A Bangladesh soap opera: privatisation, accounting, and regimes of control in a less developed country

This paper reports an intensive case study of a soap manufacturing company in Bangladesh that was nationalised upon Bangladesh's independence in 1971 and privatised in 1993. Theoretically it is informed by Burawoy's contributions to labour process theory, especially how the consent of labour is manufactured through internal states, internal labour markets and games, and how regimes of control in less developed ex-colonial countries are transformed by state and production politics. How the role of accounting systems may shape and be shaped by these processes is traced. Nationalisation brought state attempts to manufacture consent by the methods described in Burawoy's depiction of hegemonic regimes. However, idealistic attempts to secure accountability, rational planning and control, and consent through bureaucratic means were subverted and transformed into a regime of political hegemony. Here control was secured by political interventions, often at the behest of trade unions, for party political rather than commercial ends. Detailed systems of accounting for control and accountability were maintained but became marginal, ritualistic, and de-coupled from operations. Privatisation brought changes consistent with Burawoy's prediction of coercive controls within a new despotic regime. New owners destroyed the internal state and internal labour markets and, following widespread redundancies, most workers were hired through internal subcontracting. The changes heightened worker divisions and rendered workers powerless to resist. Gaming was observed but this relieved the pressures of work intensification and proved functional to management. Significant changes to accounting controls were made. External reporting ceased in violation of legal requirements — financial accounting became the preserve of the owning family and was beset with irregularities. Budgets became more market oriented and were transmitted downwards in a physical form to reinforce coercive pressures upon managers and thence the shop floor. The paper concludes by relating the findings to a revised model of transformation of control regimes in Bangladesh     

The Timing of Asset Sales: Evidence of Earnings Management?

This paper presents empirical evidence from a sample of publicly traded Singaporean firms on the question: to what extent do firms manage earnings through the timing of asset sales? Previous studies have focused on accounting motives behind asset sales, ignoring the need to also consider economic motives. Some empirical evidence is provided to support the hypothesis that managers of firms with decreasing net earnings–per–share smooth earnings upwards using asset sales.     

Ethnic Minority Enterprise in its Urban Context: South Asian Restuarants in Birmingham

The embeddedness of ethnic minority business activity is widely accepted, as researchers increasingly eschew ethno‐culturalist explanations of the phenomenon. However, despite the importance of urban processes, studies of ethnic minority enterprise are often ‘spaceless’. This article uses Rekers and van Kempen’s urban spatial framework to assess the experiences of South Asian owners in Birmingham’s restaurant industry. One taken‐for‐granted but evidently important element to which this article draws attention is location, which emerges as one of the key points of differentiation within the ethnic business community. Location is seen to influence individual access to market potential, an unevenly distributed resource largely shaped by local social geography. At the same time, entry into more lucrative market niches is heavily dependent on the possession of other resources such as capital, information and in some instances management skills. Si l’intégration d’entreprises créées par des minorités ethniques est largement admise, les chercheurs évitent de plus en plus les explications ethno‐culturalistes du phénomène. Par ailleurs, malgré l’importance des processus urbains, les études sur ces entreprises n’ont souvent pas de ‘bornes’. Cet article utilise le cadre spatial urbain de Rekers et van Kempen pour évaluer les expériences de propriétaires de restaurants sud‐asiatiques à Birmingham. Il attire l’attention sur une composante normale, quoique manifestement importante: le lieu. Celui‐ci apparaît comme l’un des points de différenciation essentiels au sein de la communautééconomique ethnique. Il influence l’accès individuel au marché potentiel, ressource inégalement répartie et largement configurée par la géographie sociale locale. Parallèlement, une pénétration de niches de marché plus lucratives dépend considérablement de la détention d’autres ressources, telles qu’un capital, des informations et, dans certains cas, des compétences de dirigeant.     

Modern Russian corporate governance: convergent forces or product of Russia’s history?

Does Russian corporate governance in the new millennium amount to a gradual evolution towards US-style corporate governance, or can it be expected to continue to reflect historical institutions and national culture? When multinationals complain about State interference in firms’ strategies and operations, can this be a permanent state of affairs, or is the situation likely to change?After 1991, Russia, in the middle of a huge crisis, embarked on a program of mass privatization, ostensibly with a view to creating full, market-based corporate governance, with open information disclosure, and enterprise ownership by outside investors having no relationship with the firm other then through their shares. In practice, however, it has become clear that a very different pattern has emerged, especially in manufacturing industries with relational investors, including managers and employees, as well as banks and other firms linked horizontally or vertically, little share liquidity. There is continued hostility towards active western and other genuinely ‘outside’ investors, and persistently strong State influence. This paper argues that this outcome can only be understood in the context of business history.     

Renewal or rigor mortis? Union responses to contracting in local government

Contracting, or competitive tendering, is now common throughout local government and may provide the basis for a ‘renewal’ of workplace trade unionism. Without significant investment and support, however, local structures may be too fragile to withstand the managerial and competitive pressures that contracting brings in its wake.     

The Performance of Exchange Rate Forecasts

Since the floating of the Australian dollar the forecasting of exchange rate movements has become more difficult and received much more attention. As a result, some participants in the foreign exchange market have, on a number of occasions, come under criticism for their inability to predict exchange rate movements. This article seeks to evaluate these criticisms through an examination of exchange rate forecasts made by market participants (as published in the Australian Financial Review from March 1985 to December 1985). The accuracy of the $A/US$ forecasts is compared with that of forecasts generated from a number of simple forecasting rules as well as forecasts of the US$/Yen exchange rate. In general, the simple forecasting rules provide superior forecasts to those provided by the individual market participants. However, under some criteria, the mean of the individual participants' forecasts may be preferred to these simple forecasting rules. Further, the comparison of the US$/Yen forecasts with the $A/US$ forecasts shows the former to be generally more accurate.     

Factor Endowments and Industrial Structure

What determines industrial structure? Do sector‐specific characteristics such as unionization, regulation, and trade policy dominate production patterns? One is inclined to believe so based on countless industry‐level studies and the many political battles that are continually fought over trade and industrial policy. In contrast, standard neoclassical trade theory suggests that industrial structure is primarily driven by relative factor supplies. This paper demonstrates that aggregate factor endowments explain much of the structure of production—independent of industry idiosyncrasies—and quantifies the extent to which shifts in industrial structure in a cross‐section of countries are driven by the broad forces of factor accumulation. These results are reached through an empirical application of the factor proportions model of production.