The auditor’s strategy selection for negotiation with management: Flexibility of initial accounting position and nature of the relationship

The audit partner is usually the first mover in a negotiation with client management and has an intended strategy set going into such a negotiation. Negotiation strategies that make up the set may be integrative (both parties can gain or at least not lose) and distributive (there is a winner and a loser). We focus on five strategies: two integrative (expanding the agenda or problem solving) and three distributive (contending, conceding or compromising) and measure the audit partner’s intent to use these strategies’ associated tactics. We report the results of an audit negotiation experiment in which 140 highly experienced audit partners planned a negotiation in response to a case scenario that incorporated two key theoretical variables: the flexibility of the client initial accounting position and the nature of the prior relationship between the auditor and client management. In addition to intended tactics, we also examine these two variables’ effects on commitment to the goal of reducing net income. Our results indicate that in contrast to findings in the generic negotiation literature that show negotiators have a preference for distributive tactics and have difficulty employing integrative ones, our audit partners generally favored the use of integrative tactics over distributive ones when entering negotiations, irrespective of circumstance. However, the two theorized variables led to particular strategic choices when distributive tactics were intended; for example, when the audit partner perceived he or she was facing a client management that was inflexible in its initial accounting position, the partner was more likely to use contending tactics and less likely to use conceding and compromising tactics. Finally, we discuss implications of these results for practice and research.     

Are we operating effectively? A lean analysis of operating theatre changeovers

Hospital operating theatres are a critical but costly resource in healthcare processes. Their efficiency and utilisation impact upon hospital finances, clinical effectiveness and patient outcomes. Operations management techniques have now been applied widely to optimise flow. An important challenge is to balance the needs of process flexibility, efficiency and work standardisation with clinical requirements. This paper applies operations management methods to analyse elective orthopaedic surgery at five international hospitals to describe the issues that affect operating theatre productivity. It utilises an innovative method of video analysis to observe patient changeovers over 29 days of surgery and data is analysed to understand the causes of variability and waste. The findings suggest that processes which are standardised via operations management methodologies can improve productivity in a process that exhibits wide variation in practice. There are apparent trade-offs associated with efficiency and clinical concerns such infection control, that lead to different standard process archetypes being utilised. Recommendations for standardising patient changeovers are provided.     

那捉摸不定的感觉

当你将手机调成振动状态或者用一个振动手柄玩赛车视频游戏，你正在享用触觉科技。人的身体可以感知多种不同的感觉并发生错觉，如果把感觉集于一隅，它会变得很有趣。     

Firms' Market Power,Endogenous Preferences and the Focus of Competition Policy

Conventional neoclassical views of dominance are generally restricted to a concern for a firm's market power seen in terms of the ability to raise and maintain prices above their marginal costs of production. A prime example of this approach is the application of dominant firm price leadership models, which has led to a restricted theoretical perception of the nature of market power and to an incomplete view of the social costs of monopoly power. This paper argues that a broader conception of a firm's market power leads to a quite different perspective on its conduct. In particular, if we allow dominance to involve the ability to influence product demand patterns, then the theoretical analysis of firm behaviour changes significantly. Specifically, it implies the endogeneity of preferences which, it is argued, represents an important alternative to mainstream analysis. It is suggested that we need to consider a firm's dominance not so much in terms of its pricing in the context of a particular market structure but to focus on its ability to gain advantage over its rivals in terms of 'creating' an asymmetry in the demand for its products. This has important implications for competition policy, for it suggests a need to concentrate on the 'power' of firms and less on the effects of a change in market structure. Likewise, we need to reconsider the adequacy of defining markets in terms of product demand characteristics.     

An integrative model of e-learning use: Leveraging theory to understand and increase usage

Employees are increasingly using technology to access content for learning, and theory development has been outpaced by practice. Drawing on a well validated theory of behavior change (the Transtheoretical Model of Change), as well as theories on technology acceptance and employee development, this paper offers an integrative model of factors that influence employee use of e-learning as well as practical recommendations for how use might be increased. Recommendations for future research on e-learning are also offered.     

Influences on technology strategy in the uk oil- and gas-related industry network

In the course of the last 25 years the UK has seen the emergence of a new, technologically advanced network of organisations underpinning the technical needs of the oil and gas extraction industry.The euolution of this industy network has taken place within a public policy framework which has had too central objectives: to maximize UK industrial involvement in the industry and to maximize. North Sea oil and gas extraction. The extent to which this framework has encouraged the development of new, technology-based firms has not been systematical stuided. This study examines the extent of indigenous incoltlement in the network and the influence of the currrent pressures of economic and policy changes on the performance and strategic planning of these compnies.     

Housing tenure choice and the dual income household

Housing tenure choice has been the subject of a very large literature. Many treatments have sought to estimate the effect of household income on the likelihood of home ownership. To date, no study has ever disaggregated the household income of married couples into the separate labor income components to see if one partner’s income has a different effect than the other. Using a derived likelihood function to control for censoring in the wife’s income, this paper estimates the effect of separate incomes on housing tenure choice, accounting for possible endogeneity of the wife’s income. To compare the results of this estimation method, the paper also estimates the standard IV models, 2SLS and IV probit. While the results show that there is no endogeneity of the wife’s income, ignoring the censoring of the endogenous variable (when a large fraction of observations are censored) can possibly lead to biased coefficient estimates. Also, this paper confirms the importance of total household income, which has a larger effect than the total disaggregated components.     

The Emergence,Variation, and Evolution of Corporate Social Responsibility in the Public Sphere, 1980–2004: The Exposure of Firms to Public Debate

This study examined the emergence of corporate social responsibility (CSR) as a public issue over 25 years using a content analysis of two national news- papers and seven regional, geographically-dispersed newspapers in the U.S. The present study adopted a comprehensive definition encompassing all four CSR dimensions: economic, ethical, legal, and philanthropic. This study examined newspaper editorials, letters to the editor, op-ed columns, news analyses, and guest columns for three aspects: media attention, media prominence, and media valence. Results showed an increase in the number of opinion pieces covering CSR issues over the 25-year period. The prominence of each of the four CSR dimensions varied over time. Each of the four CSR dimensions had its moment of media prominence when it was more important than the other dimensions. The most prevalent valence of the opinion pieces was negative; the volume of negative pieces increased over the 25 years, whereas the number of opinions with positive, neutral, and mixed tones showed little change over time. The study concludes by tracing the implications of the role of the news media for business ethics research.