Debate: Economic policy and prospects; Accounting for inflation

Citizenship, a somewhat elusive concept, is explored in the context of social, economic and political entitlement. At the socio‐political level, it is argued that bodies intermediate to the state and individual—civil and civic formations—are necessary for citizenship to flourish in an atmosphere where experiments in living can take place. We currently lack a clear philosophy directed to creating an acceptable balance between individual self‐help, the enabling state which pilots the needs of citizens into agreed channels and intermediate social life forms. Such a philosophy needs to be developed alongside an institutional restructuring of the state. In this, a reformed constitutional and administrative law has a crucial role to play.     

The impact of foreign equity flows on market volatility during politically tranquil and turbulent times: The Egyptian experience

Since the popular uprising of January 2011, a series of momentous events has rocked Egypt’s political order, jeopardising the country’s economic and financial stability. This study examines the role of foreign capital flows in the volatility of the Egyptian equity market, and whether this role has changed due to the recent domestic political unrest. These issues are empirically addressed in the context of GMM estimation. The results suggest that, unlike those of foreign individual investors, trades of foreign institutional investors contribute to market fluctuations, whether prior to or following the January 2011 uprising. Sell trades by foreign individual and institutional investors exert a significant influence on volatility. Further, when volume is split into its anticipated and unanticipated components, the results show that surprises in trading activity by either group tend to exacerbate volatility in periods of calm and turmoil. These findings are broadly insensitive to volatility measures and robust, even after controlling for a variety of relevant determinants of market volatility. The evidence documented in this study provides important implications for policy markers.     

Beyond Self‐Evident: Recognising the Problematic Political Context of Accrual Accounting Adoption in South Korea

This paper responds to a recent call by researchers that we need to move beyond both advocacy of and technical arguments about the value of accrual accounting to more fully recognise the institutional forces, key change agents and the local political fields. We draw on elements of institutional theory and the practice theory of Pierre Bourdieu to explore the ‘problematic’ aspects of institutional forces, key organisational change agents and the local political field associated with the adoption of accrual accounting in the South Korean public sector. We found that accrual accounting was driven by many factors including a local financial scandal, the advocacy of a civil society group and the ambitions and the ideology of key actors. The contribution of this paper is that it shows how the practices of accounting cannot be separated from their political and personal context.     

Transformative change towards sustainability: the interaction between organisational discourses and organisational practices

This paper adopts a case study approach to explore the complex process of organisational change towards greater social and environmental sustainability. The case study of a major global financial services organisation involved interviews and examination of company documents, and their website over the period 2000–2014. The rare longitudinal empirical evidence from different sources provides important insights to how companies are responding to increasing demands for sustainable development. Using Laughlin’s [1991. Environmental disturbances and organizational transitions and transformations: some alternative models. Organization Studies, 12 (2), 209–232] pathways of change model, the study investigates the interaction between organisational discourses (i.e. its interpretive schemes) and organisational practices (i.e. design archetypes). The findings demonstrate the centrality of organisational discourses, especially those relating to accounting calculative practices, to radical change towards sustainable development. The paper also contributes to the literature on institutional logics, particularly multiple institutional logics, and how these are implicated in change processes.     

社会信任与企业劳动投资效率

本文从非正式制度的视角,研究了社会信任与企业劳动投资效率的关系。研究发现,社会信任有助于提高企业劳动投资效率。进一步研究表明,社会信任与企业劳动投资效率的相关关系在融资约束越强以及代理冲突更严重的企业中更显著。同时,随着信息不对称程度的加大,社会信任对企业劳动投资效率的提升作用更显著。此外,社会信任对企业劳动投资效率的改善主要表现为降低劳动投资不足,且对雇佣不足与解雇过度两个方面都存在抑制作用。本文丰富了社会信任的经济后果和企业投资效率影响因素的研究,对于揭示社会信任在企业劳动投资中的作用以及提高劳动投资效率具有一定启示意义。     

Conscious practices and purposive action: A qualitative study of accounting and social change

The paper develops a methodology of accounting practices as conscious representations of purposive action, which seeks to build broader insights from qualitative research into the social aspects of accounting change, and how these relate to wider organisational and social transformations. The paper constructs the methodology by linking together and developing interpretive and labour process perspectives through an analysis of ethnographic material drawn from an extensive field study of the empresas recuperadas – cooperatives formed by workers during economic and political crisis in Argentina in 2001. The analysis traces the involvement of accounting practices within collaborative dynamics that transformed a hierarchical organisational structure, embedded within accountability systems that manifest prevailing notions of identity and collectivism, into a decentralised organisation that established relations with grass roots societal groups informed by new purposes and values. This perspective develops into a concept of the differentiated and contradictory social aspects of profitability, and highlights a range of potential relations between representations and realities. The final part conceptualises the collective and nuanced conditions through which accounting practices represented individual needs more effectively. The paper concludes by highlighting how its methodology and findings help to understand the conscious, collaborative involvement of accounting practices within social life.     

The adoption of internet banking: An institutional theory perspective

Several models have been proposed in the literature to understand technology acceptance in which social environmental factors are not primarily addressed. Drawing upon the social contagion theory and institutional theory, this study proposes a model to examine three social environmental factors of normative, coercive and mimetic pressures within the internet banking (IB) context. The model is tested using survey data from 124 respondents. The results reveal that normative and coercive pressures significantly influence the attitude and intention of adopting IB, while mimetic pressures appear not to. Attitude plays a mediating role between institutional pressures and IB adoption. This study spearheads an institutional analysis at the individual level within the IB context. The findings also provide valuable insights for bank managers to manage the IB services.     

Human Choice: the genetic code for social development

A comprehensive theory of social development is needed that treats human beings as the center of the development process and integrates all its economic, political, social, and cultural factors. Drawing a wide range of intriguing parallels with biological evolution, the authors describe the central role of organization in social development; “surplus human energy” as both condition and fuel for the process; the role of conscious individual pioneers who express subconscious social aspirations; imitation as the mechanism for social diffusion; information flows that serve as catalysts for new things to do and new ways to do old things; and laws, policies and formal systems as way-stations on the road to internalized values and informal social organizations. The primary resource and ultimate determinant of development is the individual human being's unlimited capacity for creativity and resourcefulness. Extending greater freedom of choice to its individual citizens is the central mechanism by which society can tap and release this infinite resource for the collective benefit.     

Budgetary change at a university: A narrative inquiry

This paper reports the results of a qualitative case study of an Australian University's implementation of a new budget model. To inform our research, we developed a theoretical framework by drawing from neo-institutional sociology, old institutional economics and technical-rational choice. A narrative inquiry was employed to elicit the stories of participants' experiences of the budgetary change in its socio-political and institutional contexts. Through this narrative inquiry, we depart from prior institutional management accounting change studies which have presented change steered by external pressures for conformity and/or legitimacy. Our study shows how budgeting, as a management accounting tool, can be viewed as a rational myth conferring social legitimacy upon organisational participants and their actions. Further, we demonstrate that the emergence of a new management accounting practice is attributed to the demands of technical-rational imperatives, and the existence of internal rationalised dynamics and norms. We highlight and analyse the role and ability of organisational actors to create budgetary change in an institutionalised higher education environment.     

Financial development,institutions and banks

This paper presents a framework for understanding the interactions between political and legal institutions, property rights protection, and their implications for financial development. Whereas the literature has answered questions on why some countries lag behind in terms of financial and economic development, the current study suggests how to get around some institutional attributes to spearhead financial intermediation and economic growth through a set of institutional, information, and banking reforms. It finds little support that common law legal heritage is more suitable than French civil law for some key features of financial development. It concludes that types of institutional and market reforms are more relevant to financial intermediation than legal systems. It proposes some ways forward to increase financial intermediation; and expects, over the long run, the proposed approach to financial development to be beneficial for a number of developing countries.     

Environmental management accounting in local government: Functional and institutional imperatives

The challenge of using environmental management accounting (EMA) tools such as full‐cost accounting to improve waste and recycling management has been acknowledged for over a decade. However, research on assessing and understanding local government use of EMA, especially broader levels of EMA, is lacking. This study investigates the link between the nature and drivers of EMA practice for waste and recycling services based on a survey conducted with local governments in New South Wales, Australia. The study finds that although social and organisational factors are related to the uptake of EMA, local governments are subject to stronger functional demands than institutional pressures in their use of more expansive EMA such as indirect and external costs and impacts. This implies that the use of EMA in local government is viewed more as an adaptive activity to cope with functional challenges and achieve efficiency, than as an institutional imperative to achieve social acceptance.     

吉林省人口老龄化与完善社会保障体系研究

人口老龄化已成为影响社会和经济发展的重要因素之一。根据第五次人口普查的资料显示,吉林省人口老龄化特征明显,已初步进入老龄化阶段。因此,及时对人口老龄化及社会保障体系进行分析和研究对促进我省人口和经济的协调发展、加快我省的现代化进程具有重要的现实意义。     

Constructing institutional performance: a multi-level framing perspective on performance measurement and management

Research on performance measurement and management (PMM) informed by institutional theory has proliferated over the past two decades. Much of this research has concentrated on the institutional effects on organisational PMM practices and their consequences for organisational behaviour and has only recently started to pay more focussed attention to the effects of such practices on the construction of the very conceptions of performance that come to dominate institutional fields. To further integrative theory development, I pull these strands of research together into an analytical framework pivoting on the concept of institutional performance. Institutional performance is defined as the socially constructed conceptions of organisational performance that become firmly institutionalised as legitimate aspects of achievement in institutional fields. Adopting a multi-level framing perspective, I develop a set of research propositions reflecting how contradictory PMM practices, emerging in response to the institutional complexity attributable to heterogeneous and competing constituency demands, shape such conceptions of performance and how this contributes to reducing or reinforcing institutional complexity over time. I discuss the implications of applying this framework in empirical research and the contributions to institutional research on PMM as well as institutional theory, more generally, that may emerge from such research.     

Institutional Influence,Transition Management and the Demand for Carbon Auditing: The Chinese Experience

The primary objective of this study is to investigate factors associated with the increase in demand for carbon auditing in China. Based on an analysis of publicly available carbon‐related information and data, the paper documents the large amount of carbon auditing that occurred in the public sector during the period 2009–2013. We find that the creation of carbon institutions and the significant increase in governmental green funding were the main reasons for the emergence of carbon auditing in this period. The change in models of economic development attempting to balance GDP growth and ecosystem protection, in addition to institutional reform, has led carbon auditing from rhetoric to practice. In addition, we show that carbon auditing serves as a tool for the management of transitions and the governance of sustainable socio‐technical and organisational innovation and transformation.     

Determinants of tax revenue in OECD countries over the period 2001–2011

By using static and dynamic panel data techniques, this paper analyses the impact of economic, structural, institutional and social factors on tax revenue, across 34 countries from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, over the period 2001–2011. The results show that gross domestic product per capita, the industrial sector, and civil liberties have positive impact on the dependent variable, while the agricultural sector and the share of foreign direct investment in gross fixed capital formation have negative impact. The lagged value of the dependent variable enters positively in the equation and its effect is larger in high income countries. We also encounter tax effort and tax gap and find that they are stable over time but diverse across countries regardless the level of development of the economies.     

Herding and Feedback Trading by Institutional and Individual Investors

We document strong positive correlation between changes in institutional ownership and returns measured over the same period. The result suggests that either institutional investors positive-feedback trade more than individual investors or institutional herding impacts prices more than herding by individual investors. We find evidence that both factors play a role in explaining the relation. We find no evidence, however, of return mean-reversion in the year following large changes in institutional ownership—stocks institutional investors purchase subsequently outperform those they sell. Moreover, institutional herding is positively correlated with lag returns and appears to be related to stock return momentum.     

Economic Globalization and Financial Development in East Asia: A Panel Cointegration and Causality Analysis

This study examines the role of economic globalization in financial development in eight East Asian economies. The heterogeneous panel cointegration test reveals that cointegration is present among economic globalization, institutions, financial development, real gross domestic product per capita, and financial reforms. The Granger causality test results indicate that economic globalization has a significant causal influence on institutional quality, and institutional reforms have in turn facilitated and supported financial development, in particular of the banking sector in East Asia. Economic globalization is also found to have a favorable causal impact on stock market development without going through the institutional quality channel.     

Foresight in the Brussels Capital Region

This paper presents results from the Iris Futures research project. The research was aimed at exploring the potential role of foresight in the development of the Brussels Capital Region and the identification of tools, capabilities and conditions for an improved application of foresight in Brussels. An overview was created of the characteristics of 60 future oriented activities and 120 organisations involved in such activities At the outset questions on organisational or institutional fragmentation and collaboration were not intended to be in the foreground of the research but over the course of the research this issue was observed to have a significant adverse impact on foresight capacity in Brussels. The case of the Brussels Capital Region demonstrates that institutional and organisational fragmentation need to be overcome for a futures oriented practice to have opportunity. De-fragmentation, bottom-up and institutionally, is both a condition for and an effect of the futures oriented practice underlying the foresight capacity of organisations.     

Internet-based tourism services: business issues and trends

This paper assesses the current state of development among the Internet-based providers of tourism services. The study focuses on leading intermediary businesses and enabling groups: travel agents; specialist service providers; reservation technology providers; and public agencies. In studying some 50 leading web sites, spanning a range of differing groups of intermediaries, we examined how travel agent sites seek to differentiate themselves, how public tourist information bodies are harnessing the Internet, and the role of computer reservation technology providers. We also examined factors shaping the future of the Internet: institutional tensions; competition for end users and investors; and end user expectations. The conclusions highlight a number of implications for the further development of tourism services provision within Europe, where the Internet plays a significant role. For example, the extent and pace of social and economic change that Internet derived information is facilitating.     

The relation between trades of domestic and foreign investors and stock returns in Sri Lanka

This study investigates the relation between equity flows and returns in Sri Lanka using daily trade data categorized by investor classes. The results show that purchases and sales of domestic and foreign investors, both institutional and individual, are positively related with past returns, except during crisis periods, when they are negatively related. Domestic institutional and foreign individual purchases lead to higher future returns whereas domestic individual purchases lead to lower future returns. Foreign institutional purchases do not impact future returns. Sales by domestic investors have no impact on future returns while sales by foreign investors lead to higher future returns.