学分析

本文从制度经济学的角度对会计制度不完全性进行了分析 ,认为会计制度安排作为一种不完全合约 ,无论是在发达的市场经济国家 ,还是在转轨时期不完善的市场经济国家 ,会计制度的不完全性是客观存在的 ;此外 ,会计环境的复杂性、未来的不确定性及相关法规制度的不完善是会计制度不完全性的外在诱因。本文在分析我国经济转型期会计制度不完全性原因的基础上 ,提出完善我国会计制度的政策建议     

Enterprise risk management and firm performance: A contingency perspective

In recent years, a paradigm shift has occurred regarding the way organizations view risk management. Instead of looking at risk management from a silo-based perspective, the trend is to take a holistic view of risk management. This holistic approach toward managing an organization’s risk is commonly referred to as enterprise risk management (ERM). Indeed, there is growing support for the general argument that organizations will improve their performance by employing the ERM concept. The basic argument presented in this paper is that the relation between ERM and firm performance is contingent upon the appropriate match between ERM and the following five factors affecting a firm: environmental uncertainty, industry competition, firm size, firm complexity, and board of directors’ monitoring. Based on a sample of 112 US firms that disclose the implementation of their ERM activities within their 10Ks and 10Qs filed with the US Securities and Exchange Commission, empirical evidence confirms the above basic argument. The implication of these findings is that firms should consider the implementation of an ERM system in conjunction with contextual variables surrounding the firm.     

Social accounting research: An Australasian perspective

This paper provides an insight into the nature and the extent of social accounting research being undertaken within Australasia. It demonstrates that Australasian researchers account for a significant amount of internationally published social accounting research, but emphasises that the research effort seems to be confined to a limited number of researchers perhaps reflecting a lack of ‘take-up’ in this area in terms of the scale of participation. Information is also presented about the relative propensity of journals within the sample to publish social accounting research, and identifies that ‘top tier’ accounting journals historically have not published social accounting research. The paper also considers various factors which seem to be impeding the ‘recruitment’ of new social accounting researchers.     

Systematic risk and international diversification: An empirical perspective

This paper reports findings from a study that systematically evaluated the nature of the relationship between internationalization and systematic risk. In addition to previous conceptualizations, this study also examined whether the number of foreign countries and segments a firm operates in constitute a part of the information used by market participants to assess a firm's risk exposure. We find that international diversification is significantly and positively associated with systematic risk and that diversification augments systematic risk. Our findings have implications on the stability of foreign expansion and business decisions by managers on the appropriate level of overseas commitment.     

Consequences,morality, and time in environmental risk evaluation

Environmental risks pose a serious problem to individual and societal decision‐making, and the public debate is often characterized by a conflict between morally‐principled and technically oriented points of view. Drawing on previous work of Böhm and Pfister (), we propose a model on how environmental risks are cognitively represented and how risks are evaluated. The model suggests two evaluative pathways, evaluations of consequences and evaluation of moral considerations, each leading to a distinct set of emotions and action tendencies. Either one of these pathways may become dominant depending on the evaluative focus of the person, which, in turn, depends on the causal structure of the risk. An experimental study yields confirming evidence for this model. Furthermore, the influence of time perspective, that is, the delay of negative consequences caused by an environmental risk, is investigated. Contrary to the common assumption, only weak evidence for temporal discounting effects is found. It is concluded that environmental risks, due to their strong moral component, are partly immune to time perspective.     

Uncertainty and risk management from Islamic perspective

Most decisions are taken in very uncertain contexts and all objective economic behaviour is dictated by the efforts of different agents to protect themselves against uncertainty. So, how to act in the face of uncertainty to minimise the harmful consequences of recurrent financial crises? The purpose of this article is to answer this question by highlighting the ethical aspect of investments and finance from the Islamic perspective, which notoriously, forbids excessive uncertainty, gharar. Islamic law proposes a legal framework that specifies the rules by which risk is understood, managed, taken or shared. The way the Islamic financial system resisted the recent crisis leads us to study its unusual interpretation of risk. We also investigate whether Islamic ethics as an alternative could help to prevent the disaster of repeated financial crises.