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As Lindsay (1994, 1995) encourages validation of existing results, this research replicates Guilding and McManus (2002) in a New Zealand (NZ) context. The usage and perceived merit of customer accounting practices were lower in NZ than in the Australian study. Few of the regressions where customer accounting usage and perceived merit were dependent variables revealed a statistically significant role for competition intensity and market orientation. There was some minor support for the perceived merit of customer accounting being higher in companies experiencing medium levels of competition intensity.

The Balanced Scorecard (BSC), first introduced by Kaplan and Norton in 1992, is described as a comprehensive performance measurement system as well as a strategic management tool. Over the past decade, the BSC has attracted increasing attention in mainstream management accounting research. A review of the literature identifies five main areas of criticism relating to the BSC. Using particularly Nørreklit’s (2000, 2003) criticisms of the BSC’s assumptions, this research gained views (using both a pilot and follow up survey of New Zealand companies) on the number and titles of perspectives in the BSC; the existence and understanding of cause‐and‐effect relationships; whether or not the BSC was perceived as a strategic control model; the number of performance measures and perceptions of the ability to judge performance based on those measures; and the credibility and effectiveness of the BSC as a management solution. The findings show that the BSC is not used extensively by the firms studied but those that do use it take full advantage of the BSC’s flexibility, using broader perspective names, as needed, to incorporate the desired aspects of organisational performance. There appears to be no concern over whether the cause‐and‐effect relationships meet a set of academic criteria relating to empirical verification and logical independence. However, Nørreklit’s (2000) criticism that the BSC fails to increase strategy awareness finds some support. The findings also contradict the suggestion that the BSC necessitates an excessive number of performance measures which could be detrimental to managerial performance evaluation. Finally, the criticism that the BSC is merely a trend, popularised by management consulting firms, is also not supported.

As there is scant research outside Japan on the implementation of target costing, the purpose of this research is to examine target costing practices in New Zealand.

A mail questionnaire survey was sent to 80 New Zealand manufacturers, with a response rate of 31 (39 per cent).

A total of 12 of the 31 respondents use target costing. Findings on the use of target costing that contrast with or add to prior studies include the following: target costing is being applied to existing products; the manufacturing department is highly involved in target costing; the involvement of suppliers in target costing is relatively low; considerable adjustments are made to the calculated allowable costs, especially in order to assist sales of future products and to ensure the achievement of target costs; and higher achievement of target costs is associated with higher firm performance. The goals of target costing and the departments involved in the practice were similar to those in prior studies.

The sample size and minimal number of firms actually using target costing has made it difficult to obtain statistically significant results. The survey method prevents follow‐up questions and clarification of ambiguities. Single measures of performance and strategy were used.

This survey provides academic researchers and teachers and firms implementing or using target costing systems with a greater understanding of how target costing is being used by New Zealand manufacturers, as well as adding to the scant research on target costing outside Japan.

This paper presents the results of a survey of the use of the balanced scorecard in New Zealand companies. The top 40 companies on the New Zealand Stock Exchange (NZSE40) were chosen as the survey population. A 62.5% response rate was achieved. One hundred percent of respondents indicated that they have knowledge of the balanced scorecard. Sixty‐one percent and 65% of the respondents reported that they use a balanced scorecard at organisational and divisional level, respectively. The results indicate that financial performance measures continue to dominate non‐financial measures in terms of importance. In addition to further developing the literature on the balanced scorecard, the research provides opportunities to investigate balanced scorecard implementations in New Zealand in more depth.

Economics is catering to a diverse student cohort. This cohort needs to be equipped with transformative concepts that students can integrate beyond university. When a curriculum is content-driven, threshold concepts are a useful tool in guiding curriculum re-design. The paper aims to discuss these issues.

The evidence for this pedagogic need can be seen in the UK’s higher education economics curriculum framework which is formulated around the threshold concepts of economics. Through a literature review of the application of threshold concepts in economics, the researcher has systematically re-designed an entry-level economics course. This research has been applied to the course structure, the learning and teaching activities, as well as the assessments. At the end of the semester, students students were surveyed on the student experience of the curriculum design and the course activities. The course grades noted the achievement of the students’ learning outcomes.

When comparing the survey responses and the student course results to the previous semesters, there is a significant improvement in student experience as well as student learning outcomes of the course curriculum.

This research provides curriculum developers with a benchmark and the tools required to transform economics curricula.

An engaging, transformative and integrative entry-level economics course is often the only exposure most business graduates have to the economics way of thinking and practice.

This is the first comprehensive study that applies a curriculum re-design based on threshold concepts across an entry-level economics course.

Discussions of ethics and Artificial Intelligence (AI) usually revolve around the ethical implications of the use of AI in multiple domains, ranging from whether machine learning trained algorithms may encode discriminatory standards for face recognition, to discussions of the implications of using AI as a substitute for human intelligence in warfare. In this chapter, I will focus on one particular strand of ethics and AI that is often neglected: whether we can use the methods of AI to build or train a system which can reason about moral issues and act on them. Here, I discuss (1) what an “artificial conscience” consists of and what it would do, (2) why we collectively should build one soon given the increasing use of AI in multiple areas, (3) how we might build one in both architecture and content, and (4) concerns about building an artificial conscience and my rejoinders. Given the increasing importance of artificially intelligent semi- or fully autonomous systems and platforms for contemporary warfare, I conclude that building an artificial conscience is not only possible but also morally required if our autonomous teammates are to collaborate fully with human soldiers on the battlefield.

The purpose of this paper is to examines the positive and negative impact of service provider experiences on the process of identity adjustment and how they can lead to subjective well-being (SWB). Due to increased life expectancies, people are experiencing major life events during aging (e.g. death of a spouse, serious disease and major health problems), events that lead to identity redefinition.

To gain more insight into this issue, a qualitative study was carried out that involved 37 in-depth interviews conducted with aging individuals who had experienced a major life event such as retirement and/or death of spouse. To apprehend the diversity of consumption situations, the authors investigated daily consumption, hedonic consumption and imposed services (e.g. health and funeral services) due to life events.

The findings suggest that service providers influence consumer’s SWB as regards relationships, growth and purpose in life, mastery and independence and self-acceptance.

The contribution indicates that services play a role in maintaining and/or creating SWB. By segmentation through social roles and facilitating access to services, providers must take into account the processes of normalcy and abandonment (déprise) among aging consumers in life transitions. They must also ensure that they support consumers with the lowest human capital (skills, level of education, income and social class).