(Re)presenting ‘sustainable organizations’

This paper investigates how organizations represent themselves in relation to sustainable development in 365 publicly available corporate reports from 1992 to 2010. This period of reporting captures the emergence and development of corporate reporting on sustainable development within the context of the study, New Zealand. Laclau and Mouffe’s discourse theory is employed to frame the analysis and interpret the findings. In particular Laclau and Mouffe’s conceptualizations of discourse, identity and group formation, and their theorization of hegemony are drawn upon. The analysis uncovers a changing organizational identity over time. Three distinct identities which capture key organizational representations over time are highlighted: environmentally responsible and compliant organizations; leaders in sustainability; and strategically ‘good’ organizations. The paper demonstrates through an analysis of these evolving identities and their effects, how organizations have maintained a ‘right to speak’ within the sustainable development debate, despite the fundamental challenges and hegemonic threat that a broader reading of sustainable development might imply.     

Govern(mentality) and Accounting: the Influence of Different Enlightenment Discourses in Two Spanish Cases (1761–1777)

New perspectives in accounting history have uncovered previously unattended relations between accounting and government. Earlier Foucauldian analyses of governments have not explained sufficiently the relations of accounting practices to governmental discourses in order to manage populations.
This work uses the governmentality frame to analyse the role of accounting in two organizations located in the south of Spain in the second half of the eighteenth century: the New Settlements of Sierra Morena and Andalucia (NSs) and the Royal Tobacco Factory of Seville (RTFS). The period studied is remarkable because it was the apogee of the Enlightenment in Spain. From the standpoint of government, this period facilitated a new way to manage populations. The present work has drawn on Foucault's concept of governmentality in order to discover how accounting worked in two government-supported organizations independently of the discourses that pervaded each one. Drawing on the reticulation of the space, the use of rules and accounting from the governmental perspective, we analyse those institutions.
The article concludes that the reticulation of space is an essential apparatus to exert action at a distance; the rules are a type of government technology; and, overall, accounting is a practice for the mastery of the population independently from the discourse of the institution.     

(Almost) Model‐Free Recovery

Under mild assumptions, we recover the model‐free conditional minimum variance projection of the pricing kernel on various tradeable realized moments of market returns. Recovered conditional moments predict future realizations and give insight into the cyclicality of equity premia, variance risk premia, and the highest attainable Sharpe ratios under the minimum variance probability. The pricing kernel projections are often U‐shaped and give rise to optimal conditional portfolio strategies with plausible market timing properties, moderate countercyclical exposures to higher realized moments, and favorable out‐of‐sample Sharpe ratios.     

Value‐Added Per Share (VAPS): A Value‐Relevant Corporate Performance Metric

The authors introduce Value Added Per Share (VAPS) as a value‐relevant metric that is intended to complement earnings per share (EPS) in helping corporate managers and analysts understand and overcome the limitations of GAAP‐based reporting. VAPS discounts a firm's past and projected cash flows at its “cost of capital,” allowing companies to avoid the subjective accounting accrual process and other practices that often make EPS misleading. A company's VAPS is calculated in three main steps: (1) estimate the change in the capitalized value of after‐tax operating cash flow by taking the net change (plus or minus) of the firm's operating cash flow after taxes and dividing that number by the firm's cost of capital; (2) subtract total investment expenditures; and (3) divide by the number of shares outstanding. By capitalizing the change in after‐tax operating cash flow, one finds the net change in a firm's current operations value. By subtracting investment expenditures from that change in current operations value, the analyst gets a clearer picture of the benefit to shareholders net of the funds used to create that benefit. Consistent with basic theory, VAPS is positive when a company earns a return at least equal to its cost of capital and negative otherwise. Because of their fundamental differences, EPS and VAPS are likely to send different signals, and VAPS is expected to provide greater insight into stock price changes. The authors provide the findings of statistical tests showing the superior explanatory power of VAPS and recommend that companies publish statements of VAPS along with standard GAAP results, especially since the former can be readily calculated using the available income statement, balance sheet, and cash flow statement data.     

Compensation discussion and analysis (CD&A): Readability and management obfuscation

This paper examines the relationship between the readability of the CD&A section in proxy statements and management motives to obfuscate executive compensation disclosures. Using the CD&As in the 2007 and 2008 proxy statements, we examine whether the CD&A readability is associated with the proportion of CEO pay not related to the economic determinants of compensation. We note that the average CD&A is difficult to read. We find that firms with CEO pay exceeding the benchmark pay have a more difficult to read CD&A in the 2007 proxy season. The result suggests that, in its first CD&A report, top management tends to cloak its compensation practices when the practices are not tied to the economic determinants of pay. However, we also find those firms with CEO pay exceeding the benchmark pay improve the readability of their CD&As in the 2008 proxy season, suggesting that executive compensation disclosure improves under regulatory oversight and public pressure.     

China's Enterprise Bankruptcy Law (EBL 2006): cross‐border perspectives

With China's new Enterprise Bankruptcy Law (‘EBL 2006’) having come into effect on 1 June 2007, a critical issue arises as to the extent to which Article 5, as a cross‐border provision, will strengthen creditors' rights across jurisdictions. In this paper attention will be paid in particular to how the Chinese People's Court is likely to exercise its discretion to grant recognition to a foreign court ruling, and vice versa. The paper will start with a brief introduction to the circumstances under which Article 5 came into being. The evolution of China's cross‐border insolvency practices will be examined through an analysis of an inbound case of B&T (2002) as well as an outbound one of GITIC (2005). In spite of the fact that China has not adopted the UNCITRAL Model Law, essential factors deemed necessary to be considered by China's court and its counterparts in US and UK are to be highlighted throughout the paper. Although the effect of Article 5 remains to be seen, it will be critically analysed focusing on some controversial issues. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.