Accounting for the furniture,fittings & equipment reserve in hotels

The somewhat idiosyncratic accounting procedure of maintaining reserves to fund furniture, fittings and equipment (FF&E) capital expenditure in hotels mediated by a management contract is examined. Five research objectives have been pursued: (i) ascertaining contrasting motives of owners and operators with respect to FF&E reserve accounting; (ii) determining FF&E reserve accounting approaches adopted in hotels; (iii) determining the amount assigned to FF&E reserves in hotels; (iv) determining the sufficiency of FF&E reserves in hotels; and (v) appraising the degree of ease with which hotel operators can draw on FF&E reserve funds. These objectives have been pursued through the analysis of qualitative field data as well as survey data collected in Australia and New Zealand. The study’s more significant findings include the determination that, consistent with the wishes of operators, maintaining cash funded FF&E reserves is the most popular approach (particularly in small hotels). It has also been found that FF&E reserves are 40 per cent underfunded. This deficiency beckons a question over whether hotel FF&E reserve accounting serves any meaningful role.     

Public Sector Banks in India: Rationale and Prerequisites for reform

This paper contributes to the debate on public sector banks by suggesting several rationales for government ownership of banks in India. The paper then proceeds to argue that due to high economic costs, the current public sector banking system is unsustainable. Although a policy of wider private ownership was introduced in the 1990s, it is suggested that there are several prerequisites to be met before such a reform can be more fully implemented. It is argued that these prerequisites arise from the rationales for government ownership, and they include a credible bank regulatory regime, and government promotion of co‐operative banks and credit unions.     

Trade Union Responses to zero hours work in Ireland

This paper examines the strategies adopted by Irish unions in responding to zero hours work in four sectors. It concludes that rather than adopting either a passive or a uniform approach, unions have pragmatically varied their strategies to curtail zero‐hours work through actively combining both bargaining and regulatory approaches.     

Corporate implementation of socially controversial CSR initiatives: Implications for human resource management

An organization's success in recruiting, selecting, and retaining employees can be attributed, in part, to reactions to a firm's CSR activities. Today, organizations appear to be more frequently pursuing CSR initiatives that are related to social issues. Unlike CSR initiatives which are unrelated to social issues, those that are attached to social causes are more likely to be perceived as controversial. Consequently, how individuals view such actions can impact their perceptions of the firm and may lead to changes in individual behavior. Grounding this work in social identity theory, we explore the effect controversial CSR actions can have on HRM functions. The goal of this effort is to explore and delineate how this shift in CSR may alter the nature of the CSR-HRM relationship and to examine the potential implications for HRM practice. Future directions for research and HRM practice are discussed.     

Bringing Ecosystem Services into the Real World: An Operational Framework for Assessing the Economic Consequences of Losing Wild Nature

Policy action to halt the global loss of biodiversity and ecosystems is hindered by the perception that it would be so costly as to compromise economic development, yet this assumption needs testing. Inspired by the recent Stern Review on the Economics of Climate Change, the leaders of the G8+5 nations commissioned a similar assessment of the economics of losing biodiversity, under the Potsdam Initiative on Biodiversity. Here, we propose a conceptual framework for such a global assessment which emphasizes several critical insights from the environmental economics and valuation literature: contrasting counterfactual scenarios which differ solely in whether they include specific conservation policies; identifying non-overlapping benefits; modeling the production, flow, use and value of benefits in a spatially-explicit way; and incorporating the likely costs as well as possible benefits of policy interventions. Tackling these challenges, we argue, will significantly enhance our ability to quantify how the loss of benefits derived from ecosystems and biodiversity compares with the costs incurred in retaining them. We also summarise a review of the current state of knowledge, in order to assess how quickly this framework could be operationalized for some key ecosystem services.     

Counterpoising Collectivism: Performance-related Pay and Industrial Relations in Greenfield Sites

This paper addresses some of the industrial relations ramifications of performance-related pay (PRP) using empirical data from both new and longer established firms in the Republic of Ireland. Particular emphasis is placed on the adoption of PRP systems based on performance appraisal and the implications of such systems for collectivism in industrial relations. The paper concludes that the diffusion of such systems is indicative of increasing employer attempts to individualize the employment relationship and exclude union penetration. It is further argued that such PRP systems, irrespective of the motivation for their establishment, undermine the essence of collectivism and solidarity in industrial relations.