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The purpose of this paper is to examine the relationship between accounting and the early roots of the nation‐state in mid nineteenth‐century Siam/Thailand.

First, the paper examines the theoretical inter‐relationship between accounting and nationalism. Second, it relates this theoretical understanding to a study of the changing concepts, methods and structures of indigenous Siamese accounting at a time of transition when foreign mercantile influence was beginning to have an impact on the mid nineteenth^‐century Siamese economy. Third, the paper analyses how these accounting structures and practices came to constitute a socio‐political instrument, which contributed to the administrative development of a Siamese dynastic state by the mid nineteenth‐century. Finally, the paper studies the ways in which this dynastic state began to promote national characteristics through the use of its accounts to create a sense of Siamese cultural identity.

The findings emphasise the important role of accounting in the construction of political and national identity.

This inter‐disciplinary paper highlights a general neglect in the accounting literature of the instrumental role of accounting in nation‐state formation as well as offering a re‐interpretation of Thai historiography from an accounting viewpoint. Moreover as an example of alternative accounting practice, this paper provides an analysis of indigenous accounting methods and structures in mid nineteenth‐century Siam/Thailand at the point when they were becoming increasingly influenced by foreign mercantilism.

The Sri Lanka Telecommunications company was recently partially privatised and a major Japanese company became responsible for its management. Previously, it was a government department characterised by rule bound, bureaucratic management and political interventions into operational issues. The longitudinal study illustrates how a Japanese manager's charismatic and patrimonial leadership eliminated bureaucratic controls, brought new management controls and reward systems, and achieved some commercial success. However, some employees unsympathetic to the changes allied with politicians frustrated with their exclusion from organisational affairs to get the Japanese manager removed and restore formal bureaucracy. This was achieved not through direct intervention but largely through the politicians' control of the regulatory system. Conflicts between the two competing management control ideologies were profound and violent. The paper traces how modes of production and management accounting and controls in less developed countries are related, and are transformed in an unpredictable and often unexpected fashion due to cultural, economic, and political factors.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the claim that Western accounting reforms, in particular the adoption of International Public Sector Accounting Standards (IPSASs) would enhance transparency and accountability and reduce corruption in patronage-based developing countries such as Nigeria.

The paper utilises the patron/clientelism framework to examine the dynamics of Western accounting reforms in the Nigerian patronage-based society, in which the institutions of governance and regulatory structures are arguably weak. The paper utilises archival data and interviews conducted with representatives of state bodies (elected politicians and officials) and professional accounting associations.

Results from two major reforms (the sale of government-owned residential properties in Lagos and the monetisation of fringe benefits for public officials) are presented. Despite the claim of the adoption of Western accounting standards, and in particular IPSAS 17, which requires full accrual accounting and the utilisation of fair value in property valuation, historical cost accounting appeared to have been mobilised to massively corrupt the process for the benefit of politicians, other serving and retired public officials and family members.

This study contributes to the current literature by providing evidence of the relationship between patronage, corruption and accounting in wealth redistribution in the patronage-based Nigerian socio-political and economic context.

This article examines the interaction between Western leadership and authority practices and those of a non‐Western culture in their managerial and organizational contexts. Specifically, it examines the mechanism for organizational commitment through the use of a non‐Western authority relationship in a Western organization situated in a non‐Western culture. Data concerning the experience of an organizational change in a non‐Western cultural context fail to confirm some of the ideas advanced in the divergence and convergence thesis. An alternative framework for conceptualizing the process of interaction and outcome of organizational development in situations of cross‐cultural transfer and application of management practices is proposed.

Examines the interaction between Western leader ship and authority practices and those of a non Western culture (Nigeria) in their managerial and or ganisational context. Data concerning the experience of an organisational change in a non‐Western cultural context fail to confirm some of the ideas advanced in the convergence and divergence theses. An alternative framework for conceptualising the process of interaction and outcome of organisational development in situations of cross‐cultural transfer and application of management practices is proposed.

The paper aims to examine accounting changes in the Ashanti Gold Corporation (AGC) in Ghana over 120 years from pre-colonialism to recent times and whether the framework of management accounting transformations in Hopper et al. (2009) is applicable.

Mixed data sources are used, namely, interviews, some observations of practices, historical documentation, company reports and research papers and theses. The results are categorised according to the periods and contextual factors in the Hopper et al. framework to test whether it matches the data collected.

Despotic controls with minimal management accounting but stewardship accounting to the head office in London prevailed under colonialism. Upon independence state, capitalist policies descended into politicised state capitalism. Under nationalisation, the performance of mines deteriorated, and accounting became decoupled from operations. In the early 1980s, fiscal crises forced Ghana’s government to turn to the World Bank and International Monetary Fund for loans. This period marked a gradual transformation of AGC into a foreign multinational, organised along divisional lines and currently exercises despotic control through supply chain management that renders labour precarious and is neglectful of corporate social accounting issues.

The work challenges neo-classical economic prescriptions and analyses of accounting in developed countries by indicating its neglect of the interests of other stakeholders, especially labour and civil society. Accounting is important for development but the article infers other forms may better serve the public interest.

The paper tests the Hopper et al. framework with respect to a large private multinational in the commodity sector over an extended period, which differs from the case studies drawn on originally.

The purpose of this paper is to discuss the causes and circumstances of what has become systemic corruption in Vietnam, and the reasons why the moves taken by the regime to combat it have been largely ineffective so far.

The paper offers a commentary based on published secondary sources.

The paper concludes that the immediate prospects for any substantial reduction in the level of corruption in Vietnam appear to be bleak. Endemic corruption, especially in the form of elite rent-seeking, is likely to remain strong. However, the paper sketches two more possible scenarios on anti-corruption prospects in the country for the intermediate future.

The paper relies on secondary sources in providing a macro-level discussion of corruption in Vietnam.

Gives a deliberately cynical view on the requirements of managers for succeeding in a bureaucracy where personal moral standards must be adapted to fit the prevailing culture in politics, style, patronage, etc. For example, social expertise is valued more than the ability to meet targets. In general, the distinction between the Protestant Work Ethic and the bureaucratic ethic is emphasized in favour of the latter.

The paper aims to present a systematic conceptual analysis of the problem of organizational goal and to reduce the insights into it provided by the main conceptions taken in their development from one to another, to break out of the ruling paradigm and outline a new solution.

The study has been carried out from the historical and critical perspective.

The paper discovers the logic of the evolution the approaches to organizational goals have undergone and portrays it in a matrix form in the heart of which is the “zigzag effect”: each posterior stage returns to the essential elements rejected by those preceding it, and the last stage, being diametrically opposite to the first, is, at that, as well as the latter, akin to the intermediate stages. The opportunities afforded by the current paradigm have been exhausted and it seems to run to an impasse. Instead, the author suggests a new frame of orientation: organizational goals are closely interknit with personal, but not reducible to them and bear fundamentally transpersonal character, while the mechanism of involving the preferences of individuals and groups in goal-setting is based on the self-contained interests of the organization they pertain to.

The findings, conclusions and generalizations obtained can serve for a necessary ground to researchers getting deeper into the essence of what bonds organizational life and activity.

The material empowers practitioners to comprehend the difficulties of framing cohesive goal and find efficient ways to overcome them. It is of value also to the teachers seeking to present a more exact and elaborate view of teleological foundations of management and organization theory.

Both the conceptual analysis of the evolution of the approaches to organizational goals and the author’s exposition of its logic and vision of their nature are provided for the first time.

Based on the cognitive bias theory, this study aims to explore the relationship among the size of new ventures, entrepreneurial experience and organizational decentralization.

This study uses 175 entrepreneurial companies in the Bohai Bay Rim as samples. The hypotheses are tested through partial least squares (PLS).

A clear positive relationship is found between size and organizational decentralization, and entrepreneurial experience is found to have a negative effect on this relationship.

The influences of other variables at the organizational level on organizational decentralization are not taken into consideration, and the measurement of entrepreneurial experience is not accurate enough.

This study also has practical implications. Compared with inexperienced entrepreneurs, experienced entrepreneurs do not always have many advantages. Entrepreneurs should decentralize power at the right time in the process of expanding their businesses and continuously reflect and learn, instead of exaggerating their own intelligence, consequently making more rational decisions.

This study has three theoretical implications. First, it provides a theoretical implication for understanding the characteristics of changes in the organizational decentralization of new ventures, which enriches the literature on organizational decentralization in the field of entrepreneurship. Second, it derives theoretical implications for understanding the role of organizational size in organizational development. Third, this study, which applies the cognitive bias theory to assess the effect of entrepreneurial experience, helps supplement existing research on the relationship between entrepreneurial experience and new ventures.