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This paper reports on an exploratory study examining factors which may affect the career choice of accounting students. Although prior studies have examined factors affecting the choice of an accounting major, few studies have examined factors affecting the choice of career of accounting graduates. This study found that more students aspired to become Certified Practising Accountants (CPAs) of the Australian Society of Certified Practicing Accountants (ASCPA) rather than Associate Chartered Accountants (ACAs) of the Institute of Chartered Accountants in Australia (ICAA) This study also found that there were differences in career aspirations between males and females, and between students at different universities. Female students perceived gender discrimination would have a greater adverse effect on their future careers compared with male students, particularly in chartered accounting and industry; and overseas students were more conscious of discrimination than Australian students. There is also some evidence that Big 6 selection practices are perceived as biased.

With growing literature on corporate reputation, different perspectives are being reported on the concept of corporate reputation. These stem from different sets of issues to be managed, and various disciplinary competencies brought to bear on them. This paper presents a review of these efforts.

Additionally, a new methodological basis for understanding perceptions of corporate reputation is presented. This paper introduces social judgement theory as a potentially useful theoretical and methodological basis for understanding perceptions of corporate respectability.

Though it is generally recognized that subjectivity plays an important role in the assessment of reputation, that people rely on naïve theories of judgement to make such assessments, and that subjective or clinical judgements are generally not accurate, investigations of the process by which corporate respectability is assessed are not generally reported. However, a computerized procedure facilitates identification, measurement and reporting of judgemental sources of assessment of corporate respectability.

This paper provides an account of an empirical study as an example of how the procedure described here can be used for both research and practical application in formulating corporate reputation policy.

The procedure described here can be used for both research and practical application in formulating corporate reputation policy. The approach presents an alternative approach to the assessment of corporate respectability.

The description of policies in terms of parameters of the judgement process provides an operational definition of the decision makers’ cognitive sets about the domain of corporate respectability. This information would prove invaluable in developing and implementing a judgement‐based decision support system for the benefit of managers of public relations, corporate communications, and corporate reputation.

The purpose of this paper is to examine some of the problems associated with the prevailing rhetoric in corporate communication. It proposes the consideration of nonviolent rhetorical approaches.

This paper explains corporate communication's affinity for aggressive, militaristic language in terms of constraint of time, and expediency and efficiency of standardized communication strategies designed for large‐scale effectiveness. However, such communication strategies run the risk of dehumanizing the intended targets, distancing the individuals, and compromising socially responsible corporate behavior. The recent corporate scandals of unprecedented scale, occurring in spite of vast improvements in communication theory and technology, have highlighted the need for alternative approaches to corporate communication. Further, it examines the prerequisites that must exist for corporate communication based on nonviolent rhetoric to be effective. The conditions that must be present in the environment, in the corporation or its agent, and in the method of communication, for nonviolent rhetoric to prove effective are discussed.

Corporations seek to establish and modify relationships by influencing stakeholder beliefs, values, expectations and needs. Corporate rhetorical success is reflected in enhanced reputation and respectability, which in turn has significant economic consequences. To achieve these ends, corporations expend considerable effort on communication to educate, entertain and inform their stakeholders. Yet, scholars have generally neglected to study role of rhetoric and language in public relations.

This paper would be of value to researchers and practitioners, in the fields of corporate communication, organizational communication, public relations, and strategic management, seeking to promote, practice or otherwise influence socially responsible corporate behavior.

Purpose – This chapter explores my responses to Carolyn Steedman’s Landscape for a Good Woman (1986) as a historian and an educated working-class woman and considers the ‘blind spots’ in some commentary on the book. The aim of this study is to unpick understandings of subjectivity, class and education in certain kinds of academic text.

Methodology/Approach – The chapter draws on a qualitative analysis of works of history and cultural studies and reflections on the author’s own emotions and experiences.

Findings – Education and class are equally important in the experiences of educated working-class people, but there are considerable difficulties in communicating these different aspects of selfhood and in ensuring they are understood.

Originality/Value – ‘Autobiographical histories’ as a form, and the use of the first person in contexts where it is not usually accepted, provide new possibilities of identification and knowledge for marginalised peoples. ‘Vulnerable writing’ therefore has a political purpose.

Decision speed, flexibility, and innovation have often been cited as key ingredients to business success on the turbulent twenty‐first century business landscape. Sets out to argue that the increasing emphasis on legal and regulatory compliance, the push for which can be attributed to the spectacular collapses of WorldCom and Enron, will burden management with decision‐making speed‐bumps as opposed to protecting shareholders' interests.

The impact of legal and regulatory compliance is discussed within the business decision‐making context. Businesses succeed or fail in a dynamic environment where the smallest advantage can push one competitor ahead of another. Arguments in favour of increasing legal compliance are debated and the impacts of proposed regulatory compliance issues are discussed within the context of the competing business firm and its need for speed and flexibility.

The issue of increasing and stricter compliance for business is far‐reaching. Attempting to protect shareholder interests through further measures of compliance will only introduce further operating complexities for management while increasing costs and reducing decision speeds and flexibility. The impact on firms forced to compete under such conditions will be considerable, particularly if they find themselves on an international landscape competing against firms not burdened with the same regulatory requirements.

This paper is based on original work by the authors commencing with issues surrounding shareholders versus stakeholders, followed by a debate concerning corporate governance mechanisms and a discussion concerning the consequences and impacts of levying further regulatory burdens on business and managers.

[In view of the approaching Conference of the Library Association at Perth, the following note on the Leighton Library may not be inopportune. Dunblane is within an hour's railway journey from Perth and has a magnificent cathedral, founded in the twelfth century, which is well worthy of a visit.]

The purpose of this paper is to examine the way organizational actors argue to obtain a license to operate for new ventures.

The design, which addresses the issue at the industry level, consists of a case study of the ways in which power developers argue for the development of wind energy in Sweden.

The study shows that wind power developers proffer a necessity‐ability‐acceptability line of argument that relies not only on the convincing character of claims grounded in premises, but also on the persuasive character of values, knowledge and opinion likely to win the adherence of the audience.

From a theoretical perspective, this is an illustration of the relevance of bridging the divide between argumentation theories in tune with formal or informal logic and those oriented toward rhetoric and the social practice of communication.

More practically, the paper suggests that in order to obtain a license to operate, managers need to combine and balance in their practice of argumentation a logical approach to factual knowledge with a situational sense for the rhetoric favored by the audience.

This study emphasizes the key role played by argumentation in corporate communication.

The study of policing in Anglo-American societies has been severely restricted in the last 20 years to quasi-historical overviews, studies of policing in times of stable, non-crisis periods in democratic societies that in turn had survived the crisis as democracies. Perhaps the epitome of this is the sterile textbook treatment of policing in Canada and the United States – a sterile rubble of functions, duties, training surrounded by clichés about community policing. Scholarly writing on democratic policing and its features is severely limited by lack of inclusiveness of the range of contingencies police face, and many respects this work is non-historical and non-comparative. In the present world of conflict and strife that spreads beyond borders and challenges forces of order at every level, the role of police in democratic societies requires more systematic examination. In my view, this cannot be achieved via a description of trends, a scrutiny of definitions and concepts, or citation of the research literature. Unfortunately, this literature makes a key assumption concerning police powers in democratic societies: that the police are restricted by tradition, tacit conventions, and doctrinal limits rooted in the law or countervailing forces within the society. While these constraints are sometimes summarized as a function of “the rule of law,” this assumption is much deeper and more pervasive than belief in the rule of law. It is possible to have a non-democratic police system that conforms to the rule of law and reflects the political sentiments of the governed. It is also possible to have non-democratic policing emerge from a quasi-democratic system as I show in reference to the transformation of the police in the Weimar Republic to the police system of the Third Reich. The complex relationship between policing and a democratic polity remains to be explored.

We have from time to time suggested that librarians should pool experiences in regard to annual estimates, but there seems to be no enthusiasm for the suggestion. If library work is to develop it must be by gently progressive finance, and nothing helps one librarian more than to be able to point to another who is progressing. We all tend to wait upon one another. In such a matter as salaries, a librarian circulates his colleagues to learn what they are getting; and library authorities almost invariably ask, “What is paid at So and So ?” This is a vicious circle which cannot be broken unless librarians in consultation can reach a Standard. Perhaps the active London and Home Counties Branch of the L.A. will give a lead since the L.A. itself is too busy to do so.