Management accounting: Are new techniques making in-roads with practitioners?

Despite numerous criticisms and the examples of specific companies changing to a particular technique, there are few empirical studies providing evidence of the status of management accounting practice. The primary purpose of this study was to examine trends in the adoption of the new managerial accounting techniques by manufacturing firms. Evidence of changes in the direction of managerial accounting would have significant future implication regarding the direction of management accounting education and of accounting theory. The results of this study indicate that new techniques are being adopted while traditional systems are being maintained, suggesting that a broadening of innovations in management accounting may require the development of a new and separate course dealing strictly with these innovative techniques in the transition to world-class manufacturing.     

Does managerial ability facilitate corporate innovative success?

This paper examines whether managerial ability facilitates corporate innovative success. First, we show that managerial ability is positively associated with innovative output. Second, we show that the positive association between managerial ability and innovative output is weaker for older CEOs and managers who stay in the same job for longer, suggesting a preference for a ‘quiet life’ by long serving CEOs. Third, we find that the equity market values patents generated by more able managers more positively, suggesting that equity holders deem better skilled managers more effective at converting innovative ideas into valuable new products. Finally, we show that managerial ability is positively associated with more ‘radical’ innovations, which are outside of the firm's knowledge base. Overall, our results suggest that managerial ability is an essential component of corporate innovative success.     

Innovation and economic change

The MIT System Dynamics National Model represents the physical and human processes involved in the long-term growth of a national economy and can provide a theoretical explanation for the generation of long waves. The phases of the long-wave cycle strongly influence the climate for innovation: towards the end of a boom minor improvement innovations in established industries tend to predominate, but managerial and political innovations in a depression can ultimately lead to an upsurge of radically new technologies. A balance between human population and environment may now be the most fundamental requirement for political and social innovation, taking precedence over the proliferation of technical innovation for its own sake.     

Accounting for the control of doctors: Management information systems in hospitals

The paper describes some current and proposed innovations in the activity accounting and cost accounting systems in two Swedish hospitals. Results are reported of interviews with administrators and senior doctors which reveal their attitudes and intensions with respect to the new control information generated by the accounting innovations. The fundamental differences between the professional ethos of the doctor and the managerial ambitions of the administrator are found to remain robust. Nevertheless there is evidence that the new control information may be the focus of some genuine convergence in the outlook of some administrators and some “doctors managers” with some consequent reduction in goal-uncertainty in the organisation. This paper argues that this calls for some revision of existing accounts of the interaction of doctors and administrators in hospital management.     

The effects of organic and mechanistic control in exploratory and exploitative innovations

This study investigates the indirect effects of mechanistic and organic types of control on project performance acting through innovativeness in exploratory and exploitative innovation projects. It also examines the interaction effect of these controls on performance. The research model is empirically tested with survey data from 119 projects in various project organizations, using Partial Least Squares (PLS) with controls for the size of the project and task uncertainty. The results illustrate that organic control, acting through innovativeness on project performance is an important form of control in exploratory innovations, and also enhances performance in exploitative innovations. In addition, the results indicate that the interaction effect of organic and mechanistic control types enhances performance in both exploratory and exploitative innovation projects, suggesting a complementary effect. The findings are discussed in relation to theory and their managerial implications.     

开放条件下我国服务贸易结构性失衡与对策

加入WTO以来,随着服务业开放的保护性安排逐渐结束,我国服务贸易的结构性失衡呈现新的特点:传统服务业仍然维持一定规模贸易顺差,新兴服务业如金融、电信、信息、咨询等行业的贸易逆差增大。在新的开放条件下,服务贸易发展面临来自外国服务提供者的激烈竞争和挑战。笔者认为,我国服务贸易失衡是服务业竞争劣势的集中体现,有必要通过技术、管理和制度创新增强服务业竞争优势,同时要有效运用国际惯例和国内法律规范维护我国服务产业安全和服务贸易利益。     

The Performance of Microinsurance Programs: A Data Envelopment Analysis

The purpose of this research is to measure the performance of microinsurance programs using data envelopment analysis and to derive implications for the viable provision of microinsurance products. This is a worthwhile exercise given the significant limitations of the existing performance measures used in the microinsurance industry. A single and simple to interpret performance measure can overcome these limitations and provide a sophisticated tool for performance measurement within a multidimensional framework. Moreover, this technique can incorporate the important social function that microinsurers fulfill and provide powerful managerial implications. We illustrate the capabilities of data envelopment analysis using a sample of 20 microinsurance programs and recent innovations from the efficiency literature, such as the bootstrapping of efficiency scores and a truncated regression analysis of efficiency determinants.     

基于企业社会责任的管理会计框架重构

企业社会责任(CSR)的概念是不断演进的。无论围绕风险管理关注CSR对企业价值的影响,还是投资者结合社会责任投资(SRI)再造投资管理新模式,以及结合CSR与SRI的相关性来重新定位公司治理的作用等,均需要完善管理会计系统,进而重构管理会计的新框架。当前,从CSR的伦理观考察管理会计的框架结构是一种比较现实的选择。     

Spreadsheet usage by management accountants: An exploratory study

Spreadsheets play an important role for managerial accountants. For these practitioners, spreadsheets are necessary tools for traditional responsibilities such as planning, budgeting, forecasting as well as newer decision-making responsibilities. Responsibilities for managerial accounting practitioners have shifted from a transaction-based focus to an emphasis on decision support, planning, and control. Managerial accountants are expected to be key members of decision making and cross-functional teams outside the accounting area. Spreadsheets are major tools for meeting these new responsibilities.     

Modernizing innovations Analysing their use and prospects in Brazil

A recent study, conducted in Brazil, has investigated the difusion of new technologies and new organizational techniques—both important facets of the emerging technoeconomic paradigm—in the context of a newly industrializing country. In addition to examining current levels of use of these innovations in leading firms, it examines the expectations of managers as to future prospects for their use, and the implications for employment, training and competitive circumstances. As well as presenting methodological innovations, this article reports on the empirical results—indicating considerable uptake of some elements of the new paradigm, but less effort with respect to others—and develops scenarios for the future of the Brazilian economy.     

The ambidextrous organization

Corporate executives must constantly look backward, attending to the products and processes of the past, while also gazing forward, preparing for the innovations that will define the future. This mental balancing act is one of the toughest of all managerial challenges--it requires executives to explore new opportunities even as they work diligently to exploit existing capabilities--and it's no surprise that few companies do it well. But as every businessperson knows, there are companies that do. What's their secret? These organizations separate their new, exploratory units from their traditional, exploitative ones, allowing them to have different processes, structures, and cultures; at the same time, they maintain tight links across units at the senior executive level. Such "ambidextrous organizations," as the authors call them, allow executives to pioneer radical or disruptive innovations while also pursuing incremental gains. Of utmost importance to the ambidextrous organization are ambidextrous managers--executives who have the ability to understand and be sensitive to the needs of very different kinds of businesses. They possess the attributes of rigorous cost cutters and free-thinking entrepreneurs while also maintaining the objectivity required to make difficult trade-offs. Almost every company needs to renew itself through the creation of breakthrough products and processes, but it shouldn't do so at the expense of its traditional business. Building an ambidextrous organization is by no means easy, but the structure itself, combining organizational separation with senior team integration, is not difficult to understand. Given the executive will to make it happen, any company can become ambidextrous.     

Managerial accounting systems and organizational control: A role perspective

This paper proposes a new way of viewing the relationship between managerial accounting systems and organizational control. This is done to provide a structure around which control processes may be observed and research conducted. In the context of role theory several propositions are advanced in order to explain the relationship. Namely, it is noted that managerial accounting systems are useful in communicating role expectations, are important to motivation, and are useful in communicating organizational climate. Also, several factors concerning managerial style and social context were seen to influence the operativeness of these propositions.     

Institutional Markets,Financial Marketing,and Financial Innovation

Firms and institutions are monitored and controlled through a complex set of implicit and explicit contractual relations. Because of these agency theoretic relations, institutional behavior in financial markets is not a simple reflection of the preference structures of individuals. Institutional preferences give rise to a demand for new financial instruments and innovations, even when the returns on these instruments are “spanned” in the sense of complete pricing. The innovations can be thought of as solving moral hazard problems. An agency theoretic example serves to illustrate the demand, supply, and financial marketing of stripped securities. In short, institutions matter.     

CONNECTING ACCOUNTING AND EDUCATION IN THE UK: DISCOURSES AND RATIONALITIES OF EDUCATION REFORM

In this paper we analyze the processes which have structured the emphasis upon budgeting and accounting in the Local Management of Schools initiative by outlining the inter-relations between the discourses of neo-liberal government and economics, and the apparent “need” for the expansion of accounting and budgeting systems in the public sector and particularly education in the UK during the past six years.At the heart of our analysis is the contention that accounting and budgeting systems have been promoted throughout the UK public sector by connections to a discourse of managerial enterprise and economic rationality. The intersections between accounting techniques, and economic and managerial notions of decision making, responsibility and market organization have provided the complex discursive formation within which the accounting and budgeting innovations introduced under LMS have been presented and represented as “necessary” elements of proper public sector organization. The colonization of accounting into the education sector has been made possible by a series of seemingly unquestioned linkages, associations and reductions, upon which we offer a commentary, between the discourse of economic rationality and the techniques of accounting.     

全球股指期货与期权市场的发展动向及启示

本文通过对近年来全球股指期货及期权场内交易发展态势及动向分析,指出全球股指期货及期权呈现出交易量稳居各类产品之首、交易高度集中于几家交易所的几种产品、中国概念股指备受关注、创新步伐不断加快等四大趋势,启示我们适时推出股指期货,研究股指期权,不但可以拓展期货市场发展空间,推动境内资本市场的健康发展,建立完善的股指市场体系,而且是股票类衍生品创新的基础。     

To succeed in the long-term, focus on the middle-term

When a mature company fails to endure over the long term, it's often due to the "Horizon 2 vacuum," argues Moore, author of Crossing the Chasm and several other books on innovation strategy, and managing director of the consulting firm TCG Advisors. The reference is to the strategic horizons outlined by McKinsey's Mehrdad Baghai and colleagues in The Alchemy of Growth: Horizon 1 is today's cash-generating business, Horizon 2 is the set of innovations just being commercialized, and Horizon 3 consists of forward-thinking R&D. Most companies understand they must invest in their future, so the funding and management of Horizon 3 is not the problem. The trouble starts when those innovations are brought to market and must compete with the mainstay business for company resources. They disappear from top management's radar screen and suffer a level of neglect few ventures could survive. Cisco Systems is one company that has recognized the problem and tried to address it. To begin with, CEO John Chambers has insulated Horizon 2 projects from many of the pressures of Horizon 1--for example, by reorchestrating sales coverage so that emerging markets won't be neglected. He has also kick-started some Horizon 2 businesses by augmenting them with acquisitions, increasing their scale, and giving them more management attention. For the same reason, he has challenged his head of product development to think in terms of new businesses, not simply new products--knowing that the latter tend to get lost in salespeople's bags. Most important, Cisco is handicapping its Horizon 2 projects so that they need not compete head-to-head with established businesses. Their success is judged by metrics that are appropriate to new businesses, and they are given the benefit of Cisco's best managerial talent.     

Predicting hedge fund performance when fund returns are skewed

We show that fund-specific return skewness is associated with managerial skill and future hedge fund performance. Specifically, skewness in fund returns reflects managerial skill in avoiding large drawdowns. Using a new measure of investment skill that accounts for this managerial ability, we demonstrate that traditional performance measures underestimate (overestimate) managerial performance when returns exhibit positive (negative) fund-specific skewness. Our new measure is particularly valuable during periods of economic crisis, when the annual risk-adjusted outperformance is 5.5%.     

Measuring Investment Distortions when Risk-Averse Managers Decide Whether to Undertake Risky Projects

We create a dynamic model in which a self-interested, risk-averse manager makes corporate investment decisions at a levered firm with characteristics typical of public US firms. We examine the magnitude of distortions in those decisions when a new project changes firm risk and find expected changes in the values of future tax shields and bankruptcy costs to be important factors. We evaluate the extent to which these distortions vary with firm leverage, debt duration, project size, managerial risk aversion, managerial non-firm wealth, and the structure of management compensation packages     

Credit policy and its heterogeneous effects on green innovations

We use the issuance of a new credit policy in China—the Green Credit Guideline (Guideline)—as a unique event and investigate its heterogenous effects on various green technology innovations for different firms in the world’s largest emerging economy. We find that all firms experience a significant increase in green technology innovations after the issuance of the Guideline. Companies with more considerable legitimacy deficiency in environmental compliance are more responsive to the Guideline. The larger increase in green technology innovations for companies with more legitimacy deficiency in environmental compliance is mainly driven by their higher productivity in applicational technology innovations after the Guideline was issued. All firms experience significant improvements in the effectiveness of investments, which is an important channel for increasing green technology innovations. Local legal system development and law enforcement efforts, firms’ political connections, and state ownership are essential mediating factors for green technology innovations, especially for firms with more legitimacy deficiency in environmental compliance. The Guideline positively affects both firm value and reputation, indicating that the new credit policy promotes impact investing.     

银行可持续发展:寻求金融创新与风险管理的适度平衡

在宏观经济面临的不确定性越来越大、宏观调控政策日趋频繁的复杂环境下,商业银行要想持续、稳健发展就必须加大金融创新的力度.但金融创新在为银行拓展新的经营空间、创造利润的同时也引致了新的风险.本文论述了商业银行金融创新的发展方向并对金融创新的风险点进行了识别和分析,认为当前的银行业改革必须在金融创新与风险管理之间寻求适度的平衡,这在金融全面开放的后WTO时代,对于推动银行业实施战略转型从而实现可持续发展具有重要的意义.