Comparative assessment of tourist generating markets for New Zealand

Portfolio analysis has become a widely used strategic planning tool in many industries during the past decade. Strategic decisions in the tourism industry include issues such as which markets are most attractive (e.g. have greatest visitor expenditure potential); in which markets are a specific country's “products” most competitive; how promotional budgets should be allocated for greatest effectiveness; and what the promotional message should convey. Industry Attractiveness Analysis—a flexible variety of portfolio analysis—has been applied to the generating countries which supply tourists to New Zealand in an illustrative case study. Both national level and individual company applications are described and illustrated in 3 × 3 matrix form. These diagrams are, in themselves, a good communication mechanism which encourages rational, strategic thinking about managerial decisions and resources allocations. Past, present, and future situations can be portrayed in a graphically useful manner.     

Assessing Benefits from Department of Health and National Health Service Research & Development

Public services in the UK are increasingly expected to account for their outputs and performance. This article describes a retrospective evaluation of the benefits from the R&D funded by a regional office of the NHS Executive. The methods adopted enabled the various elements of the region's R&D portfolio to be examined and provided a basis for the development of a plan for regular monitoring. The proposals for implementation are now also feeding into a debate as to how health services R&D might best be monitored nationally in a way that is compatible with the norms and practices of research in other contexts.     

An Analysis of Materiality and Reasonable Assurance: Professional Mystification and Paternalism in Auditing

Critical analyses of the audit profession have become more common in recent years. Many of these analyses focus on the entire audit profession in developing their criticisms and concerns. In this paper, the scope of analysis is narrowed to examine in depth the auditing profession's use of the concepts of reasonable assurance and materiality in audit performance and audit communications. Reasonable assurance and materiality are the terms that auditors use to describe the scope of their responsibility to the public. Similarly, reasonable assurance and materiality are the key determinants of audit effort. An overview of official guidance, practitioner reports, and academic research reveals that these two key concepts are not well specified nor are they consistently applied in audit practice. These findings are evaluated from two competing perspectives on professions – the traditional, functionalist perspective and the critical theorists' perspective. Evaluation from the latter perspective leads to a conclusion that the profession's use of these key terms to guide practice and communication leaves the profession open to charges of mystification and unjustified paternalism.     

Issues in modelling innovation intense environments: The importance of the historical and cultural context

Since the 1970s the number of developments labelled as innovation intense environments has increased at an exponential rate. Innovation intense environments are defined here as those spaces that are purported to accelerate the rate of innovation and the proliferation of high technology industries. A number of academic fields now study existing innovation intense environments like Silicon Valley, in order to explain how they are constituted and how they can be replicated.

 Over the years a wide variety of model innovation intense environments has been proposed including: science park, technopolis, information city, milieu, industry cluster and regional innovation system. These different models are compared and analysed in terms of their portrayal of appropriate form, core innovation dynamics and policy recommendations. The discussion of models is then placed within the post-war history of the most famous innovation intense environment—Silicon Valley. It is concluded that such models must be well grounded within a specific historic and cultural context in order to function as useful analytic tools.     

From academic research to marketing practice: Exploring the marketing science value chain

We aim to investigate the impact of marketing science articles and tools on the practice of marketing. This impact may be direct (e.g., an academic article may be adapted to solve a practical problem) or indirect (e.g., its contents may be incorporated into practitioners' tools, which then influence marketing decision making). We use the term “marketing science value chain” to describe these diffusion steps, and survey marketing managers, marketing science intermediaries (practicing marketing analysts), and marketing academics to calibrate the value chain.     

The Influence of Improvements in Accounting Standards on Earnings Management: The Case of IFRS

This article examines the effect of improvements in the quality of International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) on the level of earnings management. In order to achieve this aim, we study the accounting quality of German listed companies through discretionary accruals yielded from 1998 to 2006. We assess the effectiveness of efforts by the International Accounting Standards Board to improve IFRS by using two indices that consider the revision process of the standards, and their mandatory application. Our results indicate that the improvement of accounting standards quality significantly reduces the level of reported negative discretionary accruals of the German listed firms during the period of analysis, once incentive variables are controlled. Further, companies gradually assume the quality of the new standards from the moment they can be voluntarily applied.     

Perceptions and Worry about Hazards at Work: Unions, Contract Maintenance, and Job Control in the U.S. Petrochemical Industry

Union statements and journalist accounts have tied workers' fears of accidents to the increasing use of subcontractors at U.S. petrochemical plants. In this case study of workers at a chemical facility in Louisiana, we explore who perceives and worries about chemical exposures and explosions in the work place and why. Perceptions of chemical exposures were highest among union members, contract workers, and those with low job control, whereas perception of explosions was highest among those reporting being rushed or overworked. Contract workers appear to be more worried about hazards in the industry than direct-hire employees.     

The role of the U.S. medical complex and the media in value transformation: The case of viable organ transplant

This paper examines the unintended consequences of marketing a specific technology— viable organ transplantation. A content analysis of print media is conducted to compare accounts of the world's first heart transplant (1967) with accounts of subsequent local transplants in a southwestern city. Results of this analysis suggest that “objective” coverage of transplant incidents convey changes in the construction of the self the authors associate with the interdependence of culture, technology, and marketing practice.     

Attitudes towards Uniform Accounting: Cultural or Economic Phenomena?

The existing literature suggests that uniformity versus flexibility is a key dimension of differentiation in cross-national financial reporting practices. However, the issue of what drives attitudes towards uniformity has not been explored. Drawing upon a variety of existing studies, this study explores the attitudes of "Big 6" auditors in 23 countries towards rules mandating a single treatment across 14 issues. The study finds that auditors are in favor of a single mandated treatment in the majority of cases and that support for such rules is affected by both culture and the importance of the domestic stock market to the country. These results hold true even after the influence of extant practice or the level of uniformity of current practice is controlled for. Relatively higher levels of uniformity in de facto financial reporting practices and relatively stronger support for increased uniformity were both found in many of those countries which are traditionally thought of as having more flexible financial accounting systems.