Search results

Polaris Battery Labs was an Oregon-based startup that provided innovation services to companies in the lithium ion battery industry. Its operating philosophy and expertise in this fast-growing industry enabled it to provide great value to its clients, but as a startup that was seeking growth the company was subject to multiple risks.

For Polaris, taking clients, developing new manufacturing capabilities to meet unproven battery technologies, and even extending credit to its clients posed real risk. Many of its clients were startups themselves and had a significant probability of failure. Others were established firms testing new and unproven battery technologies, many of which were unlikely to gain traction in the market.

The case examines how a technology-driven firm managed the risk of working with startups, claiming appropriate intellectual property, and developing a sustainable portfolio of clients.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the role of graduate recruitment in the professional socialisation and subjectification of Big Four professionals.

The paper draws on documentary data and interviews conducted at one British university. It adopts an interpretive perspective and is informed by Foucault’s work on technologies of power and technologies of the self.

The paper argues that the graduate recruitment practices of Big Four firms represent a series of examinations which produce the category of ideal recruits. It moreover suggests that this category serves as the ultimate objective of an ethical process whereby aspiring accountants consciously and deliberately seek to transform themselves into the type of subjects they aspire to be – ideal recruits.

The findings of the paper are primarily based on interviews conducted at one university. Future research could explore if students at other universities experience graduate recruitment in similar or different ways.

The paper highlights the constitutive role of graduate recruitment practices and shows that they can construct ideal recruits as much as they select them. It also shows that graduate recruitment is an important anticipatory socialisation mechanism that can compel aspiring accountants to learn how to look, sound and behave like Big Four professionals long before they join such organisations. Finally, the paper discusses its implications for the future of the profession, social mobility and the use of Foucault’s work on technologies of power and the self in studying subjectivity at elite professional service firms.

This article examines the construction and operation of a service industry information system in the early years of the twentieth century. It sets the operations of the Birmingham, UK, company of Mitchells & Butlers in the context of the brewing industry and the operation of public houses. The surviving records are used to construct a picture of a complex and sophisticated information system, which not only used accounting records to control managers but also used the same managers as sources of information about the broader context. The apparent success of this system is set against the reluctance of other brewers to adopt it. This is seen to relate in part to the very complexity of the information system created, but also in part to the broader perceptions of brewers about the nature and status of their trade.

The Web's link structure (termed the Web Graph) is a richly connected set of Web pages. Current applications use this graph for indexing and information retrieval purposes. In contrast the relationship between Web Graph and application is reversed by letting the structure of the Web Graph influence the behaviour of an application. Presents a novel Web crawling agent, AlienBot, the output of which is orthogonally coupled to the enemy generation strategy of a computer game. The Web Graph guides AlienBot, causing it to generate a stochastic process. Shows the effectiveness of such unorthodox coupling to both the playability of the game and the heuristics of the Web crawler. In addition, presents the results of the sample of Web pages collected by the crawling process. In particular, shows: how AlienBot was able to identify the power law inherent in the link structure of the Web; that 61.74 per cent of Web pages use some form of scripting technology; that the size of the Web can be estimated at just over 5.2 billion pages; and that less than 7 per cent of Web pages fully comply with some variant of (X)HTML.

Notes that for whatever market – educational or general – low price paperback classic series have continued to expand rapidly and in the UK the market is dominated by Penguin and the Oxford University Press. States that the classic anthology remains one of the most influential forms of publishing poetry and that Oxford has been dominant in issuing throughout the twentieth century a series of magisterial anthologies which have gone a long way to establishing the canon of English poetry. Concludes that neither student nor general reader has ever been so well provided with such a wide range of truly classic literature at moderate prices from a range of publishers.

Examines the essential ingredients for a successful quality programme. Believes it is a lack of attention in communication, education, training and facilitation. Shows how the seven circles model serves as an excellent training tool for both managers and facilitators. Asserts that initiatives for improvement must be originated by management. Concludes that with TQM there will always be a need for improvement, and that chief executives need to champion the cause of communication, education, training and build in the skills of facilitation into the management team.

The 1997‐1998 Asian financial crises underscored the dangers of open capital accounts in developing nations that have weak macroeconomic policies or poorly regulated financial systems. Most developing Asian countries responded to the crisis by adopting the orthodox remedies prescribed by the International Monetary Fund. These included liberalised capital accounts, floating exchange rates and tighter fiscal and monetary policies designed to restore investor confidence. Malaysia departed from this orthodoxy. In September 1998 it imposed controls on capital account transactions, pegged its currency to the US dollar, cut interest rates and reflated its economy. The literature suggests that even temporary capital account controls entail serious economic risks for developing countries. However, the undue hardships imposed by the IMF regimen suggest that it is time to re‐evaluate the role of currency controls in mitigating the destabilising effects of unfettered capital flows in developing countries that have poorly regulated financial systems. This article analyses the effectiveness of Malaysia’s 1998 capital controls by evaluating Malaysia’s post‐1998 economic progress. Its goal is to inform the debate concerning the benefit‐risk tradeoffs of currency controls in developing countries.