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The purpose of this paper is to recommend a print distribution and web site disclosure strategy that is both cost effective and compliant with the SEC summary prospectus rule.

The paper explains the economics of offset printing versus digital printing on demand (POD) and printing prospectuses at the traditional printer's site versus creating print‐ready PDFs electronically and making them available to fund distributors so they can print and deliver “on demand” on site. It provides a checklist of web site disclosure requirements for a fund to be compliant with the summary prospectus rule.

The paper finds that, by establishing a rock‐solid web strategy, coupled with new thinking on their printed prospectuses, firms can comfortably maximize their savings and establish a rational framework for investor disclosure envisioned by the SEC.

The paper provides cost effective guidance for compliance with the SEC summary prospectus rule.

The purpose of this paper is to explain the risk of bad mutual fund data for a financial services firm that sells mutual funds and to recommend steps a firm can take to ensure the reliability of its mutual fund data.

Explains problems caused by missing data, including the “breakpoint issue,” the best sources of mutual fund information, problems firms have retrieving and compiling that information, and weaknesses in a free service (the “Service”) provided by a well known industry utility and securities depository that related to coverage, completeness, and cost. Recommends seven actionable steps a firm can take to ensure the accuracy of its mutual fund data.

Firms offering funds may sell billions of dollars of funds every week, and maintain considerably more on their books, but frequently they pay scant attention to the accuracy of their mutual fund reference data. The breakpoint issue is alive and well today, and would seriously erode investor and regulatory confidence if this fact became better known. For many firms, discrepancies in data result from funds having one policy disclosed to the SEC while their distributors use entirely different ones. Firms now realize that ensuring accurate reference data is no longer an issue that can be avoided.

Rather than operating under the false assumption that critical data is accurate, make sure you dedicate the time to examine your organization's use of mutual fund data to ensure efficient, ongoing investor relations and to ensure the overall reputation of your firm.

Professional advice from an experienced vendor of compliance systems and software.

How investors can capitalise on a long‐term currency trend by leveraging their investment in a mutual fund is investigated. The sensitivity of mutual fund yields to exchange rate movements and the degree of leverage is tested for a strong dollar cycle (1981‐1984) as well as for a weak dollar cycle (1985‐1987). The empirical results provide evidence of the benefits derived from leveraging investments in mutual funds in anticipation of a long‐term trend in the home‐currency′s value. To facilitate the foreign leveraging by the small investor, the creation of foreign levered mutual funds is suggested. While this study was performed from the US perspective, the general implications apply to investors in any country.

The New Zealand construction sector is similar to many other countries with a few large companies and many small and micro enterprises. It seeks to achieve a 20 per cent increase in productivity by 2020 which requires a step change in how the sector operates and buy-in from key stakeholders. The purpose of this paper is to provide a set of levers to improve productivity in the construction sector and develop an implementation schedule.

This paper adopts a systems approach taking account of the nature of the building sector and the whole life cycle of a building from design to end-of-life. Information gained from the post-construction phases informs the pre-construction and construction phases.

Productivity is an integrated model whereby increases in process efficiency are executed with quality materials and workmanship, in a manner that is affordable for both the client and contractor and sustainable over time. A series of interviews and workshops produced 10 nodal points and 19 crucial levers which were prioritised for implementation. Additionally, indicators were developed to monitor progress over time and provide information for further corrective action to the system.

The effect of using a few targeted levers in unison provided significantly more gains than individual applications. Modelling real world responses to process stimuli outlined in this paper is extremely valuable. This provided the opportunity for key construction stakeholders to estimate the effects of decision making during a project.

Previous studies identified factors affecting productivity. Piecemeal approaches to improve productivity have resulted in systemic failure. A whole of life approach provides valuable insights to improve productivity in the construction and pre-construction phases which have a flow-on effect through the life cycle. Importantly, this research proposes drivers, an implementation scheme and indicators that provide leverage on nodal points to improve productivity.

Leadership is about mobilizing self and others to attain a common purpose. The actions chosen to accomplish this are guided by a set of core values. Yet many companies lack the investment in establishing a common purpose and set of core values. Effective leaders use the principle of purpose to establish a direction that will motivate and capture the energy of those needed for success. In other words, they build engagement. The key to having an engagement culture is the top team. Organizations that have strong engagement cultures are populated with senior leaders that make everyday – and everyone – count daily. The purpose of this paper is to discuss the four key principles that must be deployed to build an engagement culture.

There are a wide variety of engagement/culture surveys on the market today, but the real key to having an engagement culture is the top team. Effective leaders constantly seek out new ways to improve. They use the principle of purpose to establish a direction that will motivate and capture the energy of those needed for success. They demonstrate stewardship, provide feedback and consistently inquire into the quality of their plans, as well as the effectiveness of their organizations and their own leadership. The approach of this paper requires four key principles to be deployed to build an engagement culture: align the top team through the development of a core purpose; senior leaders embrace stewardship; senior leaders practice feedback; and senior leaders model caring and listening.

To build a culture of engagement, leaders must require that developing engaged work teams be a part of the business strategy. This means engagement becomes the way the company operates, not something done in addition to the company’s work. In other words, it is a fundamental tenet of the company that business performance is achieved by leveraging the organization’s human capital. High-performing leaders make employee engagement non-negotiable, by establishing two things: importance and accountability. Organizations that have strong engagement cultures are populated with senior leaders that make everyday – and everyone – count daily. If an organization is to build a culture of engagement, then it must first be modeled by leaders. These leaders are not afraid of tough questions, comments or challenges. They seek out those who will engage in the tough conversations to build their capability and that of the organization.

High-performing leaders make employee engagement non-negotiable, by establishing two things: importance and accountability. The approach of this paper involves leveraging the talents of the organization’s employees and engaging them to produce stronger business performance. The world’s best-in-class organizations understand that human capital yields organic growth and creates brand loyalty. When senior leaders align their top team through the development of an engaged workforce, we then see an engagement culture emerge that drives business performance and creates a true competitive advantage for the organization.

Three themes dominate Hunting Causes. The first is that cause is a plural concept. The methods and metaphysics of causation, Cartwright believes, are context dependent. Different causal accounts seem to be at odds with one another only because the same word means different things in different contexts. Every formal approach to causality uses a conceptual framework that is “thinner” than causal reality. She lists a bewildering variety of approaches to causation: probabilistic and Bayes-net accounts (of, for example, Patrick Suppes, Clive Granger, Wolfgang Spohn, Judea Pearl, and Clark Glymour), modularity accounts (Pearl, James Woodward, and Stephen LeRoy), invariance accounts (Woodward, David Hendry, and Kevin Hoover), natural experiments (Herbert Simon, James Hamilton, and Cartwright), causal process accounts (Wesley Salmon and Philip Dowe), efficacy accounts (Hoover), counterfactual accounts (David Lewis, Hendry, Paul Holland, and Donald Rubin), manipulationist accounts (Peter Menzies and Huw Price), and others. The lists of advocates of various accounts overlap. Nevertheless, she sometimes treats these accounts as if they were so different that it is not clear why they should be the subject of a single book. And she fails to explain what they have in common. If, as she apparently believes, they do not have a common essence, do they have a Wittgensteinian family resemblance? She fails to explore in any systematic way the complementarities among the different approaches – for example, between invariance accounts, Bayes-nets, and natural experiments – that frequently make their advocates allies rather than opponents.

At the time of its demise in 2001, the Enron Corporation could boast of its comprehensive, state-of-the-art management control and governance systems. Yet these controls were rendered ineffective in the company's last few years. This article identifies the radical change in Enron's corporate culture that took place from the Lay-Kinder era (1986–1996) to the Lay-Skilling era (1997–2001). It argues that this was a major cause of neutralizing these controls, which in turn proved to be a major factor in Enron's fall into bankruptcy. The article draws on Schein's (1993, Legitimating clinical research in the study of organizational culture, Journal of Counselling and Development, 71, 703–708; 1996, 2004) framework of cultural practice to develop our analysis. Thus, it supports Simon's (1990, 1995) urging to more meaningfully include corporate culture in management control research studies. The article contributes to the literature by drawing attention to the rich but untold story of Enron's governance and control and also extends the research linking corporate culture and control systems.