R&D Performance of UK Companies

This short article compares the R&D performance of the major British R&D spenders with that of other major R&D spenders world-wide. A performance index is constructed which adjusts actual R&D for firm size and the R&D intensity of the firm's main area of business. According to these performance measures, the R&D performance of these British firms is better than is suggested by the share of R&D in Britain's GDP. However, the article identifies a gap in British R&D performance - what may be called a third rank of R&D spenders - who are rare in Britain, but very common in Japan and the USA.     

Japanisation as mythology

Manufacturing management texts describe ‘just-in-time’ production as an innovative paradigm for manufacturing control, originally developed in Japan, which when implemented by Western companies will enable them to remain internationally competitive. This article describes how manufacturing techniques observed in Japan have been radically modified to suit Western organisations, and discusses the significance of continuing to describe them as ‘Japanese’.     

Deregulation in Australia,by design or default

This article traces the debate on the deregulation of telecommunications in Australia from initial private sector lobbying in 1977. Although the recommendations of the Davidson Report were seemingly sunk by the defeat of the Fraser government in 1983, the authors believe that the Labor government's commitment to monopoly public sector telecommunications may give way to deregulation by default under increasing fiscal restraint and private sector demands.     

The dynamics of edi standards development

This paper explores the development of standards for electronic data interchange (EDI), which are needed to allow the inter-organizational exchange of structured information between computer system. It focuses on the EDIFACT message development process which began informally as a mechanism for developing international standards for EDI. Since its inception, the rapidly growing scope of the process—in terms of the numbers of message being developed., geography and range of industrial sectors—has forced the process to become increasingly formalized. As the process has widened outside Europe, it has become necessary for it to accommodate a wider range og business practices and reconcile the competing objectives of user groups. For many user groups, the focus of their interest in message develpment has moved from the development of EDIFACT standard message to agreement on the use of subsets of these message. A particular issue has been teh moves in the US to align the national EDI standard ANSI X12 with EDIFACT, where, in addition to the technical changes required to satisfy the EDIFACT syntax, participation in EDIFACT represents a culture change from a domestic consensus process to an international delegated hierarchy. The paper describes how the EDIFACT process has adapted to these pressures through the formalization of its internal structures and processes, and considers whether or not there is a future for EDIFACT as a global process.     

The Effectiveness of Incomes Policies, in Australia Bargaining and Inflation Targetting Enterprise

This paper updates earlier estimates that show the existence of a range of equilibrium rates of unemployment in Australia. Within the range of equilibria framework, the paper goes on to test the effectiveness of incomes policies, enterprise bargaining and inflation-target based monetary policy for influencing the rate of inflation in Australia in the period 1965 to 2001. Incomes policies, especially the Accord, and enterprise bargaining are shown to have caused permanent reductions in the rate of inflation. The inflation-target based monetary policy is shown to be associated with, but is not shown to have caused, a reduced impact on inflation of changes in the level of activity.     

Reconstructing “behavioural accounting”

This paper adopts a critical stance towards behavioural accounting research methodology. It is argued that most accountants have based their behavioural research on the natural scientific approach, a paradigm whose relevance and suitability for conducting social research has been increasingly questioned in recent years. The author discusses some alternatives to the positivistic research methodology of the natural sciences as a way of developing social science and the implications these have for providing a coherent theoretical and methodological perspective for future “behavioural accounting” research.It is the contention of this paper that the study of the behavioural aspects of accounting has largely failed to develop into a coherent theoretical or practical body of knowledge. In an attempt to overcome this state of affairs, there is an increasing trend to employ organizational and sociological theory as a basis for research, as opposed to psychology and social psychology which informed earlier conceptual thinking and research. While accountants may see this conceptual development as an advancement in that it locates accounting processes in their organizational and social contexts, the way in which it is being conducted is criticized in this paper because, like psychology, it is characterized by an essentially positivistic methodology.This article will first provide a broad overview of the relationship between accounting research and the behavioural sciences. From that overview it will be argued that accounting researchers are unlikely to make much progress by borrowing behavioural scientific concepts unless they develop a deeper understanding of the philosophical underpinnings of these concepts and the competing schools of methodological thought which exist within the behavioural sciences. In an attempt to fill this apparent gap in understanding, the paper will discuss the scientific approach of the natural sciences, why it is felt to be inappropriate for the behavioural sciences and what alternatives exist.