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As companies grow and evolve, they inevitably face an influx of new personnel and changing responsibilities of existing staff members, often resulting in an increasingly complex organizational design. During periods of rapid organic growth, new layers of management and labor may be created as a reactionary, rather than a planned activity. This often results in redundancy of responsibility and confusing communication channels within the company, ultimately impacting financial performance. The purpose of this paper is to describe a case study of significant organizational change that was accomplished using assessment center philosophy, combined with web‐based technology.

Concurrent Technologies Corporation (CTC), a research and development professional services organization that rapidly grew its workforce to over 1,400 was faced with these challenges, resulting in direct labor billings losses. Upon strategically designing a new organizational structure, CTC was faced with making critically important staffing changes. A modified assessment center approach using web‐based technology was employed to rapidly select the best candidates for these new positions.

It is the authors' contention in this paper and practice in the implementation of this organizational realignment that practicing managers who have extensive experience with middle managers can effectively evaluate them on assessment center dimensions without observing them in assessment center simulations. These enlightened assessments leveraged web‐based technology, while avoiding the costly and time‐intensive simulation and exercise phases of the traditional assessment center.

Based on the authors' experience with CTC, combining this modified assessment center approach (evaluating managers on competencies without using simulations and exercises) with web‐based technology can provide organizations with a powerful tool for implementing fast and effective organizational change. This new and original approach can support executives in evaluating managerial talent and realigning organizational structure.

On September 15, 2008, Lehman Brothers filed for bankruptcy and nearly caused a meltdown of the financial system. This article looks at the situation before Lehman went bankrupt and how this event came to trigger a financial panic during the fall of 2008 and early 2009. Two key ideas inform the analysis. The first is that what triggers financial panics are typically hidden losses. The second is that confidence plays a key role in financial panics and that confidence can be conceptualized as a belief that action can be based on proxy signs, rather than on direct information about the situation itself.

The purpose of this study is to examine how managers in financial institutions satisfy themselves of the effectiveness of risk mitigation strategy and management control. It studies the co-opting of accounting tools within a single financial institution case study, examining the recursive and emergent characteristics of risk management practice.

Adopting a field study approach within the strategy-as-practice perspective, the paper provides insights into the role of actor perceptions of risk and accounting as a calculative practice in the adaptive enactment of risk strategy.

Results highlight the interactions between risk management strategy, management controls and actor interests at Lehman Brothers. The actions and reactions of risk management decision-makers such as Executive Committee and Board members are examined to better understand the role of accounting and leadership.

Results of this study may not be generalised beyond this single case study.

The paper emphasises that concern for the social relations and the performative interests of actors in a risk management network needs to be understood and considered in accounting research. It is argued that the market prices of tradable financial asset will continue to be opaque without these insights.

This study explores an under-researched topic in the accounting literature in examining how management controls are affected by and, in turn, affect risk strategising.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the use of narratives in biodiversity reports as a mechanism to raise the awareness of biodiversity’s importance. By classifying biodiversity narratives into 14 categories of biodiversity values this paper investigates whether the explanations for biodiversity conservation used by UK local councils are line with shallow, intermediate or deep philosophies.

This study used content analysis to examine the disclosures on biodiversity’s importance in the biodiversity action plans published by UK local councils. The narratives were first identified and then allocated into 14 categories of biodiversity value. Then, they were ascribed to either shallow (resource conservation, human welfare ecology and preservationism), intermediate (environmental stewardship and moral extensionism) or deep philosophies.

UK local councils explained biodiversity’s importance mainly in terms of its instrumental value, in line with shallow philosophies such as human welfare ecology and resource conservation. UK local councils sought to raise awareness of biodiversity’ importance by highlighting values that are important for the stakeholders that are able to contribute towards biodiversity conservation such as landowners, residents, visitors, business and industries. The authors also found that local councils’ biodiversity strategies were strongly influenced by 2010, the International Year of Biodiversity.

This paper is one of the few accounting studies that engages with the literature on environmental ethics to investigate biodiversity. In line with stakeholder theory, it indicates that explanations on biodiversity’s importance based on anthropocentric philosophies are considered more effective in informing those stakeholders whose behaviour needs to be changed to improve biodiversity conservation.

Investigates the differences in protocols between arbitral tribunals and courts, with particular emphasis on US, Greek and English law. Gives examples of each country and its way of using the law in specific circumstances, and shows the variations therein. Sums up that arbitration is much the better way to gok as it avoids delays and expenses, plus the vexation/frustration of normal litigation. Concludes that the US and Greek constitutions and common law tradition in England appear to allow involved parties to choose their own judge, who can thus be an arbitrator. Discusses e‐commerce and speculates on this for the future.

This research chapter argues lawyers, not just bankers, for good and bad have been involved in all aspects of the current financial crisis. Indeed after examining and assessing various civil causes of action related to the “Mortgage Meltdown” and its aftermath, it appears if lawyers had been less involved or had raised warnings about legal risks as well as economic ones, whether the financial impact would have been so disastrous and widespread. Indeed by raising cautionary flags earlier, lawyers might have better served both the clients’ and the public's long-term interests. This view thus complements issues related to criminally prosecuting mortgage fraud that has also seen explosive growth and where lawyers have again played central roles. Lawyers have been involved at the back end too in terms of legislation or resolving issues such as bankruptcies and foreclosures.

The chapter examines several causes of action the media have reported being raised by various parties and how they illustrate the role lawyers, regulations, and legislation have played in the origins and evolution of the current crisis. The cases explored involve individual parties and class actions. The chapter also analyzes in detail a case representing opposite ends of the origination and foreclosure closure spectrum by describing a derivative shareholder suit against corporate officers and directors actively involved in creating the subprime mess, who were then sued for covering up the inevitable results from failed loans in the reports to shareholders. It thus illustrates the legal complexities emerging from the abuse of complex financial and organizational structures impacting many investors. Finally the chapter concludes by arguing there is a public policy need not only for financial regulatory reform but also for a tightening in the professional standards and regulatory penalties imposed on lawyers involved in such transactions.

This chapter measures financial integration in 10 industries over 4 different periods. We use two robust measures of integration: (i) the Pukthuanthong and Roll (2009)’s multi-factor R-square and (ii) the Volosovych (2011)’s integration index. Both measures, based on PCA, indicate that the difference between the level of integration over the period 2009–2012 (“Post-Lehman” era) and the level of integration over the period 1994–1998 (“Post-Liberalizations” era) is relatively high. In addition, the level of financial integration across international equity markets decreased during the late 1990s. This suggests that de jure integration does not necessarily improve de facto integration. Overall, our findings give rise to a “diversification benefits-insurance benefits trade-off.”

The purpose of this paper is to examine the effects of the 2007-2009 uncertainty shocks on policymakers’ behavior.

Uncertainty shocks in the US credit, financial and production markets are represented by extraordinary events. As in Bloom (2009), these events are associated with significant economic and political shocks (e.g. Lehman Brothers’ collapse). Credit markets uncertainty shocks, which played a crucial role in the aftermath of the house prices collapse in the USA, are first analyzed in a bivariate VAR context, and then, embodied in a simple theoretical framework.

The empirical evidence suggests that the US credit, financial and production markets have been affected by a relative large number of uncertainty shocks (i.e. rare events). In a Brainard’s (1967) uncertainty scenario, it is shown that a bizarre money-liquidity relationship exacerbates the “policymakers’ cautiousness-aggressiveness trade-off.” In addition, the model suggests that a “double” dose of policy, in presence of a global credit crunch, might be useless.

This paper improves the existing literature in two main directions. First, it provides novel empirical evidence on the unusual dynamics of the US credit market and its effects on the real economic activity during the crisis. Second, in a very simple theoretical framework accounting for parameter uncertainty, it addresses whether a bizarre money-credit relationship affects policymakers’ behavior (i.e. cautiousness vs aggressiveness).

The case introduces students to the nature of collateralized debt obligations (CDO) and the CDO origination process, with emphasis on the corporate structure of the special purpose vehicles, cash flows to various CDO tranches, and motivation behind CDO origination. Students will learn to quantitatively evaluate the risk-return profile of CDO tranches with emphasis on the equity tranche (also known as “toxic waste”). This is ideal for MBA and advanced undergraduate level courses on financial markets, financial institutions, and investments. In the case, an associate at the Debt Capital Markets desk of Lehman Brothers prepares a CDO issuance for Western Asset. Western Asset had been contacted by a group of commercial banks eager to sell senior secured bank loans and high-yield corporate bonds to lower their capital requirements and free up capital for additional lending.

This paper is intended as an overview and think piece, contributing to literature identifying accounting’s impact in making things knowable. Critical accounting research has always sought alternative ways of understanding the discipline and the legacy is extended here by considering pathways forward. Accounting continually impacts public policy in what it privileges for selecting and in what it silences and neglects. Given that humans are meaning-making we have choices, and this essay interrogates accounting techniques operating as façades while disguising social impacts. Promoting qualitative accounting research that reimagines these complexities and considers moral contexts is the substance of this essay, for advancing the public interest in accounting.