Accounting students’ choice of blended learning format and its impact on performance and satisfaction

Using online platforms to deliver educational content, some institutions have developed blended courses that combine the advantages of online instruction with traditional face-to-face (F2F) teaching. This study compares accounting student performance and satisfaction in two blended formats with similar content and design, i.e. F2F+ vs. Online+ courses. It also assesses the characteristics of students who choose the latter option over F2F+ courses. Students in four advanced accounting subjects were surveyed and their course performance was obtained. Results indicate that the main determinants of students’ decision to register for an Online+ course are retaking the course, increased weekly work hours, and belief that this type of blended course facilitates learning. Results show that students in advanced accounting courses with equivalent content and design perform similarly and have the same level of course satisfaction across course delivery formats, as hypothesized under equivalency theory.     

Towards a critical understanding of accounting: The case of cost accounting in the U.K., 1914–1925

Management accounting is commonly understood to be a set of techniques for collecting and processing useful facts about organisational life. The information obtained is viewed as an objective form of knowledge untaited by social values and ideology; the practitioners as technically skilled professionals whose political and social allegiances have no bearing on their practices. In this paper these views are brought into question through the “genealogical” method of looking in detail at one period in the history of accounting, examining the interplay between knowledge, techniques, institutions and occupational claims. In the period and place chosen — Britain during the First World War and the immediately following years, society was in a state of turmoil and this provides an ideal context for considering one part of the genealogy of management accounting.     

How important are commercial revenues to today's airports?

This paper investigates the importance of commercial revenues to today's airports. It establishes that on average commercial revenues now account for about half of all revenues, although this varies considerably by region and individual airport, with retail being the most significant commercial source. It explores some of the key factors, such as consumer trends, security developments and political changes, which have led to a much more challenging time for commercial managers since the late-1990s. With growing pressure to control levels of aeronautical revenues, even greater focus on commercial revenues may be needed in the future and the paper concludes by discussing the implications of this.     

Investigating CSR communication in SMEs: a case study among Danish middle managers

This paper seeks to analyse small‐ and medium‐sized enterprise (SME) managers' representations of corporate social responsibility (CSR) and CSR communication in a corporate communication perspective. The basic question is: how strategic is CSR communication in SMEs? Corporate communication and CSR theories are used to establish an ideal typology of CSR concepts informing an analysis of qualitative data in the form of interviews with three middle managers in two Danish SMEs. A CSR communication model published earlier by the authors is challenged from a SME perspective. Results from an Internet‐based questionnaire survey of 1071 SMEs pave the way for the analysis. Our analysis shows that SME managers clearly have an inside‐out approach to CSR, with a strong emphasis on the internal (corporate culture) dimension. However, SMEs and/or SME managers tend not to communicate externally about the CSR activities of the company. Based on these findings, the paper argues that CSR communication in SMEs is challenged by the global economy and is under revision. The contribution of the paper is to provide an insight into SMEs' present stage in relation to a possible future approach to strategic CSR communication. The paper also reminds us that SMEs have no interest in turning their local and authentic practice into a forced marketing and branding exercise, leaving them with an artificial picture of who they are and strive to be in the future. They should keep on acting locally but force themselves to think globally.     

The Prosecution of Public Figures and the Separation of Powers. Confusion within the Executive Branch – A Conceptual Framework

Criminal investigation and prosecution of politicians, top civil servants and other public figures are topics frequently discussed in the media. The nature of the investigating or prosecuting authority varies between countries – from the general public prosecutor, through magistrates to independent counsels or parliamentary investigation commissions. This paper analyzes the role and status of public prosecutors within the separation of powers-concept. Prosecutors are usually part of the executive and not the judicial branch, which implies that they do not enjoy the same degree of independence as judges, and are ultimately subordinated to the directives of the minister of justice or the government. Conflicts of interest may hence arise if members of government can use the criminal process for their own or partisan interests. The incentives of public prosecutors in different jurisdictions are compared.     

The enemies of trust

Researchers have established that trust is critical to organizational effectiveness. Being trustworthy yourself, however, does not guarantee that you are capable of building trust in an organization. That takes old-fashioned managerial virtues like consistency, clear communication, and a willingness to tackle awkward questions. It also requires a good defense: You must protect trust from its enemies. Any act of bad management erodes trust, so the list of potential enemies is endless. Among the most common enemies of trust, though, are inconsistent messages from top management, inconsistent standards, a willingness to tolerate incompetence or bad behavior, dishonest feedback, a failure to trust others to do good work, a tendency to ignore painful or politically charged situations, consistent corporate underperformance, and rumors. Fending off these enemies must be at the top of every chief executive's agenda. But even with constant vigilance, an organization and its leaders will sometimes lose people's trust. During a crisis, managers should enlist the help of an objective third party--chances are you won't be thinking clearly--and be available physically and emotionally. If you "go dark" in the face of a crisis, employees will worry about the company's survival, about their own capacity to cope, and about your abilities as a leader. And if trust has broken down so badly that your only choice is to start over, you can do so by figuring out exactly how the breach of trust happened, ascertaining the depth and breadth of the loss, owning up to the loss instead of downplaying it, and identifying as precisely as possible the specific changes you must make to rebuild trust.     

Strongly stable networks

We analyze the formation of networks among individuals. In particular, we examine the existence of networks that are stable against changes in links by any coalition of individuals. We show that to investigate the existence of such strongly stable networks one can restrict focus on a component-wise egalitarian allocation of value. We show that when such strongly stable networks exist they coincide with the set of efficient networks (those maximizing the total productive value). We show that the existence of strongly stable networks is equivalent to core existence in a derived cooperative game and use that result to characterize the class of value functions for which there exist strongly stable networks via a “top convexity” condition on the value function on networks. We also consider a variation on strong stability where players can make side payments, and examine situations where value functions may be non-anonymous—depending on player labels.     

Risk,uncertainty and the theory of planned behavior: A tourism example

The differential impacts risk and uncertainty have on travel decision-making were explored by examining the constructs' influence on the antecedents of intentions to visit Australia using the theory of planned behavior. Respondents were obtained from online consumer panels in South Korea, China and Japan. The South Korean and Chinese samples were general population samples, while the sample from Japan was an international travelers' sample. The extended model fitted the data well, explaining between 21 and 44 percent of the variance in intentions. Subjective norms and perceived behavioral control significantly impacted on intentions in all country samples, whereas attitudes toward visiting Australia were only significant in Japan. Subjective norms influenced attitudes and perceived behavioral control in all country samples. Finally, perceived risk influenced attitudes toward visiting Australia in South Korea and Japan, while perceived uncertainty influenced attitudes toward visiting Australia in South Korea and China and perceived behavioral control in China and Japan.