Corporate governance: from accountability to enterprise

This paper discusses the development of the corporate governance debate in the UK since the formation of the Cadbury Committee to the recent reports of the Hampel Committee within the context of a general corporate governance framework. It identifies the changing emphasis in this period between accountability and enterprise aspects of governance. The literature relating to accountability and enterprise is reviewed in terms of the key areas of governance (board structure, directors' remuneration, directors' ownership, institutional shareholders; auditors, auditing and accounting information; and the market for corporate control). Issues of substitutability and complementarity of governance mechanisms are also examined. The paper argues that although there has been a shift in emphasis towards enterprise, there is a need for further rigorous UK-based research to underpin this development. Areas for future research are identified.     

Analysis of the effect of risk management practices on the performance of new product development programs

Risk management is receiving much attention, as it is seen as a method to improve cost, schedule, and technical performance of new product development programs. However, there is a lack of empirical research that investigates the effective integration of specific risk management practices proposed by various standards with new product development programs and their association with various dimensions of risk management success. Based on a survey of 291 product development programs, this paper investigates the association of risk management practices with five categories of product development program performance: (A) Quality Decision Making; (B) High Program Stability; (C) Open, problem solving organization; (D) Overall new product development project success; and (E) overall product success. The results show that six categories of risk management practices are most effective: (1) Develop risk management skills and resources; (2) Tailor risk management to and integrate it with new product development; (3) Quantify impacts of risks on your main objectives; (4) Support all critical decisions with risk management results; (5) Monitor and review your risks, risk mitigation actions, and risk management process; and (6) Create transparency regarding new product development risks. The data shows that the risk management practices are directly associated with outcome measures in the first three categories (improved decision making, program stability and problem solving). There is also evidence that the risk management practices indirectly associate with the remaining two categories of outcome measures (project and product success). Additional research is needed to describe the exact mechanisms through which risk management practices influence NPD program success.     

What are ‘unpopular causes’ and how can they achieve fundraising success?

• Recent efforts to grow and strengthen the culture of philanthropy in the UK have largely focused on two dimensions: the total amount of money donated and the effectiveness of philanthropic spending. This paper explores a third dimension: the destination and distribution of donations. A defining characteristic of charitable giving is that it is voluntary rather than coerced, and the resulting respect for donor autonomy makes people wary of promoting one cause above another or implying that any beneficiary group is more or less ‘worthy’ of support. However, the absence of much comment on, or significant research into, the destination of donations does not alter the fact that some groups succeed in attracting significant philanthropic funds whilst others struggle to secure many—or any—donations. This paper explores the concept of ‘unpopularity’ in the charity sector, especially in relation to its impact on fundraising. We unpack what this loaded phrase means, identify good practice by those seeking support and present case studies of charities that have overcome perceived unpopularity to achieve success in raising voluntary income. We suggest that by investing organisational resources and effort in fundraising, by framing the cause to maximise the arousal of sympathy and minimise concerns about beneficiary culpability and by avoiding the unintended negative consequences of self‐labelling as ‘unpopular’ no charity need assume it is their destiny to languish at the bottom of the fundraising league tables.

Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

MCDA Framework for Fishing Rights Allocation in South Africa

The work discussed in this paper relates to the allocation of fishing rights within the Western Cape province of South Africa. Many of these fisheries are under threat through over-exploitation, and yet are a traditional source of livelihood in many communities. We describe a sequence of interventions during which principles and processes of multiple criteria decision analysis (MCDA) formed the framework for structuring the problems, for facilitating group consensus on the decision making process, and for designing a decision support template for use in future allocations. Interactions with community representatives and with the the national Department of Environmental Affairs and Tourism revealed a high degree of consistency in perceptions of the management goals that need to be taken into consideration. These goals could be structured and summarized in the form of an integrated value tree, which in turn formed the basis for a formalized decision support structure that could provide a transparent, coherent and auditable basis for the allocation of fishing rights in a fully goal-directed manner.     

‘If I Should Fall From Grace…’: Stories of Change and Organizational Ethics

Although studies in organizational storytelling have dealt extensively with the relationship between narrative, power and organizational change, little attention has been paid to the implications of this for ethics within organizations. This article addresses this by presenting an analysis of narrative and ethics as it relates to the practice of organizational downsizing. Drawing on Paul Ricoeur’s theories of narrative and ethics, we analyze stories of organizational change reported by employees and managers in an organization that had undergone persistent downsizing. Our analysis maintains that the presence of a dominant story that seeks to legitimate organizational change also serves to normalize it, and that this, in turn, diminishes the capacity for organizations to scrutinize the ethics of their actions. We argue that when organizational change narratives become singularized through dominant forms of emplotment, ethical deliberation and responsibility in organizations are diminished. More generally, we contend that the narrative closure achieved by the presence of a dominant narrative amongst employees undergoing organizational change is antithetical to the openness required for ethical questioning.     

Inequality in Vietnamese Urban–Rural Living Standards, 1993–2006

We investigate urban–rural inequality in Vietnam using data from the Vietnam Living Standard Surveys between 1993 and 2006. We find that mean per capita expenditure of urban households is consistently twice as much as that of rural households and that the urban–rural gap monotonically increases from the poorer to the richer groups of the expenditure distribution. To isolate factors contributing to the urban–rural gap, we apply the Oaxaca–Blinder type decomposition to a newly developed unconditional quantile regression method. Factors contributing significantly to the high urban–rural gap include inter‐group differences in education, household age structure, labor market activity, geographic location and their related returns, with education playing the most important role. Over the period, consistent with the country's massive rural–urban migration, we find that domestic remittance plays a significant role in shortening the urban–rural expenditure gap in the later years, 2002 and 2006.     

Incompatible theoretical bases underlying accounting standards

The paper presents evidence that demonstrates that U.K. and International Accounting Standards require entries in income statements that are sometimes based on a matching approach and sometimes on a valuation approach. It indicates that the two approaches are fundamentally different and that they produce different net income figures that have different meanings. In these circumstances, the imposition of the standards currently required results in figures of net income that have no defined meaning and are therefore potentially confusing. Consequently, one can argue that the regulators have been misguided in failing adequately to differentiate between the two approaches. Each income statement published should be based on a clearly identified model and be interpretable by reference to known assumptions.     

Managing information sharing and stewardship for public-sector collaboration: a management control approach

Information sharing is essential for public-sector collaboration but needs to be balanced with information stewardship obligations. There is little research on how public-sector managers can influence the attitudes and behaviours of their employees to achieve these competing objectives. To investigate this, the study applies a management control framework to a case study of a law enforcement organization attempting to improve its information sharing and stewardship. The study extends prior literature by providing insights into the specific effects that different management controls have for the information sharing and stewardship behaviours of employees involved in public-sector collaboration.