bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025_split huggingface dataset:
Market‐orientated accounting: information for product‐level decisions
Authors: Inglis Robert , Clift Robert 
Published: April 2008

PurposeThe paper's purpose is to explore and describe the interface between the customer component of a market orientation and the accounting information used in making product‐level decisions.Design/methodology/approachExploratory/descriptive organisational case study of a multi‐function product decision‐making setting. Development of a model of the customer‐accounting information requirements of a market orientation.FindingsDescribes how customer‐orientated product decisions are guided by managers' shared understanding of product‐attributes and conceptions of a “product” as a “bundle of attributes, benefits or characteristics”. Describes the limited accounting function involvement in product‐decisions and the use of customer‐orientated and non‐financial decision criteria.Practical implicationsA market‐orientated approach to business has been associated with increased business performance. The identification and integration of information from the management accounting discipline facilitates the understanding of the resource costs of satisfying individual customer needs and assists in operational level decisions. The authors highlight potential barriers to the integration of customer‐orientated accounting information in product decisions.Originality/valueThere remains a scarcity of marketing and management accounting interdisciplinary case research at the product‐attribute decision‐making level. The organisational study provides an insight into the decision‐making information and processes at the market orientation and management accounting interface. A framework and suggestions for the further development of interfunctional product‐level decision‐making are provided.
Life cycle costing: a review of published case studies
Authors: Korpi Eric , Ala‐Risku Timo 
Published: April 2008

PurposeDespite existing life cycle costing (LCC) method descriptions and practicable suggestions for conducting LCC analyses, no systematic analyses on actual implementations of LCC methods exist. This paper aims to review reports on LCC applications to provide an overview of LCC uses and implementation feasibility.Design/methodology/approachA review of LCC cases reported in academic and practitioner literature. Case reports were compared against one another and against the defining articles in the field.FindingsMost of the reported LCC applications were far from ideal. Compared to the methods suggested in the literature many of the case study applications: covered fewer parts of the whole life cycle, estimated the costs on a lower level of detail, used cost estimation methods based on expert opinion rather than statistical methods, and were content with deterministic estimates of life cycle costs instead of using sensitivity analyses.Research limitations/implicationsThis review is limited to reported LCC applications only. Further research is encouraged in the form of a field‐based multiple‐case study to reveal context‐specific dimensions of LCC analysis and implementation challenges in more detail.Practical implicationsThis review highlights the difficulty of conducting a reliable LCC analysis, and points out typical problems that should be carefully considered before drawing conclusions from the LCC analysis.Originality/valueFirst systematic analysis of LCC applications that gives directions for further research on the LCC concept.
To what extent does internal control effectiveness increase the value of internal evidence?
Authors: Janvrin Diane 
Published: April 2008

PurposeThis research seeks to examine whether two relevant characteristics, source objectivity and internal control effectiveness, influence how auditors evaluate evidence items supporting accounting estimates.Design/methodology/approachA controlled experiment approach with a sample of 24 auditors from one large international firm.FindingsResults indicate that effective internal controls reduce the impact of relying on internal as opposed to external evidence items. Results also suggest that auditors place reliance on internal control effectiveness when they evaluate external evidence items.Practical implicationsRecent professional trends, such as the demand for faster financial reporting, put pressure on auditors to rely on internal rather than more persuasive external evidence items. Relying on less persuasive evidence items reduces audit effectiveness. Auditors may respond by examining a second evidence characteristic; US audit standards suggest evaluating internal control effectiveness if evidence was generated from internal (i.e. client) sources. Thus, this study explores whether internal control effectiveness reduces the impact of relying on evidence items with lower source objectivity.Originality/valuePrior research has concentrated on examining the impact of a change in one evidence characteristic on audit judgment; this study expands the understanding of the evidence evaluation process by exploring how auditors evaluate multiple evidence characteristics. Furthermore, as suggested by Bonner, this research identifies an audit judgment deficiency (i.e. reliance on less persuasive internal evidence due to the demand for faster financial reporting) and examines one potential remedy (i.e. consideration of internal control effectiveness).
Auditing students’ professional commitment and anticipatory socialization and their relationship to whistleblowing
Authors: Elias Rafik 
Published: April 2008

PurposeThe accounting profession has emphasized the need for professionals to develop ethical attitudes early in their career, even before they enter the profession. The current study aims to examine the attitude of 128 US auditing students regarding whistleblowing.Design/methodology/approachSome determinants of whistleblowing perception such as professional commitment and anticipatory socialization (as operationalized by perception of financial reporting) are explored.FindingsThe results indicate that auditing students very close to graduation with more commitment to their profession and higher perception of financial reporting are more likely to blow the whistle on illegal management actions.Originality/valueThe results of the research have implications for the accounting profession and accounting education.
Globalization, growth, and poverty: the missing link
Authors: Akoum Ibrahim F. 
Published: April 2008

PurposeTo review the literature on the relationship between growth, globalization, and poverty, and present empirical evidence on whether countries registering high growth rates do necessarily succeed in reducing the incidence of poverty.Design/methodology/approachNotwithstanding data and methodological problems cited in the literature, this paper makes an effort to quantitatively examine the issue of statistical correlation between growth and poverty variables, through regressing the share of population in poverty on growth rates of countries for which data is available from World Bank surveys.FindingsThe paper concludes that countries registering high growth rates do not necessarily succeed in reducing poverty, thereby, holding that a wide‐ranging policy approach could be more effective in poverty reduction than the broad‐based growth policy approach.Originality/valueThe debate among academics and practitioners over the causal relationship between growth and poverty has not rendered any conclusive evidence that growth is a sufficient condition for reducing poverty, hence the difficulty facing policy makers on the most effective approach for poverty reduction. This paper is an attempt to contribute to this debate and assessing whether to embrace the broad‐based growth or pro‐poor growth policies.
Islam versus liberalism: contrasting epistemological inquiries
Authors: Alam Choudhury Masudul 
Published: April 2008

PurposeTo address the much heated debate now raging in the international scene, namely between Islam and the West as two great civilization forces of mankind.Design/methodology/approachThe objective is achieved by studying it in the light of rigorous analysis involving the world‐systems of the two paradigms and by subjecting the analysis to mathematical investigation as necessary.FindingsSome specific issues, such as epistemology and the associated phenomenological model, its application for economy, markets, money and globalization are investigated to establish the arguments of the paper.Research limitations/implicationsIf research is reported on in the paper this section must be completed and should include suggestions for future research and any identified limitations in the research process.Practical implicationsSome practical implications arising from the theoretical basis of the paper are shown in the areas of money and real economy, globalization and the economy.Originality/valueSuch a contrasting scientific argumentation between Islam and neoliberalism as the contrasting paradigms has not been undertaken in any paper that I know of. Thus, this is an original paper in argumentation rather than polemics.
Challenging trickle‐down approach
Authors: Azeem Qureshi Muhammad 
Published: April 2008

PurposeSuccessive governments in Pakistan have been pursuing pro‐growth trickle‐down approach with the proclaimed intent that benefits of growth will ultimately reach all. The purpose of this paper is to challenge this intent with a systemic model and suggest alternative policy.Design/methodology/approachThis paper develops a model of system structure of public expenditure and human development (HD) using System Dynamics method. The theoretical and empirical literature provides the conceptual framework to model the paradoxical case of Pakistan.FindingsThe simulation results show that high economic growth may not result into better HD indicators. This is in conflict with the trickle‐down approach of economic growth which advocates the economically disadvantaged segments of the society ultimately reap the long‐term benefits of economic growth. On the contrary, high spending on education and health will yield better results even if the economy grows at a relatively lower rate. This paper suggests that the demographic and human development of Pakistan has strong linkages with the public expenditure on HD and weak linkages with the economic growth.Practical implicationsThe paper suggests a threshold of 3 percent of sustained economic growth rate as a pre‐requisite to plan for HD in Pakistan. With that in place the government should adhere to high public spending on education and health for HD which is not only an end in itself but is also a must for sustainable development.Research limitations/implicationsThis paper assumes exogenous gross domestic product (GDP). The future research requires relaxing of exogenous assumption for GDP to make it endogenous to reflect two‐way feedback relationship of HD and GDP in the long run. Moreover, it will be useful to model the role of HD to promote equitable income distribution in this context where asymmetric income distribution is especially pronounced and may have causal links with HD.Originality/valueA detailed and robust population cohorts' structure that provides demographic development over time is a unique feature of the model developed for this paper. This is a conscious effort to reflect the causal links of economic growth and HD that involve nonlinearity and delays.
Should we replace the environment?
Authors: Antoci Angelo , Borghesi Simone , Galeotti Marcello 
Published: April 2008

PurposeTo protect against the increasing environmental degradation many agents choose today to replace consumption of depleted environmental goods with that of privately produced substitute goods. The present paper aims to highlight how this “self‐protective” behaviour that is increasingly frequent in modern societies may affect the welfare of the individuals.Design/methodology/approachThe paper presents a combination of narrative with argument and analysis. It first provides several examples of self‐protective choices to give a heuristic view of this phenomenon and then examines their effects through a simple evolutionary model that leads the reader beyond a purely intuitive understanding of the substitution mechanism described in the first part.FindingsThe paper shows that replacing environmental goods with artificial substitute goods may give rise to an “undesiderable growth” process, that is, a vicious circle between environmental degradation and private consumption which contributes to economic growth but may have negative effects on the welfare of the agents.Originality/valueThe paper investigates an aspect of the link between environmental degradation and economic growth that has been mainly ignored in the literature so far. While most contributions have underlined that self‐protective choices can boost economic growth, the paper goes one step forward and shows that they can actually give rise to a self‐reinforcing growth process in which environmental degradation increases economic growth and viceversa, leading the economy on a welfare‐reducing path.
Can education affect pro‐social behavior?
Authors: Ahmed Ali 
Published: April 2008

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to examine whether education and training affect pro‐social behavior. Economics students are often accused of being less pro‐social. The explanations given are that less pro‐social people choose to study economics or that economics studies indoctrinate students to selfish behavior. The paper experimentally tests these postulations.Design/methodology/approachThe paper uses the prisoner's dilemma game and stag hunt game to study cooperation across different groups of students.FindingsThe experiment supports neither of the postulations: economics students would be indoctrinated or less pro‐social people choose to study economics. However, the study shows that police cadets, who go through an education where teamwork and cooperation is promoted, become more cooperative and pro‐social after their completed education.Originality/valueIn contrast to earlier studies, this paper does not simply study economics students, but also examines if students in educational programs that promote loyalty and cooperation and encourage teamwork are more pro‐social than other students.
A note on mergers and acquisitions
Authors: Cigola Margherita , Modesti Paola 
Published: April 2008

PurposeRecently numerous mergers have been realized. The paper aims to discuss famous static models about the exchange ratio. The paper then seeks to propose a simple dynamical model to valuate both the immediate merger's effects and the delayed ones.Design/methodology/approachThe paper examines from an analytical viewpoint the inequalities of Larson and Gonedes and of Yagil about the exchange ratio. Then, it looks for a possible valuation of future dividends through a dynamical approach.FindingsThe paper shows that the results of Larson and Gonedes and of Yagil are substantially the same and, in spite of appareances, do not propose real limitations, but only formal constraints, which need to be further treated before obtaining useful information. The paper then provides sufficient conditions to have dividends and/or prices greater than dividends and/or prices in absence of merger. Finally, an index to valuate synergy is proposed.Research limitations/implicationsOn the basis of real data, the model may be tested. Moreover, non‐linear models and a stochastic framework could be considered.Practical implicationsThe paper provides a critical viewpoint to consider classical models. Furthermore, the valuation method for future dividends may be applied and the synergy index may be calculated.Originality/valueBoth the results about the classical inequalities (to the authors' knowledge, there is no study in such a sense) and the dynamical model (the paper studies possible gains within a time horizon T and not only at time 0 and it does not obtain the fundamental value of stocks, as Yagil does, but their market price) are original.
Exchange ratios in a merger with stochastic capital reserves: fair valuation and embedded options
Authors: Giacomello Bruno 
Published: April 2008

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to analyze how exchange ratios in mergers can be assessed when the companies economic capital valuation is carried out in a stochastic framework with financial assets and minimum guarantees.Design/methodology/approachThe paper is a theoretical one. Its main objective is to present a quantitative model for exchange ratios accounting, introducing a stochastic pricing model in the presence of stochastic cash‐flows and representing contractual embedded real option such as minimum guarantees.FindingsThe paper presents a financial model to evaluate the differences in exchange ratios induced by stochastic capital reserves in the merging companies.Research limitations/implicationsStochastic cash‐flows in the economic capital of the merging companies set up a stochastic capital reserve which represents an additional value and could induce important differences in exchange ratios.Practical implicationsThe model is fully applicable, also in the presence of embedded real options such as minimum guarantees, but requires the volatility of the underlying.Originality/valueThe paper should be useful under both a managerial and a theoretical use in order to evaluate stochastic exchange ratios.
Synergies, shareholder value and exchange ratios in “value‐creating” mergers
Authors: Kürsten Wolfgang 
Published: April 2008

PurposeThe purpose of this research paper is to clarify why shareholders should be prudent when managers promise value gains from a synergetic merger.Design/methodology/approachThe paper proposes a simple two‐state model of stochastic firm cash flows which allows for a discussion of wealth redistribution in conglomerate mergers, both under perfect information and moral hazard.FindingsIt is found that shareholders regularly lose in non‐synergetic mergers, and will not necessarily gain if synergies are positive. In the model, a corresponding critical level of synergies is calculated explicitly. It is shown that there are also new value effects induced by moral hazard, which constitute genuine financial synergies of their own.Research limitations/implicationsThe positive synergies are due to the mitigation of asset substitution problems after the merger, and they are an interesting question for generalization in future research.Practical implicationsAs one of its practical implications, the findings suggest that managers should provide shareholders with concrete ideas of where promised synergies might come from, and why there should exist any bargaining range for equilibrium exchange ratios which leaves all shareholders better off.Originality/valueThe paper shows that these questions can be answered on a rigorous basis which might improve the pre‐merger decision process between managers, shareholders and the affected groups of stakeholders, respectively.
Exchange ratio determination in a market equilibrium
Authors: Moretto Enrico , Rossi Stefano 
Published: April 2008

PurposeThe paper aims to present an exchange ratio for merging companies that incorporates the change in the level of riskiness.Design/methodology/approachThe paper is a theoretical one. Its main objective has been achieved exploiting standard modern finance results such as Capital Asset Pricing Model Capital Asset Pricing Model (CAPM).FindingsThe paper offers a formula that determines a risk‐adjusted exchange ratio that takes into account both risk and synergy.Research limitations/implicationsDue to the fact that CAPM is applied and beta factors are required, the formula is fully applicable only to companies whose stocks are traded on a financial market. Empirical test of the exchange ratio formula (using, for instance, an event‐study methodology) should be performed.Practical implicationsThe use of the formula allows the identification of whether the offered exchange ratio fully reflects the expected return/risk profile for stockholders of the merging companies.Originality/valueThe paper should be useful in both theoretical and managerial conditions. It carries a way to embed relative riskiness of two companies into a simple formula.
The alchemy of acquisition currency: exclusive advantages of listed companies
Authors: Tagliavini Giulio 
Published: April 2008

PurposeAcquisition currency is the possibility, enjoyed mainly by listed companies, of paying for acquisitions with paper (i.e. with conversion shares) instead of financial means, decreasing the participating share of the controlling shareholder as little as possible. The paper seeks to address the issues.Design/methodology/approachThe paper describes an original model to deal with the conceptual framework of the problem.FindingsThe acquisition currency game is interesting and it is worth playing it. It is clear that at a certain point the mechanism breaks and it is useful to see what happens. A mechanism that continues to increase the P/E does not exist; at a certain point there must be a limit.Originality/valueThe paper illustrates that the model convincingly describes some current behaviour of stock exchange prices and alerts about some dangerous situations.
Location and shelf mapping from OPAC search results: with reference to Wichita State University
Authors: Li Hongfei , Deng Sai 
Published: April 2008

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to examine dynamic mapping of holding locations to the animated maps in a library catalog which aims to resolve complex shelving situations, augment the user experience in locating library materials and enrich the Online Public Access Catalog (OPAC) by integrating external programming into the Integrated Library System (ILS).Design/methodology/approachDynamic mapping displays animated direction maps for users to locate quickly the items found in the library catalog. The maps are displayed in accordance with various shelving policies. At Wichita State University Libraries, the original bibliographic data are captured from the record results page in the OPAC and transferred to a processing program residing on another server. Instead of transferring ISBN/ISSN (International Standard Book Number/ International Standard Serial Number, as practiced by some libraries) to display the Syndetic cover images, it transfers bibliographic ID and a few other fields from MARC (MAchine‐Readable Cataloging) records to a processing program which queries the ILS database for extracting data needed for the dynamic map processing. The dynamic map system consists of three sections: queried data from the ILS database, programming logic, and dynamic maps.FindingsCompared to title‐level shelving map displays that have been implemented in some libraries, holding level map displays solve the problem of complex shelving situations, such as a title with multiple copies shelved in different locations and/or in different formats.Originality/valueThis project received very positive feedback from the library community and this paper will provide information to those libraries which are interested in dynamically presenting holding information in their OPAC.