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This performance autoethnography may or may not be interpreted as a continuation of a conversation regarding the experiences of those with devalued statuses in academic settings. The authors rely on “strange accounting” to consider their experiences in the academy from various standpoints: before and after promotion, before and after leaving academia. While reflecting on our past experiences, we introduce the concept of “everyday precariousness” as a way of explaining the normalization of instability, insecurity, and negative affect that is part of everyday life for those with devalued statuses in academic settings and beyond. Everyday precariousness is an embodied experience for those in vulnerable positions. Normalized exposure to risks, such as discrimination, harassment, bullying, or structural instability, produces an undercurrent of threat that permeates academic culture. Our stories of everyday precariousness span race, ethnicity, class, academic roles, and gender boundaries (among many others). Analyzing these experiences furthers previous work on the uses of strange accounting as well as the dynamics of status silencing. In the final analysis, unresisted and unabated, everyday precariousness and status silencing can lead to institutional failure and resonance disasters.

This autoethnography takes up the matter of toxic masculinity in university settings. We introduce the term “status silencing” as a way to make visible the normalization of toxic masculinity in everyday talk and interaction in university settings among and around colleagues. Status silencing is the process in which the status of a dominant individual becomes a context which renders the story of an individual with a subordinated status untellable or untold. Using strange accounting, we explore active and passive types of status silencing to show how talk and interactions involving toxic masculinity are both internalized and externalized expressions of power and dominance. We argue that while most scholars view toxic masculinity as blatant acts of violence (mass shootings, rape and sexual assault, etc.), it is also a normalized occurrence for feminized others and that toxic masculinity in academic settings is part of an ongoing institutional norm of silence.

The purpose of this paper is to describe an AI (Artificial Intelligence) that can “think like an African traditional doctor”. The system proposes to model and to use attitudes taken and concepts used by African traditional doctors when facing cases. It is designed to go deep into the concepts of African traditional medicine (ATM) by dealing with all the possible interpretations of those concepts, and to produce more much satisfying and accurate support for medical diagnosis and prescription than existing systems.

To take into account the sometimes strange concepts used and attitudes taken by African traditional healers, including mystical considerations, the system relies on a deep ontology describing all those concepts and attitudes in a more computer readable manner allowing a multi-agent system to have full access to ATM knowledge. Ethnological inquiries, literary analysis and interviews of traditional doctors (the holders of African medicine knowledge) were performed to gather sufficient data to achieve the work.

The paper addresses this question of how to build a practical large-scope computer-aided diagnosis and prescription system which can exploit deep descriptions of ATM concepts, including mystical considerations. The system also provides scientific interpretations to some concepts sometimes considered as mystical facts. It is a java web-based platform combined to a Java Agent Development framework multi-agent system accessing an ontology to provide its results.

Because of the origins of healers involved in this research (from Gabon and Cameroon, countries of Central Africa), the ontology and the collected data may lack generalizability in the African scope and then it is a prototype. Therefore, ATM experts all over the continent are encouraged to participate to improve and standardize the ATM ontology and to populate the knowledge base. On the other side, the system cannot give scientific explanations to all the mystical considerations in ATM, there still some facts which cannot be rationally explained for now.

The paper demonstrates the practical usability of the implemented system on the diagnosis and the treatment of a patient case.

The research describes a system which once validated by traditional experts, will serve as a tool to assist them in their day-to-day diagnosis and prescription tasks and will also serve as a reference on ATM practices for all interested users.

The paper provides an in-depth description of a computer-aided diagnosis system (CADS) that promotes indigenous technology from an African perspective. Comparing to the former systems identified in the literature, the proposed system is the first which deals with believes and mystical considerations in ATM, and also the first which provides a function to rank its results.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the issue of compliance with a voluntary professional Code of Practice. It aims to take service charge management as its subject and it also to discuss how current notions of “best practice” have evolved in order to explain the poor performance uncovered. From this it seeks to derive an alternative perspective and develop a new framework for managing agents to consider utilising in order to advance the generalised principles within the existing RICS Code of Practice, Service Charges in Commercial Property.

The paper applies an inductive reasoning by applying best practice from other disciplines (the specific) to commercial property (hence arguing for their adoption to the general). It utilises a critical review of the secondary literature on the wider aspects of best practice and original data on commercial service charge management to devise an ideal type framework for accounting for service charge moneys.

It provides an idealised conceptual framework for managing agents to consider applying to their management of the service charge process, specifically with regard to accounting issues therein. The paper is not proposing a definitive adoption of accruals accounting, but provides an analysis of the potential advantages – and problems. The intention of this work is to drive consultation for better practice, rather than provide a de facto template for adoption.

The work relies on data previously generated by the authors, and produces an original template and example for the practitioner. The work's primary value is that it proposes an innovative approach to the occupation of the commercial service charge manager. Within this, it also offers advice to the wider profession on how to better regulate the discipline. While the proposed approach offers advantages over the existing best practice paradigm, it generates its own conceptual problems that will need to be considered by professionals.

A striking feature of Jaques' work is his “no nonsense” attitude to the “manager‐subordinate” relationship. His blunt account of the origins of this relationship seems at first sight to place him in the legalistic “principles of management” camp rather than in the ranks of the subtler “people centred” schools. We shall see before long how misleading such first impressions can be, for Jaques is not making simplistic assumptions about the human psyche. But he certainly sees no point in agonising over the mechanism of association which brings organisations and work‐groups into being when the facts of life are perfectly straightforward and there is no need to be squeamish about them.

OUT of the chaos of war and the further burdens immediately “peace broke out” came at least one glorious birth—the German novel. 1870—the German nation; 1919—the German novel…. Superficially, the antithesis is not without truth; at no time could it be said that pre‐war Germany kept pace with its Gallic and English neighbours in achieving great masterpieces of fiction: the pre‐war German novel, indeed, was popularly about as non‐existent as drama in Scotland or poetry in France. Nor, where it did exist, was its form other than merely plastic,—the conventional “novel of manners,” for instance, if it was really desired at all, seemed continually to be eluding Germany. Pre‐war novel writing Germany, in a word, was a complete paradox—Gilbertian and Chestertonian at the same time; for the very theories which might have been requisitioned to account for this strange phenomenon seem themselves of an almost contradictory nature.

This paper provides evidence on the impact of regulatory environment on financial reporting quality of transitional economies. This study compares the financial reporting quality of Hong Kong firms which are cross-listed in mainland China with those of Hong Kong firms cross-listed in China using specific earnings management metrics (earnings smoothing, timely loss recognition, value relevance and managing towards earnings targets) under pre- and post-IFRS regimes.

The financial reporting quality of Chinese A-share companies and Hong Kong listed companies are examined using earnings management measures. Using 2007 as base year, the study used a cumulative of −5 and +5 years of convergence experience which provide a total of 3,000 firm-year observations. In addition to regression analyses, we used the difference-in-difference analysis to check for the impact of regulatory environments on earnings management.

Through the lens of contingency theory, our results indicate that the adoption of the new substantially IFRS-convergent accounting standards in China results in better financial reporting quality evidenced by less earning management. The empirical results further shows that accounting data are more value relevant for Hong Kong listed firms, and that firms listed in China are more likely to engage in accrual-based earnings management than in real earnings management activities. We established that different earnings management practices that are seemingly tolerable in one country may not be tolerable in another due to level of differences in the regulatory environments.

The findings show that Hong Kong listed companies’ exhibit higher level of financial reporting quality than Chinese listed companies, which implies that the financial reporting quality under IFRS can be significantly different in regions with different institutional, economic and regulatory environments. The results imply that contingent factors such as country’s institutional structures, its extent of regulation and the strength of its investor protection environments impact on financial reporting quality particularly in transitional and emerging economies. As such, these factors need to be given appropriate considerations by financial reporting regulators and policy-makers interested in controlling earnings management practices among their corporations.

This study is a high impact study considering that China plays a significant role in today’s globalised economy. This study is unique as it the first, that we are aware of, to compare real earnings activities against accrual-based earnings management in pre- and post-IFRS adoption periods within the Chinese and Hong Kong financial reporting environments, distinguishing between cross-listed and non-cross-listed firms.