Australia's divided accounting profession: The 1969 merger attempt and its legacy

The Australian accounting environment is dominated by two competing brands – Chartered Accountant (CA) and Certified Practising Accountant (CPA) – which signal that the profession has been unable to achieve full unification. Focussed on 1969, this dual theory-informed, in-depth study examines the first of four unsuccessful attempts to merge the two professional accounting associations from which the two brands originate: The Australian Society of Accountants (the Society) and The Institute of Chartered Accountants in Australia (the Institute). Primary data from public archives and oral history interviews, combined with secondary sources, are drawn upon to explain the failure of this proposed merger and to consider its legacy. The complementary theoretical perspectives of “boundary-work” and “institutional work” are applied. Amidst other challenges, corporate collapses during the 1960s precipitated a legitimacy crisis for the profession and raised the prospect of there being sufficient commonality of purpose to enable a merger. While there was overwhelming support from Society members, the merger proposal was defeated by a comprehensive “no” vote from Institute members. This pattern of voting was repeated in three subsequent merger attempts, leading to the persistence of the curious binary structure of the Australian accounting profession and associated ongoing differences and tensions.     

Financial literacy education and behaviour unhinged: combating bias and poor product design

The growth of products available in the consumer financial market has provided more choice and formal control over household financial decisions than ever before. Financial literacy education programs are generally assumed to improve consumer behaviour in relation to financial products and services. However, there is scant evidence that demonstrates the causal link between education, literacy and behaviour. Through the use of a sample study, we show that the actions of individuals who are financially literate do not necessarily mean they will demonstrate good financial behaviour. We propose that in order to improve the financial behaviour of consumers, two critical areas need to be addressed. Firstly, the objectives of financial literacy programs should be not only to educate consumers about financial markets and products but highlight to individuals the psychological biases and limitations that they as humans cannot easily avoid. Secondly, the regulation of financial products sold to consumers needs alteration to meet the aim of protecting retail consumers from complex financial products that are confusing, ambiguous and inappropriate. We propose regulation and redesign of product information offerings using techniques employed in ecological interface design models to derive a suitability test for consumer financial products.     

Financial advisor participation rates and low net worth investors

This study presents a simple analytical framework to identify the key determinants underlying the incentives for households to engage financial advisors. Using the US 2007 Survey of Consumer Finances, we employ a logistic regression approach to understand the characteristics of households who engage financial advisors for investment or comprehensive financial advice. We find that age, education, employment category, income and net worth are highly significant variables related to the propensity to engage a financial advisor. The results also indicate significantly reduced active engagement between advisors and low net worth investors than claimed by the low net worth investors in the survey. We construct a model to derive the expected fee profile of financial advisors as a function of wealth and compare the fee structure against a financial advisor client portfolio. We find that a combination of lower aggregate costs per investor and higher expected fee income motivates advisors to target higher net worth investors. Advisors therefore prefer higher net worth investors due to the lower aggregate costs of engagement, which drives low investment participation rates by less wealthy households.     

Choosing among alternative new product development projects: The role of heuristics

The initial screening decision that marketing managers make is critical. It requires the selection of what innovation project to invest in, which is fundamental to marketing success. However, our knowledge of how managers make these decisions and how this impacts performance is limited. By drawing upon cognitive psychology and the managerial decision-making literature, we address two critical questions. The first question focuses on identifying specific decision-making types (e.g., specific heuristics, intuition) used when making an innovation screening decision. Based on this analysis and prior research, we develop specific decision-maker profiles about how an individual manager decides. The second research question is about connecting these profiles with performance. Specifically, it addresses what the consequences of different decision-maker profiles are on the perceived accuracy and speed of decision-making? Data were collected from 122 senior managers in these industries. We find that when heuristics are used alone, or concurrently with intuition, managers make decisions that are as accurate as when they rely on analytical decision-making. However, the process is significantly faster. The findings provide an important step toward a more comprehensive understanding of decision-making at the front-end of innovation.     

PCA oversedation: application of Healthcare Failure Mode Effect (HFMEA) Analysis

Hospital systems utilize many varied problem-solving processes to address system improvements and ensure patient safety. The Healthcare Failure Mode Effect Analysis (HFMEA) model is one of these tools and uses a multidisciplinary team to look at processes, diagramming the steps involved to identify potential failure points. The application of the HFMEA model allowed one large health care system to address a complex process by prioritizing proactive change improvements in order to prevent postoperative patient-controlled anesthesia oversedation events. The changes implemented identified 16 failure points with a hazard score of 16 or greater. One year later, the established system HFMEA goal was met: oversedation events were reduced by 50%.     

会计委派的成本效益分析

从成本效益分析的角度探讨会计委派制的可行性。认为,会计委派制对我国目前的财务监督起到了相当大的作用,但会计委派制由政府部门实施,不符合现代企业发展方向。随着我国经济的发展,会计人才市场的建立和完善,会计委派制将退出历史舞台,逐渐被会计行业监督所替代。     

The physician and the marketing concept

Most physicians use some marketing techniques (albeit, unintentional or unplanned) in the operation of their private medical practices. They use marketing to attract patients, but seem unaware of the necessity and potential value of satisfying customer needs beyond the provision of adequate medical care. Medical service is often characterized by impersonality, with patients treated as machines rather than humans. This situation is partially a reflection of a seller's market, with a shortage or absence of private medical services in many areas of the country. In addition, the apparent lack of consumer orientation is reinforced by policies of the American Medical Association that forbid most forms of self-promotion and by the minimum fee schedules suggested by local medical associations that effectively preclude price competition. Physicians do not seem to recognize the congruity between their own interests or objectives and the total satisfaction of consumers in the marketplace for medical care.     

HRM as a predictor of innovation

There is growing evidence available to suggest that HR practice is an important predictor of organisational performance. In this article, we argue that HR practices also have the potential to promote organisational innovation. We describe a longitudinal study of 22 UK manufacturing companies and examine the relationship between such practices and product and technological innovation. Results reveal that training, induction, team working, appraisal and exploratory learning focus are all predictors of innovation. Contingent reward, applied in conjunction with an exploratory learning focus, is positively associated with innovation in technical systems. Furthermore, training, appraisal and induction, combined with exploratory learning focus, explain variation between companies in product and technological innovation above and beyond the main effects observed.     

Model uncertainty and policy evaluation: Some theory and empirics

This paper explores ways to integrate model uncertainty into policy evaluation. We describe a general framework that includes both model averaging methods as well as some measures that describe whether policies and their consequences are model dependent. These general ideas are then applied to assess simple monetary policy rules for some standard New Keynesian specifications. We conclude that the original Taylor rule has good robustness properties, but may reasonably be challenged in overall quality with respect to stabilization by alternative simple rules, even when these rules employ parameters that are set without accounting for model uncertainty.