成本上升侵蚀中国竞争优势

在上海的宜家商店，售价1．4美元的泰迪熊可能是全城最便宜的了，但它们不是产自中国，而是在印度尼西亚缝制和填充的。     

The system of Ferney: A fable

This paper is an allegorical essay which attempts to provide a critical perspective on systems analysis. It employs both the language and rationale of systems analysis within the structure of the fable. More specifically, it uses the schematic representation of The World Model (found in the Meadows, et al., The Limits to Growth) as the political and social divisions of the Ferney System. The integrating tool for technological assessment within this metaphorical system is the Delphi Method of Futures Research. Expert opinion-consensus serves as the chief mode of governance. The actual history of Ferney, within the fable, is a loop feedback process.     

Social Constructivism,Mental Models,and Problems of Obedience

There are important synergies for the next generation of ethical leaders based on the alignment of modified or adjusted mental models. This entails a synergistic application of moral imagination through collaborative input and critique, rather than “me too” obedience. In this article, we will analyze the Milgram results using frameworks relating to mental models (Werhane et al., Profitable partnerships for poverty alleviation, 2009), as well as work by Moberg on “ethics blind spots” (Organizational Studies 27(3):413–428, 2006), and by Bazerman and Chugh on “bounded awareness” (Harvard Business Review, 2006; Mind &; Society 6:1–18, 2007) Using these constructs to examine the Milgram experiment, we will argue that the ways in which the experiments are framed, the presence of an authority figure, the appeal to the authority of science, and the situation in which the naïve participant finds herself or himself, all create a bounded awareness, a narrow blind spot that encourages a climate for obedience, brackets out the opportunity to ask the moral question: “Am I hurting another fellow human being?” and may preclude the subject from utilizing moral imagination to opt out of the experiment. We will conclude that these forms of almost blind obedience to authority are correctable, but with difficulty. We will argue that linking the modification of mental models to an unbinding of awareness represents an important synergistic relationship and one that can build effectively on the lessons learned from our experience with moral imagination.     

Linking Ethics and Risk Management in Taxation: Evidence from an Exploratory Study in Ireland and the UK

Ethical dilemmas involving tax issues were identified by members of the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants as posing the most difficult ethical problem for them (Finn et al., Journal of Business Ethics 7(8), pp. 607–609, 1988). The KPMG tax shelter fraud case proves that the tax profession has not gone untainted in the age of numerous accounting and corporate scandals, such as the Enron débacle (Sikka and Hampton, Accounting Forum 29(3), 325–343, 2005). High-profile scandals serve to highlight the problems caused by differences in ethical judgement among accountants and tax practitioners and the issue of ethics has been brought publicly to the forefront of the profession. Nevertheless, the nature and dimension of ethical issues in tax practice have been largely unexplored (Erard, Journal of Public Economics 52(2), 163–197, 1993; Marshall et al., Journal of Business Ethics 17(12), 1265–1279, 1998; Frecknall Hughes, Unpublished PhD Thesis, The University of Leeds, 2002). This research aims to contribute to the debate on ethics in tax practice by reporting interview data on tax practitioners’ perceptions of ethics in the jurisdictions of Ireland and the United Kingdom and exploring the link or equation of ethics with risk management.     

Resolving post-formation challenges in shared IJVs: The impact of shared IJV structure on inter-partner relationships

The “50/50”, or the shared management international joint venture (shared IJV) remains a popular and yet challenging control structure to govern IJVs. The purpose of this study is to understand the post-formation management of shared IJVs, specifically the relationship between shared structure, relational conditions and management of post-formation challenges. Our evidence is based on 26 in-depth interviews across four cases of shared IJVs between British multinationals and Asian companies. Our findings indicate that the highly integrative nature of shared IJVs, including high operational interdependence and shared decision-making, encourages partners to work closely together, communicate frequently and intensely and exchange personnel. Although share management can lead to inter-partner conflicts, the equal investment and mutual responsibility partly provides partners with motivation and opportunities to learn about each other, to better implement the control structure, to build trust, and to commit to the venture and partner. These relational conditions facilitated the successful management of post-formation challenges such as diversity related conflicts and macro volatility.     

Management Guidance Pre‐ and Post‐Restatement

We examine whether the quality of restating firms’ management guidance differs in periods before and after restatement announcements. While characteristics of restating firms and the consequences of restatement have been a central topic in accounting and auditing research, the quality of management guidance around restatements is less well understood. We consider two competing characterizations of the link between management forecast accuracy and bias and restatement (an event that tends to signal poor financial controls): “Forecast–Opportunism Explanation” and “Forecast–Ability Explanation”. Under the Forecast–Opportunism Explanation, pre‐restatement weaknesses in financial controls enable managers to manipulate earnings toward forecasts and to meet or exceed opportunistically biased forecasts, and the post‐restatement strengthening of financial controls constrains opportunistic behavior. Under the Forecast–Ability Explanation, pre‐restatement weaknesses in financial controls impede managers’ ability to issue accurate forecasts, and post‐restatement improvements remove impediments so that the accuracy of forecasts improves; forecast bias remains unaffected. Evidence indicates that before a restatement, restating firms’ forecasts are more accurate and relatively more downwardly biased than control firms’ forecasts. Post‐restatement, restating firms have less accurate and less downwardly biased management guidance. Our overall results are consistent with the Forecast–Opportunism Explanation.     

SME Reporting in Australia: Where to Now for Decision‐usefulness?

This paper develops recommendations for simplified decision‐useful SME financial reporting in Australia – a country that has traditionally allowed a wide range of reporting standards to be used by these entities. Drawing on interviews and comment letters from a number of stakeholders, and data from a survey of users of financial statements of non‐publicly accountable unlisted entities, we analyse stakeholder arguments for and against SMEs providing less detailed reports, and identify the line items that might be most useful to users for decision making.     

Does Chatter Matter? The Impact of User-Generated Content on Music Sales

The Internet has enabled a new era of user-generated content, threatening the hegemony of traditional content generators as the primary sources of “legitimate” information. In this study, we examine the usefulness of such content, consisting of data from blogs and social networking sites, in predicting sales in the music industry. We track changes in online chatter for a sample of 108 albums for four weeks before and after their release dates. We identify the significance of variables on the observation date in predicting future album unit sales one, two, and three weeks ahead. Our findings are that future sales are positively correlated with (a) the volume of blog posts about an album, and (b) traditional factors such as whether the album is released by a major label and reviews from mainstream sources like Rolling Stone. More generally, the study provides some preliminary answers for marketing managers interested in assessing the relative importance of the burgeoning number of “Web 2.0” information metrics that are becoming available on the Internet. The study also provides a framework for thinking about when user-generated content influences decision making.