Identity, appropriateness and the construction of regulatory space: the formation of the Public Accountant's Council of Ontario

Practice rights legislation in Canada continues to be contested 50 years after its first enactment. In Ontario, one of the earliest provinces to enact restrictive legislation, the challenges have focused on how the legislation has been implemented rather than on whether or not public accounting should be regulated. To better understand the contested issues in this field, we examine the process undertaken by the Public Accountants Council of Ontario to implement the Public Accountancy Act of 1950. Our analysis is based on the first 15 years of the minutes of the meetings of the Public Accountants Council for Ontario, augmented by other archival sources such as court cases, newspaper clippings, correspondence and reports. Our intent is to document the process and “logic of appropriateness” used by the Council to construct its identity and stake out its “regulatory space” in the face of the ambiguity of the law and pressure from interest groups. We also identify the contradictions that were institutionalized in this field resulting in repeated challenges to the Council. We conclude by relating the historical insights from this analysis to the continuing challenges to practice rights legislation in Ontario.     

Business Strategy and Poverty Alleviation

Currently, entrepreneurs and corporations overwhelmingly do not view the alleviation of global poverty as a strategic priority. Yet business activity can have a negative as well as a positive effect on each distinctive form of poverty. In order to reduce poverty, entrepreneurs have to find ways of limiting the negative aspects. This might be achieved by deliberately augmenting strategies so that they can achieve a synthesis, in partnership with governments and NGO’s. Alan E. Singer is a reader in strategy at the university of Canterbury. He was the 2004/5 Aram chair of Business Ethics at Gonzaga. He is author of Strategy as Rationality (Avebury), Co editor (with Pat Werhane) of Business Ethics in Theory and Practice (Kluwer) and editor of Business Ethics and Strategy (Ashgate, forthcoming). He has written journal articles on many aspects of strategy and decision making and has served on the editorial boards of Journal of Business Ethics (to 2003), Human Systems Management, Journal of International Entrepreneurship, African Journal of Business Ethics and the Journal of Economic Development and Business Policy.     

The Competitive Characteristics of U.S Manufacturers in the Machine Tool Industry

This paper examines the competitive characteristics of U.S. manufacturers in the machine tool (MT) industry. After several decades of decline, this industry has recently shown signs of a modest but sustained recovery. Empirical evidence from a national survey of 104 MT producers suggests that the revival of this sector has been driven by a combination of factors, including renewed export involvement, improved customer support, and better product design. Although most MT companies are small-to-medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), the survey data show that very small SMEs are poorly represented in the recovery thrust of the industry as a whole. Our principal conclusion is that the MT industry has been following an export-led path toward stabilization, but that certain types of small producers are unlikely to thrive for very long. The most serious problems facing small producers include shrinking local markets, import competition, shortages of skilled labor, and cyclical demand.     

HOW IDEOLOGIES SUPPLANT FORMAL STRUCTURES AND SHAPE RESPONSES TO ENVIRONMENTS

Observations of nineteen hospitals show how organizational ideologies are manifested and sustained by beliefs, stories, languages, and ceremonial acts. The data indicate that harmonious ideologies accompany simple structures, but that discordant ones accompany elaborate structures. Through their effects on people and structures, ideologies guide organizations’responses to external threats.     

Heterogeneity in Economics

This paper argues that heterogeneity of agents’ characteristics plays a fundamental role in the economy and should do so in economic models. Three aspects are considered. Firstly the notion that assuming heterogeneity was a solution to the problem posed by the results of Sonnenschein Mantel and Debreu is considered and it is suggested that the more pragmatic approach adopted by Hildenbrand is likely to be more productive. Next the role of adaptation and evolution which necessarily involve variety or heterogeneity is examined. It is suggested that heterogeneity will persist since agents will only slowly learn to adapt and that in the meantime the environment will change. Lastly the role of heterogeneity in financial markets is examined. It is suggested that heterogeneous and varying expectations may account for many of the stylised facts which do not seem to be consistent with the standard financial markets model.“Variety is the spice of life”     

Customer loyalty: Toward an integrated conceptual framework

Customer loyalty is viewed as the strength of the relationship between an individual’s relative attitude and repeat patronage. The relationship is seen as mediated by social norms and situational factors. Cognitive, affective, and conative antecedents of relative attitude are identified as contributing to loyalty, along with motivational, perceptual, and behavioral consequences. Implications for research and for the management of loyalty are derived. His research interests include consumer decision making, information processing, and consumer loyalty. He has published in theJournal of Consumer Research andAdvances in Consumer Research. His research interests are consumer information processing, persuasion cues in advertising, and international marketing. His articles have appeared in theJournal of Consumer Research, Journal of Marketing Research, Journal of Consumer Psychology, andCanadian Journal of Administrative Sciences as well as in a number of conference proceedings.     

Expressive Constitutionalism

We argue that the standard Constitutional Political Economy defence of constitutionalism, that derives from an argument relating to the shift from narrowly self-interested motivations in the in-period context to relatively general-interest decision making in the constitutional context, is flawed precisely because it is intended to relate to essentially political settings where decision making must be construed as collective in nature. We suggest an alternate account of expressive constitutionalism that points to a specific defence of constitutional conventions that are insulated from popular voting.     

进言中国企业:如何攻略美国市场

我们正看到一种趋势初露端倪.这种趋势将很快成为下个10年里中国商业战略的"主流".更多的有战略头脑的中国公司开始在全世界展开直接的兼并业务,尤其是在美国.     

Behavioural Microsimulation with Labour Supply Responses

This paper provides a technical survey of recent developments in behavioural microsimulation. We discuss the criteria by which models of labour supply may be chosen for application to behavioural microsimulation, and consider how such models may be augmented to control for fixed costs, child–related work costs, preference heterogeneity and endogeneity in wages. We describe methods by which non–linear budget constraints may be accommodated in estimation, policy simulations and welfare analysis, and discuss how stochastic terms may be factored into the simulation of behavioural responses to a policy shock.