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Explores management control and accounting systems of three successfully competing companies to gain deeper insight and fill knowledge gaps. Results show that management control and accounting systems do exist which enhance successful competition. Common features are heavy influence of marketing strategy and activities, but with little interaction between the marketing and accounting functions and with substantial accounting‐type activity, notably activity based cost accounting, outside the accounting function. Traditional budgetary accounting controls are used only for operating costs; social and behavioural controls are used for revenues. Company executives believe these features contribute to effective competition strategy. Findings differ from conventional wisdom but provide implications for system design and continued research.

The foresight styles assessment (FSA) was regarded as an important empirical measure and dimension of a strategy level leader's dominant and back‐up styles of engaging with matters related to anticipating the future. The measure is also associated as a dimension of foresight as a leadership competence. This study seeks to determine the validity and reliability of the revised FSA as proposed by Gary.

A quantitative two‐step methodology was adopted as a pilot study preceding the main study in which a web‐based survey methodology was used. The sample consisted of 298 strategy level leaders. Data were analysed using advanced statistical analysis techniques including factor analysis and structural equation modelling.

The FSA's four factors; tester, adapter, framer and reactor, were confirmed but did not display uni‐dimensionality. Analytical results confirmed the validity and reliability of the measure, and the structural equation model illustrated good model fit. The reactor factor was determined to be a method factor and theoretical concerns could be raised regarding whether the reactor factor describes a foresight style. Future research of a summated three‐factor scale (excluding the reactor factor) is suggested and should include strategy‐level leaders, especially in more diverse populations, investigating further, the nomological validity and reliability of the scale.

Owing to the purposive non‐probability sampling technique the sample results are not generalisable. However, the statistical results are rigorous and significant in terms of determining the validity and reliability of the measure. Further research of a summated three‐factor (tester, framer, adapter) scale amongst a more diverse population is suggested.

While some notable studies have been conducted, futures studies research generally lacks validated and reliable quantitative measures related to the foresight construct. As suggested by Inayatullah, the importance of understanding the value free observations of the empirically observable is required to meaningfully conduct deeper analysis of social issues. The findings of this research has implications in the study of foresight by providing empirical grounds for further exploratory research, and providing rigorous evidence supporting the use of the foresight styles assessment especially as a three‐factor summated scale. Use of the scale is not limited to foresight studies, indeed it can and has been applied to broader leadership cognition and strategic management studies yet to be reported.

Considering that foresight is regarded as an innate human characteristic and the need for social foresight may never have been higher, understanding a basis of measuring the construct may have significant implications in terms of further social science research and social foresight development.

In terms of measuring a broader construct of foresight competence, the rigorous validation of a measure to enable further interpretive, exploratory and critical research is important. To the author's knowledge, using structural equation modelling techniques in futures studies is very rare if at all. The study further contributes to the development of a rigorous measure that may facilitate significant foresight/futures studies/leadership and management future research.

Religious institutions can affect organizational practices when employees bring their religious commitments and practices into the workplace. But those religious commitments function in the midst of other organizational factors that influence the working out of employees’ religious commitments. This process can generate varying outcomes in organizational contexts, ranging from a heightened effect of religious commitment on employee behavior to a negligible or nonexistent influence of religion on employee behavior. Relying on social identity theory and schematic social cognition as unifying frameworks for the study of religious behavior, we develop a theoretically informed approach to understanding how and why the religious beliefs, commitments and practices employees bring to work have varying behavioral impacts.

Social and economic disparities between racial/ethnic groups are a feature of the American context into which immigrants are incorporated and a key determinant of population health. We ask whether racial/ethnic disparities in diabetes vary by nativity and whether native-immigrant disparities in diabetes vary by race and over time in the United States. Using the 2000–2015 National Health Interview Survey, we estimate logistic regressions to examine the interaction of race/ethnicity, nativity, and duration in the US in shaping diabetes patterns. Relative to their native-born co-ethnics, foreign-born Asian adults experience a significant diabetes disadvantage, while foreign-born Hispanic, Black, and White adults experience a significant advantage. Adjusting for obesity, education, and other covariates eliminates the foreign-born advantage for Black and White adults, but it persists for Hispanic adults. The same adjustment accentuates the disadvantage for foreign-born Asian adults. For Black and Hispanic adults, the protective foreign-born effect erodes as duration in the US increases. For foreign-born Asian adults, the immigrant disadvantage appears to grow with duration in the US. Relative to native-born White adults, all non-white groups regardless of nativity see a diabetes disadvantage because the racial/ethnic disadvantage either countervails a foreign-born advantage or amplifies a foreign-born disadvantage. Racial/ethnic differentials in diabetes are considerable and are influenced by each group’s nativity composition. Obesity and (for the foreign-born) time in the US influence these disparities, but do not explain them. These findings underscore the importance of unmeasured, systemic determinants of health in America’s race-conscious society.

Sponsors claim that ambush marketing damages the integrity and financial basis of an event, however, definitions of “ambushing” remain ambiguous, particularly where more than oneparty lays claim to specific images. When the New Zealand Rugby Football Union (NZRFU) changed its official apparel supplier from Canterbury International Limited (CIL) to adidas, CIL argued it was entitled to draw on its past involvement with the All Blacks. This paper explores ambush marketing in NZRFU v CILand concludes by offering suggestions that couldreduce the likelihood of similar situations arising

Purpose: We examined whether the five-service quality dimensions described by SERVQUAL (SQ) and SERVPERF (SP) are consistent with perceived dimensions of management accounting (MA) service quality and we compared responses from users and providers.

Design/methodology/approach: We surveyed experienced providers and users of MA services to learn their perceptions and expectations of accounting service quality using SQ/SP adapted to an MA context. We used principal components analysis (PCA) to investigate service quality dimensions.

Findings: Participant responses identified three dimensions of MA service quality. There was a high degree of correspondence in dimensions of service quality between users and providers, but with notable differences in service priorities. A performance-only (SP) approach seems to provide a better measure of overall service quality than performance minus expectations (SQ).

Research limitations/implications: Participants self-selected to participate. Respondents were not matched by organization. The SQ/SP instrument may not capture important organization specific attributes. Our approach may serve as a guide for future studies of accounting service quality.

Practical implications: SP may be more useful to managers who wish to evaluate overall service quality. SQ may be more useful to identify specific gaps between user perceptions and expectations. SQ/SP assessments may help to improve the quality of MA service delivery and provider-user communications.

Originality/value: This is the first empirical study to our knowledge that reports on MA service quality dimensions using both the SQ and SP instruments. This study investigated perceptions and expectations of MA service users and providers. Our sample is a cross-section of experienced professionals.

Roland Joffé, the film-maker behind the significant critical hits The Killing Fields (1984) and The Mission (1986), employed a hypnotic aesthetic, which unflinchingly depicted violence and brutality within different cultural contexts. In 2007, he used a no less impressive aesthetic in a similar way, although this film, Captivity, was met with public outcry, including from self-proclaimed feminist film-maker Joss Whedon. This was based upon the depiction, in advertisements, of gendered violence in the popularly termed ‘torture porn’ subgenre, which itself has negative gendered connotations.

We aim to revisit the critical reception of Captivity in light of this public controversy, looking at the gendered tensions within considerations of genre, narration and aesthetics. Critics assumed Captivity was an attempt to capitalize on the popularity of the torture horror subgenre, and there is evidence that the film-makers inserted scenes of gore throughout the narrative to encourage this affiliation. However, this chapter will consider how the film works as both an example of post-peak torture horror and an interesting precursor to more overtly feminist horror, such as A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night (2014) and Raw (2017). This is seen through the aesthetic and narrative centralizing of a knowing conflict between genders, which, while not entirely successful, does uniquely aim to provide commentary on the gender roles which genre criticism of horror has long considered implicit to the genre’s structures and pleasures.

The purpose of this paper is to develop a framework for organizational learning in an alliance‐based context. An interaction effect of environmental turbulence on the relationship between top management attitude towards learning and organizational learning is proposed.

The paper begins with the notion that alliances provide an opportunity for organizations to learn from one another. The paper describes three basic tenets of organizational learning. It then proposes how top management attitude will affect these. It also proposes that these relationships will be affected by the environment in which the organizations are operating.

The proposed framework makes clear that, for organizational learning to take place, both top management attitude toward learning and environmental turbulence will affect the way organizational learning takes place.

The paper proposes an important relationship between top management attitude, environmental turbulence, and organizational learning. In highly turbulent environments, even a positive top management attitude will not always help to improve organizational learning.

The paper fills a gap in the alliance and organizational learning literature by proposing environmental effects on the relationship between top management attitude and organizational learning.