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It must surely be universally accepted that corrosion in marine environments is by far the most serious with which to contend, and provides the worst conditions of all, other than a few specialised exceptions of chemically polluted atmospheres in some industrial areas.

Until electronic data interchange (EDI) reaches a business manager audience, it still has inertia to overcome. These are the people who can harness the real advantages that EDI developments provide and to whom the article is addressed. Discusses all the practical problems of implementing EDI, from the initial choice of the type of system to common problems with electronic trading partners. Includes the three main types of EDI systems and the advantages of each, together with some basic design criteria for EDI software. Places emphasis on the impetus that EDI can give to change dated working practices. This is the real commercial secret of EDI.

This study aims to provide insights into US and Australian analysts' views regarding the relative importance of disclosing the direct method (DM) or indirect method (IM) statement of cash flows and forecasting firm performance.

Evidence is collected from responses to 104 surveys and 52 interviews completed by US and Australian analysts from 2017 to 2022. The survey and interview questions are developed with reference to the literature.

US and Australian analysts believe that the DM format provides incremental benefits compared to the IM for (1) confirming the reliability of earnings; (2) improving earnings confidence; (3) more accurate ex ante forecasts of operating cash flow and earnings; and (4) identifying opportunistic accruals manipulation. Analysts view that DM disclosure can lower firm-level cost of equity, although US interviewees more uniformly expect lower costs of equity under DM disclosure when firms yield low earnings quality. DM disclosure is also more important during unstable economic periods, as proxied by COVID-19.

Limited research currently exists regarding disclosure of the DM or IM and its impact on analysts' forecasting accuracy, earnings quality, economic uncertainty and cost of equity. Previous research has relied on archival research to examine differences between the DM and IM methods and are limited by data availability. Our findings are particularly relevant to the US market with few US firms reporting the DM format.

This paper is an initial attempt to discuss the American institutionalist movement as it changed and developed after 1945. Institutionalism in the inter-war period was a relatively coherent movement held together by a set of general methodological, theoretical, and ideological commitments (Rutherford, 2011). Although institutionalism always had its critics, it came under increased attack in the 1940s, and faced challenges from Keynesian economics, a revived neoclassicism, econometrics, and from new methodological approaches derived from various versions of positivism. The institutionalist response to these criticisms, and particularly the criticism that institutionalism “lacked theory,” is to be found in a variety of attempts to redefine institutionalism in new theoretical or methodological terms. Perhaps the most important of these is to be found in Clarence Ayres’ The Theory of Economic Progress (1944), although there were many others. These developments were accompanied by a significant amount of debate, disagreement, and uncertainty over future directions. Some of this is reflected in the early history of The Association for Evolutionary Economics.

Drawing on recent research, which recognises the situated nature of accounting practices, the purpose of this paper is to extend the Burns and Scapens (B&S) framework and to illustrate its potential for studying the situated nature of management accounting practices. The extended framework distinguishes field-level institutions (which the authors term broader institutions) and institutions within the organisation (which the authors term local institutions). To extend the B&S framework the authors draw on recent debates in institutional theory, both new institutional sociology, where the focus is now on the institutional logics perspective, and old institutional economics, where there has been debate about the relationship between institutions and actions.

While the B&S framework focussed on institutions within the organisation, the extended framework explicitly recognises institutions which extend beyond the boundaries of the organisation. It also recognises the way in which rationality and deliberation are related to human agency, as well as the power of specific individuals and/or groups to impose new rules. To illustrate the usefulness of the extended framework the research note draws on a recent study of performance measurement in the Accounting and Finance Groups of the Universities of Groningen and Manchester.

It is argued that local institutions within the organisation combine with the broader institutions to shape the forms of situated rationality which are applied by individuals and groups within the organisation. Different groups within an organisation (e.g. engineers and accountants) can have different forms of situated rationality, and contradictions in these forms of rationality can be a source of institutional change or resistance to change within the organisation, and can explain why accounting changes can by implemented in different ways in different organisations and also in different parts of the same organisation.

The extended framework will be useful for studying: (1) how situated rationalities evolve within an organisation, more specifically how they are shaped by both local and broader institutions; and (2) how prevailing situated rationalities shape the responses to accounting change.

Robert Franklin Hoxie was of the first generation of University of Chicago economists, a figure of significance in his own time. He is often heralded as the first of the Institutional economists and the impetus behind the field of labor economics. Yet today, his contributions appear as mere footnotes in the history of economic thought, when mentioned at all, despite the fact that in his professional and popular writings he tackled some of the most pressing problems of the day. The topics upon which he focused included bimetallism, price theory, methodology, the economics profession, socialism, syndicalism, scientific management, and trade unionism, the last being the field with which he is most closely associated. His work attracted the notice of some of the most famous economists of his time, including Frank Fetter, J. Laurence Laughlin, Thorstein Veblen, and John R. Commons. For all the promise, his suicide at the age of 48 ended what could have been a storied career. This paper is an attempt to resurrect Hoxie through a review of his life and work, placing him within the social and intellectual milieux of his time.

The paper advocates a Darwinian explanation of the process of firm transformation. Existing but generally opposing views related to the selection‐adaptation debates are united to consider the dialogic nature of both approaches. It is argued that a Darwinian approach, as opposed to a neo‐Darwinian or Lamarckian approach, provides the means to scale the sides of a debate that has for too long divided scholars interested in firm and industry transformation.

The paper addresses three specific issues to develop its Darwinian argument. First, the various works of Geoff Hodgson that have for many years advanced Darwin's evolutionary ideas are used to argue the nature and application of Darwinism in the socio‐economic domain. Second, the nature of what constitutes the elements of firm‐environment interaction is considered to establish basic areas of focus through which the process of firm transformation is more understandable. Finally, the construct absorptive capacity is likened to a mechanism of transmission through which the learning processes associated with the acquisition of favoured variations can be reconciled with the generic evolutionary processes of variation, selection, and retention.

To understand the process of firm learning, the role of habits and routines must be outlined in specific detail. They cannot be assumed to perform interacting and replicating roles simultaneously. To do so undermines the fundamental qualities of an evolutionary theory.

The preliminary framework advanced takes us beyond the Darwinian‐Lamarckian debate and provides elements of focus from which a greater understanding of the process of firm/industry transformation is possible.