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Despite its strategic importance, researchers have given little attention to when CEOs are willing to delegate decisions to top management team members. Prior studies and conventional wisdom suggest that CEOs will be more willing to delegate in times of good performance. Drawing from prospect theory, we suggest an alternative view: that CEOs will be risk‐averse and, therefore, less willing to delegate when their firms have performed well. Our findings provide support for both perspectives.

Economic ideas are the product of contemplation, but also of our economic lives. In the history of ideas, Gérard Debreu’s shining book of 1959, Theory of Value, represents the pinnacle of purity in contemplating economic life. Rather than contextualizing this oeuvre through his intellectual life, as is usually done, this essay describes his axiomatic analysis by contextualizing it through his economic life. What do we learn about Debreu’s axioms on consumption when thinking of his own consumption? What do we learn about his theory of value when thinking of his own values? Historiographically, this approach permits the use of a widely neglected source in the history of economics: anecdotes. Epistemologically, blending axioms and anecdotes offers a description of how axioms regulate an economic discourse. Finally, this essay offers a language for the material dimensions of economic life that are so underexposed in Debreu’s own work.

The Bureau of Economics in the Federal Trade Commission has a three-part role in the Agency and the strength of its functions changed over time depending on the preferences and ideology of the FTC’s leaders, developments in the field of economics, and the tenor of the times. The over-riding current role is to provide well considered, unbiased economic advice regarding antitrust and consumer protection law enforcement cases to the legal staff and the Commission. The second role, which long ago was primary, is to provide reports on investigations of various industries to the public and public officials. This role was more recently called research or “policy R&D”. A third role is to advocate for competition and markets both domestically and internationally. As a practical matter, the provision of economic advice to the FTC and to the legal staff has required that the economists wear “two hats,” helping the legal staff investigate cases and provide evidence to support law enforcement cases while also providing advice to the legal bureaus and to the Commission on which cases to pursue (thus providing “a second set of eyes” to evaluate cases). There is sometimes a tension in those functions because building a case is not the same as evaluating a case. Economists and the Bureau of Economics have provided such services to the FTC for over 100 years proving that a sub-organization can survive while playing roles that sometimes conflict. Such a life is not, however, always easy or fun.

IN the less‐than‐a‐century in which children's literature has developed, many types of books have emerged, and perhaps one class—the moral story—has disappeared (or if not entirely so, at least it is cold‐shouldered by modern young people). But the new literature has not displaced the fairy tale, one of the oldest forms, and still a favourite of children with imagination. A volume which should be added to the home bookshelf alongside Andersen, Grimm and Perrault, is Christina Hole's recently reprinted collection of tales from many lands entitled Folk Tales of Many Nations (H. Joseph, 10/6). They are related in a pleasant, straightforward style which presents no difficulties, and they are just long enough to hold the attention of young readers. In Norwegian Fairy Tales (Muller, 5/−) G. Strindberg has chosen old traditional folk legends about trolls, hulders, and other fairy people, and she has illustrated them herself. The Golden Treasury of Fairy Tales (Gulliver, 6/−) contains abridged and retold versions of childhood favourites by the Brothers Grimm, Hans Andersen, Frances Browne, and others. On the production side, the printing is rather lifeless and badly spaced. An interesting collection of tales handed down from father to son in the remote parts of the Irish countryside has been made by Gerard Murphy in Tales from Ireland (Browne and Nolan, 7/6). The volume is attractively produced and illustrated and will appeal to rather older boys and girls. Tom Scarlett's The Gnome and the Fairy and other Stories (Muller, 6/−) is in the modern vein and recounts the adventures of everyday people with fairies, wizards, birds and animals. Hettie Roe's simple line drawings are almost too tempting for children with a box of crayons.

While the formal structures of universities may predominantly reflect ceremonial rather than functional purposes, attempts at changing them are usually a fertile ground for academic conflicts. Taking this apparent contradiction as a starting point, the aim of this article is to explore the intriguing role of formal structures in academic settings. Drawing on a case study of a merger and organizational restructuring process in an academic research centre, it shows how symbolic responses to institutional pressures may have actual consequences on research practices, beyond myth and ceremony.

The purpose of this paper is to examine different processes four organizations use to achieve best practices. There is an apparent contradiction between projects designed to create innovation and rigid rule following used for productivity. While both contribute to best practices this study describes a third source. Employees disobeyed rules and, in some cases, the results became best practices. This study identifies three management responses to deviant employee behaviors.

This study uses a multi-case field study design built upon organizational theory in the area of work structures. It uses qualitative methods based on grounded theory. Interviews, observations and archival data were used to triangulate findings. Four firms were selected to participate. One global and one regional accounting firm were compared and contrasted with one global and one regional manufacturing firm.

The paper provides insights about how change occurs not only from intentional innovation but also from disobeying rigid rules designed to enhance productivity. It also highlights three specific management responses to deviant behavior and the conditions under which each is selected.

Because of the chosen research approach, this research may not be easily generalized. Therefore, researchers are encouraged to further test the proposed conclusions. The paper expands organizational routine theory to examine how improvisation may change the structure of a formal work process.

The paper includes management implications. It suggests that rigid conformance to rules may inhibit a possible source of best practice innovation and gives management potential reasons to rethink imposed constraints.

Relationships of supervisory action to employee performance and productivity become more important when innovation and efficiency are sought in an organization. These relationships should be examined with a specific outcome in mind. There may be a choice between control and discovery that will require further consideration by management.

Many studies look at processes, procedures and organizational routines, most assuming that what is designed is implemented. Others consider deviant behavior usually in a negative light. This paper provides insights into non-conforming actions by employees and the positive unexpected results that can occur, taking into consideration the studies that took this approach to innovation.

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.

Lemos&Crane has conducted a national survey of action to tackle racial harassment, funded by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation. Two hundred and fifty organisations in the sixty‐seven local authority areas in which the majority of black and minority ethnic people live were interviewed. The report has proposed a new framework for tackling racial harassment, with the intention of going beyond an acknowledgement of the problem to a truer understanding, not just of the extent of racist attacks, but also of their impact.