Search results

Earthworks are the embankments and cuttings that allow a railway to maintain a certain line, level and grade through the landscape. Earth embankments consist of an engineered bank of earth that carries the railway above the natural ground. A cutting is used to carry the railway through ground with a natural level above the line of the railway. Modern (post 1960s) earthworks are carefully engineered to perform well. However, many railways run on earthworks that were constructed over 100 years ago without the use of mechanised plant. The quality of construction of older earthworks was often poor compared with present-day engineering practice. Ageing of the earthwork structures, and the greater demands of heavier and faster trains and climatic change, means that earthworks suffer ultimate and serviceability failures that can present operational difficulties. Older earthworks that fail or do not perform well require maintenance and repair, and sometimes complete replacement. This chapter explores the main engineering considerations for modern earthworks, and the challenges associated with older earthworks including their modes of failure and upgrade and repair.

This paper suggests that a corporate-environmental food regime is emerging as part of a larger restructuring of capitalism. Like past food regimes, it reflects specific social and political compromises, which I interpret through the social movement concept of interpretive frames. The diasporic-colonial food regime of 1870–1914 grew up in response to working class movements in Europe, and created a historically unprecedent class of commercial family farmers. When world markets collapsed, those farmers entered into new alliances, including one that led to the mercantile-industrial food regime of 1947–1973. Lineaments of a new food regime based on quality audited supply chains seems to be emerging in the space opened by impasse in international negotiations over food standards. Led by food retailers, agrofood corporations are selectively appropriating demands of environmental, food safety, animal welfare, fair trade, and other social movements that arose in the interstices of the second food regime. If it consolidates, the new food regime promises to shift the historical balance between public and private regulation, and to widen the gap between privileged and poor consumers as it deepens commodification and marginalizes existing peasants. Social movements are already regrouping and consolidation of the regime remains uncertain.

This study uses a descriptive casual design and survey random sampling from 115 observations from five-star, four-star and three-star hotels due to the fact that they provide employee staff feeding or complimentary service. The Pearson correlation and multiple regression were used to test the direct and mediating effects for linear relationships between income tax and financial performance. Tax on adjusted net income has a significant effect on net income and non-significant effect on return on asset (ROA). This means that the level of income tax paid by the hotels after reintegration of non-deductible charges including complimentary staff feeding and other allowances reduced their assets and turnover in general thus slowing reinvestment. The findings reveal that firm liquidity had a significant effect on ROA. This indicates that the income tax pay-out decreases hotels’ cash flow resulting on loan diversification leverage. Shareholders are therefore forgoing their shares for reinvestment in different businesses other than hotels. The findings also reveal a significant effect of firms’ age on income tax on hotels’ financial performance. Simply paying income taxes is not lowered by the hotels’ age thus endorsing the concept of paying tax when income is available and vice versa when there is no income. Since Rwanda promotes investment and doing business for the private sector, the tax base increases the tax collection amount instead of collecting a small amount on a few number of tax paying hotels. This commends the tax administration review and frequently harmonised the tax procedures to hospitality sector and is the key development of their financial performance, which had been used by the hotels of the developed countries like the USA and Europe. This will improve Rwanda’s competitiveness in hotel induction and sustain hospitality business investment with tax base for government. It was pragmatic that hotels may directly deduct all related expenses before income tax calculation while others assimilate them into other similar expenditures. There is no formal way for accounting these hotel expenses, whereas the category of staffs benefitting are mainly junior staffs who, in turn, are low-wage holders. This does not leave space for hotel owners to take out incentives therefore leaving out hotels’ darkness in their earnings returns and staff welfare. This chapter presented the directorial policy, philosophy and practices in tourism or hospitality (hotel) sector in Africa. It has become relevant for harmonisation of financial performance while including all life cycle practices of hotels like staff feeding or complimentary service. This chapter is classified as an empirical study.

We conduct an experiment to examine the occurrence of the bystander effect on willingness to report a fraudulent act. Specifically, we investigate the impact of evidence strength on managers’ decisions to blow the whistle in the presence and absence of other employees who have knowledge of the wrongdoing. Results indicate that when there is strong evidence indicating a fraudulent act, individuals with sole knowledge are more likely to report than when others are aware of the fraudulent act (the bystander effect). However, the bystander effect is not found when evidence of fraud is weak. Further, a mediated moderation analysis indicates that perceived personal responsibility to report mediates the relation between others’ awareness of the questionable act and reporting likelihood, suggesting that the bystander effect is driven by diffusion of responsibility. Our results have implications for all types of organizations that wish to mitigate the detrimental effect of fraud. Specifically, training or incentives may be necessary to overcome the bystander effect in an organization.

Various authors allege that the theory of group selection is inconsistent with methodological individualism, and therefore analysts must reject at least one of these principles. The present article argues for their compatibility. The meaning of methodological individualism is clarified, and the new version of group selection (articulated by Wilson & Sober, 1994, 1998) is explained. The two principles are then incorporated into a single methodological approach. Group selection affects the assumptions made about the kind of individuals who populate social scientific models, while methodological individualism requires models’ conclusions to follow from the actions and interactions of those individuals.

The literature on labor-managed firms identifies the source of under-capitalization in the Furubotn–Pejovich effect. Appropriable capital accounts can counteract the horizon problem, but they engender little-examined problems connected with the distribution, reinvestment, and reimbursement of net surpluses. This paper proposes that the introduction of cooperative bonds would provide a better match between the horizons of members and their firms. However, bonds generate risks of their own due to capital variability, thus requiring the imposition of various constraints and the retention of appropriate levels of collective reserves. Finally, a hierarchy of liabilities is proposed to protect parties who undergo information disadvantages.

This chapter combines quantitative studies of the connections between stressors and performance in accounting settings and identifies the mediators and moderators of stressors–performance relationships. Using meta-analyses and path analyses, this research compiles 72 studies to investigate the relationships of stressors with accountant and auditor performance. As hypothesized, bivariate meta-analyses results indicate that work-related stressors negatively affect performance, and burnout and stress are negatively related to performance, whereas motivation is positively related to performance. Moreover, a meta-analytical structural equation modeling indicates that role stressors have significant direct and indirect effects (through burnout and stress) on job performance. Accumulation of multiple samples through meta-analysis bolsters statistical power compared to single-sample studies and thus reveals the sign of residual direct effects of role stressors on job performance in accounting settings.