Netweaving alternative futures: Information technocracy or communicative community?

The metaphor of networking is widely used to describe how the emerging communications and information technologies are supposedly overcoming the tyranny of distance. In this case it has positive overtones, as if the barriers are coming down for a more open exchange among different people separated by distance and culture, making for some kind of better world, but is such technological optimism justified? Also, is it deliberate promotion on the part of eager technocrats whose vested interests have been favoured often ahead of a concern for the human condition? Here, an alternative metaphor, netweaving, is used in order to examine the apparent tensions and paradoxes surrounding the introduction of new communications and information technologies. Especially it will investigate the complex associations between apparently opposing dimensions within three layers of the social fabric: globalisation/localisation; centralisation/decentralisation; and standardisation/diversification. A futures studies assessment is used to anticipate alternative scenarios for the impact on the social fabric by the emerging technologies a generation from now, in 2020.     

Does the Achilles heel of guarantee networks drive financial distress?

To explore characteristics of guarantee networks that drive financial distress, we use a dataset comprising 20,467 firm-year observations from Chinese companies listed on the Shanghai and the Shenzhen Stock Exchanges to construct networks from 85,229 guarantee relationships. We show that guarantee networks have a negative effect on company financial distress, revealed by cash holdings and long-term liabilities. Larger networks, those with an Achilles heel, and companies with high closeness centrality exacerbate this effect, and companies in a stronger financial position suffer greater negative impacts. Guarantee networks may also exert their negative impact by acting as a channel for shareholder tunneling.     

Rehabilitation of mining sites: do taxation and accounting systems legitimise the privileged or serve the community?

This paper explores both accounting standards and the taxation provisions with respect to the treatment of rehabilitation costs of mining entities in Australia. A special tax deduction is allowed only for expenditure actually incurred, yet the accounting standard provides a different calculative practice for the representation of the same event. With this example we demonstrate inconsistencies that exist between accounting and tax and although the accounting for income taxes standard accounts for the differences, we argue this merely legitimatises them. We challenge this false consciousness that assumes these inconsistencies are merely incidental and point out that these two systems, of tax and accounting, implicitly sustain and reinforce each other. These institutional practices perpetuate the privileges, powers and impact of the mining industry, whilst claiming to serve the community as a whole.     

The demise of community banks? Local economic shocks are not to blame

The number of US community banks is falling rapidly. Is this reduction being driven in part by banks’ desire to geographically diversify to reduce their vulnerability to local economic shocks? A comparison of the performance of banks in counties that suffered economic shocks in the 1990s with similar banks in counties that did not suffer economic shocks shows that banks withstand local economic shocks quite well. This result suggests that the geographic concentration risk that community banks must bear to focus on relationship lending is small and is not an important factor contributing to the decline of community banks.     

Have community banks reduced home foreclosure rates?

Compared with mortgage brokers and universal banks, community banks have stronger incentives to originate high-quality residential home loans. Using the RealtyTrac database on residential foreclosures between 2005 and 2008, we show that county-level foreclosure rates are lower in counties with greater community bank presence. This finding is robust to a host of county-level economic and demographic control variables and after controlling for possible endogeneity of community bank presence.     

Do small businesses still prefer community banks?

We formulate and test hypotheses about the role of bank type – small versus large, single-market versus multimarket, and local versus nonlocal banks – in banking relationships. The conventional paradigm suggests that “community banks” – small, single-market, local institutions – are better able to form strong relationships with informationally opaque small businesses, while “megabanks” – large, multimarket, nonlocal institutions – tend to serve more transparent firms. Using the 2003 Survey of Small Business Finance (SSBF), we conduct two sets of tests. First, we test for the type of bank serving as the “main” relationship bank for small businesses with different firm and owner characteristics. Second, we test for the strength of these main relationships by examining the probability of an exclusive relationship and main bank relationship length as functions of main bank type and financial fragility, as well as firm and owner characteristics. The results are often not consistent with the conventional paradigm, perhaps because of changes in lending technologies and deregulation of the banking industry.     

The new global accounting community: Rationale for dialogue to establish its accountability?

The reputation of the accounting community is an important intangible asset. The community persistently builds its reputation through disclosure of reputation signals that crystallize its status with the commercial social system [Riahi-Belkaoui and Pavlik, 1992; Raar J. Beyond ethics: a community platform to secure moral integrity. Australian Accounting Review 2006;16(1):41–50]. Therefore, as a community in the global village, it is an institution of accountability, which in turn is dependent on honesty and trust (Lee, 1995). The intention of this conceptual paper is to provide discourse that induces questions for reflection in the call for values underpinning the integrity and ethical stance of the profession. To an extent ethical codes assist, however in an international professional community the self-governance procedures and investigations of a local professional body may now be outside its geographical jurisdiction. Walker [Walker RG. The ASRB: policy formation, political activity and research. Paper presented at Accounting Association of Australian and New Zealand (AANZ) annual conference in Sydney; August, 1985] suggests that accounting rules are only symbolic behaviour unless compliance is monitored, and sanctions are imposed [Walker RG. The ASRB: policy formation, political activity and research. Paper presented at Accounting Association of Australian and New Zealand (AANZ) annual conference in Sydney; August, 1985. p. 12]. The internationalisation of accounting standards appears to present an opportune period in the evolution of a self regulatory accounting profession to consider the issues of moral values and integrity and ask the question, what does this international profession stand for?     

Are bonds blind? Board-CEO social networks and firm risk

We examine the impact of social networks between independent directors and the CEO on firm risk. Employing the deaths and retirements of socially connected independent directors and the passage of the 2002 Sarbanes-Oxley Act for two identifications, we find that board-CEO social networks have a positive impact on firm risk. Specifically, CEOs who are socially connected to their independent directors are motivated to adopt riskier investment, operating and financing strategies. This positive influence is more pronounced for prior under-performing firms and for CEOs with low power or overconfidence, indicating that board-CEO social networks act as career insurance and a power-enhancing mechanism to encourage managerial risk-taking.     

New development: Faith,community organizing and migration—the case of ‘regularization’

When civil society organizations pool their muscle, it is amazing what they can achieve. The London Citizens ‘Strangers into Citizens’ campaign has put the idea of a conditional amnesty for illegal immigrants on the political table—and won powerful backers, including the Mayor of London and the Catholic Church.     

Toward a different debate in environmental accounting: The cases of carbon and cost–benefit

Many champions of environmental accounting suggest that calculating and internalizing ‘externalities’ is the solution to environmental problems. Many critics of neoliberalism counter that the spread of market-like calculations into ‘non-market’ spheres, is, on the contrary, itself at the root of such problems. This article proposes setting aside this debate and instead closely examining the concrete conflicts, contradictions and resistances engendered by environmental accounting techniques and the perpetually incomplete efforts of accountants and their allies to overcome them. In particular, it explores how cost–benefit analysis and the carbon accounting techniques required by the Kyoto Protocol, the European Union Emissions Trading Scheme and other carbon trading mechanisms ‘frame’ new agents, spaces, relations and objects, and what the consequences have been and are likely to be.     

Social networks,social interaction and macroeconomic dynamics: How much could Ernst Ising help DSGE?

In this paper, two different versions of the agent-based DSGE (dynamic stochastic general equilibrium) model are studied in comparison The first version is the mesoscopic modeling of market sentiment using the Brock–Hommes adaptive belief system (ABS). The second version is the microscopic modeling of market sentiment by applying the Ising model to different social networks. The issue is to examine whether the distribution of market sentiment generated by the ABS machine can emerge from some kinds of local mimetic interactions, and hence the macroeconomic behavior of the two versions will be essentially the same. Our simulation results show that it is rather hard to have the equivalence of these two versions in the Kolmogorov–Smirnov sense. Hence, directly incorporating social networks and social interactions into microscopic modeling has its own values and may not be replaced or simplified by the mesoscopic counterpart.     

A review and comparison of medical expenditures models: two neural networks versus two‐part models

This paper compares the two‐part model (TPM) that distinguishes between users and non‐users of health care, with two neural networks (TNN) that distinguish users by frequency. In the model comparisons using data from the National Health Research Institute (NHRI) in Taiwan, we find strong evidence in favor of the neural networks approach. This paper shows that the individuals in the self‐organizing map (SOM) network clusters can be described as several different forms of frequency distributions. The integration model of SOM and back propagation network (BPN) proposed by this paper not only permits policymakers to easily include more risk adjusters besides the demographics in the traditional capitation formula through the adaptation and calculation power of neural networks, but also reduces the incentives for cream skimming by decreasing estimation biases.     

Financial advisors: A case of babysitters?

We use two data sets, one from a large brokerage and another from a major bank, to ask: (i) whether financial advisors are more likely to be matched with poorer, uninformed investors or with richer and experienced investors; (ii) how advised accounts actually perform relative to self-managed accounts; (iii) whether the contribution of independent and bank advisors is similar. We find that advised accounts offer on average lower net returns and inferior risk-return tradeoffs (Sharpe ratios). Trading costs contribute to outcomes, as advised accounts feature higher turnover, consistent with commissions being the main source of advisor income. Results are robust to controlling for investor and local area characteristics. The results apply with stronger force to bank advisors than to independent financial advisors, consistent with greater limitations on bank advisory services.     

Cosmopolitan risk community in a bowl: a case study of China’s good food movement

Abstract

Ulrich Beck fundamentally transformed our way of thinking about human interdependence through his three core theses on risk, individualisation and cosmopolitanisation. However, two commonly observed deficiencies in Beck’s grand theory were its Eurocentric orientation and a lack of empirical grounding. Based on 5 focus groups and 14 interviews with participants of the emerging Clean Food Movement in China, this paper extends the Beckian discussion outside Europe. Through examining how individuals understand both ‘traditional’ and ‘new’ risks associated with contemporary food consumption, this paper demonstrates that in the face of unpredictable and incalculable harms, risks are not seen as a ‘thing’, but are translated into ‘causal relations’. Subsequently, for Chinese stakeholders, the best way to safeguard food risks is to enact more visible and functioning interdependent relations in the food system. This in turn has given rise to new forms of communities which cut across conventional geographic, socio-economic and political boundaries. The paper deepens a Beckian theorisation in two ways. First, it demonstrates that the ‘enabling’ effect of risk towards a cosmopolitan society is not limited to obvious global crises, such as climate catastrophes and financial meltdown. In fact, the mundane yet intimate concern of putting ‘good’ food in one’s dinner bowl already presses actors to form new social solidarities that are cosmopolitan in nature. Second, it goes beyond Beck’s assertion that the risk society has culminated in a cosmopolitan moment, and explores how a performative cosmopolitan community reshapes the ‘relations of definition’ to mitigate risks on the ground.     

Time dollars, work and community: from ‘why?' to ‘why not?'

Conventional notions of work and economics are failing our communities. We need to rethink how we can provide a chance for every member of society to secure work and have a minimally decent standard of living. This essay describes an innovative strategy that generates social capital by using a system of bartering time. Time Dollars schemes transform jobless individuals in communities from a burden into assets. People earn Time Dollars by helping others and then use them to buy essential services, purchase goods, and thus play an invaluable part in building and strengthening community. By freeing communities to ask ‘Why not?', Time Dollars mobilise human resources in a host of beneficial ways and open up a whole variety of hitherto unimagined possibilities.     

Problem-solving styles of accounting students: Are expectations of innovation reasonable?

In response to input from the profession, accounting programs are attempting to increase the innovative problem-solving skills of their students. However, they have done so without data on what the problem-solving styles of their students are, and without an understanding of the capacity for innovation by different problem-solving styles. This study compares the problem-solving styles of accounting students with other business majors and business minors. Results indicate that accounting students are predominantly adaptive in problem-solving style. Statistical analysis shows a significant difference in the problem-solving style of accounting students and other business majors, with other business majors more likely to be innovative. Implications of these findings for changes in the accounting curriculum and for the profession are discussed.