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The procedural and administrative aspects of UK tendering have remained largely unaltered for decades but this may soon change in light of the recent review of the construction sector, headed by Sir Michael Latham. This paper presents findings of a nationwide survey of UK construction contractors assessing their opinion of the Latham procurement recommendations, along with their opinion of the authors' proposals for alternative selection procedure. Contractor usage/opinion of current tendering methods, tendering documentation and contractual arrangements are also identified. Analysis techniques primarily involve the derivation of contractor preference, agreement and importance indices (Pri, Agi and Imi respectively). Results show that clients are attempting to cut costs by increased use of open tendering coupled with plan and specification tender documentation, but that savings are offset by clients ultimately paying for contractors' costs associated with their achieving contract award for only 1 in 5 bids. Generally, contractors are in tune with the ideals of the Latham review and characteristics pertaining to the HOLT (Highlight Optimum Legitimate Tender) selection technique.

A quantitative contractor selection technique which embraces the pre‐qualification, evaluation and final selection processes is being developed. The emphasis is on evaluating contractors' performance potential in terms of their ability to achieve time, cost and quality standards. This approach is in contrast to the majority of current selection techniques which tend to prequalify, then discriminate predominantly on the cost component of tenders. The conceptual model is applied to a hypothetical but realistic scenario of a contractor competing for a small industrial contract. This illustrates the mechanics of the new technique, emphasizing that contractor selection should include identifying the contractor with the best performance potential and not merely the lowest bidder.

A programme of introducing teamworking into the business was undertaken at BICC Cables, a leading cable manufacturer. Teamworking allowed managers to combine their efforts in dealing with business strategy and organizational change, and to implement changes in a spirit of common purpose and shared responsibility. Team development provided the necessary catalyst for improved relationships and purposefulness, whilst a focus on actions and follow‐up generated a great deal of successfully implemented changes in a relatively short time.

This is a study of how members of Alcoholics Anonymous (AA) produce their talk, using the principles of ethnomethodological conversation analysis. The focus is on two interralated phenomena of the openings of turns. Recurrently, the first words of the turns, i.e., greetings and self‐identification, are followed with a resonse space during which members display their orientation to coparticipants through allusions to prior speakers. Positive references to prior speakers are stated directly and addressed explicitly, typically through a phrase such as: “I identified with X and what X said,” wheras critical remarks are stated implicitly and without any address. Through this procedure, members establish their individual position in each meeting without posing challenges to other members. The allusions occasions initiation of a subsequent topic of the turn that characteristically is biographically relevant for the speaker. This procedure of organization of talk permits AA meetings to handle delicate issues in a sociable, nonconfrontive way.

The paper provides a theoretical framework for interdisciplinary accounting scholars interested in performances of accountability in front of live audiences.

This is a processual case study of “Falkirk in crisis” that covers the period from September 2021 to September 2022. The focus of this paper is two-fan-Q&A sessions held in October 2021 and June 2022. Both are naturally occurring discussions between two groups such as are found in previous research on routine events and accountability. This is a theoretically consequential case study.

A key insight of the paper is to identify the practical and symbolic dimensions of accountability. The paper demonstrates the need to align these two dimensions when responding to questions: a practical question demands a practical answer and a symbolic question requires a symbolic answer. Second, the paper argues that most fields contain conflicting logics and highlights that a complete performance of accountability needs to cover the different conflicting logics within the field. In this case, this means paying full attention to both the communitarian and results logics. A third finding is that a performance of accountability cannot succeed if the audience rejects attempts to impose an unpalatable definition of the situation. If these three conditions are not met, the performance is bound to fail.

An important theoretical coontribution of the study is the application of Jeffery Alexander’s work on political performance to public performances of accountability.

The phenomenon explored in the paper (what the authors term “grassroots accountability”) has broad applicability to any situation in organizational or civic life where the power apex of an organization is required to engage with a group of informed and committed stakeholders – the “community”. For those who find themselves in the position of the fans in this study, the observations set out in the empirical narrative can serve as a useful practical guide. Attempts to answer a practical complaint with a symbolic answer (or vice versa) should be challenged as evasive.

This paper studies an engagement of elite actors with ordinary (or grassroots) actors. The study shows important rules of engagement, including the importance of respecting the power of practical questions and the need to engage with these questions appropriately.

This paper offers a new vista for interdisciplinary accounting by synthesizing the accountability literature with the political performance literature. Specifically, the paper employs Jeffery Alexander’s work on practical and symbolic performance to study the microprocesses underpinning successful and unsuccessful performances of accountability.

An examination of insider trading before and after the announcement of Credit Watch placements sheds new light on the study of both bond rating changes and insider trading. This paper utilizes Credit Watch placements classified by 11 indentifiable trigger events for the years 1981‐1990. We find significant insider purchases before positive implication placements, but no sales before negative implication placements. Among individual trigger events, we observe significant insider purchases before and after placements due to improved operating performance, bidding on a firm with a higher debt rating and firms increasing their debt‐to‐equity ratios. Significant insider purchases are found before placements due to purchasing assets. Significant insider sales are found before and after placements due to poor operating performance.

This paper collects together quotations and extracts from 19th and 20th century thinkers who were little-known for being supporters of workplace democracy.