Valuing not-for-profit and charity brands—real insight or just smoke and mirrors

Brands introduce emotional decision-making criteria, differentiating all brands across the not-for-profit sector. Brands shift the demand curve upwards and the cost curve downwards. The result is higher turnover, profit and surplus ‘consumer utility’. Brand equity is a measure of the emotional reservoir that shows how far the demand curve has moved and what the future cash flows will be. Brand valuation is a snapshot of those future cash flows. David Haigh and Stephen Gilbert's article describes how these three concepts fit together and explains how and why they have become best practice in marketing and financial management. Copyright © 2005 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

‘High potential’ programs: Let's hear it for ‘B’ players

Organizations implement ‘high potential’ (HiPo) programs to identify, develop and retain their most talented employees (also known as ‘A’ players). However, there is still not much known on how these programs affect other employees (i.e., ‘B’ players) who are not included. Drawing on Bowen and Ostroff's (2004) framework on the strength of HRM system and attribution theory, we theoretically examine the impact of HiPo programs on ‘B’ players’ attitudes and behaviours. Specifically, we propose that ‘B’ players use various information and contextual cues to make attributions about these programs. We also propose that trust moderates the relationship between various meta-features of HiPo programs and ‘B’ players' perceptions about these programs. Further, we examine the role of an employee's motivation profile (i.e., achievement motivation and power motivation) in forming his/her attributions about these programs, which then affects his/her commitment and organizational citizenship behaviours. Future research directions and practical implications are presented.     

A NOTE ON THE ‘GREAT CONTRACTION’

The modern literature on the US banking crisis in 1931 overlooks the key role played by ‘liquidity black holes’ and under‐pricing in the corporate and government bond markets resulting from the banking system's fire sale of assets. This process weakened the bank lending channel in a continuous feedback loop which was eventually checked by ‘money creation’ by the Federal Reserve. This note investigates the work of Evans Clark (1933 ) who highlighted the process of fire sales and mispricing of assets due to non‐fundamental causes.     

THE LABOUR FOOTPRINT: A FRAMEWORK TO ASSESS LABOUR IN A COMPLEX ECONOMY

As addressing labour becomes crucial in the move towards sustainability, there is the need for assessment tools suitable for current complex economic systems. This article presents an input–output based framework (‘labour footprint’) for evaluating labour issues behind the production of different economic commodities, including entire supply chains. In line with the guidelines of the International Labour Organization, six labour issues are considered: collective bargaining, forced labour, child labour, gender inequality, hazardous work, and social security. This conceptual article sets to (a) define this footprint's labour dimensions, (b) cite relevant data sources, (c) describe its calculation, (d) illustrate its application through a case study, and (e) discuss this framework's relevance from ‘conscious consumption’, ‘supply chain responsibility’, and regulators' standpoints. Since it advances the evaluation of fundamental labour issues and the scope of multi-criteria analyses, this footprint may be a valuable tool for sustainability assessments.     

Categorizing Neighborhoods: The Invention of ‘Sensitive Areas’ in France and ‘Historic Districts’ in the United States

This essay offers a reflexive return to two research projects to demonstrate the value of Bourdieu's emphasis on the symbolic for the analysis of contemporary urban transformation. Bourdieu's insistence that we track the social genesis and diffusion of spatial categories of thought and action directs us to the empirical study of the struggles between agents and organizations that promote and/or oppose these categories, as well as the political, economic and other interests animating the agents. A retracing of the parallel invention of the ‘at‐risk neighborhood’ (quartier sensible) coined for and targeted by French urban policy since the late 1980s and the emergence of ‘historic’ or ‘diverse’ neighborhoods touted by gentrifying residents, cultural organizations and real estate agents in the United States since the 1960s challenges misleading oppositions between materiality and representations that often underpin and cramp urban research.     

Field vehicle fleet management in humanitarian operations: A case-based approach

Transportation is the second largest overhead cost to humanitarian organizations after personnel. Academic knowledge about fleet management in humanitarian operations is scarce. Using a multiple case research design we study Field Vehicle Fleet Management (Field VFM) in four large International Humanitarian Organizations (IHO): the International Committee of the Red Cross, the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies, the World Food Program and World Vision International. Our field research includes more than 40 interviews at headquarters, regional and national level in Africa, the Middle East and Europe. The paper answers three research questions: (1) How do IHO manage their field vehicle fleets? (2) What are the critical factors affecting IHO Field VFM? (3) How does Field VFM affect in-country program delivery? The contribution of this research is twofold. First, it helps to fill the existing gap in the humanitarian literature regarding Field VFM. Second, it expands the fleet management literature to a new and virtually unexplored area.     

Does Targeted Monetary Policy Matter? A Perspective from China

Several major central banks have experimented with targeted monetary policy to improve credit resource allocation. This policy only applies to ‘eligible’ banks. For example, The People's Bank of China conducted seven targeted reductions of reserve requirements during 2014–15. This article documents the phenomenon of targeted monetary policy and evaluates its effects. The results show that, in the case of China, this policy has generated an extra significant, positive return on the stocks of eligible banks, amounting to 1.2–1.3 per cent in a four‐day treatment period. This substantial return gives commercial banks an extra incentive to align with the policy goals of central banks.     

Urbanization and the City Image in Lowry at Tate Britain: Towards a Critique of Cultural Cityism

This article explores cultural cityism at a time when a more expansive, ‘planetary’ urbanization is argued to have superseded ‘the city’ as the dominant urban form. It takes an essentially Lefebvrian problematic and works this through an examination of one aspect of contemporary metropolitan culture, the L.S. Lowry exhibition at Tate Britain, held in the summer of 2013. The article scrutinizes the juxtaposition of Lowry's images of the industrial city with the image of ‘global’, corporate London provided by Tate Britain itself. The exhibition is presented as evidence of Lefebvre's argument that although the urban core has imploded and exploded, through images the city ‘can perpetuate itself, survive its conditions’. Taking stock also of the preponderance of city images in culture more widely, it is argued such images make a fetish of the city, producing also an ‘urban pastoral’ that obscures the defining characteristics of urban life today. Finally, Benjamin's concept of the ‘dialectical image’ and Rancière's notion of the ‘sentence image’ are invoked to capture the flashing together of past and present city images and the opportunities for critical reflection this constellation presents.     

Innovation pathways at the Base of the Pyramid: Establishing technological legitimacy through social attributes

Two challenging imperatives we face today are the amelioration of global poverty and reducing environmental impacts such as global climate change. This article discusses these challenges in the ‘Base of the Pyramid’ (BOP), impoverished socio-economic groups from underdeveloped regions that have traditionally been excluded from economic participation. Drawing on the BOP, global value chain and latecomer literature, we propose five innovation pathways for social and environmental improvement within poor communities. We extend Geel’s (2002) new socio-technical landscape framework, Hall et als' (2011) and Hall and Martin’s (2005) framework for innovative uncertainties and Aldrich and Fiol’s (1994) legitimization processes by proposing a ‘hurdles and levers analysis,’ suggesting that in addition to overcoming technological and commercial hurdles, social attributes play a key role in BOP innovation dynamics. Two illustrative cases are presented; an initiative to replace candles and kerosene lanterns with semiconductor white light-emitting-diodes (WLEDs) in various BOP locations; and the development of naturally colored cotton in poor regions of Brazil for sale locally and abroad. We argue that social uncertainties in particular may act as ‘levers’, compensating for initial technological and commercial deficiencies, thus providing technology developers time to improve. The paper concludes with implications for policy and future research.     

Rebalancing and Regional Economic Performance: Northern Ireland in A Nordic Mirror

Northern Ireland has been characterised as having an excessively large public sector. This characterisation has led some to explain poor regional economic performance in terms of ‘crowding out’. This diagnosis has been used to justify a policy of ‘rebalancing’ and the region copying its southern neighbour's lower rate of corporation tax. The experience of large public sectors in the Nordic economies seems however to suggest that higher public spending is not necessarily damaging. This argument is examined critically. Rodrik's comparative institutional analysis indicates that in the Nordics a large public sector was the result of building a successful tradable private sector rather than its cause. In terms of the possible ‘economic dividend’ from devolution we suggest that a Hayekian insight is better: no ‘silver bullets’ exist.     

ADAM SMITH AND THE ROLE OF THE METAPHOR OF AN INVISIBLE HAND

Daniel Klein and Brandon Lucas's ‘In a Word or Two, Placed in the Middle: The Invisible Hand in Smith's Tomes’, following a vague hint by Peter Minowitz (2004) , offers original physical evidence that Smith ‘deliberately placed the phrase “led by an invisible hand”– at the physical centre of both his masterworks’. Further, it suggests that the invisible‐hand paragraphs are a response to Rousseau (1755 ); and that in ‘numerous and rich ways’, centrality holds ‘special and positive significance in Smith's thought’. This paper acknowledges the physical centrality of the invisible‐hand metaphor, but questions whether centrality alone gives weight to wider claims that the ‘invisible hand’ was Smith's ‘central idea’. It draws upon Smith's Rhetoric Lectures (1763), and argues that the invisible‐hand paragraphs in The Theory of Moral Sentiments and Wealth of Nations identify the actual objects of the invisible‐hand metaphor. This paper insists that Adam Smith is the most reliable source for revealing what he meant. In contrast, most modern attributions of special meaning to Adam Smith's use of the metaphor ignore Smith's teaching on the use of metaphors and, instead, make numerous, and often mutually exclusive, claims that Smith had a ‘doctrine’ of ‘an invisible‐hand’.     

Knowlege networks for innovation in small Scottish software firms

This paper examines the emergence of small indigenous software companies in Scotland, focusing on the strengths and weaknesses of the region's socio-economic infrastructure as a foundation for innovative new business ventures. Following a brief review of some of the accepted wisdom on high-tech start-ups and regional economic development the paper provides some background information on the Scottish region, comparing new firms in the software industry with the foreign multinationals that dominate the local IT industry. A framework - the ‘sociotechnical constituencies’ approach - is then proposed that allows the author to examine networks of specialist knowledge that underlie new business development. Agglomeration effects and the influence of ‘clusters’ of complementary types of knowledge, expertise and innovative competencies at the regional level are at the heart of the analysis. The framework is applied to a sample of local firms, looking at how ‘learning’ via sociotechnical networks underlies their evolution. Policy-makers' attempts to boost the region's new business birth rate and promote the hoped-for ‘silicon glen’ effect are viewed in the light of the study's findings.     

Renaissance Revisited: Singapore as a ‘Global City for the Arts’

Singapore is renowned as a global business and financial centre, an international hub of air and sea transport, and Asia's leading convention city. In the new millennium, the government has envisioned a new role for the city‐state as a ‘Renaissance City’ and ‘Global City for the Arts’. This vision is premised on Singapore becoming an investment base for leading arts, cultural and entertainment enterprises in the region, the theatre hub of Southeast Asia, and an entertainment destination for tourists. This article examines the challenges and accomplishments in Singapore's quest to be a Renaissance City. Drawing on literature on ‘global cities’ and concepts relating to ‘globalization’ and ‘localization’, it argues that the key challenge facing Singapore is how best to ‘go global’ and ‘stay local’ at the same time. Developing a Renaissance City entails a balancing act between globalizing local sensibilities on the one hand, while localizing global best‐practices on the other. This global‐local nexus can be approached in three ways: (1) by striking a balance between the economic and humanistic objectives of the arts; (2) by importing world‐class arts talents and exporting home‐grown skills; and (3) by globalizing local peculiarities in line with best practices from around the world. The need to balance global standards with local interests is not easily achieved, however, making Singapore's ‘Global City for the Arts’ vision one of its most ambitious goals to date. Singapour est célèbre en tant que centre mondial de la finance et des affaires, pivot du transport aéro‐maritime international, site de premier plan pour les salons en Asie. Avec le millénaire naissant, le gouvernement a envisagé une nouvelle fonction pour la cité‐État, celle de ‘Ville de la Renaissance’ et ‘Ville mondiale des Arts‘. Préalablement, Singapour doit devenir non seulement une base d'investissement pour les grands projets artistiques, culturels et de divertissement dans cette partie du monde, mais aussi le nud théâtral de l'Asie du Sud‐Est et une destination touristique de loisirs. L'article étudie les défis et réalisations qui jalonnent cette entreprise. Exploitant les documents traitant des ‘villes mondiales’ et des concepts liés à la ‘mondialisation’ et à la ‘localisation‘, il démontre que le grand problème auquel Singapour se heurte est de concilier simultanément les deux démarches ‘agir mondial‘ et ‘rester local‘. Développer une Ville de la Renaissance implique un équilibrage entre la mondialisation de sensibilités locales d'un côté, et la localisation des meilleures méthodes internationales de l'autre. On peut aborder ce lien mondial‐local de trois manières différentes: trouver un juste milieu entre les objectifs économiques et humanistes des arts; importer des talents artistiques de dimension mondiale et exporter les compétences nationales; mondialiser les particularités locales cohérentes avec les meilleures méthodes internationales existantes. Atteindre l'équilibre nécessaire entre normes mondiales et intérêts locaux est loin d'être aisé, ce qui fait de la vision de Singapour en ‘Ville mondiale des Arts‘ l'un des buts nationaux les plus ambitieux à ce jour.     

In Praise of Expansionary Fiscal Contraction

Textbook orthodoxy maintains that increases in the cyclically adjusted budget balance (i.e. reductions in the deficit) withdraw demand from an economy. Those Keynesian economists who believe that fiscal policy is the most powerful single influence on changes in demand expect ‘fiscal contraction’ to be accompanied by below‐trend growth or even declines in output. This article, a response to Martin Wolf's 2013 Wincott Memorial Lecture, considers this Keynesian view. Using a database prepared by the International Monetary Fund, it shows that since the 1980s ‘expansionary fiscal contractions’ have been the norm and not the exception in the USA and the UK. Keynesian support for fiscal activism is unsupported by a large body of recent evidence.     

In Search of ‘Successful’ Accounting Research

This critical commentary on Ohlson's paper (in this issue) problematises the concept of ‘successful’ accounting research; highlighting its ex-post, variable nature as a socially manufactured object. Contrasting Ohlson's notion of a singular body of shared ‘common knowledge’ in accounting with the plurality of knowledges valued by different research communities, the commentary advocates a deliberate courting of heterogeneous research paradigms so as to stimulate insightful scholarship. The commentary also reflects on systemic trends underlying the growth of research measurement programmes, and points out that the quest for ‘successful’ research could perversely undermine the generation of memorable and innovative research. Finally, individual researchers are encouraged at each career stage to determine for themselves the intended results to which they aspire, conscious that there are multiple notions of ‘successful’ research and therefore multiple routes to success.     

Reinventing auditing,redefining consulting and independence

This paper deals with recent developments in auditing, taking KPMG's ‘business measurement process’ as its example. From this example it is discussed how and why auditing is currently being ‘reinvented’. The ‘reinvention’ of auditing, it is argued, represents a fundamental break with the established epistemological dualism between auditing and management advisory services,¹ that is central to most literature on auditor independence, including the European Commission's Green Paper. Consequently, it is not only auditing that is being reinvented, it is also consulting and independence, and the consequences of this rupture are finally discussed. The paper concludes that the auditor cannot be independent because auditing is no longer independent.     

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.     

Profit maximization and marketing strategies: Demand rotation and social influences

Microeconomic texts discuss alterations in industry demand curves as movements to higher or lower levels. Consider, instead, the implications for a monopolist's profit of rotating its (linear) demand curve. Where this can be done without cost by pivoting at the current price it will be profitable to continue to pivot the curve until it is horizontal or vertical. The possibility of rotating the demand curve of a ‘new’ product on an arbitrarily selected price allows us to consider the optimality of different advertising strategies (‘bandwagon’ or 'snob').     

Trade spends and profitability of promotions

This paper examines the prevalent mechanism of financing advertising and temporary price reductions through trade spend budgets. A manufacturer and a retailer interact for a number of periods with a plan to hold a sale in the last period. During the nonpromotional periods, the retailer accumulates the funds in this budget in proportion to the size of its order from the manufacturer. In the sale period, the budget is used to finance the discount offered by the manufacturer and advertising. I find that the manufacturer drops its price in the sale period to increase the profitability of promotions for the retailer. To be able to sell more units during the sale period, the retailer needs to accumulate a larger trade spend. This is accomplished by setting a smaller mark-up over the manufacturer's price in the regular periods. The manufacturer takes advantage of the retailer's softer pricing by increasing its regular wholesale price. As long as such trade spends are used to finance advertising, the total profits of each firm increase. Using fixed trade spends, where the manufacturer allocates a fixed amount for the retailer, does not lead to an increase in profits.