The proletarianisation of academic labour

This article looks at industrial relations changes, conflict and control in higher education, particularly among university academics. It suggests a tendency towards proletarianisation, and a focus on the academic labour process is useful in explaining growing conflict. An apparent HRM agenda and (reluctantly) increasing managerialism are forms, not causes, of change which is driven by funding pressures similar to those affecting other HE systems.     

The effect of more rules‐based guidance on expense disclosure under International Financial Reporting Standards

International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) are often described as principles‐based; however, we show that IFRS and Australian pre‐IFRS expense‐related standards are more rules‐based than pre‐IFRS expense disclosure in New Zealand. Thus, we examine expense disclosure in New Zealand and Australia around IFRS adoption to provide evidence on the effect of more or less rules‐based standards on voluntary disclosure. First, we add to the rules versus principles‐based standards debate by finding higher voluntary expense disclosure under more rules‐based standards (e.g. IFRS). This contrasts with expectations, as we would expect fewer voluntary disclosures under more rules‐based standards as there would be fewer possible voluntary disclosures. Second, we document that New Zealand firms have significantly less voluntary expense disclosure than size‐ and industry‐matched Australian firms in both the pre‐ and post‐IFRS period. However, all measures of expense disclosure significantly improved post‐IFRS for New Zealand, whilst little change occurred for Australian firms. Thus, there is greater financial statement comparability across these countries post‐IFRS, but not full harmonization. Third, we show that the relationship between most firm characteristics and expense disclosure is weaker post‐IFRS. In addition, cross‐listed firms and loss‐making firms have a higher level of expense disclosure, as contrasted with firms in the investment and property industry which have a lower percentage of unspecified expenses but also report fewer voluntary expenses.     

Loosely Coupled Results Control in Dutch Municipalities

This paper analyses the implementation of the ‘dual system’ in Dutch municipalities which was part of a package of New Public Management‐reforms. This system was stimulated by Dutch central government and called for more accountability for performance of municipal managers and the board of mayor and aldermen, as well as for the use of more output and outcome information. Interviews of participants on four different hierarchical levels in 12 municipalities show that the practices of output management at different hierarchical levels are only loosely coupled to each other (‘vertical loose coupling’). We also found some degree of ‘horizontal loose coupling’ at each hierarchical level between result orientation, the development of output indicators and the use of output information for performance evaluation. The paper analyses the reasons why municipalities encounter difficulties in designing a comprehensive and coherent performance management system.     

Spend More Today Safely: Using Behavioral Economics to Improve Retirement Expenditure Decisions With SPEEDOMETER Plans

This article examines how behavioral economics can be used to improve the spending decisions of retirees, using a SPEEDOMETER (or Spending Optimally Throughout Retirement) retirement expenditure plan that employs defaults within a choice architecture. The plan involves just four key behavioral nudges: (1) first, make a plan—ideally by being auto‐enrolled into one or with the help of a financial adviser; (2) automatic phasing of annuitization, which is designed to tackle the aversion to large irreversible transactions and losing control of assets, and so allows the greatest possible degree of flexibility in managing the rundown of retirement assets; (3) capital protection in the form of “money‐back” annuities that deals with loss aversion, that is, the fear of losing your money if you die early; and (4) the slogan “spend more today safely” that utilizes hyperbolic discounting to satisfy the human trait of wanting jam today, and to reinforce the idea that “buying an annuity is a smart thing to do.”     

Comparison of Mean-Risk Efficient Portfolios in Asia-Pacific Capital Markets

In order to analyze the performance of mean-risk efficient portfolios, several methods of portfolio comparison have been developed. In this paper we analyze the second-order stochastic dominance efficiency of portfolios on the mean-risk efficient frontier assuming that the risk is represented by standard deviations and concordance matrices set up on the basis of Pearson's linear correlation, Spearman's rho, or Kendall's tau. Empirical analysis of the market returns of selected Asia-Pacific stock markets is carried out considering both the U.S. dollar and euro as reference currencies, and different periods: before and during the subprime crisis. Measures and portfolios on the mean-risk efficiency frontier that should be of interest to at least one risk-averse investor are empirically documented.     

Cross-ownership as a structural explanation for over- and underestimation of default probability

Based on the work of Suzuki, we consider a generalization of Merton’s asset valuation approach in which two firms are linked by cross-ownership of equity and liabilities. Suzuki’s results then provide no arbitrage prices of firm values, which are derivatives of exogenous asset values. In contrast to the Merton model, the assumption of lognormally distributed assets does not result in lognormally distributed firm values, which also affects the corresponding probabilities of default. In a simulation study we see that, depending on the type of cross-ownership, the lognormal model can lead to both over- and underestimation of the actual probability of default of a firm under cross-ownership. In the limit, i.e. if the levels of cross-ownership tend to their maximum possible value, these findings can be shown theoretically as well. Furthermore, we consider the default probability of a firm in general, i.e. without a distributional assumption, and show that the lognormal model is often able to yield only a limited range of probabilities of default, while the actual probabilities may take any value between 0 and 1.     

Cost engineering and costing in Hawthorn Leslie Shipbuilders, 1886–1915

This research examines cost engineering and costing in a British shipbuilding firm in the late nineteenth – early twentieth century. The firm maintained separate systems of contract accounting, costing and reporting for directors and employed internal data from these systems in performance measurement, the development of managerial incentives and the enforcement of managerial accountability. An apparent gap in the information required to manage the firm in a cyclical and highly competitive industry during a period of rapid organisational and technological change was filled by an informal and personal cost engineering system developed by the shipbuilding manager. The shipbuilding manager's cost engineering system employed a wide range of both internal and external data for use in cost management and in cost estimation, pricing and tendering. Thus cost engineering and costing developed to serve different purposes and developed in different spheres and along different trajectories.     

Combining backcasting and adaptive management for climate adaptation in coastal regions: A methodology and a South African case study

Developing adaptation strategies for deltaic and coastal regions is a major challenge, due to future uncertainties of climate change and complexity of the social–ecological systems to be managed. This paper investigates how desirable futures or normative scenarios approaches, in particular backcasting, can be used to develop more robust climate strategies in coastal regions. The paper develops a methodology in which participatory backcasting and adaptive management are combined, and its applicability is demonstrated for the Breede–Overberg coastal region in South Africa where a catchment management strategy has been developed. It is concluded that the methodology offers an adequate framework for developing and implementing long-term climate adaptation strategies and policies, including a transition management scheme for intermediate assessments.     

LEGAL KNOWLEDGE AND AGILITY IN PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION

To address agility in public administration, we have developed a knowledge acquisition infrastructure for legal knowledge, based on an implementation‐oriented conceptualization of the legal system. Our objective is to reframe legal knowledge as a knowledge source in a design‐oriented task ontology, building on insights from the CommonKADS methodology for intelligent system design. The main result is to make case law and legal expert knowledge of critical incidents in organizations, two diagnostic knowledge sources underutilized in modern management and engineering, more accessible as a resource for design of agile organizational structures and intelligent systems. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.