Who should teach what? Australian perceptions of the roles of universities and practice in the education of professional accountants

This paper addresses the respective roles and responsibilities of universities and practitioners in educating professional accountants. The issues are explored by a review of the literature in accounting and other professions regarding the respective roles of universities and employers in the development of both technical and non-technical knowledge and skills of professionals, particularly accounting practitioners. The literature review suggests that critics of university-based education fail to recognise (a) the changes that have occurred in the roles and responsibilities of accounting practitioners, and (b) the opportunity costs necessarily associated with providing generalist accounting degrees. Universities and employers have comparative advantages for the development of different types of professional skills and knowledge. These insights are extended by way of a series of interviews with Australian accounting practitioners, representatives from professional accounting bodies, recent accounting graduates, and accounting students about their perceptions of the respective responsibilities and roles of universities and employers. Although some interviewees recognised that universities cannot be ‘all things to all people’, there was a tendency to expect universities to have the major responsibility for the development in accounting graduates of both technical and non-technical knowledge and skills. Such perceptions tended to understate the responsibilities and comparative advantage of employers and result in unrealistic expectations about the outcomes of a university education. Employers need to be made more aware of the resource and other limitations associated with university programs and should develop meaningful opportunities for learning and reflection within workplace contexts.     

Safety representatives and committees in the NHS: a healthy situation?

This article uses a survey of RCN safety representatives to examine the operation of the Safety Representatives and Safety Committees Regulations 1977. The survey’s findings indicate that while NHS employers have become more supportive of such representatives, many are still failing to comply with their statutory obligations.     

Transforming multinational enterprises: towards a process model of strategic human resource management change

How MNEs control and co-ordinate their subsidiaries' human resources has been a mtter of some debate in recent years. The corporate centre's human resource (HR) department is frequently accorded a key role in shaping direction through programme of strategic change involving best practice transfer or culture change. Such programmes, however, have been questioned by academics and practitioners for their ability to deliver on the promises made for them and for the failure to recognize the problems of top-down programmes of change. In this paper, we address the question of what it might take to deliver a coherent and acceptable corporate-wide strategic HR change initiative whilst allowing for simultaneous subsidiary development and innovation? Drawing on our direct experience of case studies and building on the more general strategic change literature, we develop a process model of strategic HR changes in MNEs, which identifies the key factors that lead to successful change outcomes. The main contribution of this work is to fill existing gaps in the literature and to provide some advice to practitioners who seek to implement universal HR change programmes in MNEs.     

The determinants of reserves disclosure in the extractive industries: evidence from Australian firms

This paper examines the determinants of reserves disclosure (RD) in the Australian extractive industries. Our regression results indicate that RD are positively associated with variables relating to corporate governance, foreign listing, existence of reserves in foreign jurisdictions, pledging of reserves in debt covenants, leverage and external (Big 4) auditor, after controlling for firm size, subindustry, shareholder concentration and development/production stage. Additional regression testing shows that the existence of reserves in foreign jurisdictions is the most important determinant of RD in Australia. This paper contributes to a better understanding of the extent and rationale behind the RD practices of Australian resource firms.