An ontological analysis of the economic primitives of the extended-REA enterprise information architecture

The resource–event–agent (REA) model for enterprise economic phenomena was first published in The Accounting Review in 1982. Since that time, its concepts and use have been extended far beyond its original accountability infrastructure to a framework for enterprise information architectures. The granularity of the model has been extended both up (to enterprise value chains) and down (to workflow or task specification) in the aggregation plane, and additional conceptual type-images and commitment-images have been proposed as well. The REA model actually fits the notion of domain ontology well, a notion that is becoming increasingly important in the era of E-commerce and virtual companies. However, its present and future components have never been analyzed formally from an ontological perspective. This paper intends to do just that, relying primarily on the conceptual terminology of John Sowa. The economic primitives of the original REA model (economic resources, economic events, economic agents, duality relationships, stock–flow relationships, control relationships, and responsibility relationships) plus some newer components (commitments, types, custody, reciprocal, etc.) will be analyzed individually and collectively as a specific domain ontology. Such a review can be used to guide further conceptual development of REA extensions.     

A note on an architecture for integrating cloud computing and enterprise systems using REA

This paper presents an architecture for integrating cloud computing and enterprise systems based on the Resource-Event-Agent (REA) model. The public/private approach used in RosettaNet provides the conceptual basis to capture information used in the cloud and by users of the cloud locally in their own systems. The architecture is then examined using information in the context of REA and the cloud-based software developed by Workday to illustrate different characteristics of the approach.     

REACH: automated database design integrating first‐order theories,reconstructive expertise,and implementation heuristics for accounting information systems

This paper describes the integrated use of different knowledge types in an automated software engineering tool called REACH. These types include: (1) a first‐order domain theory called the REA accounting model, (2) reconstructive expertise gleaned from textbooks on accounting system design in a bookkeeping environment, and (3) implementation compromise heuristics derived from the design experience of database designers. This tool aids an enterprise database analyst in the conceptual design stages of view modeling and view integration. Copyright © 1999 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Model-based auditing using REA

The recent financial crisis has renewed interest in the value of the owner-ordered auditing tradition that starts from society's long-term interest rather than management interest. This tradition uses a model-based auditing approach in which control requirements are derived in a principled way. A problem with this approach is that it has been proven hard to apply it in modern complex organizations. Making it feasible requires at least an adequate enterprise modeling approach. In this paper, it is shown that the REA ontology fulfills most of the requirements for such a model-based approach. The analysis also suggests some directions in which REA can be extended.     

The effects of decision aid structural restrictiveness on cognitive load,perceived usefulness,and reuse intentions

As accounting environments become increasingly automated through information technology support systems, the underlying systems are increasingly restrictive in an effort to direct user behavior and decision making. However, consistent with the theory of technology dominance, restrictive systems have been found to dominate users' decision processes and to have a detrimental effect when decisions require knowledge from outside the system's capability. This study expands upon this research through an examination of users' preferences for more (less) restrictive systems based on their own level of domain knowledge. Incorporating theory on task technology fit, we theorize that users with less knowledge will prefer to be dominated by the system, while users with greater levels of knowledge will prefer a system that provides the user with a level of control over the decision process rather than submitting entirely to the decision aid's control. These theorizations are empirically tested through an experimental design that varies the level of systems restrictiveness across groups of novice and experienced participants. The results confirm that novice (experienced) participants find a highly restrictive system substantially (minimally) reduces cognitive load, increases (decreases) usefulness of the decision aid, and strengthens (weakens) the intention to reuse the system in the future. The results add an important piece to understanding the effect of restrictive systems in that the users that are most susceptible to dominance by decision aids are the users most willing to adopt a restrictive system that reduces the effort they must put forth and in turn reduces the knowledge they accrue from using the system.     

The office of strategy management

There is a disconnect in most companies between strategy formulation and strategy execution. On average, 95% of a company's employees are unaware of, or do not understand, its strategy. If employees are unaware of the strategy, they surely cannot help the organization implement it effectively. It doesn't have to be like this. For the past 15 years, the authors have studied companies that achieved performance breakthroughs by adopting the Balanced Scorecard and its associated tools to help them better communicate strategy to their employees and to guide and monitor the execution of that strategy. Some companies, of course, have achieved better, longer-lasting improvements than others. The organizations that have managed to sustain their strategic focus have typically established a new corporate-level unit to oversee all activities related to strategy: an office of strategy management (OS M). The OSM, in effect, acts as the CEO's chief of staff. It coordinates an array of tasks: communicating corporate strategy; ensuring that enterprise-level plans are translated into the plans of the various units and departments; executing strategic initiatives to deliver on the grand design; aligning employees' plans for competency development with strategic objectives; and testing and adapting the strategy to stay abreast of the competition. The OSM does not do all the work, but it facilitates the processes so that strategy is executed in an integrated fashion across the enterprise. Although the companies that Kaplan and Norton studied use the Balanced Scorecard as the framework for their strategy management systems, the authors say the lessons of the OSM are applicable even to companies that do not use it.     

Applying XBRL in an Accounting Information System Design Using the REA Approach: An Instructional Case*

The Church in Somewhere (CIS) is a small community church which uses an Excel spreadsheet to keep its financial records. The church administrator is considering moving from a spreadsheet accounting system to a relational database system that can easily be expanded to include more information in the future. In this paper we examine the transforming process in this hypothetical case by following a resource‐event‐agent (REA) modeling paradigm to create a database. We then link the REA model to financial reporting using Microsoft Access. In addition, using the financial report in the database, students prepare and validate an eXtensible Business Reporting Language (XBRL) document for CIS. Instead of applying the complex U.S. Generally Accepted Accounting Principles (GAAP) Taxonomies, Release 2009 , the case uses a dedicated CIS Taxonomy to complete the mapping and tagging processes.     

Human-centred CIM : Informating the design/manufacturing interface

The work design philosophy embodied in the human-centred computer integrated manufacturing (CIM) approach provides a radical alternative to traditional technology-oriented and Taylorist approaches to CIM. In order to extend the work that has been done on redesigning factory production and planning tools and systems, this approach can usefully be enhanced by drawing on research on ‘simultaneous engineering’ and the technical and organizational redesign of the design/manufacturing interface. The vision of the ‘informated’ factory of the future embodied in this human-centred CIM vision provides a much needed challenge to traditional guiding images of the ideal automated factory.     

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.     

Future Search as ‘real-time’ action research

This paper explores essential links between the brief planning meeting that we call ‘future search’ and the action research tradition of pioneer social psychologist Kurt Lewin. The two practices, based on common values, employ different procedures. Unlike action research, future search involves stakeholders in collecting and organizing their own data, and deciding what to do, all in a single meeting. Unlike scenario planning, future search leads people to create the future they most desire without assessing the probability of attaining it, We work on the assumption that people who put their energy into what they want are more likely to have it. We think of future search as an intersection of three levels of social change practice: (1) a meeting design based on four key principles to be described; (2) a theory and philosophy of facilitating that might be characterized as ‘doing less so that participants can do more;’ (3) a whole system change strategy requiring no special training, systems theory or vocabulary. This article highlights the first level, showing how principles grounded in the Lewinian tradition are translated into a meeting design that stimulates ongoing cooperative action.     

Chasing assets abroad: Ideas for more effective asset tracing and recovery in cross-border insolvency

Asset tracing and recovery (ATR) has become highly challenging in the digital age, where, with the touch of computer keys, assets can be shifted through multiple jurisdictions within minutes, creating significant challenges for recovering value. While many countries have tools to enable ATR, these tools differ from jurisdiction to jurisdiction and often are not recognized across borders in a manner that keeps pace with the need for rapid ATR, particularly during insolvency. This article takes stock of the myriad ATR tools available in domestic systems to discern parameters of key ATR tools that have common objectives, features, and safeguards, and that can form the basis of more standardized understanding and application of such tools. It also explores the extent to which cross-border ATR is aided by the leading frameworks for global, cross-border insolvency—the UNCITRAL Model Laws on Cross-Border Insolvency, insolvency-related judgments, and enterprise groups—in the process, revealing gaps and uncertainties. Such uncertainties can result in losses to stakeholders affected by insolvencies of different business sizes but can be particularly detrimental in small and medium enterprise (SME) cross-border insolvencies where there are typically more limited resources to chase assets. Against this backdrop, this article proposes ideas for the enhancement of the cross-border insolvency framework, to allow for effective cross-border access to information held abroad, the freezing of assets in cross-border cases, and the cross-border recovery of assets.     

Universal Enterprise Adaptive Object Model: A Semantic Web-Based Implementation of Organizational Self-Awareness

In this paper we present a novel conceptual model that systematizes the integrated management and adaptation of: (1) enterprise models, (2) their representations, (3) their underlying meta-models (i.e. their abstract syntax) and (4) the representation rules (i.e. concrete syntax for the respective models). All this for different modelling languages and also different versions of these languages. Thanks to our original use of the adaptive object model and type square patterns—normally applied in the context of software engineering, but here applied for enterprise engineering—we manage to provide a strong conceptual foundation for the development of software tools that allow a precise and coherent specification of models and their evolution and also of meta-models and their evolution. We also present a prototype of such a tool currently being developed to enable collaborative enterprise ontology model management using the Semantic MediaWiki as a base framework. This solution is solidly grounded on the theoretical foundations of organizational self-awareness and Ψ-theory of enterprise ontology and is a valuable contribution to facilitate general and distributed enterprise model management and also concrete and abstract syntax specification (i.e. the specification of a language's meta-model). This allows flexibility and ease of use in creation and adaptation of organizational models and also the use of semantic queries to detect and inform users on any violation of meta-model rules. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Accounting,New Public Management and American Politics: Theoretical Insights into the National Performance Review

Borrowing from the work of political theorists Sheldon Wolin and William Connolly, this essay seeks to provide additional rationalization for the expansion of accounting within domains like the public sector. We suggest that such an expansion is intimately linked to social and cultural transitions which have led political theorists to not only question modern political theory but to also recognize the political significance of practices like accounting to political theory. We contend that these same transitions also make possible expansions of accounting through New Public Management (NPM) initiatives like the U.S.'s National Performance Review (NPR). Seen in this way, accounting theory begins to move away from its traditional status as, in Foucault's (1995) terms, a “subjugated” knowledge and to take on a serious intellectual priority within political theory. A primary objective is to provide at least a partial rational-analytic typos useful in understanding the codetermined relationship between accounting and politics.     

债券融资支持工具实践路径研究--基于2018~2019年浙江省民营企业数据

为稳定和促进民营企业发债融资,以市场化方式帮助缓解民营企业融资难,2018年,国务院常务会议决定设立"民营企业债券融资支持工具"。基于此背景,本文选取民营企业债券融资支持工具作为研究对象,分析其实践机制,并以浙江为例探索实施民营企业债券融资支持工具的实现路径和难点所在。研究发现:浙江债券融资支持工具的实践探索持续协调发展,在创设主体、标的债务、凭证定价等三方面呈现趋优转向,但其发展仍受认知差异、计量规则、风险偏好、预期收益等复杂因素影响。     

激励理论在高校与企业中的比较分析

目前我国高校越来越重视对教师的长效激励。高校长效激励在理论上还是崭新的,但长效激励及其理论与实践在企业中备受重视,相关研究已经很深入了。所以企业的长效激励实践与理论对于高校而言有着积极的借鉴意义。本文基于心理诱导逻辑的管理学激励理论和利益关联逻辑的经济学激励理论,对高校和企业的激励进行比较研究,并对高校和企业长效激励机制适用对象进行了比较分析,研究发现,高校不适合使用股权激励机制。     

The digital future of internal staffing: A vision for transformational electronic human resource management

Through an international Delphi study, this article explores the new electronic human resource management regimes that are expected to transform internal staffing. Our focus is on three types of information systems: human resource management systems, job portals, and talent marketplaces. We explore the future potential of these new systems and identify the key challenges for their implementation in governments, such as inadequate regulations and funding priorities, a lack of leadership and strategic vision, together with rigid work policies and practices and a change-resistant culture. Tied to this vision, we identify several areas of future inquiry that bridge the divide between theory and practice.     

Some reflections on the high expectations as formulated in the Internet Bubble era

Since the breakthrough of the Internet to the broader public in the 1990s, expectations of the converging information technology, telecommunication and media industries and technologies as a catalyst for economic growth and social welfare have been high. Futures scientists were involved in predicting the future of these technologies during the Internet bubble. In this paper, we use a meta-analysis approach to examine how well futures studies have been able to describe future reality. We limit our studies to futures research in the ICT and Internet domain that were published between 1995 and 2000. Because the number of relevant studies can hardly be called impressive, we selected a number of available futures studies that were conducted by official government bodies and individual companies, based on various approaches, ranging from technology forecasts [1] to highly creative visions [2], and from predictions [2] to essays [4]. These studies were carried out by Dutch as well as by international organizations. Based on a framework we developed for the analysis of business models, we wanted to see whether technological drivers, regulatory/policy issues and market development as well as competitive behavior, on the input side, and the way value for customers and providers is provided, on the output side, were discussed. Our analysis made it clear that, looking back with what we know now about business models, futures studies and recently developed tools like road mapping, developments in futures studies have made tremendous progress since the Internet Bubble. However, here is still room for more rigor when it comes to methodology and reporting. More recently, there has been a promising integration of scenario analysis and business model approaches that opens new avenues for futures studies.     

A framework for assessing the vulnerability of food systems to future shocks

Modern society depends on complex agro-ecological and trading systems to provide food for urban residents, yet there are few tools available to assess whether these systems are vulnerable to future disturbances. We propose a preliminary framework to assess the vulnerability of food systems to future shocks based on landscape ecology's ‘Panarchy Framework’. According to Panarchy, ecosystem vulnerability is determined by three generic characteristics: (1) the wealth available in the system, (2) how connected the system is, and (3) how much diversity exists in the system. In this framework, wealthy, non-diverse, tightly connected systems are highly vulnerable. The wealth of food systems can be measured using the approach pioneered by development economists to assess how poverty affects food security. Diversity can be measured using the tools investors use to measure the diversity of investment portfolios to assess financial risk. The connectivity of a system can be evaluated with the tools chemists use to assess the pathways chemicals use to flow through the environment. This approach can lead to better tools for creating policy designed to reduce vulnerability, and can help urban or regional planners identify where food systems are vulnerable to shocks and disturbances that may occur in the future.     

美国公司所得税制的实践及其对我国的启示

传统公司课税理论从法人性质角度说明公司负担所得税的合理性,但是这种解释方式受到了现行公司组织形式多样化的挑战。美国之所以对C公司、S公司、有限责任公司和开放式合伙采取灵活多样的所得税制,而不受纳税人是否具有独立法人资格的影响,乃是贯彻应能负税原则使然。在这一理论的指导下,并受国际上减轻经济性双重征税趋势的影响,我国对一人公司应改为采用单一课税模式。