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The purpose of this paper is to examine the construction of articles published in three highly ranked interdisciplinary accounting journals.

The analysis is based on articles published during 2010 in Accounting, Auditing & Accountability Journal (AAAJ), Accounting, Organizations and Society (AOS) and Critical Perspectives on Accounting (CPA). The authors develop a framework and examine characteristics of the published articles, including the prose.

Based on the construction of accounting academic articles in the highly ranked interdisciplinary journals, the authors introduce a simplified concept of the five distinct major parts of an article, make some taken-for-granted aspects of article construction explicit and conclude that alternatives, if used effectively, can add to the quality of an article. Finally, there is a discussion of, and a reflection on, how the taken-for-granted rules of academic publishing can be challenged.

This article is limited by the authors ' own analysis and interpretations of AAAJ, AOS and CPA articles published during 2010.

As far as can be ascertained, the authors are the first to examine the construction of research articles published in high ranking interdisciplinary accounting journals. The paper can assist emerging scholars in the process of planning and writing their own articles. For seasoned researchers, the paper ' s insights may serve to reaffirm or help further develop their approach. The paper also contributes to the ongoing debate around the pressure to publish, the measurement of publications, and the difficulties of getting published.

For a good part of the U.S. system of federalism municipal incorporation has been the formal structure for local communities. Over the last 60 years there has been a shift in this structure to special district government. The Woodlands, Texas presents an interesting case study on the incremental development of a former New Town community, the change in formal government organization and the potential for a different model of local governance structure in the 21st Century. The authors explore the four stages of development for The Woodlands over the past 40 years and assess this development through several model theories including institutional, urban regime, and urban governance. Contrary to some current literature on governance, The Woodlands appears to have transitioned from decentralization to more centralization while at the same time avoiding full incorporation as a municipality. It may be indicative of the new governance.

OUR readers may be amused this month by the microfilm imaginings of our correspondent in “Letters on Our Affairs,” but there is undoubtedly a more marked disposition now than formerly to reduce to a mechanism many of the usual routines of libraries. We suppose routine is always mechanical, is repetitive and, for the enterprising ambitious library worker, a matter of boredom. How far the “electronic brain” and other more recent developments of science can be adapted to our simple processes remains to be seen, but all experiment is good even if it does not survive the initial stage. What is to be most feared in any profession is the standardizing inflexibly of its techniques ; that way lies its old age, perhaps its petrification. It is for this reason that we welcome such things as those we have already discussed at times in our pages—the central cataloguing experiment of Harrods, the punched‐card vouchers and other records sponsored (so far as libraries are concerned) by Mr. T. E. Callender, the highly mechanised method of classing propounded by Dr. Ranganathan, the placing of D.C. numbers on the title pages of the books they publish by Jonathan Cape and Harrap, the visible fines receiving box and many more such things. No one uses them all. They free librarians, it is urged, for more specifically library service. We hope that they do. We have always before us the undoubted truth that the good man scraps methods that are obsolescent and the librarian (if one now exists) who is not a business man—especially if he is charged with a large library—is a somewhat pathetic person.

The paper aims to describe the career and contributions of Joseph Scanlon in gaining labor‐management cooperation through employee participation and sharing the gains from cost savings.

The paper makes use of archives and unpublished sources; correspondence with Scanlon's daughter and a previous colleague; Scanlon's writings; and secondary sources as needed.

Joseph Scanlon used his experiences to develop a plan that encouraged union‐management cooperation and workers and managers sharing gains from improved productivity. Scanlon's background is examined and how his colleagues at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, especially Douglas McGregor, provided the venue for his ideas to flourish and gain widespread acceptance. An analysis of 117 studies over a period of six decades is used to identify the conditions that appear to promote or to interfere with the Scanlon Plan.

The Scanlon Plan illustrates a means to promote labor‐management cooperation and a means to involve employees through sharing cost savings.

This is the first biographical study to use archival and unpublished sources to provide new insights into Scanlon and how his plan for cooperation and Gainsharing developed.

The study aims at disclosing the evolution process to an entrepreneurial university in the government‐pulled triple helix in China through the analysis of MIT and Stanford model of “university‐pushed triple helix” in which academic institutions take the lead in regional innovation.

The paper is based on a case study of the Northeastern University (NEU), which is located in the Northeast China where there is a dominant government‐pulled triple helix and with the establishment of China's first science park in which a highly successful software company (Neusoft) was created.

The pathway to an entrepreneurial university begins with government‐pulled + industry‐university collaboration, to university‐industry collaboration + interaction triple helix. This may be followed by a gradually developing “university‐industry collaboration” in which companies fund academic research with potential industrial use, the beginnings of a university‐pushed triple helix.

The analysis of NEU exemplifies the emergence of the entrepreneurial university in China and provides strategic implications for policy makers in terms of designing the appropriate policy to support university enterprising strategy.

The purpose of this paper is to understand how J. Walter Thompson (JWT) utilized its private forums for its executives over the period 1936‐1938 to build trust both within its own organization as well as with the public in the 1930s. This was a time when the advertising industry was under public scrutiny resulting from using what consumers considered emotional and irrational appeals in their advertising practices.

This archival research examines the meeting minutes of these forums to discover what topics were most important to the leaders of JWT at this time. The archives are located at the Hartman Center at Duke University.

This paper highlights the importance of these forums that were led by the top management team and attended by the creative staff of JWT. These forums played an important role in strengthening the culture of JWT, by building organizational trust and fostering organizational communication with a new generation of JWT leadership.

This paper utilized primary data sources – the meeting minutes from 1936 to 1938 – to uncover the values of JWT and how those values were disseminated to their employees, as well as how it impacted their work with their clients and ultimately the public.

John E. Elliott has been a professor of economics at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles since 1956 when he graduated from Harvard University with a doctorate in economics. In that position at USC, John has distinguished himself not only as a scholar and prolific writer but also as an outstanding teacher. He has received every teaching honour which USC has within its power to bestow. Moreover, John has distinguished himself for his contribution to the well‐being of the faculty and to the advancement of its efforts to preserve and extend the concept of academic freedom. John E. Elliott was born in the year 1931 and the essays which comprise this Festschriftare written in celebration of his sixtieth birthday. The numerous awards he has received for the high quality of his teaching, for his creativity and innovation in the dissemination of knowledge, his record of books published, articles contributed to scholarly journals and book reviews are to be found in his curriculum vitae printed at the end of this work.

John E. Elliott has been a professor of economics at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles since 1956 when he graduated from Harvard University with a doctorate in economics. In that position at USC, John has distinguished himself not only as a scholar and prolific writer but also as an outstanding teacher. He has received every teaching honour which USC has within its power to bestow. Moreover, John has distinguished himself for his contribution to the wellbeing of the faculty and to the advancement of its efforts to preserve and extend the concept of academic freedom. John E. Elliott was born in the year 1931 and the essays which comprise this Festschrift are written in celebration of his sixtieth birthday. The numerous awards he has received for the high quality of his teaching, for his creativity and innovation in the dissemination of knowledge, his record of books published, articles contributed to scholarly journals, and book reviews, are to be found in his curriculum vitae printed at the end of this work.

The authors explore the under-researched area of post-decision evaluation in PPPs (public–private partnerships), focusing upon how and whether Post-decision Project Evaluation (PdPE) is considered and provided for in United Kingdom (UK) public infrastructure projects.

The authors’ research design sought insights from overviewing UK PPP planning and more focused exploration of PPP operational practice. The authors combine the extensive analysis of planning documents for operational UK PPP projects with interviews of different stakeholders in PPP projects in one city. Mobilising an open critical perspective, documents were analysed using ethnographic content analysis (ECA) and interviews were analysed using thematic analysis consistent therewith. The authors theorise the absence and ambiguities of PdPE drawing on the sociology of ignorance.

The authors find a long-standing absence and lack of PdPE in PPP projects throughout planning and operational practice, reflecting a dynamic, multi-faceted ignorance. Concerning planning practice, the authors’ documentary analysis evidences a trend in PdPE from its absence in the early years (which may indicate some natural or genuine ignorance) to different levels or forms of weak inclusion later. Regarding this inclusion, the authors find strategic ignorance played a substantive role, involving “deliberate engineering” by both public sector and private partners. Interview findings indicate lack of clarity over PdPE and its under-development in PPP practice, deficiencies again suggestive of natural and strategic ignorance.

The authors draw from the sociology of ignorance vis-à-vis accounting's absence and ambiguity in the context of PPP, contributing to an under-researched area.

As our Flashbacks for this issue clearly show, public relations is no new subject as far as librarianship is concerned. The only thing that seems to change is the name under which it operates. In 1911 it was called, without any subterfuge, advertising. By 1936 it had become publicity. And now it is public relations, and a subject which British librarianship is at last taking seriously.