‘Passionate and professional’: reconciling logics in public service accounting

In order to deliver public value, the UK government sought to build relationships and connect ‘the public’ with public servants (including back-office workers), but with what effect? Drawing on interviews with public service accountants, the authors found that how these accountants conceptualized ‘the public’—as society or people—shaped whether public value was considered as a monetary or moral concept. Accountants who regarded the public as people spoke of an improper level of involvement and struggled to maintain their professionalism.     

Men at work. Wages and industriousness in southern Sweden 1500–1850

ABSTRACT

In his classic works on the industrious revolution, Jan de Vries argues that demand for new consumer goods trigged eighteenth century Europeans to work more. This implies that industrious behaviour and new consumption patterns were two parallel and interdependent processes that preceded the industrial revolution. However, there is an alternative explanation for any increase in labour output on household level, namely that the labourers were forced to work more to meet ends. An indication of this could be that day labourers’ relative wages decreased over time. In this article, we investigate this by studying wages from annual and casual labour in southern Sweden and compare their levels with consumption baskets.     

Worlding Water Supply: Thinking Beyond the Network in Jakarta

This article draws on scholarship in Southern theory to ‘world’ the study of water’s urbanization. This means complicating scholarship by widening the focus beyond the application of Northern norms to engage with complex and diverse practices in Southern cities. For water’s urbanization, this means focusing on what water supply is for the majority: neither the centralized piped‐water network nor its absence, but the range of practices and technologies that unite people, nature and artefacts in a complex socio‐ecological politics of water. Drawing on scholarship from Southern urbanisms, urban political ecology, and science and technology studies, we illustrate how expanding water’s urbanization to include more than networked infrastructure in Jakarta draws attention to the importance of ecological connections between piped water, groundwater, wastewater and floodwater. Thinking beyond the network requires deeper engagement with the ecological connections between the diverse flows of water in and around urban environments. These produce distinct forms of fragmentation that are missed when analysis is limited to piped‐water supply. The emphasis on ecological connections between flows of water and power seeks to draw attention back to the importance of the uneven exposure to environmental hazards in cities in which neither water nor nature are wholly contained by infrastructure.     

The economic value of INTUITY in aortic valve replacement

Objective: The recent development of the EDWARDS INTUITY Elite? (EIE) valve system enables the rapid deployment of a prosthetic surgical heart valve in an aortic valve replacement (AVR) procedure via both the minimally invasive (MISAVR) and conventional (CAVR) approaches. In order to understand its economic value, this study performed a cost evaluation of the EIE valve system used in a MIS rapid-deployment approach (MIS-RDAVR) vs MISAVR and CAVR, respectively, compared to standard prosthetic aortic valves.

Methods: A simulation model was developed using TreeAge (and validated with MS Excel) to compare the inpatient utilization and complication costs for each treatment arm. Thirty-day clinical end-points for the MIS-RDAVR (mortality and complications) were taken from the TRANSFORM trial; and a best evidence review of the published literature was used for the MISAVR and CAVR approaches. Studies were pooled and parameter estimates were weighted by sample size in order to compare the TRANSFORM patients. Cost data (2016 USD) were taken from the Premier database. Incremental cost and cost-effectiveness was assessed and one-way/probabilistic sensitivity analyses performed to gauge the robustness of the results.

Results: MIS-RDAVR costs $2,621 less than CAVR and had lower mortality rates, making it a superior (dominant) technology relative to CAVR. MIS-RDAVR costs $4,560 more than MISAVR, but was associated with an additional 0.20 life years-per-patient. This implies a cost-effectiveness ratio of $22,903 per-life-year-gained. Thus, MIS-RDAVR is cost-effective compared to MISAVR.

Conclusions: The EIE valve system deployed in a MIS approach appears to be a cost-effective technology compared to MISAVR and CAVR. When compared to CAVR it may achieve cost savings as well. These results suggest that MIS-RDAVR confers superior economic value compared to both standard MISAVR and CAVR via lowered key complication rates (re-operation, renal complications, wound infection, TIA, endocarditis) and utilization (cross-clamp time, hospital ward days).     

Artisan Flowers Inc.: A Framework‐Based Approach to IFRS Leasing Standards

Artisan Flowers Inc.'s (AFI) business is centered on importing and selling cut flowers. The company has entered into a number of lease transactions that have the president of AFI perplexed with their accounting treatment and implications. Now, the audit firm needs to explain to AFI's president the appropriate treatment and implications of these lease transactions using current IFRS (IAS 17) and (optionally) the 2013 Lease Exposure Draft. The purpose of this case is for students to gain an understanding and appreciation of the intricacies of IAS 17 as well as the proposed Lease Exposure Draft and the implication of these standards on debt covenants. Students are asked for an explanation of the conceptual basis for the standards and for an analysis of the impact of the standards on AFI's statement of financial position.     

Internationalisation Processes,Networking and Local Embeddedness in Technology-Intensive Small Firms

The paper argues that technology-intensive small firms often need to internationalise their activities, and especially sales, at a very early stage of their development because of the limited and global nature of the technological market niche which they have been set up to exploit. From a survey of 100 such firms in the Cambridge and Oxford regions, it demonstrates that many technology-based smaller firms are engaged in a range of international networks and internationalisation processes, including internationalisation of markets, research collaboration, labour recruitment, ownership and facilities location. Technology-intensive firms reporting high levels of internationalisation also differ significantly from those which are more nationally-oriented, for example in terms of size, age, research intensity, university links, and innovativeness. There are also differences with respect to recent growth rates. Finally, the paper demonstrates that far from substituting international for local networks, technology-intensive firms which have achieved high levels of internationalisation in fact also exhibit above-average levels of local networking with respect to research collaboration and intra-industry links. Internationalisation therefore appears to be grounded or embedded in successful local networking and research and technology collaboration.     

A Comparison of Conjoint Methods When There Are Many Attributes

This paper compares several methods of performing conjoint analysis when there is a large number of attributes. National parks were described in terms of 17 attributes and 56 levels. Subjects were randomly assigned to one of four groups and each person responded to a calibration questionnaire that allowed the estimation of one of the following conjoint analysis models: full profile, ACA, individual-level hybrid, or full profile on the person's eight stated most important attributes. Validations were performed in terms of individual choices and aggregate choice shares. Reliabilities were assessed on both ratings and choices.Surprisingly even with a large number of attributes, the full profile method consistently validated best. Second was a full profile model estimated on the respondent's stated eight most important attributes. ACA and individual hybrid conjoint analysis performed similarly, but worse than these two methods on most measures. Validation differences were more strongly related to differences in attribute importances than desirabilities for levels within an attribute. It appears that these respondents were not able to accurately report self-explicated importances with a large number of attributes.     

Foundations of Incomplete Contracts

In the last few years, a new area has emerged in economic theory, which goes under the heading of "incomplete contracting". However, almost since its inception, the theory has been under attack for its lack of rigorous foundations. In this paper, we evaluate some of the criticisms that have been made of the theory, in particular, those in Maskin and Tirole (1999 a ). In doing so, we develop a model that provides a rigorous foundation for the idea that contracts are incomplete.     

Misleading Forecasts in Accounting Estimates: A Form of Ethical Blindness in Accounting Standards?

Drawing from research on strategic choice, this study investigates the relationship between market turbulence and firms’ sustainable behavior, in the context of sustainability-related institutional adversity. It argues that the relationship between market turbulence and sustainability is mediated by network embeddedness, and this mediating role in turn is moderated by a firm’s innovative orientation. Data collected from a sample of Ontario restaurants inform predictions about firms’ propensity to adopt local wines in their portfolios, despite the limited market and normative support that these wines receive compared with imported wines. The study shows that market turbulence enhances sustainable firm behavior, through the development of strong network relationships. Furthermore, the mediating effect of network embeddedness is particularly salient among firms that exhibit a stronger innovative orientation. These findings reveal how and when turbulent market conditions can contribute to a firm’s sustainable behaviors in the presence of limited institutional support for such behaviors.     

Simulated Attention-Tracking Methodologies: An Examination of Measurement Efficacy

This study introduces and examines a simulated attention-tracking methodology as an emerging technique to improve the study of in-store shopper behavior and decision making. To assess the viability of this new methodology, we examine its efficacy in producing consumer behavior data consistent with results predicted by the marketing literature. Empirical data across five grocery categories are used to examine the influence of personal, product, and situational differences on external information search. Findings show that the attention-tracking methodology is able to demonstrate expected results in almost all cases. The methodology is also able to provide a more complete view of external information search through tracing the observed search behavior preceding decision making. This proof of methodology responds directly to calls in the marketing and retailing literature to test new and emerging methodologies in support of research on in-store marketing and shopper behavior. Findings also provide managers with a methodology to examine the actual impact of marketing actions intended to capture shoppers’ attention at the retail shelf and to influence behavior.