Mutual Caring—Resolving Habituation Through Awareness: Supporting Meaningful Learning From Projects

This study used Grounded Theory methodology and developed an emergent theory of Mutual Caring. The main concern was Habituation to ineffective lessons learned sharing practices. Habituation is resolved through Mutual Caring, a socially and psychologically adaptive process. Mutual Caring involves comfortable conversations, engaging/sharing, and developing self‐confidence, resulting in an enhanced wisdom pool. This paper extends the emphasis on tangible knowledge‐sharing mechanisms. Mutual Caring could lead to better outcomes, such as more accessible and usable knowledge, a project management wisdom pool, and criteria for improved dyadic relationships to enhance project learning.     

The price of Cherokee removal

In this paper, we estimate the social costs and income transfers of Cherokee removal, i.e., “The Trail of Tears.” Our cost estimates provide several new insights into this extensively studied topic. First, our estimate of the number of removal-related fatalities is considerably lower than the commonly accepted figure of 4000. Second, the uncompensated value of ceded Cherokee land in the southeast was the largest cost borne by the Cherokees, followed in magnitude by the value of lost agricultural output due to removal. Third, American taxpayers paid for roughly 44% of the total social costs of removal. Also, the cost burden of Cherokee removal, as a share of 1 year's GDP, was greater for the Cherokees than the cost burden of any major war for the American population.     

Mining Sector Currency Risk Management Strategies: Responses to Foreign Currency Accounting Regulation

This study investigates the impact of Approved Accounting Standard ASRB 1012, Foreign Currency Translation, on the currency risk management strategies of firms in the Australian mining industry. ASRB 1012 increased the responsiveness of most mining companies' reported earnings to exchange rate movements, and it was predicted that firms would alter their capital structures in response to the increased accounting exposure. The results suggest that mining companies decreased their proportionate levels of long-term foreign debt and increased their share capital and/or reserves to mitigate the effects of the standard on their contracts. This information is useful to standard-setters seeking an awareness of the potential micro and macro-economic effects of their pronouncements.     

Competency Training for Managing International Cooperation Engineering Projects

Organizations are becoming more and more aware of how important it is to strengthen the competences of their project managers. This fact acquires greater relevance in the development and international cooperation sector because of the need to have qualified professionals who can take up the challenges and address the specific demands of an ever more demanding and constantly evolving sector. This article provides the results of research that more than 100 experts in project management and administration participated in to detect which competences are the most relevant in this context.     

Empowering communities: The experience of the church urban fund

This article seeks to report on ways of empowering local communities who are suffering multiple deprivation. It is set within the context created by the requirement for partnership in the submission of funding applications to City Challenge and the Single Regeneration Budget. This exploration draws upon an evaluation of the Church Urban Fund undertaken by the authors in 1993-4 funded by the Department of the Environment, the Church Urban Fund, the Paul S. Cadbury Trust and the Wates Foundation (Farnell et al, 1994).     

Perceived importance of red flags across fraud types

The purpose of this study is to examine whether internal auditors, external auditors and economic crime investigators perceive the importance of red flags as significantly different across two fraud types: fraudulent financial reporting and misappropriation of assets, as well as across within-subject categories. A total of 471 useable responses were collected using a web-based survey. The findings indicate that significant differences exist on both single and aggregate mean levels among the participant groups. Internal auditors report a higher perceived importance of the red flags related to detecting misappropriation of assets than of those related to fraudulent financial reporting, whereas the opposite is true for economic crime investigators. For external auditors, only small differences in aggregate means between misappropriation of assets and fraudulent financial reporting were found. As the sensitivity to fraud type may affect professional planning, procedures and techniques with regard to fraud prevention, detection and investigation, the results may have both practical and theoretical implications. Further, the focus on both fraud types adds to prior literature on fraud.     

The Effects of Tolerance for Ambiguity and Task Uncertainty on the Balanced and Combined Use of Project Controls

This study contributes to the literature by examining antecedents to different combinations of management control systems. These combinations include combined use, focusing on the absolute magnitude of the project manager's organic and mechanistic control activities, and the balanced use, that is their relative magnitude. It is proposed that project managers' perceived task uncertainty and tolerance for ambiguity have direct and interaction effects on their balanced and combined use of different combinations of project control. Consistent with the hypotheses, the results show negative relationships between high tolerance for ambiguity and balanced and combined use of organic and mechanistic controls. Further, task uncertainty appears to have a direct, significant negative effect on balanced use, but not on combined use. Furthermore, as proposed, a negative significant interaction effect was found. The results were controlled for project size, project type and level of innovativeness.     

On the ‘Disclosure Initiative – Principles of Disclosure’: The EAA Financial Reporting Standards Committee’s View

Abstract

This paper summarises the contents of a comment letter produced by a working group of 12 academics in response to the International Accounting Standards Board (IASB) Discussion Paper on principles of disclosure. The comment letter was submitted by the Financial Reporting Standards Committee (FRSC) of the European Accounting Association (EAA). The work includes reviews of relevant academic literature of areas related to the various questions posed by the IASB in the Discussion Paper, including the ‘disclosure problem’ and the objective of the project, the suggested principles of effective communication, the roles of the primary financial statements and notes, the location of information and the use of performance measures. The paper also discusses the disclosure of accounting policies, the objectives of centralised disclosure, and the New Zealand Accounting Standards Board staff’s approach to disclosure.