Mary Fisher, Teresa Gordon, Marla Myers Kraut and David Malone
Reporting cash flows is a relatively recent development in college and university financial reporting. An examination of the purported usefulness of cash flow information to the…
Abstract
Reporting cash flows is a relatively recent development in college and university financial reporting. An examination of the purported usefulness of cash flow information to the users of college and university financial statements including an examination of the relationship between accrual-based change in net assets and cash provided by operations found private universities have implemented the cash flow reporting requirements with a relatively high level of compliance employing the indirect format for reporting operating cash flows. The principal areas of deficiency were the reporting of split-interest, restricted gift activities and the required disclosures of cash outflows related to interest and taxes. The discussion of the compliance deficiencies and display findings leads to needed disclosure guidance and future research.
Alexandra L. Ferrentino, Meghan L. Maliga, Richard A. Bernardi and Susan M. Bosco
This research provides accounting-ethics authors and administrators with a benchmark for accounting-ethics research. While Bernardi and Bean (2010) considered publications in…
Abstract
This research provides accounting-ethics authors and administrators with a benchmark for accounting-ethics research. While Bernardi and Bean (2010) considered publications in business-ethics and accounting’s top-40 journals this study considers research in eight accounting-ethics and public-interest journals, as well as, 34 business-ethics journals. We analyzed the contents of our 42 journals for the 25-year period between 1991 through 2015. This research documents the continued growth (Bernardi & Bean, 2007) of accounting-ethics research in both accounting-ethics and business-ethics journals. We provide data on the top-10 ethics authors in each doctoral year group, the top-50 ethics authors over the most recent 10, 20, and 25 years, and a distribution among ethics scholars for these periods. For the 25-year timeframe, our data indicate that only 665 (274) of the 5,125 accounting PhDs/DBAs (13.0% and 5.4% respectively) in Canada and the United States had authored or co-authored one (more than one) ethics article.
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Tyler Watts and Molly Woodruff
The purpose of this paper is to examine differences in property institutions in the USA and India and their effects on agricultural productivity.
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to examine differences in property institutions in the USA and India and their effects on agricultural productivity.
Design/methodology/approach
This paper undertakes a case study of industrial organization of agriculture, comparing agricultural development in the USA and India, with a focus on changes in farm size over time.
Findings
In the USA, unlimited individual land ownership has enabled the gradual, long-term development of scale economies in agriculture through the application of capital and technology. In contrast, land reforms in India, especially land ceilings that limit farm size, have stunted productivity growth in agriculture by limiting achievement of scale economies and capital formation.
Practical implications
The finding that India’s consistently meager agricultural productivity stems largely from legal limitations on land ownership indicates that reforms that create a US-style open-ended land ownership structure would greatly increase farm productivity and total crop output in India.
Originality/value
This paper presents a side-by-side analysis of the USA and India and their radically different paths of agricultural development over time, and connects these divergent outcomes directly to the underlying institutional framework of property rights. Moreover, the paper analyzes the prospects for pro-market reform in light of public choice political economy, specifically applying Tullock’s insights regarding the “transitional gains trap.”
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Q.B. Chung, Wenhong Luo and William P. Wagner
To propose a framework with which to study the efficacy of strategic alliances of small firms in knowledge industries, with an emphasis on research design to examine the issues…
Abstract
Purpose
To propose a framework with which to study the efficacy of strategic alliances of small firms in knowledge industries, with an emphasis on research design to examine the issues surrounding the phenomena.
Design/methodology/approach
A framework is developed that consists of four constructs, namely conditions, roles and contributions, learning, and efficacy. Details of the constructs are explained.
Findings
Management consulting industry proves to be a fertile research ground to study strategic alliances with regard to firm size. Through an illustration, it is shown that the proposed framework can be put into practice to investigate relevant research questions.
Research limitations/implications
The framework has limited generalizability to situations where the clients of the knowledge‐intensive service are not clearly defined up front.
Practical implications
Knowledge industries will benefit from developing taxonomy of expertise. Client firms may benefit from encouraging small firm to form strategic alliances.
Originality/value
The contribution is threefold; identification of the interplay of firm size and the practice of alliance formation in knowledge industries as a viable research topic; a framework with which to examine the efficacy of strategic alliances of small firms in knowledge industries; and proposing to expand the knowledge management research beyond intra‐firm learning.
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Ira Abdullah, Alisa G. Brink, C. Kevin Eller and Andrea Gouldman
We examine and compare current practices in teaching preparation in U.S. accounting, finance, management, and economics doctoral programs.
Abstract
Purpose
We examine and compare current practices in teaching preparation in U.S. accounting, finance, management, and economics doctoral programs.
Methodology/approach
We conduct an anonymous online survey of the pedagogical training practices experienced by Ph.D. students in accounting, finance, management, and economics programs in the United States.
Findings
Results indicate that accounting, finance, and management perform similarly with respect to providing doctoral students with first-hand teaching experience and requiring for-credit courses in teacher training. Accounting and management appear to utilize doctoral students as teaching assistants less than the other disciplines. A lower proportion of accounting doctoral students indicate that their program requires proof of English proficiency prior to teaching, and pedagogical mentoring is rare across disciplines. Accounting and management doctoral students feel more prepared to teach undergraduate courses compared to finance and economics students. However, all disciplines indicate a relative lack of perceived preparation to teach graduate courses.
Practical implications
This study provides empirical evidence of the current practices in pedagogical training of accounting, finance, management, and economics doctoral students.
Social implications
The results highlight several areas where accounting could possibly improve with regard to pedagogical training in doctoral programs. In particular we suggest (1) changes in the teaching evaluation process, (2) development of teaching mentorships, (3) implementing a teaching portfolio requirement, and (4) incorporation of additional methods of assisting non-native English speakers for teaching duties.
Originality/value
The study fills a gap in the literature regarding the pedagogical training in accounting doctoral programs.
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There have recently been concerted efforts by many post‐conflict African countries to formulate and implement policies and measures that will reconstruct and develop their…
Abstract
There have recently been concerted efforts by many post‐conflict African countries to formulate and implement policies and measures that will reconstruct and develop their societies. Much of the discussions of realizing post‐conflict reconstruction and development have generally focused on disarmament, demobilisation and reintegration (DDR) of ex‐combatants. What is however, missing is a discussion on capacity development and capacity building initiatives to help in reconstruction in the period after DDR. This paper therefore examines the importance of capacity development in post‐conflict African environment. It notes that while demobilising and disarming warring factions is important, the success of reconstruction efforts in a post‐conflict environment depends largely on the ability to build and develop capacity and skills that are pertinent to helping reconstruct and promote the development goals of the countries. It is argued that post‐conflict societies should have a coherent and co‐ordinate approach to rebuilding, reconstructing and developing the capacity of the state in order to achieve the state’s legitimacy and effectiveness. Such capacity development measures should involve the development of physical infrastructure; the building of the state’s institutional structures; the promotion of good political and economic governance; skills and education training for individuals; and measures to improve and deliver security and social services.
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Richard A. Bernardi and David F. Bean
This research is a 6-year extension of Bernardi's (2005) initial ranking of the top ethics authors in accounting; it also represents a broadening of the scope of the original data…
Abstract
This research is a 6-year extension of Bernardi's (2005) initial ranking of the top ethics authors in accounting; it also represents a broadening of the scope of the original data into accounting's top-40 journals. While Bernardi only considered publications in business-ethics journals in his initial ranking, we developed a methodology to identify ethics articles in accounting's top-40 journals. The purpose of this research is to provide a more complete list of accounting's ethics authors for use by authors, administrators, and other stakeholders. In this study, 26 business-ethics and accounting's top-40 journals were analyzed for a 23-year period between 1986 through 2008. Our data indicate that 16.8 percent of the 4,680 colleagues with either a PhD or DBA who teach accounting at North American institutions had authored/coauthored one ethics article and only 6.3 percent had authored/coauthored more than one ethics article in the 66 journals we examined. Consequently, 83.2 percent of the PhDs and DBAs in accounting had not authored/coauthored even one ethics article.
Markus Wohlfeil, Anthony Patterson and Stephen J. Gould
This paper aims to explain a celebrity’s deep resonance with consumers by unpacking the individual constituents of a celebrity’s polysemic appeal. While celebrities are…
Abstract
Purpose
This paper aims to explain a celebrity’s deep resonance with consumers by unpacking the individual constituents of a celebrity’s polysemic appeal. While celebrities are traditionally theorised as unidimensional semiotic receptacles of cultural meaning, the authors conceptualise them here instead as human beings/performers with a multi-constitutional, polysemic consumer appeal.
Design/methodology/approach
Supporting evidence is drawn from autoethnographic data collected over a total period of 25 months and structured through a hermeneutic analysis.
Findings
In rehumanising the celebrity, the study finds that each celebrity offers the individual consumer a unique and very personal parasocial appeal as the performer, the private person behind the public performer, the tangible manifestation of either through products and the social link to other consumers. The stronger these constituents, individually or symbiotically, appeal to the consumer’s personal desires, the more s/he feels emotionally attached to this particular celebrity.
Research limitations/implications
Although using autoethnography means that the breadth of collected data is limited, the depth of insight this approach garners sufficiently unpacks the polysemic appeal of celebrities to consumers.
Practical implications
The findings encourage talent agents, publicists and marketing managers to reconsider underlying assumptions in their talent management and/or celebrity endorsement practices.
Originality/value
While prior research on celebrity appeal has tended to enshrine celebrities in a “dehumanised” structuralist semiosis, which erases the very idea of individualised consumer meanings, this paper reveals the multi-constitutional polysemy of any particular celebrity’s personal appeal as a performer and human being to any particular consumer.