Resource Accounting and Executive Agencies

Executive agencies have had several years' experience of the introduction and development of accruals based accounting systems. Senior agency managers therefore provide an authoritative source of information on the problems that could follow from introducing it more widely across government. A survey of senior managers revealed that, despite major improvements in accounting information systems, agencies still face difficulties in implementing accruals accounting. Government departments also seem unlikely to accept easily the switch from cash accounting to accruals accounting without extensive training. The effort and resources required for this should not be underestimated.     

浅议核算型会计向管理型会计的转化

当前管理会计已为企业管理者所接受,管理会计的一些方法也正在为会计工作所应用,但管理会计的完善发展仍受着制约。本文拟对核算型会计向管理型会计转化的问题作一些探讨。     

商业银行推行成本管理会计的思考

我国商业银行对成本管理会计不够重视,信息系统基础薄弱,成本资料欠缺,高素质的成本管理会计人才稀缺,内部资金的转移价格难以确定,业绩评价体系的合理性与有效性难以平衡。商业银行要推行成本管理会计就要提高各商业银行职工对成本管理会计重要性和复杂性的认识;尽快建立专门的组织机构,着力培养或引进高素质的专门人才,制定或完善规章制度;实行全面成本管理,实现分部门、分产品、分客户的管理;运用计算机技术,实现业务流程再造;强化利率——产品定价机制,合理确定内部资金转移价格;提高数据质量,建立和完善相关信息系统。     

Executive Agencies within the Scotland Territorial Programme

This article supplements the cross-sectional survey literature by focusing upon a subset of executive agencies which, though highly disparate on many dimensions, share the experience of being part of the command of the Secretary of State for Scotland. Agencies operating within the context of territorial management face markedly different operating environments. In particular, centralised financial control by the territorial department is an essential continuing feature of the public expenditure control system. The characteristics of those activities which have been agencified in Scotland are closely examined, followed by an evaluation of the implications for internal management, external accountability, the reform of the parliamentary system of Supply, and the extension of accruals accounting across central government.     

我国应重视商业银行会计管理和会计控制

本文分析了我国商业银行中会计管理和会计控制的现状,提出我国商业银行在"强化管理、规范经营、稳健发展"中应重视和强化商业银行会计管理与控制的迫切性.     

集团化视域下的会计信息管理

随着世界科技进步和社会经济发展,跨行业跨地区的集团化公司不断涌现。如何使集团化公司做强做大,会计信息管理发挥着举足轻重的作用。针对目前某些集团公司会计信息管理的现状和问题,文章从集团化会计信息管理方面入手,从会计核算精细化、建立财务报表管理平台、增强会计服务功能、强化会计信息保密等方面进行探讨和研究,为集团公司强化会计信息管理提供有效途径。     

经理人股票期权会计确认的探讨

经理人股票期权的确认问题是亟待解决的会计理论和实践问题。经理人股票期权的经济实质是企业经理人参与企业剩余索取权的分享。经理人股票期权是一项无形资产,应在经理人提供劳动期间内,将其平均摊销。应改革现行的财务会计观念与模式,增设“待转股本准备”科目,以适应企业经理人参与现代企业剩余索取权分享的现实。     

Decentralisation and Management Accounting in Central Government: Recycling Old Ideas?

This paper examines the Next Steps development from both contemporaneous and historical perspectives. Specifically, it traces the reliance on a distinct model of management and accounting in Next Steps (1988) and its predecessors (FMI, 1982; and Fulton, 1968). This shows not only that there are a series of commonalities within the details of these various reforms of central government, over the past three decades, but also that these various reforms share foundations which are embedded in 'management thought' on best practice in the 1950s and 1960s. We identify contemporaneous studies in both management and management accounting which could have informed these reforms, and make suggestions for situationally specific means of improving management and accounting in central government.     

The Influence of Management Accounting Departments Within German Municipal Administrations

The achievement of better performance from municipal administrations is an ongoing challenge. We use the contingency theory perspective, which concentrates on the specific environmental settings of organisations, to examine the influence of management accounting departments within German municipal administrations. Our findings indicate that as the size of municipalities increases, the level of their administrative performance decreases. We additionally show that this negative effect can be mitigated when management accounting is seen as being highly relevant and when the management accounting department performs well. Furthermore, a comparison of the accounting systems (cash versus accrual accounting) used in municipal administrations reveals that a successful working management accounting department can only exert a positive effect when the municipal administration acts under an accrual accounting regime.     

基于管理会计导向的先进管理系统：商业银行信息化战略定位

当前,国内银行纷纷借鉴西方商业银行的发展模式与经验,引进ERP管理信息系统。商业银行选择国内外ERP管理信息系统的核心标准是ERP管理信息系统能否真正实现商业银行资源有效配置与充分利用。商业银行会计包括财务会计与管理会计两大体系：商业银行管理会计是商业银行面向未来资源配置与利用的价格信号机制：商业银行财务会计是商业银行过去资源配置与利用的会计。基于管理会计导向的先进管理系统是商业银行信息化的战略定位。商业银行管理会计体系是以商业银行战略管理框架为基础。围绕为企业战略决策提供决策信息的管理会计内在逻辑来构建价值创造型商业银行管理会计体系。     

Drivers of Autonomy of Public Agencies in Italy

The creation of agencies has been and still is a widespread trend in the public sector: governments in many countries often establish semi‐autonomous single‐purpose organizations to carry out a wide range of functions and tasks. The trend to autonomization is problematic as it affects public sector's governance: several bodies operate partly autonomously from the core elective government, and are sometimes loosely coupled with their ‘parent’ administration. Consequently, analysing the drivers of agencies’ autonomy is a crucial issue for public management. This paper, in the light of some major contributions in organizational science, assumes that agencies’ autonomy is influenced by factors that affect post‐delegation relationships: agencies’ structure, culture and nature of the tasks executed. The study was aimed at testing a range of hypotheses about the autonomy of public agencies, using for this purpose the so‐far not investigated case of Italy–much in the spirit of the accumulation of knowledge in an area of public management. Results do not provide any strikingly counter‐intuitive finding, but a mix of confirmations and disconfirmations of previous findings that allow a finer‐grained analysis on the determinants of agency autonomy.     

Evaluating Assessed Group-work in a Second-year Management Accounting Subject

Abstract

This paper discusses the perceptions on the part of a large cohort of Sydney-based second year university accounting students of the benefits of group-work in developing transferable skills in teamwork, self-management, and planning and organising. The Australian accounting profession and business employers have identified these skills as lacking in accounting graduates. A questionnaire was administered to obtain students' perceptions of assessed group-work and the results were compared with three other similar studies of smaller cohorts of students. Overall, students considered assessed group-work to be a positive experience and a vehicle to develop transferable skills. The paper elaborates on elements in effective group-work design and students' comments which raise the need to integrate and scaffold assessed group-work in the accounting curriculum.     

Executive Agencies: Have They Improved Management in Government?

The UK's Next Steps programme has now been running for 15 years. It has been copied internationally, but has never been evaluated officially. This article looks at whether Next Steps has achieved its immediate goals of structural and institutional change, and whether these have led to behavioural change and improved performance.     

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.     

Continuity and Discontinuity in Accounting Technology in Danish State Institutions

The development of accounting technology in the Danish state sector is characterised by episodes of disruption and the longevity of certain principles that define accounting's accountability as involved in producing the state as a unit, as providing a continuous concern for productivity, and as providing the means by which a parliamentary democracy may work. The episodes of disruption may often repair on this trinity of issues. The recent transformations are radical as they introduce a new form of management via individualised 'accounting-cultured' institutions and managers. They do so via a heightened emphasis on a core technology already in place supplemented by a new mode of output orientation rather than input orientation via a Company Accounts . In addition to reporting on spending, this set of accounts introduced a series of non-financial measures such as productivity, quality, and customer satisfaction.     

Political Influence and Coexistence of a Uniform Accounting System and Accounting Standards: Recent Developments in China

This article investigates the role of political influence, as well as accounting tradition and the equity market, in China's recent changes in accounting regulation. We find that the Chinese government, in part self-motivated and in part under external pressure, has been active in developing accounting standards in harmony with international accounting standards. However, it has retained a uniform accounting system in the Enterprise Accounting System issued in 2000 to accommodate the special circumstances of a transforming government, strong state-ownership, a weak accounting profession, a weak and imperfect equity market, and the inertial effect of accounting tradition and cultural factors. This article also contributes to existing models of accounting system classification by illustrating the need for considering political influence as a factor that affects the rate of transition towards full implementation of international accounting standards.     

Management Accounting Lag

Kaplan (1984) claimed that there has been little innovation in the last sixty years in the design and implementation of management accounting systems. Current systems lag changes in manufacturing processes. This paper provides a framework to explain that this lag in organizations may be due to the perceived greater complexity and lesser relative advantage, compatibility, trialability and observability of administrative (e.g., accounting) innovations as compared with technical innovations. The empirical research not only supports the existence of an accounting lag, but also suggests that there may be a substantial reward for those organizations that can remedy it.     

Converging New Public Management Reforms and Diverging Accounting Practices in Flemish Local Governments

This paper aims at presenting a comparative study of the diverging development of accounting reforms in Flemish local governments in terms of accounting from a technical point of view. On the one hand, the objectives and the framework of current governmental accounting reforms aiming at improving New Public Management are currently converging. On the other hand, a conceptual examination reveals that the prescribed accounting practices are widely diverging and apparently this is also the case for the practical implementation of the reformed accounting systems. By way of conclusion, a number of possible reasons for this unsuccessful proliferation are presented.     

A Study of the Use of Targets in the Planning Documents of Executive Agencies

The use of quantitative, often non-financial, targets and performance measures in the plans of both businesses and not-for-profit organisations has recently received increasing attention in the academic literature. In the UK public sector this has been particularly important, given the rise of New Public Management. This has resulted in a shift from issues of policy to issues of management, and the break-up of traditional bureaucratic structures. These changes have been supported by an increasing focus on setting quantitative targets which cover all aspects of an organisation's performance. This paper seeks to examine the possible role of quantitative targets in planning and control in public sector organisations. Furthermore, through an exploratory study of over eighty planning documents from executive agencies, the nature and breadth of targets being used are examined and discussed.     

顾客价值创造与管理会计发展

企业经营的重点正在"从销售额向利润,再进一步向价值"的方向转变。对于价值(value),人们更加重视企业价值以及股东价值之外的顾客价值。顾客价值的创造经营(Custom er Value Added M anage-m ent:CVAM)催生了管理会计的两大工具,即成本企画与作业成本管理。