Cumulative trauma and stress at work

Cumulative trauma is a form of workers' compensation claim in which an employee contends that a major illness or disability is the cumulative result of minor job stresses and strains extending over a period of years. The paper reviews the U.S. legal developments in this area and discusses their implications for both corporate policy and the developments of accounting for the human resource.     

The components of risk in new product development: Project New Prod

Although new product development is one of the riskiest activities of a modern corporation, relatively little account is taken of risk measurement in the R & D project selection literature. The existing consensus is that risk is measured by some combination of the total amounts at stake and the uncertainties of the situation. The paper describes a project aimed at more exactly identifying and defining the components of risk as perceived by a decision-maker within a firm undertaking new product ventures. The project is based on data from a study of the behaviour of 103 firms and 197 ventures.
The results show broadly that managers perceive risk to be highest when the product shows least synergy with the firm's current business. In contrast, the possibility of reducing uncertainty components of risk through information-seeking seems to be of little account in risk perception. The author concludes from this that decision-makers are much more influenced by factors that control the amounts at stake (in general, the less the synergy the greater the resources needed to back a new product entry) than by uncertainty as to the outcome. The latter must constitute an important element of risk in reality. Its neglect may be because managers find they can deal conceptually more easily with concrete matters like the amount at stake than with the intangibles of uncertainty reduction. This may explain why many firms fail to integrate information into their new product development process.     

The product life cycle trap

Many of America's most successful companies have gone through a life cycle similar to the product life cycle. They began as innovators, and then grew to be giants in their markets. But, as their products mature, they need new products to continue company growth. However, the organizational structure of an established company is no longer suited for innovation. The authors provide some insight into this cycle, and offer some solutions for big companies which need new products.     

Arithmetic versus geometric mean estimators: Setting discount rates for capital budgeting

This paper addresses an issue central to the estimation of discount rates for capital budgeting: should the geometric mean or arithmetic mean of past data be used when estimating the discount rate? the use of the arithmetic mean ignores estimation error and serial correlation in returns. Unbiased discount factors have been derived that correct for both these effects. In all cases, the corrected discount rates are closer to the arithmetic than the geometric mean.     

Using data envelopment analysis to measure the efficiency of not-for-profit organizations: A critical evaluation—comment

This note responds to Nunamaker (1985) who supposedly deals with deficiencies in Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) as an approach for (1) measuring efficiencies of not-for-profit entities identified as Decision Making Units (DMUs) and (2) locating sources and amounts of inefficiencies in each of the inputs used and in each of the outputs produced by each DMU. Corrections and comments are offered with references supplied for interested readers who wish to examine more detailed treatments of the topics covered.     

Auditing and accounting for program efficiency and management efficiency in not-for-profit entities

A measure of efficiency for not-for-profit entities - developed by the authors in association with Edward Rhodes - is explained and illustrated by data from Program Follow Through, a large scale social experiment in U.S. public school education. A division into Follow Through and Non-Follow Through participants facilitates a distinction between “program efficiency” and “managerial efficiency” which is also illustrated and examined for its use in evaluating such programs. Relations to comprehensive audits and other possible uses are explored.