Effect of cognitive style and professional development on the initiation of radical and non-radical management accounting innovations

This study examines the effects of adaptive/innovative cognitive style, and professional development on the initiation of radical and non‐radical innovations by individual management accountants. Data are gathered through questionnaire and follow‐up interviews with practising management accountants. The results show that management accountants with a more innovative (adaptive) cognitive style tend to initiate more (fewer) radical relative to non‐radical innovations, and that this effect is amplified by professional development. The study has implications for research in management accounting innovation and for practice, including the importance of maintaining a balance of radical and non‐radical innovations in organizations, and of professional development.     

The demography of micro-states

There are two types of micro-states, islands and mainland ones. Except for a few islands very close to the coast, most of the insular micro-states are demographically very different from the rest of the Third World. Their death-rates are lower, their birth-rates lower, and the propensity of their populations to migrate to developed countries higher. It is argued here that these differences are based on other social and economic differences, which can be summarized by saying that such states are more Westernized. They were part of the European maritime system at a time when the West did not have the economic strength to penetrate continental areas to the same extent. On the whole they retained colonial links longer.     

Success of activity management practices: the influence of organizational and cultural factors

This study examines the success of activity management practices and the organizational and cultural factors affecting success at each of Gosselin's (1997) three levels of activity analysis (AA), activity cost analysis (ACA) and activity‐based costing (ABC). Data were collected by survey questionnaire from a random sample of managers of Australian business units. The results indicate that activity management is moderately successful in Australian organizations, with greater use associated with higher levels of success. Two organizational factors (top management support and link to quality) were associated with success at each of Gosselin's three levels, whereas training was associated at the AA and ACA levels. The cultural factor of outcome orientation was associated with success at each level, with attention to detail important at the ABC level. Organizational factors were more strongly associated with activity management success than cultural factors.     

A Note on Laurence Seidman’s Article

Mihail Manoilescu was among the foremost intellectual figures of the interwar period in Romania. He was known as a politician and central banker, as well as an economist. From the very beginning of his theoretical and practical career, or at least from the late 1920s onward, Manoilescu’s ideas and theories (especially his corporatist theory) were marked by clear continuity and consistency based on the theory of protectionism grounded on productivity differences. By developing his model — an alternative to the theory of comparative advantage — Manoilescu endeavored to show the need for protectionist measures to promote the development of peripheral countries. His defense of protectionism is usually presented as clumsy and founded on an incorrect method, even if he is often recognized as the forerunner of the theory of unequal exchange and the dependency theory. Few scholars note the similarity of Manoilescu’s theory with Karl Marx’s labor theory. This paper contributes to validating Manoilescu’s conclusions, the soundness of which we test here by reconstructing the theory from a Marxian perspective. A reconstruction of this type offers new possibilities of evaluating his theory and a better understanding of its contributions and limitations.     

Slow track, fast track, and the “Galactic Club”

Discoveries in the physical and biological sciences suggest that intelligence is widely distributed throughout the universe. Before long, either we will decide that these discoveries have pointed us towards a false conclusion, or we will obtain undeniable evidence of extraterrestrial life. After finding one extraterrestrial society, we are likely to discover others and, in this manner, become a part of the “Galactic Club”. Following the “slow track”, an initial encounter will lead to accelerated search efforts that will put us in touch, one by one, with additional societies. Following the “fast track”, our initial contact will be with an affiliate of the Galactic Club, and this society will give us instant access to other members. The physical constraints imposed by interstellar distances, coupled with our understanding of large social systems, suggest that the Galactic Club will be large, stable, slow-paced, and exert only loose control over its members. The two tracks have different implications for managing initial contact, protecting our security, knowledge transfer, handling culture change, and preserving our identity.     

Two estimators for the apt model when factors are measured

Non-linear SUR and ITSUR techniques are proposed for the estimation of the APT and the CAPM when the factors are observed. These techniques estimate all of the parameters of the model simultaneously and directly impose the model's non-linear parameter restrictions.