Chris Price analyses the status and expectations of the ‘student’.
Many people are trying to tackle the cost and value issues arising from the information age in which we now live, including the profession of information and records managers, who…
Abstract
Many people are trying to tackle the cost and value issues arising from the information age in which we now live, including the profession of information and records managers, who have been wrestling with the problem for longer than most. They are now being joined by publishers, broadcasters, entertainers, creative artists, abstractors, research organisations, financial institutions and computer hardware and software suppliers. All have an urgent need to find ways of storing, valuing, trading and invoicing products and services that comprise no physical content but are pure information. In this article the author explores ways of valuing information two of which are based on its availability or proximity and the effect that having the information has. He concludes that whilst putting a price or value on information is very difficult there must be a value to it, as the effect of not having information can readily be observed.
Frederick Ng, Julie A. Harrison and Chris Akroyd
The purpose of this paper is to develop a framework for the systematic examination of management accounting practices in small businesses using a revenue management perspective…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to develop a framework for the systematic examination of management accounting practices in small businesses using a revenue management perspective. This highlights the multi-faceted nature of size as a contextual factor and emphasises the role of management accounting in supporting profit-oriented decision-making, rather than its traditional role of co-ordination, control, and accountability.
Design/methodology/approach
The framework is theoretically derived from the management accounting, revenue management, and small business literature. An illustrative case study of a small fast-food business is presented to demonstrate the applicability of this framework to practice.
Findings
The paper identifies that various dimensions of business size have different and sometimes opposing effects on management accounting practices. Given heterogeneity is a common feature of small businesses, the framework considers alternative specifications of the size contingency variable.
Research limitations/implications
The synthesis of small business characteristics and revenue management perspective offers a more incisive understanding of what has traditionally been considered a simple practice. The case study illustrates some of the influences of small business characteristics identified in the framework. Given its narrow scope, the findings are used for theorisation rather than offering generalisable results. Further cross-sectional comparisons of small businesses are needed to confirm size influences.
Practical implications
The framework can assist practitioners to gauge the strengths and weaknesses of their management accounting practices and can help assess the value of adopting more sophisticated management accounting practices, given their particular business environment. A synthesis of these small business attributes can help practitioners identify key barriers to implementation.
Originality/value
The revenue management perspective and the inclusion of key characteristics of small businesses provide a new approach to evaluating management accounting practices in small businesses.
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Efthimia Pantzartzis, Lipika Deka, Andrew D.F. Price, Chris Tann, Grant R.W. Mills and Sameedha Rich-Mahadkar
Lord Carter’s (2015) “Review of Operational Productivity in NHS providers” stated that to improve National Health Service (NHS) England’s efficiency, operational productivity…
Abstract
Purpose
Lord Carter’s (2015) “Review of Operational Productivity in NHS providers” stated that to improve National Health Service (NHS) England’s efficiency, operational productivity should be targeted in four main areas, one being estates management. NHS England’s estate includes a variety of buildings some of which are considered no longer fit-for-purpose, thus creating risk to patients and staff. These built assets require continuous maintenance, adding pressures to NHS England’s precarious financial situation. The purpose of this paper is to identify positive strategies and major constraints to achieving sustainable management of backlog maintenance (BM) across the NHS assets, and thus suggest balanced actions.
Design/methodology/approach
The research adopts a qualitative approach and combines: literature review of current BM methodologies; interviews with estates and facilities directors from seven NHS trusts on BM strategies; and a NHS trust detailed case study.
Findings
The major finding is that sustainable management of BM is achievable if there is a consistent, pro-active and long-term strategic approach where critical levels of BM are prioritised. Additional issues (i.e. appropriate methodology, performance metrics and links with clinical service delivery strategies) also need to be considered.
Practical implications
This study is relevant to the management of the NHS estate including development and adoption of sustainable strategies.
Originality/value
This paper offers original insights to the factors influencing healthcare estates’ BM at a time when the UK policy agenda is targeting infrastructure operational efficiency and organisations are seeking more comprehensive methodologies.
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It seems fitting, in this particular issue of Technical Education at the present time, for a former editor of an educational monthly — New Education — whose magazine changed…
Abstract
It seems fitting, in this particular issue of Technical Education at the present time, for a former editor of an educational monthly — New Education — whose magazine changed ownership last December in somewhat dramatically sudden circumstances, to seize a second chance of looking forward to try to make out future trends. Is the Black Paper an off beat isolated phenomenon, soon to fizzle out of the second lease of life which Ted Short gave it at Easter? Or is it the first of a series of attacks on the steady reform of educational institutions and curriculum which has been going on over the last twenty five years? Is Tom Howarth, with his new views on culture and anarchy, a second Matthew Arnold, come to pluck English Education from the slough of despond into which it has been steadily sinking for years? Or is his book the last gasp from a fading corner of the educational scene, which has only lasted so long because class attitudes and institutions are so deeply ingrained into English society? It may be still too early to say. But it looks as though this sort of debate — or one very like it — will go on in the educational world into the forseeable future.
It is an occupational risk of any minister of education that he harbours ambitions of bequeathing his surname to posterity, by fathering a new Education Act. This is normally a…
Abstract
It is an occupational risk of any minister of education that he harbours ambitions of bequeathing his surname to posterity, by fathering a new Education Act. This is normally a temptation to be resisted. Up till now, the 1944 Act has stood the test of time quite well, and there has been little agreement as to what amendments should be put in the place of those parts of it which are not working very well. It contains priceless compromises between Church and State such as no other Western country has yet achieved, compromises themselves only possible because the Act went through Parliament during the war. They were achieved at a cost of granting to the churches a scale of state aid and support far more generous than they received in any other country, and by and large it has probably been worth it. Some of its provisions have been very slow in working out (we are only just now eliminating the last few all‐age schools and making the secondary education for all, which it heralded, a reality); others, like County Colleges, have never and probably now will never take shape. There are so many arguments for not bringing in a new Act now — ‘no money’ ‘leave well alone’ ‘the '44 Act isn't yet implemented’ ‘reform local government first and education will naturally follow’ — that one has to look rather deeper for the reasons behind the recent DES announcement that a new Act is in active preparation.
Rick Ferguson and Kelly Hlavinka
This paper is aimed at describing how companies can find new opportunities for customer retention and lifetime value by applying the concepts of dialogue marketing…
Abstract
Purpose
This paper is aimed at describing how companies can find new opportunities for customer retention and lifetime value by applying the concepts of dialogue marketing, network‐building and relevant rewards.
Design/methodology/approach
The paper cites the work of Chris Anderson, Editor‐in‐Chief of Wired Magazine, and the work of Italian economist Vilfredo Pareto. The paper explains how the works of these two men, and how programs put into place at two companies (Hewlett‐Packard and Rain Bird), have opened new vistas in customer retention.
Findings
The study found that by applying specific marketing principles, companies can do a better job of retaining all customers, specifically those customers who are not in the top 20 percent of revenue‐producers.
Practical implications
Most companies believe that 80 percent of their business comes from 20 percent of their customers. However, by applying specific marketing principles, companies can do a better job of retaining all customers, specifically those customers who are not in the top 20 percent of revenue‐producers.
Originality/value
The paper takes a new look at an old principle (the 80‐20 Pareto Principle).
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One of the more successful of the NUT's campaigns in recent years has been that to eliminate untrained teachers and establish the real prospect of a Teachers' Council, which would…
Abstract
One of the more successful of the NUT's campaigns in recent years has been that to eliminate untrained teachers and establish the real prospect of a Teachers' Council, which would for the first time give teachers something of the control over entry standards that other professions have. Perhaps it is all in a good cause. By controlling entry standards (and therefore entry numbers) they will be able to behave like the classical mediaeval guild or twentieth century trade union, and ensure that the slice of the national cake allocated to education is divided up amongst a strictly limited number of people: which is one way of raising salaries. The main object, however, of a Teachers' Council (and certainly that of Ted Short, the Secretary of State for Education and Science) is to bestow upon teachers a greater sense of professionalism, to make them look doctors and lawyers in the face and feel on some sort of equality. As a matter of fact, a hundred Teachers' Councils will not achieve this object unless the salary comes more into line with that of the real professionals. So it will all be a rather slow process: it would be absurd to think that teachers will become different sorts of beings over night.
The eternal argument about the overall pattern in which we organize our schools tends to induce a state of total complacency about what goes on inside them. The politicians…
Abstract
The eternal argument about the overall pattern in which we organize our schools tends to induce a state of total complacency about what goes on inside them. The politicians prescribe the external label, but in Britain they have (very properly) no power to lay down much else. The curriculum, the ambience, the aims of the school are in the hands of the headmaster, and no one talks about them very much. Since to most parents the label is all, it is reputation rather than reality which matters. But in fact labels tell you little about the contents of the bottle. Antiquated educational ideas often flourish in supposedly revolutionized comprehensive schools, and some grammar schools have changed out of all recognition. The sooner the argument can be swung round to the purpose of education within the schools, the better.