Brand Valuation: A Model and Empirical Study of Organisational Implications

This paper presents a model concerned with the organisational and behavioural implications associated with accounting for brand values. A series of propositional statements concerning the internal implications of brand value accounting are formulated and the relative strength of each proposition is analysed using data collected via a mailed survey. In interviews conducted with senior management in strongly-branded companies it was found that beneficial managerial implications are expected to result from a brand valuation. Interviewees saw these implications as primarily strategically, rather than operationally, orientated. This view was provided with some support by the survey data. Evidence is also provided that marketing directors perceive greater benefits arising from brand valuation than do finance directors.     

Engaging employees in health care can contain costs and improve quality

Employers need to do much more to change some of the deep-seated employee attitudes and behaviors that are driving health care costs. This article debunks common employer misconceptions about employees' attitudes and behaviors with regard to health care. It then discusses the results employers can obtain by taking specific initiatives that provide employees with the motivation and resources they need to effectively manage health risks and make informed health care decisions.     

Professionalising British central government bureaucracy c. 1850: The accounting dimension

The Northcote-Trevelyan Report (1854) recommended fundamental changes to public policy which included the replacement of patronage by examination as the basis for recruitment to the British Civil Service and of seniority by merit as the foundation for promotion decisions. This paper examines the accounting dimension of reforms designed to achieve enhanced administrative efficiency and greater economy in the operation of government departments. A growing interest in the role of accounting within British government during the second quarter of the nineteenth century is elucidated, and prevailing ideas concerning how accounting within government departments and accountability from the executive to parliament might be performed more efficiently and effectively are uncovered. The battle between divergent pressure groups concerning who should possess jurisdiction over accounting work is explored, and the solution to this problematic is found to connect with the nature of a central government accounting system that was itself undergoing significant change. Consistency between the Northcote-Trevelyan recommendations and ongoing internal initiatives designed to ensure the competence of clerks recruited to undertake accounting work and subsequently applying for promotion to a higher grade is demonstrated.     

PROPRIETORIAL CONTROL IN FAMILY FIRMS: SOME FUNCTIONS OF 'QUASI-ORGANIC' MANAGEMENT SYSTEMS

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the strategies of managerial control which are used by the proprietors of family-owned business enterprises. Interviews with the proprietors and senior managers of businesses in the building industry illustrate the ‘quasi-organic’ nature of management structures. These grant some autonomy to senior managers without threatening proprietorial decision-making prerogatives. Although the family firm has certain distinctive features, similar control strategies designed to ensure that delegated decisions are ‘reliable’ and ‘responsible’ are evident in various types of business enterprise. There is, then, scope for further comparative research within a conceptual framework which does not entirely divorce the family firm from other business organizations.     

Multidimensional scaling of consumer preferences for a public transportation system: An application of two approaches

Consumer attitudes toward a proposed new public transportation system were assessed through the application of two multidimensional scaling models to data on preference choices for system attributes. Carroll's vector model and Kruskal and Carmone's nonmetric unfolding model were compared on theoretical and empirical levels to determine their utility for exposing the latent structure of attitudes for a public project. While the unfolding model was attractive because of a theoretical property, the vector model was able to uncover latent dimensions for the attitudes which could be related via discriminant analysis to socio-economic and demographic characteristics of the respondents. The vector model also produced an outcome which was more closely related to a unidimensional analysis of these data. Therefore, even though both the vector and unfolding models produced plausible geometric representations of the attitudes which arc expected to aid urban transportation planners in designing systems, the vector model produced the more acceptable outcome.