Cash balance plans: helping employers meet today's staffing needs

The author examines how cash balance plans better meet employers' staffing needs than traditional pension plans. He asserts that out-of-date pension laws, rather than employers, are responsible for creating the very "abuses" that so many are complaining about with regard to cash balance plan conversions.     

Suggested changes in accounting education to meet the demand of the profession

Accounting education is going through rapid changes. New rules and regulations are so numerous that accounting educators can barely keep pace. New teaching techniques and procedures are needed. This paper suggests some ways that accounting educators can adapt to their rapidly changing environment.     

Performance management and organizational strategy: How to design systems that meet the needs of confrontation strategy firms

The link between organizational strategy and performance management system design has been examined in numerous studies. Invariably, strategy is conceptualized using archetypes developed in the 1970s and 1980s. Scholars have increasingly questioned the wisdom of relying on strategic archetypes that are plainly dated and conspicuously disconnected from the possibility of firms competing head-to-head, not out of choice but out of necessity. Cooper (1995) calls such a situation the undertaking of a confrontation strategy. Using an exploratory research design, this paper draws on nine qualitative case studies to examine how performance management systems are designed to meet and support the implementation of a confrontation strategy. Initially six firms, spanning a variety of what were expected to be mature, highly competitive industries likely to feature confrontation strategies, were recruited for participation. This initial study was then followed by a more concentrated examination of one particular industry: the banking industry. Findings from the total case study sample of nine firms lead to the presentation of an original table contrasting the unique performance management system designs associated with the three distinct strategies of cost leadership, differentiation, and confrontation. In particular, and in contrast to firms pursuing cost leadership or differentiation strategies, firms with confrontation strategies are likely to feature collaborative organizational cultures, lean organizational structures, and training and development programs that focus on developing empowered, multi-skilled teams of self-governing and coordinating employees. The exploratory intent of the paper, and thus its reliance on a small sample size of nine organizations, may limit the generalizability of the paper’s findings. In spite of this limitation, the findings offer opportunities for researchers to move beyond the exploratory approach presently adopted and empirically test the confrontation strategy and performance management system linkages proposed. Additionally, practitioners are likely to benefit from a clearer understanding of the type of performance management system design needed to support confrontation strategies.     

Communication skills in accounting education: Perceptions of academics,employers and graduate accountants

Communication skills are central to intellectual interaction between the providers and the recipients of information. The importance of accounting starts with the gathering and processing of information and ends with the communication of processed information. This paper examines the communication skills which employers, academics and graduate accountants consider necessary to the newly graduated accountant. It also identifies and considers the differences in perception which occur between these groups and suggests solutions to the communication gap. This study confirms findings from previous research that new graduate accountants experience communication-related problems in early employment. In addition, it provides evidence that the Australian accounting curriculum has contributed to the development of communication skills. However, the paper highlights the need for the reconsideration of an emphasis on communication skills in the accounting curriculum, a role which arises from the very nature of accounting as the processing and communication of information.     

Trading incentives to meet the analyst forecast

We examine stock sales as a managerial incentive to help explain the discontinuity around the analyst forecast benchmark. We find that the likelihood of just meeting versus just missing the analyst forecast is strongly associated with subsequent managerial stock sales. Moreover, we provide evidence that managers manage earnings prior to just meeting the threshold and selling their shares. Finally, the relation between just meeting and subsequently selling shares does not hold for non-manager insiders, who arguably cannot affect the earnings outcome, and is weaker in the presence of an independent board, suggesting that good corporate governance mitigates this strategic behavior.

Liquidity needs and vulnerability to financial underdevelopment

This paper provides evidence that financial development has a large causal effect in the reduction of macroeconomic volatility resulting from the role of the financial system in liquidity provision. In particular, financial system development leads to a comparatively larger reduction in the volatility of output in sectors with high liquidity needs. Most of this decline results from the stabilization of the output of existing firms, although the volatility of the number of firms also drops significantly. Among different aspects of the financial system, the depth of financial intermediaries plays the main role in the reduction of volatility.     

亚行贷款创新高,以满足不断增长的区域需求

亚洲开发银行(简称:亚行)发布的《2015年度报告》(《2015年报》)称,随着亚太地区经济体设法解决经济增长放缓、不平等和重大环境风险等问题,该地区大型基础设施和发展项目的融资需求没有出现减弱迹象.     

Stability to profitability: managing interdependencies to meet a new environment

Management control systems represent what is believed to be an important element in managing internal and external interdependencies. The case study we present in this paper is an attempt to provide additional information contributing to the understanding of the influences on and the roles of management control systems in managing interdependencies. The management control systems were used to deal with changes in the internal and external interdependencies in the domains of strategy and structure of the organization, the organizational field, and the state. The role of the Chief Executive Officer was a key element in both defining the internal and external interdependencies and the employment of the management control systems.     

From growth to basic needs

Despite growing hostility and basic misconceptions, the concept of "basic human needs" has superseded former approaches, including concentration on growth, creation of employment, and redistribution of benefits to the poor, as the approach by which mass deprivation may be reduced. The new approach can be defined briefly as one which is designed to improve, first, the income earning opportunities for the poor; second, the public services that reach the poor; third, the flow of goods and services to meet the needs of all members of the household; and fourth, participation of the poor in the ways in which their needs are met. All four pillars must be built on a sustainable basis. In addition, basic needs must be met in a shorter period and at a lower level of earned income per capita than has generally been true in the past, or than would have been achieved via the income expansion associated with growth alone. The basic needs approach is concerned with particular goods and services directed at particular, identified human beings. Another advantage of the basic needs approach is that it is a more positive concept than the double negatives of eliminating or reducing unemployment, alleviating poverty, or reducing inequality. The basic needs approach spells out in considerable detail human needs in terms of health, food, education, water, shelter, transport, simple household goods, as well as non-material needs like participation, cultural identity, and a sense of purpose in life and work, which interact with the material needs.     

论政府应对入世的策略

中国加入WTO,客观上要求我们各级政府的行政职能和行政方式彻底放弃传统的管理模式和运作方式.要彻底转变政府职能,建立适应市场经济发展要求的行政模式、与WTO规则接轨的管理体制、符合WTO规则的国内支持体系和法律体系,为企业提供优质的社会服务.     

Do Australian companies manage earnings to meet simple earnings benchmarks?

Measurement error in unexpected accruals is an important problem for empirical earnings management research. Several recent studies avoid this problem by examining the pooled, cross–sectional distribution of reported earnings. Discontinuities in the distribution of reported earnings around key earnings thresholds may indicate the exercise of management discretion (i.e. earnings management). We apply this approach to the detection of earnings management by Australian firms. Our results generally indicate significantly more small earnings increases and small profits than expected and conversely, considerably fewer small earnings decreases and small losses than expected. These results are much stronger for larger Australian firms. We undertake an exploratory analysis of alternative explanations for our results and find some evidence consistent with management signalling its inside knowledge about the firm's expected future profitability to smooth earnings, as opposed to 'management intent to deceive' as an explanation for our results.     

企业与资本相约天津

3月22日,天津市副市长崔津渡代表中华全国工商业联合会、美国企业成长协会和天津市人民政府3家主办机构正式宣布:"中国企业国际融资洽谈会"将于2007年6月6日至8日在天津滨海国际会展中心举行.为本次大会服务的官方网站"国际融资服务网"(www.pe-fund.com)正式开通,并接受报名工作.     

文化产融通道待建

24根据中科院发布的《中国现代化报告2009:文化现代化研究》,中国的文化竞争力仅居世界第24位。为此,国务院2009年出台《文化产业振兴规划》,提出提高国家文化软实力的文化发展战略。     

惠普移动解决方案中心让安腾平台与金融行业需求同步

从2005年7月开始，作为中国乃至亚太范围内第一个高科技移动解决方案中心——惠普移动解决方案中心，先后巡游西北、华南、华东地区，以“安腾日”为核心，让各地的金融行业用户，体验基于业界领先的英特尔安腾架构的HP Integrity动能服务器所具有的强大适应力，以更加强大的高性能、标准化、适应性和灵活性，帮助用户驾驭变化，制胜未来。     

Adapting management accounting knowledge needs to functional and economic change

Changes in the function of the management accountant and in the economic environment, particularly the shift of economic activity away from manufacturing and the internationalisation of education, raise issues of the breadth and diversity of knowledge needs for management accounting. The impact of these issues is investigated using data on perceived topic importance from an international survey of over 1600 members of the Chartered Institute of Management Accountants. The substantial importance attached to a range of topics from outside the management accounting discipline itself, and to more strategic topics from within it, is consistent with a developing function for the practitioner associated with a broadening set of knowledge needs, since these topics add to rather than supplant many traditional core management accounting topics. Variation in the importance of topics among economic sectors tends to be specific to certain topics, such as costing, although the public sector has distinctive priorities. Diversity in knowledge needs is also apparent internationally, particularly in terms of those working in developing economies, who attach greater importance to many topics in finance and financial accounting than others do.