Enterprise resource planning systems, management control and the quest for integration

This paper analyses how two companies pursued integration of management and control through enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems. We illustrate how the quest for integration is an unending process and it is produced concurrently and episodically. Integration is not only about ‘mere’ visibility and control at a distance. ERP systems do not define what integration is and how it is to be developed, but they incur a techno-logic that conditions how control can be performed through financial and non-financial representations because they distinguish between an accounting mode and a logistics mode. A primary lesson from our cases is that control cannot be studied apart from technology and context because one will never get to understand the underlying ‘infrastructure’—the meeting point of many technologies and many types of controls. ERP systems are particularly interesting for what they make impossible, and our cases illustrate how the two organizations in the quest for integration mobilized a number of ‘boundary objects’ to overcome systems-based ‘blind spots’ and ‘trading zones’. The paper points out that management control in an ERP-environment is not a property of the accounting function but a collective affair were local control issues in different parts of the organization are used to create notions of global management.     

Vulnerability and industrial hazards in industrializing countries: an integrative approach

The extra vulnerability of industrializing countries to environmental problems and industrial accidents cannot be understood or solved by a ‘normal’ scientific analysis. Aspects of the social and institutional context must be included, through analyses based on post-normal science. The standard two-dimensional classification of PNS is modified to have axes ‘social ‘and institutional vulnerabilities’ and ‘complexity of technological hazards’. The analysis is mainly applied to the case of the relatively rare accidents with catastrophic potential. In these, the deaths per accident in India, Mexico and Brazil are much greater than in the industrialized countries. This discrepancy arises partly from location of such plants near residential communities for marginalized workers and their families. Other socio-political factors are relevant, as the role of these countries in the global production system, the enforcement of safety and planning laws, quality of housing, and lifestyle of residents. Reducing the vulnerability of industrializing countries will therefore require major social policies and a comprehension of the limits of the normal scientific and economic approaches to such problems.     

Diversity and social progress in the next millennium: an evolutionary perspective

An evolutionary framework for speculating about some of the socio-cultural and genetic diversity issues of the next millennium is developed. Human populations (societies) are basic biological and socio-cultural units. The nature of human societies is shaped by two kinds of linked evolutionary process: biological and socio-cultural. These evolutionary processes, in turn, are driven by human interactions with the physical environment, microorganisms, other species, other human populations, and by technological innovations. Preservation of genetic and socio-cultural diversity is identified as a crucial aspect of social progress over the next millennium. The impact of these ecological and technological ‘drivers of change’ on future evolutionary processes is discussed. While the world's affluent societies will be increasingly liberated from nature's constraints and enriched by technological innovations, it is questionable, given historical experience, whether poorer ones will share in the prosperity. Significant innovations in socio-cultural evolution, including new forms of governance, will be required to harness the accelerating forces of change and to ensure future social progress for all peoples.     

Long waves and geography in the 21st century

Intersecting macrohistorical rhythms provide insights into the processes that will guide geographical change in the first half of the next century. The repetition of long-wave rhythms provides a key to what lies 25 and 50 years ahead, helping us to identify the patterns, determine the processes, and work out their logical consequences. To understand this it is necessary to clarify the concepts of ‘techno-economic systems’ and ‘long waves of prices’ and their interrelationships in ‘growth logistics’. A second key to the next half-century is provided by the baby boom-baby bust generational rhythms that interlock with long waves and growth logistics at double the frequency. Together, the two keys not only provide a macrohistorical framework for unraveling the course of economic and social history; they provide a basis for geographical anticipations.     

Global modelling in the 1990s : A critical evaluation of a new wave

It seems that after a ‘golden decade’ in the 1970s and a period of decay in the 1980s, global modelling is making a comeback. In particular, the report Scanning the Future seems to mark the beginning of a new era in this respect. In this article this ‘new wave’ of the 1990s is compared with the ‘old wave’ of the 1970s. Although there is progress in the scientific realm, these new models lack a deep concern for the burning problems of our time like the poverty gap between the North and the South and the ‘ecological problematique’. In many ways these new models reflect the new mood of the times, which lacks any vision of a new paradigm and which is strongly ‘northern-centric’.     

Exploring (false) dualisms for environmental accounting praxis

This paper focuses on the political nature of the linguistic dualisms or ‘false antinomies’ that inhere in environmental accounting practice and environmental accounting research. These dualisms, ‘subject–object,’ ‘man–woman,’ ‘mind–body,’ and ‘culture–nature,’ the paper argues, need to be ‘ambiguized’ if the politics inherent in these dualisms are to be resisted. Two strategies for the ‘ambiguization’ of these dualisms are suggested: ‘performative parody,’ which is a strategy intended for environmental accounting practitioners, and ‘democratic reflexivity,’ which is a strategy intended for environmental accounting researchers. In taking this linguistic focus, the paper challenges common sense constructions of the environment and the potentially elitist and anti-democratic nature of environmental accounting research. By offering these two strategies, the paper provides a means of environmental accounting praxis, or means of resisting global ‘environmental’ domination.     

New markets and new commons : Opportunities in the global casino

The United Nations is well positioned for the global changes of the information age now engulfing nation-states. The UN role and tasks—as global norm setter, broker, networker, convenor, and peacekeeper—are ideally suited to today's world of linked ‘infostructures’ and distributed power, influence and knowledge typified by the emerging global civil society. The UN can serve all these emerging infostructures—and be compensated by fostering debates and convening parties to design the needed agreements for operating the emerging ‘electronic commons’, including today's global financial casino. Technological, social and economic contexts for this new global agenda are described together with some market opportunities in new public/private partnerships to serve the global commons.     

Forecasting the world's problems : The Last Empire: the corporatization of society and diminution of self

A future scenario is postulated—‘The Last Empire’—based on concern with the ramifications of increasing corporatization and moves away from individualism. The globalization of the marketplace is marked by increasing cultural, psychological, social and ideological homogeneity, politicoeconomic centralization and the threat to individualism. Personal demands for autonomy and a liberalization of the human spirit provide the counter-thrust. These competing trajectories are the context within which major global problems are viewed. Five major issues are treated here: the global economy; nationhood and cultural determinacy; the economic dimension; the educational agenda; and the individual's outlook. In each area the clashes between individual involvement and corporatization, and their outcomes, provide the key to forecasting and dealing with the world's future problems.     

Monetary policy, ‘dollarization,’ and parallel market exchange rates: The case of the Dominican Republic

Excessive money creation may give rise to inflation tax revenues and to a depreciation of the domestic currency. this in turn leads to a shift away from the domestic currency into a foreign currency (e.g., the US dollar, hence the term ‘dollarization’). From the domestic monetary authority's point of view, ‘dollarization’ is an unwelcomed phenomenomn, thus the monetary authorities will attempt to arrest the ‘dollarization’ phenomenon while maintaining the excessive money growth. This paper develops and tests a model which analyzes the effects of monetary policy on dollarization and the ‘parallel’ market exchange rates.     

Life in the tube

Douglas Rushkoff, author of Media Virus, Cyberia, and Playing the Future, explains how sensationalism in the media tends to promote our culture's natural, unexpressed agendas. This is an optimistic appraisal of the seemingly banal and exploitative fora of tabloid television, ‘Court TV’ and ‘Cops’. Such low-brow media, when approached from an evolutionary perspective, reveal themselves as the process by which closeted social issues are brought out into the cultural conversation exactly when they need to be.     

A vision of the future of science: reintegrating the study of humans and the rest of nature

This paper presents a vision of a desired future of science. In this vision, the future will bring the reintegration of the study of humans and the rest of nature. The barriers between the traditional disciplines will dissolve and a true ‘consilience’ of all the sciences and humanities will occur. This consilient transdisciplinary science will emerge from a rebalancing of analysis and synthesis, a recognition of the central role of envisioning in science, a pragmatic philosophy built on complex systems theory and modeling, a multiscale approach, and a consistent theory of cultural and biological co-evolution. It will allow us to build a world that is both sustainable and desirable and that recognizes our fundamental partnership with the rest of nature. It is a world that we must first imagine in order to achieve.     

Social accounting research: An Australasian perspective

This paper provides an insight into the nature and the extent of social accounting research being undertaken within Australasia. It demonstrates that Australasian researchers account for a significant amount of internationally published social accounting research, but emphasises that the research effort seems to be confined to a limited number of researchers perhaps reflecting a lack of ‘take-up’ in this area in terms of the scale of participation. Information is also presented about the relative propensity of journals within the sample to publish social accounting research, and identifies that ‘top tier’ accounting journals historically have not published social accounting research. The paper also considers various factors which seem to be impeding the ‘recruitment’ of new social accounting researchers.     

Towards sustainable households: a methodology for developing sustainable technological and social innovations

A high factor environmental efficiency improvement, towards a Factor 20 by 2050 AD — needed due to the assumed doubling of the world population combined with a fivefold increase of wealth per capita and a halving of the total global environmental burden — cannot be achieved through good housekeeping and technological innovation alone; any technological solutions will have to be combined with social innovations, in lifestyles and cultures. This paper describes the conclusions of the SusHouse (Strategies towards the Sustainable Household) Project that has been exploring possible socially and technologically innovative strategies for sustainable households. The Project has covered three household ‘functions’: Clothing Care, Shelter (Heating, Cooling and Lighting) and Food (Shopping, Cooking and Eating). These have been studied in five European countries (Germany, Hungary, Italy, The Netherlands and the UK). The methodology of the Project has involved stakeholder workshops, the construction of Design-Orienting Scenarios, environmental, economic and consumer assessment of the Scenarios and strategy formulation. The paper describes: (1) the methodology for devising design-orienting scenarios, with examples from the three functions; (2) the results of environmental, economic and consumer acceptability assessments of these scenarios; and (3) comments on how the methodology can be developed and applied.     

Modelling the post-industrial city

A new kind of city is emerging: globalized (connected to other cities in global networks); tertiarized and even quaternarized (dependent almost entirely for its economic existence on advanced services); ‘informationalized’ (using information as a raw material); and polycentric (dispersing residences and decentralizing employment into multiple centres or ‘edge cities’). The question is how we can adapt the urban and transportation models, which originated in the very different world of the 1960s, to these conditions, and what kind of model would then result.     

The end in sight?: Some speculations on environmental trends in the twenty-first century

For a generation there has been unresolved debate between anxious environmentalists and sanguine ‘contrarians’, both of which have been able to amass strong evidence in favour of their positions. This is an important paradox, and the paper attempts to resolve it by means of an elementary but robust model of environmental trends between 1950 and 2100. A crucial feature of the approach is to disaggregate the developed ‘North’ and developing ‘South’, revealing strikingly different patterns. The North's environmental impact will decline steadily, but in the South a rapid increase in environmental impact can be expected in the first half of the 21st century, followed by an equally rapid decline. This dramatic environmental ‘spike’ will be unique in human history and mark a fundament transition to the sustainable state. Its qualities and duration will determine many features of the human and natural world for millennia to come. Many policy implications flow from this analysis. Controversially, it suggests that the ‘spike’ should be embraced and managed rather than avoided or delayed.     

Information and the transnational SME controller

One of the issues that face the small- and medium-sized enterprise (SME) when expanding is the ‘control’ issue and this paper investigates and presents preliminary evidence of ‘controlling’ or ‘management accounting’ practice in a transnational SME. Wibsey, the site of the case, is now a small group of companies that have expanded from a U.K. base into 10 European countries. This expansion has posed complex problems, which have increased the information requirements of the SME. The contextual issues of complexity and resulting challenges for the transnational organization in its management accounting, information and control systems are considered. Wibsey uses traditional management accounting as the basis of supporting decision-making in the group and a lower level of information need is reported, in contrast to Dent (1996) (Dent, J. F., 1996. Global competition: challenges for management accounting and control,Management Accounting Research , 7(2), 247–269), because the group chooses to maintain a traditional ‘accounting-led’ evaluation system in controlling and evaluating its transnational operations.     

Accounting for People: A real step forward or more a case of wishing and hoping?

In principle, the Accounting for People initiative announced by the UK government in January 2003 held out the possibility of a real step forward in promoting the interests of employees. Despite its distinctly managerialist discourse, the initiative acknowledged that having now recognised that ‘people are our greatest asset’, employers should begin to consider how to report on their people management activities in financial statements. After more than three and a half years of consultation, debate and deliberation, larger UK quoted companies are now charged with providing only a minimal level of general information on their employees. Whatever promise may have been evident to wishful thinkers in the early months of the initiative, this outcome confirms that there is little possibility for progressively ‘accounting for people’ as long as such practices are shaped by powerful sectional interests. The purpose of this paper is to subject the initiative to critical scrutiny. The paper seeks to document how the Accounting for People initiative was quickly and effectively emasculated as a consequence of the power and influence wielded by the UK accountancy profession, identified as a key agent of capital. Additionally, attention is drawn to a number of contemporary developments, largely and perhaps knowingly ignored in the course of the Accounting for People debate, that may yet inform and energise a more radical approach to accounting for people.     

India’s strategic future: 2025

Based on the geopolitical developments in India’s neighbouring countries and India’s response to them, this paper depicts four scenarios—Storms and Fires, Rainbow in the Sky, Light and Shadows and Across Space. Each scenario explores a set of possible events and the consequences triggered by it. While Storms and Fires is based on the rise of a sharp nationalist Indian sentiment in the face of heightened security tensions in the region, Across Space outlines the future of India’s worldview shaped by the present government’s policy of US primacy. Light and Shadows is based on differential policy towards neighbours—conflict with Pakistan and cooperation with other neighbours. This scenario is predicated on the supremacy of economic objectives whereas Rainbow in the Sky is based on the regional cooperation as the primary guiding force of the Indian foreign policy. Though major geopolitical events in its neighbourhood will impact the immediate future of India, India’s response and internal strengths and weaknesses will determine its long-term future. It is therefore essential for the country to develop a well considered trajectory of its strategic options for the next 25 years.     

Pacific science in the 21st century

‘Science’ is often implied to be something emanating from Western Europe or its derivatives. But the people of the 24 nations and territories of the Pacific Islands also want their unique scientific knowledge recognized and perpetuated. Politically the islands are divided into 24 nations and territories, and culturally their people speak about 1200 different languages—each with some differences of culture. This is much the greatest cultural fragmentation on earth. Each culture has, over thousands of years, experimented and discovered some unique principles and evolved some unique techniques. For example, some principles of Pacific navigation (for many centuries the world's most advanced) and techniques of vessel construction, are unknown elsewhere—even today. Some pharmaceutical remedies are unique, some items of marine and plant science are not known to ‘Western science’ and so on. It is to these that the term ‘Pacific science’ refers. This essay explores the potentials for Pacific science in the future, and for Pacific contributions to global knowledge.     

Role of the intellectuals in governance

Environmental degradation and lack of social cohesion are rooted in bad governance, which, in turn is rooted in the inability of the modern civilization to understand the nature of differences in human psychology and their relationship with governance. The key to good governance in future will lie in invigorating such individuals to ‘speak’ who have transcended their desires of money and power and are able to take a dispassionate view of the problems in the larger social good. Multiple networks of persons who speak the truth have to be formed for this purpose.