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The purpose of this paper is to provide, at a particularly significant point in its short history, an overview of a unique system of performance management to which all principal local authorities in England have been subject for the past three years.

Comprehensive performance assessment (CPA) is the controversial centrepiece of a system of performance measurement and improvement management that has involved the external classification of each individual local authority as Excellent, Good, Fair, Weak or Poor. It is a system that, as comparative data on the scale of local government demonstrate, could only be attempted in the UK. The article is written as a non‐technical and evaluative narrative of the introduction, early operation and impact of this system, concluding with the changes in methodology introduced to counter the phenomenon of too many of the nation's local authorities becoming officially too good for the existing measurement framework.

Key points that the article brings out concern the exceptional circumstances of UK local government that make such a performance management system even contemplatable, the improvement and recovery part of the regime, and the inherent implications of a system geared to providing regular statistical evidence of continuous performance improvement.

The originality lies in the CPA system itself, aspects of which at least will be of interest both to specialists in performance measurement and management and to those with an interest in decentralized government and intergovernmental relations.

The purpose of this study is to investigate the effect of an accounting education pedagogy incorporating active learning approaches designed to engage first-year undergraduate business students and to aspire them to continue accounting as their academic major and entry into the accounting profession.

Data were collected from a questionnaire with a pre-/post-test design of 24 undergraduate business students enrolled in a course titled Accounting Active Learning Seminar (AALS) (test group) and 33 students who did not participate in the AALS (control group). The AALS incorporates various types of active learning methods designed by the authors to inspire students to continue with accounting as a career choice.

The findings show that participation in the AALS improved student’s motivation in accounting education and the likelihood of choosing accounting as their academic major. The active learning methods implemented in the AALS were effective in improving students’ confidence, of which degree contributed to students’ stronger works aspiration towards accounting professions. Further it was found that students who did not participate in the AALS tended to have lower attention dimensions of motivation, which was also significantly associated with lower percentage of students’ choice of academic major in accounting.

This is one of the few studies to empirically examine active learning on student engagement and performance with a focus on accounting. While the evidence shows that active learning has pedagogical benefits, the full potential of active learning is more likely to be realized when accounting educators design active learning carefully to address the “attention” and “confidence” attributes.

The accounting regulation literature has recently devoted a significant degree of attention to delineating the roles of accounting firms as key professional actors in the transnational policy arena. Such a heightened level of scholarly engagement with firms seems to have shifted the focus away from the roles of the national professional institutes. The purpose of this paper is to demonstrate the importance of not losing sight of the national professional bodies as important players on the transnational governance scene.

The accounting regulation literature has recently devoted a significant degree of attention to delineating the roles of accounting firms as key professional actors in the transnational policy arena. Such a heightened level of scholarly engagement with firms seems to have shifted the focus away from the roles of the national professional institutes. The aim with this paper is to demonstrate the importance of not losing sight of the national professional bodies as important players on the transnational governance scene.

The paper provides empirical illustrations and discussion of the transforming agendas and strategies of influence pursued by various national professional bodies as they attempt to reinvent themselves to face up to the challenges of the changing regulatory landscape. Specifically, the paper analyses a range of activities where such bodies are seen to be competing with each other as well as partaking in a variety of collaborative initiatives in their quest to gain/maintain the status of a global/regional professional thought leader.

The paper is designed to encourage renewed academic debate on the roles and strategies of national professional institutes and highlight opportunities and venues for future research. The paper is also suggestive of the need to refine conceptual perspectives on professionalization processes operational in transnational settings.

The accounting literature is lacking in terms of contemporary study of national professional bodies as active institutions with global ambition and strategies of influence. This paper addresses such a shortcoming by analysing the strategic intent and actions of a range of such bodies (revealing, in the process, a quite fascinating complex of activity, competition and cooperation) and calling for a renewed focus on national professional bodies as a way of enhancing contemporary understanding of the workings of the “global accounting profession”.

The purpose of this paper is to advance the current understanding of organisational conditions that facilitate service design. Specifically, the focus is on organisational capabilities, interactive practices and individual abilities as units of analysis across service system levels. Grounded in design principles, the paper conceptualises and delineates illustrative service design conditions and introduces a respective service design capability-practice-ability (CPA) portfolio. In doing so, an emerging microfoundations perspective in the context of service design is advanced.

Conceptual paper.

This paper identifies and delineates a CPA that contributes to service design and ultimately customer experiences. The service design CPA consists of six illustrative constellations of service design capabilities, practices and abilities, which operate on different organisational levels. The service design CPA builds the foundation for in-depth research implications and future research opportunities.

The CPA framework suggests that if an organisation seeks to optimise service design and subsequent customer experiences, then individual- and organisational-level (cap)abilities and interactive practices should be optimised and synchronised across specific CPA constellations.

This paper provides the first microfoundations perspective for service design. It advances marketing theory through multilevel theorising around service design capabilities, practices and abilities and overcomes extant limitations of insular theorising in this context.

The purpose of this paper is to analyse innovation policies in India from 1958 to 2020. A policy tools framework was developed to compare the innovation policies in India. India developed and implemented four innovation policies from 1958 to 2013. The recent policy change was brought in the year 2020 with releasing the draft of the Science, Technology and Innovation Policy (STIP 2020). The authors analysed the recent draft of STIP 2020 with the earlier four innovation policies.

Innovation policies implemented from 1958 to 2013 in India were studied and analysed in the “text as a data approach” and a comparative policy analysis tool was designed for this purpose. The recent draft of STIP 2020 was evaluated and the provisions of the fifth draft of STIP 2020 were compared with the previous four innovation policies' design and formulation. The CPA tool design consists of five broad themes Awareness and capacity building; Finance and infrastructure; Resource management and governance; Outreach and networking; and Policy implementation and evaluation.

Draft STIP 2020 has many features similar to earlier policies. However, policy has focused on bringing in more clarity about national challenges, goals and objectives, yet it needs better implementation to achieve stated outcomes more effectively and efficiently. New initiatives include strengthening the innovation system with open science, improving STI education, expanding the financial landscape, establishing national STI observatory acting as a central repository of all data related to the STI ecosystem and accountable research ecosystem, promoting translational and foundational research of global standards, promoting entrepreneurship, self-reliance, mainstream science communication and public engagement and decentralised institutional mechanisms. Thus, the STIP 2020 is ambitious in its approach to promoting STI in India and needs a supportive mechanism to achieve the stated objectives.

Current comparative policy analysis focused only on identifying similarities and differences among innovation policies implemented in India from 1958 to 2020 and its evolutionary changes in policy and its instruments choice. The recent draft STIP 2020 is not approved and has no update regarding its approval and implementation by the government. The revised and yet to implement STIP 2020 may have variances in the policy instruments. The earlier policies are so broad and without specific problem statements. They were released as statements and resolutions which makes it is challenging to understand the impact of each policy. Similar policy tools in STI 2013 and STIP 2020 were only considered to observe the policy instrument choice. The achievements of the innovation policies implemented before STIP 2020 are not included. Evolutionary changes in the problem statements and policy tools prescribed in innovation policies are studied.

Department of Science and Technology, Government of India, released a draft of STIP in 2020. The draft of STIP was evaluated with previous Innovation Policies. To the authors’ understanding, this is the first attempt to evaluate the STIPs of India using the “text as a data” approach. The tool can be validated by using it for CPA of innovation policies of other emerging, developed and least developed economies to understand cross-country variations in policy instrument choice by policymakers.

Numerous studies have examined the institutional setting of accounting as a professional occupation. However, institutional deeds and outcomes derive from the behaviour of individual actors, particularly those key players who drive the creation, policy development and outlook of practitioner associations. Recognising this, and in search of a more detailed understanding of the dynamics of professional formation, this study applies the prosopographical method of inquiry to accounting development in Australia during the period 1886 to 1908. Motives and actions are identified with the founding members of the Incorporated Institute of Accountants, Victoria, during this formative era, which saw key personalities transfer their allegiance to the Australasian Corporation of Public Accountants. The beliefs, preferences and ambitions of individual participants are shown to exert significant influence over the process of professional formation, highlighting the capacity of prosopographical studies to augment the predominantly vocational and institutional focus of the prior sociology of professions literature.

The purpose of this paper is threefold. The first is to explore how children engage in entrepreneurship by creating a comprehensive inventory of commercial activities in which children engage. The second is to examine the extent to which the activities and categories of activities are gendered. The third purpose is to explore if the breadth of entrepreneurial activities (i.e., balanced skillset) increases entrepreneurship chances in emerging adults.

A holistic approach was used to create an inventory of commercial activities in which children engage. The researchers engaged in seven iterations, including scholarly and Internet searches, think-aloud and pilot tests, before submitting the inventory of over 100 activities to 928 participants. The relationship between general experiences and business startup was analyzed using binary logistic regression with a subsample of emerging adults aged 18–29.

The results revealed that 61% of the 23 categories and 53% of the 121 activities were gendered. Girls and boys tend to gravitate to gender-stereotypical entrepreneurial endeavors. Males were more likely to engage in stereotypical male commercial activities outside of the home, such as yard work, farm work and painting structures. In contrast, females were more likely to engage in stereotypical female commercial activities inside the home or activities related to beauty, crafts or food. Results also revealed that a variety of entrepreneurial activities and a general versus specific college degree increased the odds of starting a business in emerging adults regardless of gender.

Research and viewpoints explaining the gendered construction of entrepreneurship have been widely discussed. However, little is known about early-age commercial activities and their gendered nature. To our knowledge, this is the first construction of a childpreneur inventory and a subsequent demonstration of a connection between childpreneur activities and gender. This study also builds on prior work with emerging adults and the jack of all trades theory by suggesting that pursuing a balanced skillset is something learned early in life. The results will be useful to other researchers in gender and entrepreneurship and support agencies that seek to encourage children's entrepreneurial aspirations.

This research aims to examine and understand the rationales and modalities behind the use of disclosure before, during and after a corporate governance scandal involving CPA Australia (CPAA).

Data beyond CPAA's annual reports were collected, such as news articles, media releases, an independent review panel (IRP) report, and the Chief Operating Officer's letter to members. These disclosures were manually coded and analysed through the word counts and word trees in NVivo. This study also relied on Norbert Elias' conceptual tool of power games among networks of actors – figurations – to model the scandal as a power game between the old Board, the press, concerned members, the IRP and the new Board. This study analysed the data to reveal a collective and in fieri power balance that changed with the phases of the scandal.

A mix of voluntary, involuntary, requested and absent disclosures was important in triggering, managing and ending the CPAA scandal. Moreover, communication and disclosure fulfilled a constitutive role since both: mobilised actors, enabled coordination among actors, contributed to pursuing shared goals and influenced power balances. Such a constitutive role was at the heart of the ability of coalitions of figurations to challenge and restore the powerful status quo.

This research introduces to accounting studies the collective and in fieri dimensions of power from figurational theory. Moreover, the research sheds new light on using voluntary, involuntary, requested and absent disclosures before, during and after a corporate crisis.

Campaign contributions are typically seen as a strategic investment for firms; recent empirical evidence, however, has shown few connections between firms’ contributions and regulatory or performance improvements, prompting researchers to explore agency-based explanations for corporate politics. By studying intrafirm campaign contributions of CEOs and political action committees (PACs), we investigate two hypotheses related to public politics and demonstrate that strategic and agency-based motivations may hold simultaneously. Exploiting transaction-level data, with over 6.8 million observations, we show that (i) when PACs give to specific candidates, executives give to the same candidates, especially those who are strategically important to the firm; and (ii) when executives give to candidates who are not strategically important, PACs give to the same candidates potentially due to agency problems within the firm.