Accounting's Latent Classicism: Revisiting Classical Management Origins

The historical classical management roots of contemporary accounting are still embedded in theory and practice, but invariably unacknowledged. This paper revisits the discourses and philosophies of three leading management writers generally regarded as proponents of scientific and classical management: Frederick Taylor, Henri Fayol, and the longest standing advocate, Lyndall Urwick. The paper argues that traditionally Taylor has been regarded as the dominant influential figure on early management and later accounting theory, but that this reflects an inaccurate stereotyping that ignores the greater reflections in contemporary accounting of Fayol and Urwick. Their approaches to planning, control, and coordination, as well as their accounting and financial management philosophies are revisited. This examination aims to better recognize their contributions to the latent classicism that still pervades accounting thought and practice.     

Under Construction: The Continuing Evolution of Job Structures in Call Centers

We study inbound call centers in fourteen businesses, using interview‐based case studies. Contrary to the notion that U.S. businesses are eliminating job security and internal career tracks, these firms still incorporate these features in their job structures, and in many cases businesses that initially dismantled job and career structures ended up rebuilding them. The paper suggests a more nuanced account of changing job structures that incorporates market, institutional, and agency factors.     

WILLINGNESS TO PAY IN CHINA'S NEW COOPERATIVE MEDICAL SYSTEM

Household survey data from China is used to analyze the determinants of households' willingness to pay to participate in the New Cooperative Medical System (NCMS). Wealthier households, households with at least one member who has been treated as an inpatient, and households in counties where NCMS is already established are willing to pay more for the program. Households who carry other forms of insurance, however, have a lower willingness to pay for the NCMS. We also find that the participation fee could be increased substantially to increase the size of the risk pool while scarcely affecting participation rates. (JEL I1, O1, D1)     

Share Repurchases

The UK government recently introduced legislation to treat the qualifying distribution on a repurchase of shares in the same way as ‘foreign income dividends’. This paper examines and criticises this reform from two perspectives. First, there is no underlying rationale for such an approach. Second, the legislation moves the tax system away from simplification. A better approach would have been to remove the advance corporation tax (ACT) charge on a repurchase. JEL classification: H25, K34.     

CLOTHES-CARE SYMBOLS: ARE THEY UNDERSTOOD?

This brief paper is a report of an investigation into the acceptability of modern clothes care symbols carried out by third-year psychology students who have been following an option in consumer psychology in their course.     

The Analytics of Performance Measurement Using a Security Market Line

Security market line (SML) analysis, while an important tool, has never been fully justified from a theoretical standpoint. Assuming symmetric information and an inefficient index, we show that SML analysis can be grossly misleading, since, in general, efficient and inefficient portfolios can plot above and below the SML. On a more positive note, if SML analysis uses the return on a marketed riskless asset for the zero-beta rate, efficient portfolios must plot above the SML. Nonetheless, arbitrarily inefficient portfolios also plot above the SML.     

Hedonic Analysis in a Spatial Context: Theoretical Problems in Valuing Location-Specific Amenities*

Hedonic analysis is frequently implemented to generate implicit prices for location-specific amenities within single markets, either in cross-city wage differentials or in intra-city rent gradients. Amenities are shown to be generally priced in both land and labour markets, with single-market valuations tending to understate true amenity values. Establishing a correct multi-market amenity valuation model is seen to depend on the resolution of a host of additional issues.