The impact of total quality management adoption on small and medium enterprises’ financial performance

This paper examines whether the management accounting practice of total quality management (TQM) positively impacts on the financial performance of small and medium enterprises (SMEs). While research has investigated the impact of TQM on larger firms, to date, there has been no comprehensive analysis of the impact of TQM on SMEs’ financial performance. Our analysis of Australian Bureau of Statistics financial data for 3776 SMEs found no evidence that TQM improved financial performance after controlling for size and risk. Our results contribute to literature by highlighting that management accounting practices developed for larger companies may not necessarily be transposable to SMEs.     

The ‘New Political Economy’ and British Economic Policy for India*

Abstract . James Mill, as a high official of the East India Company, had the opportunity after 1819 to establish economic policy for India. In fact, James Mill's Utilitarian philosophy of government and his advocacy of Ricardian rent theory as the basis for revenue policies in India set the pattern for the development of modern India. Both James and John Stuart Mill (who succeeded his father with the company) defended the company against its critics, such as J. R. McCulloch and Richard Jones, who argued that the revenue policy was inhibiting economic development. Modern Indian institutions are an amalgamation of Benthamism, Fabian Socialism, and Brahminism.     

Law, Finance, and Growth during Transition: a Survey

This paper surveys the literature on law, finance, and growth and assesses its relevance to transition economies. It describes the contribution, as well as the limitations of the legal view literature with regard to our understanding of the causality between financial development and economic growth. The legal view demonstrates that, through its impact on the financial system, an effective legal system indirectly promotes economic development. However, the particularities of the transition process – notably the existence of soft budget constraints – are such that the methodology and the results of the legal view cannot be applied to transition economies without provisos.     

On evaluating scientific research: The contribution of the psychology of science

This paper critically discusses the nature various schemes for evaluating scientific research. Through the use of Jungian personality theory, it attempts to explicate the psychological forces and assumptions underlying the vast majority of evaluation schemes. The paper argues that most schemes are greatly restricted in their choice of an underlying psychological basis. It is argued that science administration, evaluation, and technological forecasting all require a greater ability to appreciate, and even more important to integrate, the psychological functions described in this paper.“It has been lately fashionable in some quarters to think that physical science iormally progresses by moving on the whole fairly calmly in one direction, and that such progresses is interrupted only at certain periods of great upheaval in science.“But this can be true only in a limited sense. Not far below the surface, there have coexisted in science, in almost every period since Thales and Pythagoras, sets of two or antithetical systems or attitudes, for example, one reductionistic and the other holistic … “Science has always been propelled and buffeted by such contrary or anithetical forces. Like vessels with draught deep enough to catch more than merely surface current, , scientist of genius are those who are doomed, or privileged, to experience these deeper current in their complexity. It is precisely their special sensitivity to contraries that has made it possible for them to do so, and it is an inner necessity that has made them demand nothing less for themselves [5, pp. 375–376].”     

Team work and incentives: The origins and development of the butty gang system in Queensland's sugar industry, 1891–1913

In Queensland's sugar industry, a butty gang referred to a cane-cutting team operating on a collective piece-rate basis, by which each member of the team shared equally in the joint earnings of the team according to the number of days worked. This paper combines theory and evidence to investigate the origins and development of the butty gang system in Queensland's sugar industry between 1891 and 1913. Attention is focused on the economic organization of the team, the nature of the incentives implicit in the collective piece-rate arrangement, and the determinants of the optimum size of the team.