Lindsay C. Hawkes and Michael B. Adams
Total Quality Management (TQM) will have major implications for theinternal audit function. Argues that TQM concepts, such as peopleempowerment, are incompatible with traditional…
Abstract
Total Quality Management (TQM) will have major implications for the internal audit function. Argues that TQM concepts, such as people empowerment, are incompatible with traditional notions of compliance with prescribed internal controls, policies and procedures. Suggests that the fundamental principles which govern the practice of internal audit are incompatible with TQM environments. Examines a number of scenarios to assess the impact of TQM on the internal audit function. These issues may offer a basis for the conduct of further research.
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Lindsay C. Hawkes and Michael B. Adams
Argues that total quality management (TQM), with its emphasis onpeople empowerment, is incompatible with financial– andcompliance‐based internal auditing. Examines the…
Abstract
Argues that total quality management (TQM), with its emphasis on people empowerment, is incompatible with financial– and compliance‐based internal auditing. Examines the implications of TQM for internal auditors in New Zealand manufacturing companies. The empirical evidence suggests that one‐third of the companies examined do not have an internal auditing function. Nevertheless, in firms that do have an internal audit function, internal auditors make an important contribution to TQM. Internal auditors in these companies participate fully in quality programmes and they are less likely to be concerned purely with the propriety of financial systems. Arguably, this change in focus will have major implications for the future training and education of internal auditors. Concludes that unless the internal audit function responds proactively to the challenges of TQM, firms may look to other agencies to perform quality systems reviews.
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THE Fifty‐First Conference of the Library Association takes place in the most modern type of British town. Blackpool is a typical growth of the past fifty years or so, rising from…
Abstract
THE Fifty‐First Conference of the Library Association takes place in the most modern type of British town. Blackpool is a typical growth of the past fifty years or so, rising from the greater value placed upon the recreations of the people in recent decades. It has the name of the pleasure city of the north, a huge caravansary into which the large industrial cities empty themselves at the holiday seasons. But Blackpool is more than that; it is a town with a vibrating local life of its own; it has its intellectual side even if the casual visitor does not always see it as readily as he does the attractions of the front. A week can be spent profitably there even by the mere intellectualist.
ALL the auguries for the Bournemouth Conference appear to be good. Our local secretary, Mr. Charles Riddle, seems to have spared neither energy nor ability to render our second…
Abstract
ALL the auguries for the Bournemouth Conference appear to be good. Our local secretary, Mr. Charles Riddle, seems to have spared neither energy nor ability to render our second visit to the town, whose libraries he initiated and has controlled for thirty‐seven years, useful and enjoyable. There will not be quite so many social events as usual, but that is appropriate in the national circumstances. There will be enough of all sorts of meetings to supply what the President of the A.L.A. describes as “the calling which collects and organizes books and other printed matter for the use and benefit of mankind and which brings together the reader and the printed word in a vital relationship.” We hope the discussions will be thorough, but without those long auto‐biographical speeches which are meant for home newspapers, that readers will make time for seeing the exhibitions, and that Bournemouth will be a source of health and pleasure to all our readers who can be there.
Climate change is recognised as a severe threat to human and planetary wellbeing. Many children and young people around the world have chosen resistance as their form of…
Abstract
Climate change is recognised as a severe threat to human and planetary wellbeing. Many children and young people around the world have chosen resistance as their form of resilience in the face of the climate and biodiversity crises that threaten their current and future wellbeing. Their activism has widened the discourse pertaining to the climate emergency from a narrow focus on technical and scientific sources, bringing the discussion into broader public consciousness. In Aotearoa (New Zealand), the context for youth climate activism also reflects commitments to Māori, the Indigenous people, and to Pacific Peoples, given the ongoing impacts of histories of colonisation. This chapter draws from a range of focus group interviews with young Aotearoa (New Zealand) high school climate activists, and Māori and Pacific children and young people ranging in age from 10 into their 20s. Data were gathered during a recent small-scale project to develop a wellbeing guide which accompanies a climate change education programme for schools. It identifies the collective, collaborative leadership exhibited by these young people of diverse backgrounds, as well as their sophisticated analysis and advocacy for urgent remedies to address the climate crisis. It is argued that, instead of focussing on the blinkered continuation of restrictive assessment-driven pedagogies, teachers need to meet the moment of the current convergence of inter-related crises which include, along with the climate emergency, biodiversity loss, pandemic related exacerbation of socio-economic inequities, global conflict, and the unsustainable agenda of current global neoliberal economics. This can be done by supporting children and young people with knowledge and skills for climate action as they seek hope through active participation in endeavours to reshape their potential futures.
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Robert J. Manthei and Alison Gilmore
Owing to the increasing debt students are accumulating to finance their tertiary study, many are having to work during term time. The aim of this study is to explore the impact of…
Abstract
Purpose
Owing to the increasing debt students are accumulating to finance their tertiary study, many are having to work during term time. The aim of this study is to explore the impact of this paid employment on their study time and other aspects of their lives.
Design/methodology approach
Eighty three undergraduates completed a questionnaire about their academic workload, their paid employment commitments during term time, their earnings and expenditure, and their recreational and cultural activities.
Findings
Results indicated that 81 per cent of the students held at least one job during term time for an average of 14 hours per week. The money earned was typically spent on essential living expenses. Working left less time than desired for social activities, study and recreation.
Research limitations/implications
The findings are limited by the relatively small sample size of self‐selected students: mainly young, female and enrolled in Arts courses.
Practical implications
The results suggest that working is not always detrimental to students' academic efforts, particularly if the hours worked are manageable given their course load. Lecturers should be more aware of the busy lives students lead and try to structure assignments and course requirements to recognise this, including the scheduling of class times and the offering of study support services.
Originality/value
The study adds to the growing body of international data that reports on the effects of a user‐pays approach in tertiary education. There is no similar data in New Zealand.
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The purpose of this paper is to examine the popular “information transmitted” interpretation of absolute judgments, and to provide an alternative interpretation if one is needed.
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to examine the popular “information transmitted” interpretation of absolute judgments, and to provide an alternative interpretation if one is needed.
Design/methodology/approach
The psychologists Garner and Hake and their successors used Shannon's Information Theory to quantify information transmitted in absolute judgments of sensory stimuli. Here, information theory is briefly reviewed, followed by a description of the absolute judgment experiment, and its information theory analysis. Empirical channel capacities are scrutinized. A remarkable coincidence, the similarity of maximum information transmitted to human memory capacity, is described. Over 60 representative psychology papers on “information transmitted” are inspected for evidence of memory involvement in absolute judgment. Finally, memory is conceptually integrated into absolute judgment through a novel qualitative model that correctly predicts how judgments change with increase in the number of judged stimuli.
Findings
Garner and Hake gave conflicting accounts of how absolute judgments represent information transmission. Further, “channel capacity” is an illusion caused by sampling bias and wishful thinking; information transmitted actually peaks and then declines, the peak coinciding with memory capacity. Absolute judgments themselves have numerous idiosyncracies that are incompatible with a Shannon general communication system but which clearly imply memory dependence.
Research limitations/implications
Memory capacity limits the correctness of absolute judgments. Memory capacity is already well measured by other means, making redundant the informational analysis of absolute judgments.
Originality/value
This paper presents a long‐overdue comprehensive critical review of the established interpretation of absolute judgments in terms of “information transmitted”. An inevitable conclusion is reached: that published measurements of information transmitted actually measure memory capacity. A new, qualitative model is offered for the role of memory in absolute judgments. The model is well supported by recently revealed empirical properties of absolute judgments.