Building a sustainable future through transformation

Some people view the planet, as well as its present and future inhabitants, as a precious, interdependent system, and demonstrate this awareness in their daily activities and relationships. While some of those people come to this realization gradually over a lifetime, others can point to one or several significant and time-bounded experiences as the source of their commitment. It is this latter group, and their transformative learning experiences, that are the focus of this article based on a qualitative study of the transformative learning experiences of 14 men and women, mostly Canadians.     

中国上市银行：未来面临转型

5月16日,安永发布了对中国上市银行的第五份年度分析报告,分析了中国内地17家上市银行在2011年度的财务状况及经营成果。报告从盈利能力、资产负债结构、资产质量和资本及流动性等方面对上市银行的情况进行横向及纵向的分析,并在此基础上,展望中国银行业未来发展的趋势。报告指出,未来中国银行业的高速增长将可能无法持续,各银行需要转变经营思路,在业务创新和转型中重塑行业     

Politicians and the future

Politicians have a part to play, a part not of their own choosing. Their actions or motives are not determined by their own views of the future. Thus a gulf exists between politicians and forecasters. For the politician, a forecast that is wrong is irrelevant; and a forecast that is right is superfluous.     

经济的伦理内涵与伦理的经济意义

经济与伦理存在着间接或直接的依存关系。经济是不能脱离道德的，它不仅要受到经济规律的制约，而且总是在人的道德素质的合力作用下进行的。当经济主体从事经济行为时，自觉运用和遵守伦理规范，能产生一系列客观效益。但是，在经济与人们的生活领域中，伦理并不是单纯的道德理论和行为，它能引发各种利益，并具有经济利益。     

道德风险与金融危机

不可否认,当前的金融危机给政策的面貌带来了翻天覆地的冲击.在一个接一个的国家里,我们看到政府恐慌地做出膝跳反射似的反应,并把他们的政策手册扔到一边:前所未有的救助和国有化开始出现,审慎的财政政策灰飞烟灭,毫无保留的凯恩斯主义已经回归.很多人宣称,我们尝试的自由市场已经失败,现在应该进行更广泛的监管和更积极的宏观经济管理.     

The historian and the future

Historians had to come to terms with the fact that there is no ‘absolute’ past, long before forecasters were pondering the benefits of the ‘absolute’ future. They have also had to come to terms with their style of presentation, their personal biases, and the fact that they are grounded in the present and are therefore influenced by present preoccupations. Historians and futures researchers have much in common. This article explores the extent of their common ground and how it might be extended.     

Mental health and the future

The application of modelling and technology could improve empirical theories of mental health. Biochemical indices, such as enzymes and catecholamines, may provide precise, pancultural stress standards. These indices will serve as adjuncts to clinical screening and will permit quantitative evaluation of different types of therapy. When used in conjunction with measures of the psychosocial environment, biochemical indicators may discern person-environment fit or mismatch. This technology could be designed for use on a large-scale. A likely outcome will be a greater emphasis on preventive health care: brief courses at home, school, and work are likely to improve the ability to cope with stress.     

Economy and the remembered future

The millennium dawns to the strains of a duet: multiculturalism in culture, globalization in economy. While the one claims to be the last word in pluralism, the other sees itself as having inaugurated an age beyond ideology. This doublet has been able to plant itself as the reigning universal because of a collective forgetting. Through a politics of memory drawn from Walter Benjamin's notion of remembrance, it is argued that the mythical still lurks within the depths of the multicultural economic machine, and is still capable of infiltrating back into the postmodern global order triggering a slippage within it. Economics, and the institutions it serves to legitimize, are both forced to labor continuously to keep this spectre at bay.     

Wendell Bell and the sociology of the future: Challenges past, present and future

As a sociologist dealing with futures studies, Wendell Bell encountered considerable obstacles because his topic - the future, imagined, projected and shaped - poses significant problems for contemporary sociology. The paper discusses Bell's engagement with these disciplinary difficulties and his search for conceptual and methodological solutions. The paper anchors Bell's achievements in a wider historical context, identifies some of the new challenges facing sociology and considers some openings for change in our knowledge practice.     

Moral will,accounting and the phronemos

This commentary examines the work of Everett and Tremblay (2014) and their contribution to critical accounting. They examine three key ethical dilemmas that confront modern accounting practice. They examine a set of in-depth interviews, the autobiography of the former Vice President of Internal Audit of WorldCom, Cynthia Cooper, and the documents of the Institute of Internal Auditors (IIA) to shed light on accounting and audit ethics. The dilemmas confronting the accounting profession are complex and multi-faceted, which they place in their socio-economic context using ideas from Pierre Bourdieu. I add ideas from Lovibond (2004),MacIntyre (1984) and McDowell (1993) as well as audit work by Jere Francis. My solution involves accountants acting like the phronemos. The phronemos is Aristotle's term for a wise and ethical person who has the capacity to judge and act appropriately. This ideal of the phronemos is used to examine the ethical ambiguities in accounting that involve analyzing the critical role that accounting curricula, education and pedagogy play in making better judgments. This critical accounting focus was also a focus in Chabrak and Craig's work on accounting education. They examined professional credentialing and professional education. Like Everett and Tremblay, they also point us toward the public interest role of accounting and our societal need for better and informed judgments. The comment concludes with the observation that Aristotle's notion of the phronemos is an ideal type that promotes virtue ethics to address the drift in accounting away from ethics and its public interest role.     

Skin in the Game and Moral Hazard

What determines securitization levels, and should they be regulated? To address these questions we develop a model where originators can exert unobservable effort to increase expected asset quality, subsequently having private information regarding quality when selling ABS to rational investors. Absent regulation, originators may signal positive information via junior retentions or commonly adopt low retentions if funding value and price informativeness are high. Effort incentives are below first‐best absent regulation. Optimal regulation promoting originator effort entails a menu of junior retentions or one junior retention with size decreasing in price informativeness. Zero retentions and opacity are optimal among regulations inducing zero effort.     

Leading the future

This article examines conceptions of leadership appropriate for a global mind set. The financial value of triple bottom line investing is highlighted as an example of this trend. However, this approach is shown to be dependent upon a given society's stage of values development, thus an outcome of more advanced society's citizens having already met basic survival needs, supporting access to higher order values. Constructivist developmental theory is explored and the idea of a global mind set is linked to the emergence of world-centric value systems in individuals. A dialogical approach is introduced, along with Theory U, which is examined in more detail as a process or approach that can facilitate world-centric consciousness. This leads to exploring the perspective and impact of spirituality in relation to leadership appropriate for facilitating a global mind shift.     

Moral Hazard and the Portfolio Management Problem

This paper investigates the significance of nonlinear contracts on the incentive for portfolio managers to collect information. In addition, the manager must be motivated to disclose this information truthfully. We analyze three contracting regimes: (1) first-best where effort is observable, (2) linear with unobservable effort, and (3) the optimal contract within the Bhattacharya-Pfleiderer quadratic class. We find that the linear contract leads to a serious lack of effort expenditure by the manager. This underinvestment problem can be successfully overcome through the use of quadratic contracts. These contracts are shown to be asymptotically optimal for very risk-tolerant principals.     

Beyond postnormal times: The future of creativity and the creativity of the future

Creativity and imagination are the most important ingredients for coping with post-normal times, according to Sardar. This paper looks at the way creativity itself is being transformed in the West, from the individualistic/atomistic view of Modernity towards a more contextual, collaborative, complex approach. It explores the potential and possibilities for this more participatory creativity to help go beyond the “crisis of the future,” and argues that the centrality of creativity must go beyond the mythology of genius and inspiration to inform philosophy, ethics, and action. Philosophical reflection and the imagination of desirable futures can emerge from a creative ethic that stresses the value of generative interactions and contexts that support creativity.     

Communicating the future

A lot of time, money, and wisdom is wasted if the strategic planner fails to communicate his message. A substantial investment in a long and detailed forecasting exercise can only pay dividends if the results of that exercise are effectively brought to the attention of the clients, the people who can act upon the forecast. Here the author argues that this final stage of a forecasting exercise is as important as all the other stages, but that it is an area which is largely ignored by planners. So, using the example of a business environment, he gives simple practical guidance as to how planners can improve their performance in this final stage, the presentation of the results to the executives. Basically, this involves a shift away from the objective of transmitting the maximum amount of information, towards the idea of maximising the amount of information assimilated by the audience.