Who is considered an ‘older worker'? Extending our conceptualisation of ‘older’ from an organisational decision maker perspective

A refinement of the construct of age, specifically ‘older’, is recognised as a critical measurement concern for experts in both ageing research and policy formation. In this context, we set out to both chronologically define an ‘older worker’ and to identify on what basis the age of ‘older’ is determined. In doing so, we draw on open‐ended survey data (collected in 2011) from a sample of 407 organisational decision makers across all industries in Ireland. Our focus was specifically on the perspective of organisational decision makers because these individuals will be instrumental in facing the challenges associated with workforce ageing. The results show that workers are considered as ‘older’ at a younger age than might be expected and that decision makers conceptualise workers as ‘older’ using various approaches in the organisational context. Our findings contribute to the literature in three ways: firstly, by providing an important empirically derived understanding of the term ‘older worker’; secondly, by empirically examining previously suggested ‘possible’ indicators of age; and thirdly, by demonstrating that these indicators are conceptually and empirically distinct, advancing theory on the concept of age in the workplace.     

报表合并范围及方法对集团利润的影响

在市场经济日益发展成熟的今天,企业之间经济往来变得越来越密切,互相投资、股权置换等行为日益频繁,股权关系也越来越复杂。虽然新会计准则使报表合并更加完善,但大部分都是原则性的规定,仍有许多企业在利用报表合并范围、合并方法的频繁变动进行利润操纵。现从会计报表的不同合并范围及合并方法对利润的影响进行探讨,以寻求会计准则及规范的日臻完善。     

论所有者权益列报之改进

对于所有者权益的信息,现有三张会计报表的反映都不够充分:损益表与现金流量表仅仅从不同方面反映一个时期的公司利益状况;而资产负债表,虽然对所有者权益进行了分项排列,但是其静态报表的性质无法揭示更多的权益信息。现实中,“资本三原则”的应用实现了对债权人的保护,而通过对所有者权益信息的动态、历史的改进,可以满足外部股东的需求,故而是资产负债表中所有者权益排列格式的改进方向,从而提高会计报表信息的决策有用性。     

An institutional perspective of accountants' new roles – the interplay of contradictions and praxis

This paper critiques the public interest proclamations of accounting professions with particular reference to the role of disciplinary procedures in protecting these interests. It is argued that professions' widely declared concerns for the public interest, often conceptualized as encompassing a commitment to public accountability and transparency, are frequently used as a convenient mechanism for avoiding criticism and maintaining the power and privilege of delegated self-regulation. This argument is developed by examining the role played by disciplinary procedures, in particular the reporting of their results, in creating a perception that the profession acts in the public interest. The critique is supported with data derived from an investigation of the disciplinary procedures of one accounting body, the Institute of Chartered Accountants in Ireland (ICAI). The results of this examination indicate that the ICAI process appears deficient in terms of its accountability and transparency and further that there is little fairness or equity in terms of the penalties applied to members for offences committed. This tends to support prior research which suggests that disciplinary procedures (and the ethical codes they purportedly enforce) fulfil a ‘profession protection’ as opposed to a ‘society protection’ role aimed at insulating the profession from inspection and assessment from outside parties. Implications for the accounting profession and for future research are discussed.     

The Carbon Neutral Public Sector

Abstract

This paper argues for research into the effectiveness of government strategies for a ‘carbon neutral public sector’. We review initiatives in three OECD countries: New Zealand, Australia and the UK. In all jurisdictions, government agencies have consistently stressed ‘leading by example’ as a rationale for adoption. ‘Direct mandate’ by the Prime Minister (NZ); ‘organic development’ from wider central government sustainability initiatives (UK); and a more ‘laissez faire’ approach by Australian Federal and State Governments, were identified as the general pathways leading to implementation. Our assessment indicates: a lack of understanding of the implementation process for carbon neutrality; a need to identify and critically examine the ‘offset threshold’ at which mitigation efforts cease and offsetting is adopted; an absence of any evaluation of the ‘leading by example’ rationale; a lack of inter-country comparisons; a gap in understanding the relationship with economic and social aspects of sustainability; and a need to evaluate the utility of core government departments as the focus of carbon accounting. We urge colleagues to consider research in this area with a view to contributing to the interdisciplinary solutions which we believe are required.     

Political Connections and Accounting Quality under High Expropriation Risk

Abstract

We examine the impact of political connections and accounting quality among Venezuelan industrial firms, which face one of the highest levels of expropriation risk worldwide. Based on prior literature, we expect a negative relationship between expropriation risk and accounting quality as firms manage earnings to avoid ‘benign’ state intervention. We find that politically connected firms have higher accounting quality than non-connected firms, which is consistent with connected firms’ lower risk of expropriation due to connections with high-level government officials or ruling party members. The relationship between accounting quality and political connections appears to be strongly moderated by institutional features like expropriation risk.     

Employment equity policy frames in the literature: ‘good practice’ versus ‘bad idea’

Work organisations considering policies against racial or ethnic discrimination and for recognising diversity can find many different and often conflicting recommendations in the literature, in particular regarding the aim of proportional representation of different ethnic groups. To better understand this controversy, this paper rigorously examines three key theories from a frame-critical and business ethics perspective. It introduces a fundamental threefold conceptualisation of ‘employment equity policy’ (EEP) as a catch-all term for related concepts such as ‘affirmative action’, ‘equal opportunities policy’ and ‘diversity management’, distinguishing between three different organisational goals: equal treatment, equal results and individual recognition. The analysis suggests that different authors emphasise some ‘facts’ rather than others and strategically interpret the limited available empirical research to support their policy positions, mixing both classical and newer ethical reasoning. In the ‘good practice’ frame, human resource management practitioners are urged to take ‘positive action’, to monitor the ethnic composition of the workforce and to formulate target figures to increase the representation of discriminated groups. In the opposing ‘bad idea’ frame, organisations are seriously advised against EEPs with ‘hard’ numerical goals: these policies supposedly are unnecessary and ineffective and have negative unintended consequences. The article draws implications from these findings for future research and practice in the field of EEPs.     

Preserving knowledge legacies: workforce aging,turnover and human resource issues in the US electric power industry

The aging of the workforce is believed to be a potential threat to productivity of companies both in the US and worldwide. High levels of turnover that may result from workforce aging could cause short-term as well as permanent loss of knowledge critical to firm operations and customer service. While there is a wealth of research regarding the causes of turnover, there is comparatively little research on the actual effects of turnover, particularly involuntary forms of turnover such as retirement. Focusing on the US electric power industry, whose employees have average ages and company tenures among the highest in the world, this paper explores the aging workforce issue both qualitatively and quantitatively. Results from an executive survey encompassing companies representing over 75 per cent of the industry's workers affirm that workforce aging is the electricity industry's dominant human resource (HR) concern but that it is interrelated with many other top HR issues, including skill shortages, leadership, and transition from an ‘entitlement-based’ to a ‘performance-based’ culture. Implications of prior literature on organizational learning, turnover and socio-technical systems theories are discussed, and propositions are offered as a framework for further research on the general effects of potential knowledge loss due to aging-related turnover.     

Human resource diversity management practices in the Australian manufacturing sector

We examined employee perceptions of the benefits and challenges of workforce diversity and human resource (HR) diversity management practices adopted in the Australian manufacturing sector. We found that overt discrimination does not exist in the Australian manufacturing sector. However, Australian employers appear to adopt a ‘legalistic compliance approach’ and have not considered workforce diversity as a source of competitive advantage. Employers have not adopted effective HR diversity management practices. The Australian manufacturing sector has failed to value diversity or capitalize on the benefits of workforce diversity. Inadequate recognition of overseas skills, ineffective communication, increased training costs and social isolation were perceived as the main challenges, whereas a stronger work ethic among multicultural employees, greater opportunities to learn from other cultures, lower absenteeism and less labor turnover were regarded as major benefits of workforce diversity. Overall, we found migrant workers are disadvantaged in the Australian workplace.     

Production theory with profit-constrained revenue-maximization: The duality approach

This paper derives a general version of Baumol's production theory, where the main behavioral assumption is ‘revenue maximization subject to a profit constraint’ instead of ‘profit maximization’. This theory turns out to be analogous to the neoclassical (competitive) production and consumption theories. Employing the fruitful duality approach it is presented here in a unified and very economical form that provides a complete and general analysis of the comparative static behavior of Baumol's firm.     

Voluntary adoption of non-local GAAP in the European Union: A study of determinants and consequences

Abstract

This study examines the determinants and consequences of voluntary adoption of non-local accounting principles (non-local GAAP) by firms listed and domiciled in the European Union (EU). We restrict ourselves to the two predominant internationally accepted sets of accounting standards: International Accounting Standards (IAS) and United States generally accepted accounting principles (US GAAP). We have used various sources to identify EU firms that use non-local GAAP. We examine the 1999 annual reports of all these firms, because accounting standard choices in more recent years may be affected by the announcement of the proposal by the European Commission in February 2001 to mandate IAS usage from 2005 on. The maintained hypothesis is that firms that voluntarily adopt IAS or US GAAP expect to experience net benefits from adoption. The finding that 133 non-financial firms in the EU voluntarily used non-local GAAP in 1999 suggests that the majority of listed EU firms does not expect to benefit from non-local GAAP adoption. By studying the characteristics of non-local GAAP adopters this study provides insight into the determinants of non-local GAAP adoption. We find that firms voluntarily using non-local GAAP are more likely to be listed on a US exchange, the EASDAQ exchange in Brussels, and have more geographically dispersed operations. Furthermore, they are more likely to be domiciled in a country with lower quality financial reporting and where IAS is explicitly allowed as an alternative to local GAAP. We also study whether non-local GAAP adopters have lower levels of information asymmetry, a much cited benefit of using more transparent financial reporting, than non-adopters. We examine three proxies for information asymmetry: analyst following, cost of equity capital, and uncertainty among analysts and investors (forecast dispersion and stock return volatility). We document a positive effect of non-local GAAP adoption on analyst following, but fail to find evidence of a lower cost of capital for non-local GAAP adopters. Contrary to expectations, uncertainty among analysts and investors appears to be higher for firms using IAS or US GAAP than for firms using local GAAP. However, by comparing ‘early’ and ‘late’ adopters, we find some evidence that suggests that benefits take some time to fully materialise.     

From psoriasis to a number and back

This paper will argue that accounting can be understood as a special kind of Latourian Actor – a ‘space/time/value machine’ [Frandsen, A. -C. (2004). Rum, tid och pengar – En studie om redovisning i praktiken. Doctoral Thesis, Göteborg: BAS]. It starts conceptually by seeing accounting and its references as a ‘chain of translations’ [Latour, B. (1998). Artefaktens återkomst. Stockholm: Knowledge and Society; Latour, B. (1999). Pandora’s hope. Essays on the reality of science studies. Cambridge: Harvard University Press]. Empirically it follows a puzzling set of such references, from a psoriasis clinic where accounting is unfamiliar – so part of what [Tuan, Y. -F. (2001). Space and place, 8th ed. London: University of Minnesota Press] would call a ‘space’ – to a central finance function where it is taken for granted embodied knowledge, and so part of ‘place’, and then back, to observe how these references become integrated into medical everyday work and its embodied ways of knowing, establishing the clinic as an accounting ‘place’ for those who work there.. It then argues that as these references become more taken for granted, accounting acts as a special Actor because of the way it circulates inside and outside both human and non-human ‘actants’, as a machine which always names and counts, so constituting space, time and valuing through its flexible ‘named numbers’.. It tracks how accounting moves to becoming familiar and expands its reach through four categories: ‘the character of the associations’, ‘the integration of associations and the delimitation of movement’, ‘order and its relation to change; and ‘the production of other spaces’. This illuminates how accounting draws actants into its chains or circuits of value, thus extending its ability to construct both facts and acts. Here the paper supplements the actor-network approach with ideas drawn from the work of Hoskin and colleagues [e.g. Ezzamel, M., & Hoskin, K. (2002). Retheorizing the relationship between accounting, writing and money with evidence from Mesopotamia and ancient Egypt. Critical Perspectives on Accounting, 13, 333–367; Hoskin, K. (1981). The history of education and the history of writing, Unpublished paper. Department of Education, University of Warwick; Hoskin, K., & Macve, R., (1986). Accounting and the examination: A genealogy of disciplinary power. Accounting, Organisation and Society, 11, 105–136] which see accounting as a visible sign system naming and counting from before the invention of writing, and so having a special priority in settings concerned with coordinating action in space and across time. In modern managerial worklife settings, its named numbers circulate as paper and electronic texts which are strategically central to both financial and non-financial coordination of resources and actants. This helps clarify why accounting should be such a special Actor, as well as how it functions as machine.     

Mixed signals: employee reactions to talent status communication amidst strategic ambiguity

Abstract

Given the sensitive nature of communicating talent status in an ‘exclusive’ talent management system and the complexity involved in simultaneously sending signals of exclusivity and inclusivity, some organisations avoid open communication and instead opt for ‘strategic ambiguity’ – intentionally maintaining an element of secrecy and information asymmetry. However, we know relatively little about the effects of this communication approach as a feature of the organisational context on the reactions of employees. Drawing on signalling theory, we examine the reactions of both talents and ‘B’ players on finding out about their talent status in the context of a company that adopts strategic ambiguity in its communication about talent. The data consists of 24 in-depth, qualitative interviews with individuals with experience of TM in a Finnish subsidiary of a large, US-based multinational corporation. The findings reveal that the contextual effects of strategic ambiguity in talent communication affected the reactions of talents and ‘B’ players in distinctly different ways, but had few long-term positive effects on the attitudes and behaviours of either group. These findings present important theoretical and practical implications for the role of communication and organisational context in employee reactions to talent pool inclusion and for talent management more generally.     

The adoption of outside boards by small private US firms

The research issue motivating the present study is concerned with why some small private firms adopt an ‘outside board’ (i.e. larger boards in which the majority of directors are neither managers of the firm nor relatives of the Chief Executive Officer (CEO)) and others do not. This issue is addressed by investigating whether differing contextual conditions distinguish adopters from non-adopters of outside boards. The authors consider the adoption of an outside board to be one part of a larger organizational life-cycle process in which organizations implement more ‘professional management’ structures and practices in response to their evolving internal and external contexts. The authors examine simultaneously three contextual pressures that commonly confront small private firms as they develop over time- firm growth and larger size, the succession of the CEO, and the diffusion of equity to individuals outside the firm- to determine which of these are salient in explaining the presence of an outside board. Logistic regression results (3070 respondents toa cross-industry mail survey) indicate that outside boards are more likely when more equity is held by individuals outside the firm, CEOs are older and CEOs do not intend to implement an intra-family transition of leadership. The results suggest that firms adopt outside boards primarily to satisfy the desires of external owners, and only secondarily for the service and resource benefits that outside directors provide.     

Social Accounting Research as If The World Matters

Abstract

This essay is intended as a self-reflective, auto-critique of the ‘social accounting community’. The essay is directed at the academic community of accountants concerned with social accounting. This `community' is predominantly concerned with English language accounting journals and is preoccupied with the social and environmental practices of the larger private sector organisations. The essay is motivated by a concern over our responsibilities as academics in a world in crisis and a concern that social accounting is losing its energy and revolutionary zeal. This community's social accounting endeavours have taken place in almost complete ignorance of the activities and developments in non accounting communities and, in particular, developments in the public and third sectors. The essay reaches out to the public and third sector work and literature as an illustration of one of the ways in which ‘our’ social accounting can try to prevent itself from becoming moribund.     

The measurement of the economic performance of the US Nonfinancial Corporate Business Sector 1946–1990: an application of the shareholder value creation concept

This paper is based upon a juxtaposition of the cash flow-market value performance (alias SVC performance) and historic cost accounting (HC) performance of the US Nonfinancial Corporate Business sector 1946–90. It has two principal objectives: 1. To determine whether, judged on return and variability dimensions, the HC accounting model is an operationally acceptable surrogate for a multiperiod market-based accounting model. 2. To analyse the consequences of HC income-based distributions, i.e., corporate tax, interest and dividend payments based on conventionally-measured corporate income. Three principal conclusions are drawn: i. Notwithstanding their common cash flow component, HC performance indices are not reliable surrogates for SVC performance criteria. The former apparently do not accurately capture changes in corporate valuation and generally understate the variability of market-based returns. ii. The multiperiod HC income of a going concern characteristically overstates its coterminous multiperiod cash flows to a considerable degree. Contrary to common supposition, the former does not therefore constitute a ‘normalized’ or ‘smoothed’ version of a firm's ‘primitive’ cash flows in the sense that the cumulative (multiperiod) values of the two measures tend to converge. iii. As a consequence of ii, HC income and its near relation, taxable earnings, are dubious bases for measuring interest-paying, tax-paying and dividend-paying capacities. Corporate income-distribution decisions based on HC accruals-based profit measures frequently trigger external financing which may cause shareholder wealth losses and wealth transfers from shareholders to lenders. However, ‘fiscal drag’ appears to be the most serious consequence of HC accruals-based income distribution decisions.     

A New Strategy Against Hostile Takeovers: A Model of Defense in Participations

This article examines the efficacy of a ‘defense in participations’ policy consisting of competitors acquiring cross‐equity participations within the same industry to prevent hostile takeovers. This defense in participations strategy provides disincentive for raiders as partial ownerships increase market power of competitors and then reinforce the ‘outsider effect’. Also, we find conditions for a general result, which state that takeovers are less profitable in an industry with participations rather than in an industry without any capital links. We provide information to regulators about the positive social impact of cross participations in the context of mergers and expose an economic dilemma between a ‘laissez‐faire’ and an interventionist approach. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

The career competencies of self-initiated and assigned expatriates: assessing the development of career capital over time

Abstract

Building on a modern careers approach, we assess the effects of working abroad on individuals’ career capital. Given the dearth of longitudinal studies, we return to a sample of economics graduates in Finland eight years later. We measure changes in three dimensions of career capital; ‘knowing how’, ‘knowing whom’, ‘knowing why’ and find that company assigned expatriates learn more than self-initiated expatriates. All three career capital areas benefit from international experience and all are increasingly valued over time. Based on our findings, we conclude that a dynamic notion of career capital acquisition and use is needed. Managerial implications include the need for a wider view of talent management for international businesses.