The Chinese in Britain: working towards success?

The Chinese community has made rapid socio-economic advancement Britain over the course of one generation. This paper examines the influences of culture and structure in determining the remarkable levels of attainments made by the Chinese Britain. In addition, the impacts of culture and structure in circumscribing occupational choices of the Chinese in Britain are also explored, since somewhat marring this image of success is the occupational segregation of the Chinese in the labour market. The human resource implication of this latter situation is that there exists a valuable source of qualified Chinese labour currently engaged in the ethnic niche, particularly Chinese catering industry, which could be better utilized in the wider labour market. It suggested that responsibility to address this issue reducing such 'wastage', involves efforts of three parties, namely, the Chinese themselves, careers counsellors, as well organizations in Britain.     

The Stewardship Role of Analyst Forecasts,and Discretionary Versus Non-discretionary Accruals

We examine the interaction between discretionary and non-discretionary accruals in a stewardship setting. Contracting includes multiple rounds of renegotiation based on contractible accounting information and non-contractible but more timely non-accounting information. We show that accounting regulation aimed at increasing earnings quality from a valuation perspective (earnings persistence) may have a significant impact on how firms rationally respond in terms of allowing accrual discretion in order to alleviate the impact on the stewardship role of earnings. Increasing the precision of more timely non-accounting information (analyst earnings forecasts) increases the ex ante value of the firm and reduces costly earnings management. There is an optimal level of reversible non-discretionary accrual noise introduced through revenue recognition policies. Tight rules-based accounting regulation, as opposed to leaving firms more choice over non-discretionary accrual policies, may lead firms to rationally respond by inducing costly earnings management. More generally, regulating both earnings persistence and the tightness of admissible auditing policies may not result in less equilibrium earnings management.     

Stock Price Reaction to Non-financial News in European Technology Companies

Drawing upon a series of interviews conducted with leading practitioners and opinion formulators in the social, ethical and environmental audit arena, together with an extensive review of recent literature in the area, this paper offers a critical appraisal of current developments in the newly revitalized social audit movement. We particularly question whether in their enthusiasm for bringing social audit into the mainstream of current business thinking its advocates risk compromising the democratic ideals of the founding fathers of the movement. A particular concern raised is that without real change in corporate governance structures, social audit could become monopolized by consultants and/or corporate management and hence amount to little more than a skilfully controlled public relations exercise.     

The challenge for women expatriates and spouses: some empirical evidence

This is an exploratory study examining issues associated with women expatriates and their spouses. Individuals representing three groups - organizations, women expatriates, male spouses - were interviewed to identify their experiences and concerns. The authors conclude that this issue will pose a dramatic challenge for international organizations in the coming decades, and that it is timely to investigate the issue in more depth.     

Procurement of logistics services and sustainable development in Europe: Fields of activity and empirical results

This paper strives to answer the general question; how far purchasers of logistics services take into account aspects of sustainable development. Modeled on the German Sustainable Development Strategy, which is based on the EU Sustainable Development plan, five fields of activity are defined: the reduction of transport intensity and emission, the reduction of land use, the choice of carrier under consideration of sustainable aspects, the permanent improvement of working conditions, and the enhancement of qualified employment. Then, propositions for purchasing companies of logistics services are developed, which contribute to safeguard ecological as well as social sustainability. In order to conduct an explorative study, a questionnaire was sent to 750 purchase and logistics managers. It was found that purchasing companies place high value on ecological and social aspects. But the perceived importance is not associated with purchasing companies' own contributions to logistics service providers' sustainable activities. Additionally, it was seen that purchasing companies exert only a minor influence on logistics service providers regarding ecologically and socially sustainable actions. A fundamental precondition for a sustainably oriented procurement of logistics services can be seen in the purchasing companies' awareness of the need for integrating sustainable aspects in economic decisions.     

A New Approach to Gravity Anomaly Separation: Differential Markov Random Field (DMRF)

In this paper the authors introduce a novel approach to stochastic image processing, denoted as Differential Markov Random Field (DMRF), which has been applied to gravity anomaly separation problems. The advantages of the method are that it introduces only little distortion into the shape of the original image and that it is not affected significantly by factors such as the overlap power spectra of regional and residual fields. Testing of the proposed meth using synthetic examples gave excellent results.     

An analysis of asymmetric demand response to price changes: The case of local telephone calls

Asymmetric demand responses to price changes are not an observable implication of classical demand theory, which predicts that consumers will react to a small price increase in much the same way as they do to a small price decrease. Yet applied researchers have long speculated that consumers are more sensitive to price increases than they are to price decreases. In addition, recent empirical studies generally support the theory of asymmetric demand responses. We construct a dynamic model based on data gathered from monthly telephone bills for 128 New York Telephone customers over a five-year period. Our results support the conclusion that customers react more quickly and strongly when prices go up than they do when prices go down.We would like to thank Manny Haas and Bernie Reddy for their comments and suggestions.     

Disclosure‐protected Inference Using Generalised Linear Models

Vast amounts of data that could be used in the development and evaluation of policy for the benefit of society are collected by statistical agencies. It is therefore no surprise that there is very strong demand from analysts, within business, government, universities and other organisations, to access such data. When allowing access to micro‐data, a statistical agency is obliged, often legally, to ensure that it is unlikely to result in the disclosure of information about a particular person or organisation. Managing the risk of disclosure is referred to as statistical disclosure control (SDC). This paper describes an approach to SDC for output from analysis using generalised linear models, including estimates of regression parameters and their variances, diagnostic statistics and plots. The Australian Bureau of Statistics has implemented the approach in a remote analysis system, which returns analysis output from remotely submitted queries. A framework for measuring disclosure risk associated with a remote server is proposed. The disclosure risk and utility of approach are measured in two real‐life case studies and in simulation.     

‘Thinking Before Acting’ or ‘Acting Before Thinking’: Antecedents of Individual Action Propensity in Work Situations

We introduce the concept of ‘individual action propensity’ to examine the approach of individuals towards solving situations for which they lack knowledge and/or experience about what to do. We focus on a naturally contrasting pair of responses: ‘thinking before acting’ or ‘acting before thinking’, and associate low action propensity with thinking one's way into understanding how to act, and high action propensity with acting one's way into understanding such situations. We build on regulatory mode theory – with its dimensions of locomotion and assessment and the trade‐off between speed and accuracy – to examine individual characteristics as predictors of individual action propensity. We find that individual action propensity is associated with being a woman, having fewer years of formal education, not relying on help‐seeking behaviours, and having a positive attitude towards spontaneity. Our findings shed light on why individuals take action, or not, and provide implications for research on organizational action propensity.