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In this paper the annual general meetings (AGM) of corporations are conceptualized as front-stage performances and dramas where the three roles of the corporation – the shareholder, manager and director – perform the corporation as a particular type of organization. The paper aims to discuss these issues.

Meeting ethnography conducted at four seasons of AGMs in Sweden.

The study sheds light on how the required AGM of public companies may be seen as a ritualized, legitimizing and trust-building corporate performance where the different roles of the corporation are played out in positioning procedures and where the corporation as an organizational form is enacted.

The topic is of this paper is clearly original. Looking at corporations from an anthropological angle, exploring foundation myths, rites and organizational cultures, have been employed earlier, but exploring AGMs from an anthropological angle, is new.

This paper contends that, contrary to conventional wisdom, it may be rational to manage translation exposure. Accounting procedures for the translation of foreign currency accounts influence the reported income of a multi‐national firm. With non‐zero agency costs, reported income impacts real costs. In such cases, therefore, it may be rational to hedge translation exposure. Empirical evidence of agency costs and the managerial tendency to report higher levels of translated income, based on the early adoption of Financial Accounting Standard No. 52, is presented.

This article is concerned with the decision process and examines the relationships among information attributes, strategic alternatives’ evaluation and group decision support systems (GDSS) in the context of database management. The evaluation of strategic alternatives with multiple criteria is very useful for the management of enterprises and business organisations. The whole evaluation and comparison process includes two phases: the establishment and selection of basic strategic evaluation criteria and the appreciation of the ranking of the strategic alternatives. A GDSS has been developed and used to support the evaluation of strategic alternatives. The experimental results show that the proposed GDSS produces better results in evaluating strategic alternatives with multicriteria methods. The major findings are discussed and directions for future research are suggested according to the proposed model.

In seeking to extend rational choice theory from “market” to “political” behaviour, economists have encountered a paradox: namely, that the act of voting itself appears to be inconsistent with the assumption of rationality. This is true not only when self‐interest is assumed, but also when altruistic behaviour (at least in its non‐Kantian form) is allowed for. This article surveys the theoretical and empirical literature on the determinants of the decision to participate in voting, and concludes that this decision is responsive to changes in the expected benefits and costs of voting; even though the expected costs of voting must normally outweigh the expected benefits. Interpretations of this behaviour include the possibility that voters act rationally, but are misinformed about the likely effectiveness of their votes; alternatively, the electorate may include more Kantians than economists have generally been willing to admit.

There exists no direct legislation in Britain which relates to the closed shop per se or which makes the closed shop either lawful or unlawful. The legislation on pre‐entry and post‐entry closed shops which existed under the Trade Union and Labour Relations Acts 1974–76 was in connection with the law of dismissal. The fundamental changes made by the Employment Act 1980 are also concerned with dismissal. Indeed, the Thatcher Government went so far as to state that it remained opposed to the closed shop concept and that numerous employers and trade unionists themselves did not support it. The reason why indirect legislation and a Code of Practice (1a) exist on this matter is because “…closed shops are a fact of our industrial life…” and both sides of industry believe that they can help create stability in industrial relations. Furthermore, since some five million employees are covered by closed shop agreements or arrangements, legislation, albeit indirect, should exist for their orderly operation. Recent research shows that one in four of employees are covered by the closed shop. Whereas the 1974–76 legislation supposedly had the collective interest at heart, or more precisely the wishes of the trade unions deriving from the social contract, the 1980 legislation is concerned more with the individual interest by providing greater individual freedom. So as to achieve this freedom, the 1980 legislation creates openings, other than in respect to the religious objectors outlet which it repeals whereby it would be unfair to dismiss, or to take action short of dismissal in a closed shop situation. These openings in no way affect the legality of either the pre‐entry or post‐entry closed shop, they merely restore a balance by giving the individual a greater degree of freedom of choice and of personal liberty.

The purpose of the Code is to provide practical guidance on questions which arise out of the formulation and operation of closed shop agreements—that require employees to be members of one or more unions. The code imposes no legal obligations but Section 3(8) of the 1980 Employment Act states that any provisions of the Code are to be admissable in evidence and taken into account in proceedings before any court or industrial tribunal, where considered relevant.

Despite certain political, organizational, technological and socioeconomic benefits that e-voting brings, governments around the world are beginning one by one to denounce its further use in the electoral process. In this regard, the paper aims to analyze reasons that led to the discontinuation of e-voting, resorting to the case of Kazakhstan, a transitional post-soviet country, which actively used the technology in 2004-2011, as a poster child of the global trend, elaborating on key political, socioeconomic, organizational and technological risks that could be associated with the possible return of this innovation in future elections.

The research is based on the combination of context and policy analysis, as well as focus groups studies and semi-structured interviews. The context analysis was aimed to understand various political and socioeconomic benefits in adopting e-voting in Kazakhstan. The policy analysis was useful in identifying implementation strategies of the government in promoting e-voting. The focus groups were helpful in understanding the perspectives of various audiences on e-voting. The semi-structured interviews were carried among independent developers in regard to the potential software products that could be used to propose new solutions in the area, including by experimenting with various blockchain platforms.

Analyzing the lessons from Kazakhstan, one can conclude that e-voting was introduced and used for several years by authorities in this country for certain economic and organizational benefits, but later they had to reject it and return to traditional paper ballot due to lack of confidence from the non-governmental sector in the capacity of public sector to ensure the integrity of e-voting procedures. As a result, building trust and applying innovative approaches should be a priority for policymakers in the area, if they wish to return to this technology, especially in adopting new presumably more reliable solutions based on blockchain technologies.

The primary data that was collected by the author from field studies were indexed, refined and presented in a special matrix in a separate section, which were interpreted in the discussion session. These data could be used by other scholars for further interpretation and analysis in their own studies, setting new research agendas and testing hypotheses. This is a single case study research, which is focused on the analysis of reasons that led to the denunciation of e-voting in Kazakhstan, which results could be extrapolated mostly to similar transitional post-totalitarian settings.

The study can be used to inform ways of how to improve the current e-voting platforms, especially in ensuring better security and transparency of the systems, which could be useful for developers who work on blockchain-driven solutions.

The results of the case study research and expert opinions expressed by various software developers in the e-government areas, which were presented in the paper, could be used by both an academic community and practitioners in understanding better a wide range of political, organizational, economic, social and technological drivers, risks and new opportunities in promoting e-voting technology as a trust generating social phenomenon.

The paper proposes the first case study of reasons that led to the discontinuation of e-voting in the context of such a typical transitional, post-totalitarian and post-soviet society as Kazakhstan, providing new insights into a wide range of political, regulatory, socioeconomic, organizational and technological aspects of related policy decision-making and implementation strategies adopted by public institutions in this country.