Perceptions of national AAA meetings

Professional conferences, such as those conducted by the American Accounting Association, are vehicles that can provide new information to people who share common interests. There has been little formal study of what should be the purpose of such gatherings. This paper uses questionnaire responses to focus specific attention on the perceptions tenure track faculty members have about paper sessions and other activities at both national and regional meetings. Particular attention is given to how different backgrounds and interest areas appear to influence impressions.     

Beyond the grumpy rich man and the happy peasant: mixed methods and the impact of food security on subjective dimensions of wellbeing in India

This paper responds to the recent advocacy of subjective wellbeing in policy evaluation with an investigation of food security in rural Chhattisgarh, India, in 2010–2013. Conceptually, it suggests the need to move beyond a primary focus on happiness to consider a broader-based investigation into people’s subjective perceptions. In particular, it introduces a multi-domain model with some affinities to the capability approach, which asks what people think and feel themselves able to be and do. Methodologically, it suggests that the primary reliance on quantitative measures should be complemented by more qualitative approaches to give a more rounded appreciation of how people view their lives. Three approaches are presented: qualitative analysis of interview text; statistical analysis comparing a single measure of happiness with a broader, domain-based approach; and mixed qualitative and quantitative data generated from an individual case.     

The heritage of Chinese cities as seen through the gaze of zhonghua wenhua – ‘Chinese common knowledge’: Guilin as an exemplar

ABSTRACT

The pursuit of modernization in cities all over China has at one level resulted in the disappearance of much built heritage; yet at another level, millennia-old elements of urban traditions are as visibly present in contemporary cities as they were centuries ago. This visibility, however, is not always apparent to non-Chinese observers. To reach an understanding of this phenomenon, it is suggested that the normative ‘western’ approach to heritage with its focus on physical materialities, an orientation that explores in great detail the built fabric of monuments, buildings and sites and which embeds a definition of authenticity in how close to the original the current, existing manifestations are, needs to be put to one side. In Chinese history, the fundamental importance of incorporating cosmology into the entire being of towns and cities to ensure harmony between Heaven and Earth, as defined in the selection of their location in the landscape, cardinal orientation, spatial layout and the disposition of principal buildings – has been recorded in a template known as the ‘Zhou li’ or Rites of Zhou (circa 1035 BC). It was compiled by the Duke of Zhou, who is credited with transforming an abstract concept, the doctrine of the Mandate of Heaven (through which emperors ruled as ‘Sons of Heaven’ by divine right), into physical city planning and design. However, he was preceded by the ‘Three Sovereigns’ and ‘Five Sage Emperors’, including Huang-di (the Yellow Emperor, eulogized as ‘the Father of the Yellow Race’) who in Chinese historico-mythology received divine instructions that laid the basis for feng shui and Daoism and provided a context for the compilation of the Zhou li. While this template evolved over centuries, its four key tenets based around cosmology remained much the same and throughout imperial China it continued as the master guide for planning towns and cities. Despite attempts during the Cultural Revolution (1966–1976) to destroy the ‘Four Olds’ (Old Customs, Old Culture, Old Habits and Old Ideas), the essence of seeking harmony (integral to the belief system underpinning the Zhou li ) remains a predominant ideal in contemporary China, and some elements of the ancient template continue to be actively applied to the present day. Thus even though many Chinese cities may have ‘lost’ their built heritage as defined by western ‘authorities’ such as ICOMOS (International Council on Monuments and Sites, the technical body that advises United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization on applications for World Heritage Site listing), their cosmological foundations remain and will often be as evident to Chinese observers today as when those cities were originally founded hundreds of years ago. The concept of ‘Chinese common knowledge’ is crucial to this comprehension. These varied historical and cultural traditions provide the setting to examine the origins of Guilin, a 2200-year-old city in Guangxi Province, which exhibits original aspects of its traditional heritage that are eminently visible in the twenty-first-century city to the Chinese gaze but are often out of sight from western observers who fail to recognize the Chinese tangibles and intangibles all around them.     

Childcare Policy to Promote Child Wellbeing

This article reviews current evidence on the impact of childcare on child development and discusses the implications for current and future childcare policy in Australia.     

FINANCIAL CONSTRAINTS, GLOBAL ENGAGEMENT, AND FIRM SURVIVAL IN THE UNITED KINGDOM: EVIDENCE FROM MICRO DATA

Financial constraints have been found to play an important role on various aspects of firm behavior. Yet, their effects on firm survival have been largely neglected. We use a panel of 61,496 UK firms over the period 1997–2002 to study the effects of financial variables on firms' failure probabilities, differentiating firms into globally engaged and purely domestic. Estimating a wide range of specifications, we find that lower collateral and higher leverage result in higher failure probabilities for purely domestic than for globally engaged firms. This can be seen as evidence that global engagement shields firms from financial constraints.