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Within the interface between power and charity, the purpose of this paper is to enhance an understanding of the role of charities in the administration of poor in local government and to explore how accounting operates in such a context. In this investigation, the paper considers accounting, referring to both financial and non-financial information, inserted in a complex of technologies accomplishing the “government of poverty”.

The paper is based on a historical study referring to the case of MIA, an Italian charity, investigated during the sixteenth-seventeenth centuries, adopting Foucault's “governmentality” framework in a diachronic perspective. This approach, coordinating views coming from Anglo-Foucauldian scholars with alternative Foucault effects expressed in Dean's works, represents a novelty of this investigation.

The paper shows the interface of power (municipality) and charity (MIA) in the “government of poverty”, in a context of ancien regime, pointing out how this interplay was a key element within the “discourse of poor”. The pivotal function of MIA as an “agency of police” and the constitutive role of accounting as a technology of “government of poverty”, representing a social practice able to allow the preservation of the social equilibrium, emerge.

The research is based on a single case study and it shows the need for both comparative and interdisciplinary analysis in order to increase an understanding of the interface of power and charity in ancien regime contexts, as well as in contemporary situations of crisis or emergencies.

For the first time in the accounting history literature, the work presents an extension of “governmentality” analysis into the domain of the “government of poor” through a series of Municipality Orders and their operationalisation by a charity, which adopted accounting to realise a control on people and resources contributing to reach local government equilibrium aims. The work also offers a reference within the contemporary accounting literature in relation to the debate about the role of charities or similar non-profit organizations in the context of the current financial crisis affecting the world, or in situations of emergencies.

The purpose of this paper is to analyse the justifying arguments of various Birmingham organisations between 1870 and 1914 in classifying and treating the unemployed. Using a capability approach, the paper will examine how employment policies in Birmingham during this period promoted or limited capabilities of work, life and voice. Finally, implications for labour market policies today will be discussed.

The theoretical framework for this paper will draw on the capability approach to a person's well‐being, developed by Amartya Sen and on theoretical and empirical developments of the capability approach by other authors such as Bonvin and Salais. This paper is based on historical archival research and analysis.

Birmingham was an exemplar of municipal social reform in late nineteenth century England, with the development of a range of public services such as education, electricity and public transport. However, the city's vision of civic reform was closely connected to the Liberal market logic of individual responsibility, and moral judgements of the unemployed served to multiply the categories and punitive treatments of the “undeserving”, separating the valid from the invalid citizen.

This case study of municipal employment policies in Birmingham at the turn of the twentieth century demonstrates the implications of moral judgements, classifications and treatments of the unemployed for people's capabilities in work and life, drawing connections to discourses of responsibility and citizenship today.

This paper aims to examine the Victorian attitude to the poor by focussing on the health care provided at a large provincial hospital, the Newcastle Infirmary.

The archives of the Newcastle Infirmary are reviewed alongside the local trade directories. These primary sources are examined in conjunction with the writings of contemporary social theorists on poverty.

At a time when poverty was seen as a sin, an act against God, it would be easy to assume that the Victorians faced no moral dilemma in dismissing the poor, particularly what were seen as the “undeserving poor”, out of hand. Yet, the paper observes how accounting was used both to persuade the wealthier citizens to contribute funds and to enable the hospital to exercise compassion in treating paupers despite this being prohibited under the hospital's rules. Such a policy conflicted with the dominant utilitarian view of society, which emphasised the twin pillars of economic expediency and self‐help.

More case studies are needed of other hospitals to ascertain how typical the Newcastle Infirmary was of the voluntary hospital sector as a whole.

Although many histories of British hospitals exist and some have examined how accounting was used to manage within these institutions, the concern has not been with accounting as a moral practice.

The purpose of the paper is to the identify risk factors, which affect oil and gas construction projects in Vietnam and derive risk responses.

Questionnaire survey was conducted with the involvement of project executives of PetroVietnam and statistical analysis was carried out in order to identify the major project risks. Subsequently, mitigating measures were derived using informal interviews with the various levels of management of PetroVietnam.

Bureaucratic government system and long project approval procedures, poor design, incompetence of project team, inadequate tendering practices, and late internal approval processes from the owner were identified as major risks. The executives suggested various strategies to mitigate the identified risks. Reforming the government system, effective partnership with foreign collaborators, training project executives, implementing contractor evaluation using multiple criteria decision‐making technique, and enhancing authorities of project people were suggested as viable approaches.

The improvement measures as derived in this study would improve chances of project success in the oil and gas industry in Vietnam.

There are several risk management studies on managing projects in developing countries. However, as risk factors vary considerably across industry and countries, the study of risk management for successful projects in the oil and gas industry in Vietnam is unique and has tremendous importance for effective project management.

This is a mixed method comparative case study. The aim of this paper is to find the role played by non‐governmental organizations (NGOs) in the implementation of the active labour market policies (ALMPs) of Finland and Sweden, and also the relationship that the NGOs have with the government of the two countries.

Two NGOs were selected in Finland and one NGO was selected in Sweden for the data collection. The two selected NGOs in Finland were Jyväskylän Katulähetys in the City of Jyväskylä and Pirkanmaan Sininauha in the City of Tampere. Meanwhile, the one selected NGO in Sweden was Stockholms Stadsmission in the City of Stockholm. Primary data were collected through questionnaires and interviews, while secondary data were collected from literature reviews, books and internet websites. A total of 130 employees responded to the questionnaires from the two selected NGOs in Finland, while 140 employees responded from the one selected NGO in Sweden. The questionnaires were analyzed using SPSS.

The findings revealed that first, the selected NGOs play active role in the implementation of the ALMPs of Finland and Sweden by employing long‐term unemployed people in the labour market. Second, the findings revealed that the selected NGOs play active role in the implementation of the ALMPs of Finland and Sweden by providing social services, mobilizing local resources and undertaking other types of activities which have created jobs for the unemployed. Last, the findings revealed that the selected NGOs play active role in the implementation of the ALMPs of Finland and Sweden by providing voluntary work to volunteers – some of who acquire skills that can help them to find a job in the open labour market.

The relationship between the NGOs and the Governments of Finland and Sweden was found to be one of partnership cooperation through the local Employment Offices and the City Councils. However, Finland was found to have a more bureaucratic system than Sweden in the implementation of their ALMPs with regard to NGOs. The main similarity between the two countries was that the implementation of ALMPs with regard to NGOs, takes place at the local level through the local Employment Offices and the City Councils. This study concluded that although Finland and Sweden are two “Nordic countries”, the two countries slightly differ in the implementation of their ALMPs with regard to NGOs.

This paper builds on the “Law and Finance” theory and aims to examine the effect of the legal and institutional environment on the governance–performance relationship in the context of non-US firms. More precisely, it examines whether and how the country’s legal system and the level of investor protection interact with the firm-level corporate governance and affect firm performance.

The authors used the “G-Index” governance score developed by the Governance Metrics International rating for a sample of 12,728 firm-year observations from 23 countries over the 2009–2016 period.

The results show that the interaction between the country-level institutions and corporate governance system significantly affect the firm performance. In particular, the findings indicate that firms operating in common law countries tend to exhibit a positive valuation effect and higher performance than firms with a comparable corporate governance level operating in civil law countries. More precisely, the authors find that in common law countries, higher investor protection with enhanced corporate governance is associated with better firm performance. However, firms operating in civil law countries with weaker investor protection and a comparable corporate governance level tend to experience a negative valuation effect.

The findings suggest that the institutional and legal environment is crucial and important in determining the value-maximizing level of good governance practices. Managers and regulators should carefully analyze the cost of these initiatives and should coordinate it with the needs of the country’s legal system. The challenge for the company will be how to adjust its corporate governance strategy according to the needs and demands of the country’s legal system in which the company operates to improve its performance. The regulators should ensure a fit between the specifics of the national legal and institutional environment and corporate governance standards and practices.

The purpose of this paper is to develop a comprehensive framework to identify and classify key medical tourism enablers (MTEs) and to study the direct and indirect effects of each enabler on the growth of medical tourism in India.

In this paper, an integrated approach using interpretive structural modeling (ISM) and Fuzzy Matrice d'Impacts Croisés Multiplication Appliquée á un Classement (FMICMAC) analysis has been developed to identify and classify the key MTEs, typically identified by a comprehensive review of literature and expert opinion. The key enablers are also modeled to find their role and mutual influence.

The key finding of this modeling helps to identify and classify the enablers which may be useful for medical tourism decision makers to employ this model for formulating strategies in order to overcome challenges and to become a preferred medical tourism destination. Integrated model reveals enablers such as medicine insurance coverage, international healthcare collaboration, and efficient information system as dependent enablers. No enabler is found to be autonomous enablers. The important enablers like healthcare infrastructure facilities and global competition are found as the linkage enablers. Research in medicine and pharmaceutical science, medical tourism market, transplantation law, top management commitment, national healthcare policy, competent medical and para-medical staffs are found as the independent enablers. Integrated model also establishes the direct and indirect relationship among various enablers.

The research provides an integrated model using ISM and FMICMAC to identify and classify various key enablers of medical tourism in India. In conventional cross-impact matrix multiplication applied to classification analysis, binary relationship of various enablers is considered. FMICMAC analysis helps to establish possibility of relationship among various enablers so that low-key hidden factors can be identified. The low-key hidden factors may initially exhibit marginal influence but they may show significant influence later on during analysis. The uncertainty and fuzziness of relationship among various enablers can be conveniently handled by FMICMAC and expert opinions can easily be captured. This research will help medical tourism decision makers to select right enablers for the growth of medical tourism in India.

Scandals are a recurring feature of UK financial services and they were probably more common in the 1840s than they are in the 1990s. There is no overwhelming evidence that general financial practice is less ethical than it was and it appears more likely that ethical standards have risen. They are certainly higher than in the Victorian era, for example the ‘railway mania’ of 1845—46 which structurally established large‐scale financial fraud in Britain. During this period, hundreds of railway schemes were launched as a source of enormous fees for promoters, lawyers, engineers and surveyors. Many were never intended to be built, with some promoters (once they had accumulated substantial funds from investors) actively lobbying for their Railway Bills to be rejected by Parliament. However, this relative rise in the ethical standards of contemporary general financial practice will be of little comfort to the thousands of angry investors who have been mis‐sold pensions, or have been victims of modern scandals perpetrated by Peter Clowes, Roger Levitt or Robert Maxwell. Their anger is understandable because modern society expects increasing levels of security from its industries and institutions, and regulation is the medium for achieving this. Despite general trends towards deregulation, in financial services increasing regulation is inevitable, and politically desirable, because of the rising complexity and elaborate nature of exchange relationships. It is the state which is taking on the role of guaranteeing the security of those relationships. It is this guarantor role of the state which ensures that when scandals happen, the anger of victims is not merely directed at the fraudsters, but also at the regulatory system and the government which is responsible for that system.

Since 2008-2009, the governments in France and Great Britain have encouraged more rigorous penalization of tax evaders. This paper aims to investigate the implementation of these policies on the basis of an important and original empirical material.

The study done in France relies on interviews conducted with representatives of law enforcement agencies on public statistics and on an innovative database compiled from nearly 600 cases submitted to the judiciary. The comparison with Great Britain is developed through interviews conducted with different participants in the fight against tax fraud and statistical information.

This paper describes the recent evolution of the machinery for screening tax-related wrongdoings in France and in the UK. It demonstrates that whilst publicly calling for harsh punishment against tax dodgers, in practice, both governments tend to seek a balance between the growing demand for tax equality and the belief that the State should not intervene in the economic realm. This strategy leads to the over-representation of certain categories of taxpayers. Despite the commonalities resulting from the numerous filters before prosecution, the penal strategy takes on two different shapes on either side of the Channel: whereas the British institutions support an “exemplary punitive” system, French regulatory system favours a “quasi-administrative” treatment. The French tax authority continues to use the criminal procedures mainly as a financial instrument for the improved restitution of stolen taxes. The policy of Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs, supported by the “Sentencing Guidelines”, aims much more at obtaining exemplary convictions.

Based on a large empirical material, this paper highlights the different outcomes of the criminal trials against tax evaders in the two countries.

As the forces of globalisation gather pace, national economics are becoming more internationalised and interdependent, and the power of individual nation‐states is being diminished in relative terms. Increasingly, individual countries are less able to control their national economics. One consequence of these developments is that regulatory structures and processes are becoming more internationalised and a variety of modes of global governance is emerging. These shifts in regulatory power are apparent in the growing influence of bodies such as the Basle Committee on Banking Supervision (BCBS); the Financial Action Task Force (FATF); the International Organisation of Securities Commissions (IOSCO); the Organisation of Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD); and the World Trade Organisation (WTO). Similar shifts are facilitated through networks of specific agreements between professional and industry associations, and state‐sanctioned self‐regulatory organisations (in particular through Memoranda of Understanding — MoUs). However, although there is a trend towards growing regulatory harmonisation, different national and cultural influences impact upon national systems of regulation, and in international contexts these values may conflict. Given these developments, it is becoming increasingly important to understand how regulatory structures and standards function in different countries. Two elements that are constant in nearly all jurisdictions are the acknowledgement of public‐interest concerns in regulatory systems and the need for compliance with regulatory standards. This paper considers the issue of regulating against white‐collar crime in the financial services sector in the contexts of promoting regulatory compliance and the representation of notions of the public interest.