Search results

In this article the costs and likely benefits of industrial training are compared, for the nation, for the individual, and for companies under the impact of levy/grant systems introduced under the Industrial Training Act, 1964. Problems of decision‐making at national and industrial or company level will be related to new problems facing the individual in modern society. The problem of evaluating the benefits appears in a new and more favourable light if industrial training is seen as an effort to increase not merely skill and technical knowledge, but also motivation and as looking forward to a new pattern in industrial relations.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the challenges faced by an Australian accounting academic, R. J. Chambers, in the 1950s, in breaking into the accounting research community, at that time, almost entirely located in the USA and the UK. For academics outside the networks of accounting research publication in these countries, there were significant, but not insurmountable obstacles to conducting and publishing accounting research. We examine how these obstacles could be overcome, using the notion of “trials of strength” to trace the efforts of Chambers in wrestling with intellectual issues arising from post-war inflation, acquiring accounting literature from abroad and publishing his endeavours.

The article uses actor-network theory to provide an analytical structure for a “counter-narrative” history firmly grounded in the archives.

Documents from the R. J. Chambers Archive at the University of Sydney form the empirical basis for a narrative that portrays accounting research as a diverse process driven as much by circumstances – such as geographical location, access to accounting literature and personal connections – as the merits of the intellectual arguments.

Although the historical details are specific to the case being studied, the article provides insights into the challenges faced by researchers on the outside of international research networks in achieving recognition and in participating in academic debates.

The findings of this article can provide guidance and inspiration to accounting researchers attempting to participate in wider academic communities.

The article uses documents from perhaps the most extensive archive relating to an individual accounting academic. It examines the process of academic research in accounting in terms of the material context in which such research takes place, whereas most discussions have focussed on the underlying ideas and concepts, abstracted from the context in which they emerge.

The purpose of this paper is to look at the adoption of double entry bookkeeping at the Royal Treasury, Portugal, on its establishment in 1761 and the factors contributing to this development. The Royal Treasury was the first central government organization in Portugal to adopt double entry bookkeeping and was a crucial first step in the institutionalisation of the technique in Portuguese public administration.

Set firmly in the archive, this paper adopts new institutional sociology (NIS) to inform the findings of the local, time‐specific accounting policy and practice at the Portuguese Royal Treasury.

Embedded within the broader European context, this study identifies the key pressures exerted upon the Royal Treasury on its formation in 1761, which resulted in major accounting change within Portuguese central government from that date. The study provides further evidence of the importance of the state in the institutionalization of accounting practices by means of coercive pressures and highlights for Portugal the importance of individual actors who, as powerful change agents, made key decisions that influenced accounting change.

This study examines a major instance of accounting change in European central government and broadens the application of NIS in accounting history research to a different country – Portugal – and to a different time – the eighteenth century. It also serves to illuminate the difficulties of collecting pertinent evidence pertaining to this long‐dated time period in identifying certain forms of institutional pressures.

This paper examines accounting practice and its environment in one European country, Belgium, whose capital is home to the European Union (EU). Belgium's national accounting system has witnessed dramatic improvements in the last two decades as it has moved toward a highly standardized accounting system similar to France. This article traces what one author calls “the Belgian accounting revolution,” based on professional literature and personal interviews with senior partners of major accounting firms and academics in Belgium. Little is known in North America about accounting in Belgium. This article intends to fill this gap and provides some insights on accounting in this vital European country.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the notion of management as a regulated profession and provide a critique of some of the recent critiques of the profession, noting from whence the profession has come and offering a number of alternative ways forward.

The paper explores the notions of ownership and control of professional knowledge, at least as it relates to management, and considers how the profession might fare if it is seen in the light of metaphors other than the rational, scientific approaches.

The paper finds that management education has become professionalised around quasi‐scientific research methods and a regulated body of knowledge which is visibly distant from what managers use

The future shape of management education and the place of B‐schools in that process hang on the decisions made about the ideas presented here.

This paper provides some interesting insights into the development of management as a regulated profession.

There are two main alternative explanations in the literature for the patterns of financial reporting during the period of the British Industrial Revolution (BIR). Rob Bryer sees the new social relations of production in which manufacturing entrepreneurs strove to increase the productivity of wage‐labour as leading to a distinct capitalist “calculative mentality”, focused on the return on capital employed; Dick Edwards argues from agency precepts that financial reporting emerged with the transition from “industrial” to “financial capitalism”. This paper aims to reappraise these theorisations using new archival evidence.

Canals, the crucial transport network during the BIR, were owned by limited liability companies financed by outside investors, with clear separation of ownership and control, yet were not capitalist in Bryer's sense because their profits came from a form of rent (tolls on freight) not from the exploitation of wage‐labour. The paper reviews the financial statements of seven major English canals from the 1770s to the 1850s, and uses these findings as a basis for appraising the above‐mentioned theories.

The financial statements of English canal companies do not distinguish profit or enable users to calculate rates of return on capital employed and so assess the performance of management. This sharply conflicts with agency theory but is consistent with Bryer's thesis.

The paper contributes to the authors' understanding of how and why corporate financial reporting emerged, and the relationship between this process and the transition to the capitalist mode of production.

Contemporary literature reveals that, to date, the poultry livestock sector has not received sufficient research attention. This particular industry suffers from unstructured supply chain practices, lack of awareness of the implications of the sustainability concept and failure to recycle poultry wastes. The current research thus attempts to develop an integrated supply chain model in the context of poultry industry in Bangladesh. The study considers both sustainability and supply chain issues in order to incorporate them in the poultry supply chain. By placing the forward and reverse supply chains in a single framework, existing problems can be resolved to gain economic, social and environmental benefits, which will be more sustainable than the present practices.

The theoretical underpinning of this research is ‘sustainability’ and the ‘supply chain processes’ in order to examine possible improvements in the poultry production process along with waste management. The research adopts the positivist paradigm and ‘design science’ methods with the support of system dynamics (SD) and the case study methods. Initially, a mental model is developed followed by the causal loop diagram based on in-depth interviews, focus group discussions and observation techniques. The causal model helps to understand the linkages between the associated variables for each issue. Finally, the causal loop diagram is transformed into a stock and flow (quantitative) model, which is a prerequisite for SD-based simulation modelling. A decision support system (DSS) is then developed to analyse the complex decision-making process along the supply chains.

The findings reveal that integration of the supply chain can bring economic, social and environmental sustainability along with a structured production process. It is also observed that the poultry industry can apply the model outcomes in the real-life practices with minor adjustments. This present research has both theoretical and practical implications. The proposed model’s unique characteristics in mitigating the existing problems are supported by the sustainability and supply chain theories. As for practical implications, the poultry industry in Bangladesh can follow the proposed supply chain structure (as par the research model) and test various policies via simulation prior to its application. Positive outcomes of the simulation study may provide enough confidence to implement the desired changes within the industry and their supply chain networks.

The purpose of this paper is to focus on circumvolutions taken by the accounting standard-setting process in French-speaking African countries which have delayed convergence toward IFRS standards and to identify how different factors shape accounting standards in a context in which post-colonial hysteresis interact with globalization.

This study uses archival data and interviews with key individual actors. Two case studies from two successive periods are contrasted: the design of the OCAM accounting standards in the 1970s, and the development of the SYSCOA/OHADA accounting standards during the 1990s before the partial adoption of IFRS.

The study shows the convergence toward international accounting standards in French-speaking African countries emerged from a complex, multimodal process mingling competition with collaboration and negotiation. They have followed a different path from most English-speaking African countries, where convergence to IAS/IFRS took place earlier and faster. The evidence indicates the significance of the interaction between the ex-colonization and the indigenous accounting standards, the importance of key actors and the level of the educational institutions.

No African written sources were located. Most of the sources used were French.

The paper includes implications for the standards setting in developing countries. The examination of the development of accounting rules in French-speaking African countries between 1960 and 2010 shows the complexity of the accounting standards’ diffusion dynamic.

This study provides novel insights over a 30-year period of accounting standards in French-speaking African countries. This research explains why IFRS have not yet adopted in French-speaking African countries as it was in English-speaking African countries.

This article presents an analysis of three years results from the quarterly Report on Technology in Supply Management, conducted through a joint effort of the Institute for Supply Management (ISM) (formerly the National Association of Purchasing Managers) and Forrester Research. This report provides the best snapshot on the growth of e‐procurement in the United States. However, the sponsors do not publicly provide any analysis on the trends the data show from quarter‐to‐quarter. Now, with three years of available data from the twelve quarterly surveys conducted to date, there is an opportunity to analyze the adoption rates of e‐procurement tools, techniques and protocols in the American marketplace. The author of this study has conducted just such a longitudinal analysis of the ISM/Forrester data, examining the trends for organizations across the U.S. marketplace. What is demonstrated is that overall, both in manufacturing and service‐oriented firms and in large and small purchasing organizations, e‐procurement methods are rising and reaching “critical mass” in most areas with the “e‐way” fast becoming “the way”. However, important differences due exist between the groups and their specific needs, motivations, and results in their shift to an electronic acquisition environment. These are highlighted and discussed in this article.