GOVERNMENT POLICY AND THE CHANGING MARKET IN RESIDENTIAL CARE FOR THE ELDERLY: A FINANCIAL ANALYSIS OF THE PRIVATE SECTOR

The market in residential care for the elderly is in a state of flux. Key factors are the increasing proportion of elderly (particularly the 85+ age group) and central governments new community care agenda. The mixed economy of public, private and voluntary residential provision will continue but community care policy changes will entail (a) the new role of case managers in the local authorities and (b) an anticipation that the private sector will play a more significant role than hitherto not only in meeting the demand for residential care but also in leading the way by diversifying into new types of care provision. These issues are addressed by (1) examining and commenting on government policy towards the care of the elderly and (2) examining, in detail, the profitability and financial viability of a random sample of private residential homes for the elderly. This financial analysis suggests that, at present, the ability of the private sector to innovate and expand into new forms of service provision is constrained by the number of homes which operate at the margins of viability. The implications of this are that (a) government policy may be founded on an optimistic view of the ability of private sector provision to respond as expected to the new community care agenda and (b) case managers in local authorities may have to exercise considerable financial expertise in identifying financial vulnerability, as well as social work skills, in the deployment of available funds for residential care for the elderly.     

ACTIVITY-BASED COSTING IN IRELAND: BARRIERS TO,AND OPPORTUNITIES FOR,CHANGE

This paper considers the state of managerial accounting in Ireland and argues that it is “marginalised”. As evidence, the study examines the adoption of one innovative technique, Activity-Based Costing (ABC), in Ireland and reports that the rate of adoption is lower in Ireland than in Anglo-American countries. This is a puzzling phenomenon given that management accounting practices such as ABC are more transferable across national boundaries, particularly across countries that share a common language, than country-specific Generally Accepted Accounting Principles. This paper posits that the marginalisation of managerial accounting in Ireland may be due to both supply and demand barriers. In particular, Ireland lacks a supply of innovative managerial accountants due to a lack of compulsory continuing professional education, practitioner journals devoted specifically to management accounting, and executive MBA programmes. Furthermore, neither the Irish business community nor academia in Ireland have demanded sweeping changes in the accounting curricula. Changes in the supply and demand of innovative management accountants will allow managerial accountants in Ireland to become agents of change rather than marginalised recorders of the past.     

THE RELUCTANT MANAGERS: CLINICIANS AND BUDGETS IN THE NHS

A review of the literature on management budgeting, combined with recent fieldwork in a number of health authorities, points to major weaknesses in both the theory and practices of management budgeting. The lack of major incentives to clinician participation and of significant penalties for non-participation are seen as central to the failure of management budgeting to achieve either rapid or widespread adoption. In addition, it has been insufficiently appreciated that many managers themselves are less than enthusiastic about the prospects for workload-related budgeting. Finally, it is suggested that, though novel in some important aspects, resource management may often suffer similar difficulties.     

关于省会城市行集约化经营的思考与实践

在市场经济条件下,转变城市行的经营机制,将城市行改造成为业务调控中心、信贷经营中心、风险控制中心和成本核算中心,对于一个经济欠发达地区的省会城市行具有重要的现实意义.本文阐述了甘肃省分行如何根据市场变化和客户需要进行经营管理创新,走出了一条具有本行特色的经营管理道路.实现省会城市行的集约化经营,就是改变工商银行在计划经济体制下形成的"三级管理、一级经营"的运作方式,将省会城市行由管理型转变为经营管理型,实现集约化经营.因此,本文认为,按照城市行改革的基本要求,坚定不移地走质量效益型的现代商业银行发展之路,是省分行营业部改革和发展的必由之路.     

THE SEARCH FOR A PROPORTIONATE CARE LAW BY FORMULA FUNDING IN THE ENGLISH NHS

Although the National Health Service was created to achieve equity of access to health care in 1948, over twenty years later an 'inverse care law' was seen to operate. The 1976  Report of the Resource Allocation Working Party  laid the principles of formula funding to achieve an equitable distribution of resources, to move, over time, towards the operation of a proportionate care law. These principles have been applied ever since in England. This paper describes the context, governance and subsequent development of formulas and three persistent problems: accounting for populations, their needs and variations in the unavoidable costs of providers. The paper concludes by outlining continuing problems from the past and new challenges of formula funding in England to reduce 'avoidable' inequalities in health.     

A CODE FOR CORPORATE PRACTICES AND CONDUCT: RESHAPING COMPANY BOARDS?

A set of proposals on corporate conduct, prepared under the auspices of the National Companies and Securities Commission, was widely circulated for discussion during 1990 and issued in its final form in December. The proposals constitute a self-regulatory code which may significantly influence the control and decision-making structures of listed companies, particularly through its guidelines on the composition of the board of directors. This paper concludes that there is evidence that further regulating board memberships could impose costs on shareholders of companies which favour certain board structures.     

INTERNATIONAL DIFFERENCES IN RESEARCH AND DEVELOPMENT REPORTING PRACTICES: A FRENCH AND CANADIAN COMPARISON

This paper compares the research and development (R&D) disclosure practices in France and Canada, as evidenced in the annual reports of 76 French and 110 Canadian listed companies. It finds that Canadian high-tech companies (hardware, software, and biotechnology) disclose significantly more information on their R&D activities than their French counterparts. It also finds a strong link between R&D intensity and R&D disclosure among Canadian high-tech companies. Canadian companies overall are also found to be more likely to use non-financial disclosure as a means to resolve any R&D information asymmetry, while French firms disclose more traditional financial and accounting information. Canadian companies are also more willing than French firms to provide information concerning their future R&D expenditures. These results are consistent with inherent cultural and capital market differences between France and Canada. In contrast, the study does not find any significant difference in R&D expenditure capitalization policies between French and Canadian firms.     

CLINICAL AUDIT,GUIDELINES AND STANDARDS: A PRODUCTIVE RELATION FOR MANAGING CLINICAL PRACTICES

This paper contributes to the knowledge about the process of standardisation within the domain of medicine. Standardisation has become an important form of governance and co‐ordination, and there is limited empirical knowledge about its nature and consequences ( Brunsson et al., 2000 ). This paper aims to explore the development, circulation and standardisation process of a specific clinical audit programme: the Scottish Hip Fracture Audit. This audit started as a local initiative and now has developed into a sophisticated arena (Sahlin‐Andersson, 2000) which provides Scottish hospitals with monthly ‘real‐time reports’ outlining their performance against Scottish government targets. The paper argues that the interrelation between clinical audit and evidence‐based medicine (EBM) can become a ‘productive relation’ (Mykhalovskiy, 2003), that opens up spaces of intervention, in which the clinical communities engage with processes of change of clinical procedures, and in these spaces, clinicians and managers are in a position to refine clinical practice and service organisation, to reflect upon their own actions and to allow insight into the rationalities of their work (Berg, 1997).     

CAPITAL ACCOUNTING, USER NEEDS AND THE FOUNDATIONS OF A CONCEPTUAL FRAMEWORK FOR PUBLIC SECTOR FINANCIAL REPORTING

This paper analyses the need for an adequate conceptual framework for financial reporting, particularly in the public sector, and examines several factors which may have worked against progress in the UK in developing such a conceptual framework in the past. The paper then analyses in detail the needs of potential users for capital accounting information in public sector financial reports, and the relevance of accruals accounting and different measurement bases in this context. Given the large amount of existing work outside the UK on the development of conceptual frameworks for financial reporting, the paper argues the need not for a new framework, but rather for a more focused analysis of several key conceptual issues that are relevant to meeting user needs.     

网络大潮下银行业经营环境的变迁

以计算机技术、通讯技术和互联网技术为核心的信息技术从根本上改变和正在改变着银行业的外在经营环境和内部运作模式,成为推动银行业变革和创新的主要推动力之一.网络技术在带给银行挑战的同时也赋予银行业前所未有的机遇.互联网技术是信息技术集大成的产物,以网络技术为核心的信息技术可以通过规模经济大幅降低交易成本,通过业务拓展推动银行最优边界扩张,并使得客户导向的金融服务创新更为便利.利用网络技术改造银行业务主要体现在两个方面:一是引入基于TCP/IP协议的银行内联网;二是着力构建中央数据仓库.它们是银行获取竞争优势的主要手段,也是未来几年银行信息化的基本方向.     

COMPETING IDEOLOGIES IN THE ACCOUNTING AND INDUSTRIAL RELATIONS ENVIRONMENT

Despite differences in approaches towards ‘accounting and industrial relations’, there have been few attempts to record those differences systematically or to locate them within a conceptual framework. This paper documents the diversity among actors in the accounting and industrial relations environment, situates it theoretically and considers its implications for policy and practice. ‘Differences’ are shown to have persisted across time and to transcend national boundaries. Building on previous studies, a framework is presented to explain observed differences in terms of differences in underlying ideologies, based on varying sets of assumptions about society and organizations. Unitarist, pluralist and radical assumptions are seen to lead to different conceptualizations of the management–labour relationship and different sets of ‘problems’ and conclusions concerning the ends served by the disclosure of accounting information to employees and labour representatives. It is also argued that the ideologies identified incorporate competing knowledge interests and involve distinct modes of rationality.     

REGULATING CHARITABLE SOLICITATION PRACTICES – THE SEARCH FOR A HYBRID SOLUTION

A review of four fundraising regulatory models currently in existence in common law jurisdictions reveals a mismatch between the stated policy goals that these models set out to achieve and the practical, albeit unintended, consequences that flow from the implementation of these models. The paper highlights some of these policy/implementation discords. It proposes a hybrid model, which is designed to resolve some of these inconsistencies, and considers the potential for the model's practical application in one of the jurisdictions surveyed, Ireland.     

MONITORING AND AUDITING VALUE FOR MONEY IN THE UK: THE SCOPE FOR QUANTITATIVE ANALYSIS - A COMMENT

Despite Anand's comments (1988), this author still believes that there is much scope for employing naturalistic methods in the evaluation of public sector effectiveness , although he also recognises that it is also eminently sensible to try to develop new performance measures in statistical form where they can be shown to be appropriate. Look to the quotation at the end of the paper. Stoppard says it all!