Accounting Introspection

In 1994 a working party commissioned by the Australian accounting bodies produced a report titled A Research Study on Financial Reporting and Auditing - Bridging the Expectation Gap. The study was the result of concerns about the differing perceptions of the financial reporting and auditing roles. This paper asserts that the research study suffers from shortcomings including a failure to explore some important issues and a consequent failure to correct prevailing misconceptions in the minds of those compiling financial reports and others using them.     

Corporate Temperance a Business Virtue

"There are strong temptations for those at the top of an organisational hierarchy to appropriate to themselves a disproportionate share of the resources of the organisation and to exercise too much power over the activities of other organisational members." Hence the case for taking a cool look at executive remuneration and other possible breaches of applying the classical virtue of temperance to corporate behaviour. The author is Principal Lecturer in the Business Studies Department, Manchester Metropolitan University, Aytoun Building, Aytoun Street, Manchester M1 3GH.     

ASYMMETRIC COVARIANCE,VOLATILITY, AND THE EFFECT OF NEWS

We propose that covariance (rather than beta) asymmetry provides a superior framework for examining issues related to changing risk premiums. Accordingly, we investigate whether the conditional covariance between stock and market returns is asymmetric in response to good and bad news. Our model of conditional covariance accommodates both the sign and magnitude of return innovations, and we find significant covariance asymmetry that can explain, at least in part, the volatility feedback of stock returns. Our findings are consistent across firm size, firm leverage, and temporal and cross‐sectional aggregations.     

The challenge from below: an analysis of the role of the shop steward in industrial relations

An analysis of the shop steward's position in industry makes it clear that his task is complicated by the different roles demanded of him by management, his union, the rank and file, and not least, his own conception of his role.     

A REVIEW OF THE ESTIMATION OF TRANSITION PROBABILITIES IN MARKOV CHAINS

A chronological review of the development of estimation procedures for unknown constant Markovian transition probabilities is presented with emphasis on applications involving the availability of macrodata, as opposed to microdata. Monte Carlo results comparing various estimation methods are analysed and several suggestions for estimating non-stationary probabilities are made.     

The aims and methods of the education and training of shop stewards: a case study

The author's research indicates that management's objectives in releasing shop stewards for courses and the shop stewards' objectives may be quite different. Views on how far courses should be “education” and how far “training”, and the best structure for courses, also emerged from this study.     

An analytical approach to academic department location in a multi-campus university2

An educational institution faced with the operation of several campuses with which to accomplish its many functions also is typically faced with transportation, class scheduling and lost student time as problems directly related to the multi-campus operation. A model using an implicit enumeration approach with bounds on the objective function values is developed with the objective to determine the optimal allocation of indivisible academic departments to each of the several campuses. This allocation minimizes a constructed measure of operating costs while satisfying space availability constraints. Solutions for a three campus and fifty-seven department case are presented.     

Too hot to handle? Trust and human resource practitioners' implementation of anti‐bullying policy

In this article, we examine the dynamics of trust in the triadic relationship between HR, employees and managers when dealing with allegations of workplace bullying. Previous research has shown employees to be dissatisfied with HR practitioners' responses to complaints of workplace bullying, and we explore the novel angle of the HR practitioners' perspective through semistructured interviews. Paralleling extant employee accounts, the findings suggest that HR practitioners rarely judge situations as bullying where a manager is accused. Trust between employee, manager and HR practitioner is essential for the successful resolution of bullying claims, yet this study suggests multiple directions of distrust. By virtue of their role alignment and previous experiences of handling bullying, HR practitioners were found to prioritise their relationships with managers, automatically distrusting employees' bullying claims. Despite also distrusting managers to effectively deliver HRM practices, it appears that bullying complaints are ‘too hot to handle’ for HR practitioners given the risks to their relationships with managers.