The ‘SKADE LITorSET’ Expert System for Corporate ‘Litigate or Settle’ Decisions

The ‘SKADE LITotSET’ system is a blackboard-based expert system that makes ‘litigate or settle’ decisions in the product liability area. It has three knowledge sources: Legal, Manager and Insurance Adjuster. The combined expertise from each of these is required to solve the ‘litigate or settle’ problem. The control component co-ordinates the interaction between the various knowledge sources on the blackboard. Based on the latest changes to the data on the blackboard, it selects and executes the next knowledge source. The model reproduces the decision makers' opportunistic reasoning processes by the interaction between the various knowledge sources through the blackboard. The results of analyses of a hypothetical case through a series of experiments with the ‘SKADE LITorSET’ system indicate that the blackboard is an appropriate model for development of expert systems in the ‘litigate or settle’ decision domain. The initial success with the blackboard approach suggests that further work needs to be done to see whether more complex models can be built to incorporate a broader range of determinants of settlement decisions.     

How Taxes and Welfare Benefits Affect Work Incentives: A Life‐Cycle Perspective

Personal taxes and benefits affect the incentive to work over the life cycle by altering income–age profiles, insuring against adverse shocks and changing the returns to human capital. In this paper, we show how a life‐cycle perspective alters our impression of how the UK tax and benefit system affects women's work incentives. Given that actual longitudinal data conflate age effects, cohort effects and policy effects, and, in the UK, are not available covering the full life cycle, we use simulated data produced by a rich, dynamic structural model of female labour supply and human capital that incorporates family formation and fertility. We find that individuals experience considerable variability in work incentives across life that outweighs the variability across individuals. Changes in the presence of children and a partner, as well as the level of any partner's earnings, are key to explaining these patterns: work incentives vary dramatically depending on family composition and the earnings of any partner, especially for the lower‐skilled, and most women experience a number of different family types during the course of their lives.     

A health service fit for the 21st century : The Welsh ‘Health and Social Care 2010’ project

‘Health and Social Care 2010’, a project of the Welsh Health Planning Forum, has been designed to link the overall strategy of the National Health Service in Wales with the planning of local health-care strategies. During the first phase of the project, forces that may impact on health and social services in the future have been identified, and consideration has been given to how the services could adapt to the expected changes. The result has been a vision of a new kind of health care based on clusters of services. Testable indicators of the vision's fulfilment have also been identified in the form of nine assumptions regarding specific future developments in the health and social services. Groups at several pilot sites have analysed these assumptions in terms of their achievability and desirability, thus illuminating potential roadblocks in reaching the desired future, as well as creative ways around these problems.     

Audit Committees and Managerial Influence on Audit Quality: ‘Voluntary’ versus ‘Mandatory’ Approach to Corporate Governance

This study provides empirical evidence on how managerial influence to reduce audit quality is moderated by a combination of the audit committee (AC) form and compliance with AC best practice guidelines. There is a negative association between managerial ownership and audit fees; however, the association becomes positive when a voluntary AC follows best practices. Furthermore, the results are robust to the exclusion of industries with large frequency in the sample, the consideration of Korean business groups and recessionary times. The results of this study imply that a voluntary approach to corporate governance, which encourages companies to follow best practice guidelines in the form and composition of the AC, is more effective in controlling management than a mandatory approach. This study contributes to policy making aimed at improving AC effectiveness.     

A Consulting Giant; a Disgruntled Client: A ‘Failed’ Attempt to Change Management Controls in a Public Sector Organisation

There has been very little research into management consulting interventions in public sector organisations, especially in emerging economies. This paper aims to fill this void by narrating the empirics of a consulting assignment carried out by a large international consulting firm in a Pakistani public sector organisation. The study found that consultants’ recommendations of ‘businesslike’ management controls, such as a modern performance measurement system and a ‘state‐of‐the‐art’ information system, were rejected outright by the client management. Employing a critical realist perspective that focuses on the structural conditions facing both the client and the consultants, and on the strategies adopted by both parties, the study aims to explain the empirics of the case. Through structural and strategic analysis, this paper aims to enhance our understanding of the dynamics of management consulting in public sector organisations, especially in emerging economies.     

Revisiting the ‘Court of Generations’ Amendment : A conversation

In 1991, futurist Bruce E. Tonn proposed a ‘Court of Generations’ Amendment to the US Constitution. His proposed ‘Court of Generations’ lacked punitive powers but, hopefully, would have sufficient legitimacy to counteract extreme present-minded thinking evident in US political processes and institutions. Although Tonn's ‘Court of Generations’ Amendment has been well received in the futures community, who else has heard of it? Otherwise, has it made any difference? How can the cumbersome and nonfuturistic amendment procedure in the US Constitution generate a futures-oriented ‘Court of Generations’? And for those who sincerely look forward to a ‘Court of Generations,’ precisely what kind of tactically savvy visionary leadership will give the ‘Court of Generations’ any chance of being approved? During 1997, Vincent Kelly Pollard engaged Dr. Tonn in an Internet conversation aimed at clarifying these issues.     

Australian Public‐Sector Outsourcing in the ‘Golden Era’: Cost Savings Evidence or Anecdote?

This paper reports a multi-method study of the watershed period of Australian public-sector outsourcing from the mid-1990s to 2000. Interviews and a large-scale survey conducted with Australian public-sector managers indicate a number of shortfalls in decision-making and decision-evaluation processes from accounting and policy compliance perspectives. The results suggest that the cost-savings objective was given a low level of importance, that transaction-cost data were rarely used in decision-making, and that ex-post decision evaluation of the cost outcomes from outsourcing was minimal. These results are also reinterpreted and implications drawn in light of the current contracting practices of Australian public-sector organisations .     

Loan officers and loan ‘delinquency’ in Microfinance: A Zambian case

The paper seeks to promote greater understanding of the importance of loan officers in group-based microfinance by explaining their actual roles, dilemmas and tensions when working with poor clients. Few existing studies have used data outside Bangladesh and most focus upon relatively well-performing institutions. Using data from Zambia this study focuses on the recent crisis of Christian Enterprise Trust of Zambia (CETZAM) and the effects of its practices for accounting for and dealing with defaulters. The findings firstly show that loan officers faced powerful hierarchical accountability pressures and pursued inappropriate methods to compel further repayments to resolve this crisis. Its approach to borrower default was found to be stressful for loan officers and potentially detrimental for CETZAM's own short and long-term survival by reducing client loyalty and trust.