Importing accounting: the case of Trinidad and Tobago

In the period immediately following its achieving independence, Trinidad and Tobago switched from a pattern of importing British professional accountants to one of importing British professional qualifications. It was also in this period that the first professional accounting association appeared: that is, eighty years after such bodies emerged in Britain and her settler colonies. This paper seeks to explain why the achievement of political independence in Trinidad and Tobago (and perhaps in some other British non-settler colonies) signified a critical turning point in the development of a local accounting profession. The paper also explores how the history of importing accounting impacted on the contemporary organization of the profession in Trinidad and Tobago.     

Ambiguity Acceptance as a Function of Project Management: A New Critical Success Factor

This research examines the relationship between ambiguity acceptance and customer and organizational outcomes within the Six Sigma improvement project context. Results find a curvilinear relationship between open communication and customer outcomes for project leaders. Results of multiple regression find a significant positive relationship between open communication and organization outcomes, as well as a significant positive relationship between ambiguity acceptance and customer and organizational outcomes for team leaders, while there is a significant positive relationship between ambiguity acceptance and customer and organizational outcomes for team members. Theoretical and practical implications are examined.     

Bank Performance around the Introduction of a Section 20 Subsidiary

As of 1987, commercial banks in the United States were allowed to establish Section 20 subsidiaries to conduct investment-banking activities. A concern of regulators was that these activities would result in a decrease in performance of commercial banks relative to the risk being undertaken. This paper examines the performance of commercial banks around the establishment of a Section 20 subsidiary. We find that Section 20 activities undertaken by banks result in increased industry-adjusted operating cash flow return on assets, due mainly to revenues from noncommercial-banking activities. Further, risk measures for the sample banks do not change significantly.     

The Payoff to Public Investments in Pest-Management R&D: General Issues and a Case Study Emphasizing Integrated Pest Management in California

Pest-management technologies have had to adapt to address evolving pesticide resistance problems and changes in regulations driven by environmental and human health concerns. Integrated pest management, founded in the University of California, is an important example. Using California as a case study, this paper describes the post–World War II history of agricultural pest-management technology, documents the development and use of chemical pesticides, describes the role of public research, and measures the benefits and costs for five important commodities, emphasizing integrated pest management.     

Corporate governance and earnings management at large U.S. bank holding companies

This paper examines whether corporate governance mechanisms affect earnings and earnings management at the largest publicly traded bank holding companies in the United States. We first find that performance, earnings management, and corporate governance are endogenously determined. Thus, OLS estimation can lead to biased coefficients and a simultaneous equations approach is used. We find that CEO pay-for-performance sensitivity (PPS), board independence, and capital are positively related to earnings and that earnings, board independence, and capital are negatively related to earnings management. We also find that PPS is positively related to earnings management. Finally, PPS and board independence are positively related and the relationship is bidirectional. While both PPS and board independence are associated with higher earnings, our results indicate that more independent boards appear to constrain the earnings management that greater PPS compels.     

Who has the D? How clear decision roles enhance organizational performance

Decisions are the coin of the realm in business. But even in highly respected companies, decisions can get stuck inside the organization like loose change. As a result, the entire decision-making process can stall, usually at one of four bottlenecks: global versus local, center versus business unit, function versus function, and inside versus outside partners. Decision-making bottlenecks can occur whenever there is ambiguity or tension over who gets to decide what. For example, do marketers or product developers get to decide the features of a new product? Should a major capital investment depend on the approval of the business unit that will own it, or should headquarters make the final call? Which decisions can be delegated to an outsourcing partner, and which must be made internally? Bain consultants Paul Rogers and Marcia Blenko use an approach called RAPID (recommend, agree, perform, input, and decide) to help companies unclog their decision-making bottlenecks by explicitly defining roles and responsibilities. For example, British American Tobacco struck a new balance between global and local decision making to take advantage of the company's scale while maintaining its agility in local markets. At Wyeth Pharmaceuticals, a growth opportunity revealed the need to push more decisions down to the business units. And at the UK department-store chain John Lewis, buyers and sales staff clarified their decision roles in order to implement a new strategy for selling its salt and pepper mills. When revamping its decision-making process, a company must take some practical steps: Align decision roles with the most important sources of value, make sure that decisions are made by the right people at the right levels of the organization, and let the people who will live with the new process help design it.