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Advanced computing systems must be employed for aerospace companies to remain competitive and reduce time scales for the introduction of new technology. In this article Dr Mike Williamson describes the advantages gained by a user, and examines the influence of aerospace requirements on the past and future development of computer aided design and manufacturing (CADCAM) techniques.

This paper aims to explore uncertainties in the interaction between Basel II and banking practices.

The research setting is a centralized bank’s risk control organization and its commercial lending operations. The bank, despite its early adoption of the Basel II Accord, experienced severe credit losses during the global financial crisis. The data consist of interviews with twelve decision-makers and risk specialists at the bank and interviews with four professionals outside the bank after the global financial crisis.

This paper finds that there are three types of uncertainties in the interaction between Basel II and banking practices. The paper also describes corroborative examples of efforts to reduce such uncertainties. Among such efforts, the decision-makers excluded the risk specialists from decision-making and decentralized decision-making to branch offices.

Although the literature generally portrays bank decision-makers and risk specialists as opposing groups, this research finds that the bank interviewees present complementary and confirmatory accounts on three types of uncertainties.

The findings suggest that increased regulatory pressure have operational implications for banking practices.

The paper has contemporary relevance with its sole focus on credit risk after the transition period provided for Basel II Accord.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the elective affinity between sport science and elite football by situating it first, within the wider political economy of football and second, within the dynamics of the market and work situation faced by elite players in the modern game.

The methodology underpinning this paper continues this movement by considering the impact on market and work situation of elite footballers due to wider social structures and the distribution of social power peculiar to the football industry. It is premised on the view that observed events and contingent relations and processes are linked to more enduring social structures and that knowledge must take account of all three.

The resulting impact of sport science on elite football is contradictory, facilitating, on the one hand, the development of football as an aesthetic experience, while on the other hand, threatening to transform the football spectacle into a mundane exercise in the search for increased functional peak performance for its own sake.

The value of this paper is that it considers salaries and player power to determine value by exploring the impact on market and work situation of elite footballers set in the context of wider social structures and the distribution of social power peculiar to the football industry.

Elite footballers yield immense power over their market situation, which sport science has the potential to enhance and sustain by fine honing peak fitness. The football club’s relative lack of control of the player’s market situation necessitates the appliance of sport science to help maximize control over the player’s work situation.

The paper demonstrates that sport science develops elite footballers to peak fitness, while also developing footballers as commodities; and this latter aspect if taken too far may potentially transform football into a mundane exercise in the search for increased functional peak performance for its own sake.

The paper draws together the relatively neglected analysis of the football labour process with the increasing interventions of sport science to football and sets this within a broader political economy of football.

Post‐industrial predictions of a rapid growth in new technology homeworking have gained widespread currency to become part of the conventional wisdom. However the evidence, including primary research material, suggests that the claims for new technology homeworking, both regarding its extent and its alleged benefits, have been considerably overestimated. In particular, new technology homeworking by itself does not appear to open up opportunities for women to improve their position in the labour market; the demographic changes predicted for the 1990s may provide a better bet. Nevertheless, there is a danger in assuming that all firms apply the same strategy when employing homeworkers; at least three different variations can be identified and this has important implications for personnel managers. The overestimation of new technology homeworking stands in stark contrast to traditional homeworking where the extent has been considerably underestimated. This marginalisation of traditional homeworking stems in large part from the distortion caused by the conceptual split between private and public realms. The failure to find evidence to support the growth of new technology homeworking leads to a consideration of how the arguments may better be considered as rhetoric designed to advance a certain set of ideas – in particular that set associated with “privatisation” as a political ideology.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the link between management accounting and risk management. The paper measures the extent to which management accounting practices help in managing risks and the extent of the integration between these two important managerial functions.

The study used a mail survey of financial institutions listed in the Malaysian Central Banks' web site. The respondents to whom 106 questionnaires were sent were the chief financial officers; the response rate was 68 percent. A total of 16 post‐survey semi‐structured interviews were also conducted with selected respondents to gain further insights into the survey findings.

The findings from the survey indicate that analysis of financial statements was perceived to contribute most towards risk management. The majority of the respondents were of the view that the management accounting function was greatly involved in the organization's risk management. Consistent with the survey findings, the interviewees also perceived that budgetary control, budgeting, and strategic planning played important roles in managing risk.

This is a study conducted in Malaysian financial institutions and thus, results may not be generalizable to other contexts. The findings of this study strengthen the importance of both management accounting and risk management in complementing each other to form part of the corporate performance management systems.

This paper contributes to the literature as very few studies have examined the significant link between management accounting and risk management.

The aim of this study is to shed light on the mechanisms involved in, and consequences of, developing a sustainability report in a small to medium enterprise.

Action research is used to provide insights into the initial stages of the development of the sustainability report and its consequences. “Mike” is an Italian small organisation with a sustainability orientation selling products and services about wellness and health. It decided to develop a sustainability report in 2013.

The authors find that the organisation’s initial aim to report on its sustainability later extended beyond disclosure to using the information to enhance its sustainable development approach and awareness, consider long-term planning, support strategy-making based on the sustainable development concept and establish and enhance its reputation.

This research is limited to the analysis of only one small Italian organisation and as such cannot claim generalisability of its findings.

The findings indicate that the sustainability initiative of this organisation, while originally focussed on reporting, evolved into strategy and planning. Managers in similar organisations may learn from this experience to focus on strategy-making and social and environmental value creation.

The study examines sustainability reporting in the previously overlooked area of small and medium enterprises.

The purpose of this paper is to examine an important yet underexplored research question in the literature: What determines the length of contract governing buyer–supplier relationships during market transitions? The length of contract is a solid indicator of the comprehensiveness of a contract. By integrating transaction costs economics, the embeddedness perspective and the institution-based view, the paper develops a model that incorporates specific investments and perceived opportunism, strategies to select suppliers and buyer firms’ confidence in the institutional environment. It further posits how buyer firms’ dependence on suppliers moderates these relationships.

Data were collected nationwide via face-to-face interviews with 328 executives in 164 Chinese firms who shared information pertaining to 774 buyer–supplier contracts. A fine-grained mixed-empirical method was designed to test the proposed hypotheses, to confirm the reliability and to generalize the research findings.

All the proposed factors significantly influence the length of the contract. Results obtained through a moderated mediating model suggest that buyers with supplier-specific investments and that choose market-based selection relative to a relationship-based tend to perceive more opportunism in buyer–supplier relationships, which will lead to shortening the length of the contract. However, the buyer’s perception of opportunism will decrease when buyers perceive higher levels of confidence in their legal institutions.

The study discusses several practical implications for B2B managers who typically involve in interfirm exchanges as well as for emerging economies’ institutions.

Leveraging theoretical insights from transaction cost economics, the institution-based view and buyer–supplier relationships literature, this empirical study adds unique contributions to B2B research in general and emerging economies’ institutional literature in particular.

This paper aims to contribute to the construction of a framework that makes risk management (RM) more effective and visible. This is done by investigating how the concept of “risk” is included in various activities in the management accounting and control (MA&C) system.

A cross-sectional analysis of 72 Danish organisations extracted from an alumni database is conducted together with a factor analysis and a partial least squares structural equation modelling approach.

The authors find four latent variables, namely, expectation, attitude, subjective norms, processes and culture, which all have risk activities in MA&C as the depending variable. Attitude seems to be a powerful antecedent, whereas supporting processes and culture play a crucial partial mediator role for the inclusion of risk.

The findings add to the understanding of the interrelationships between risk and MA&C. An important caveat is that the authors use soft and self-reported data for the dependent variable and for the various independent variables.

The authors propose a dynamic and holistic framework for the analysis of risk. This framework eliminates the limitations found in many prior studies that have neglected the interrelated importance of attitude and supporting processes and culture. The results of this study also provide valuable insights for managers who wish to consider and to explore the interrelations of a number of antecedent risk issues that influence different risk activities in MA&C.

This paper is one of the few papers that assess the impact of different risk issues on firms’ different MA&C activities by including the theory of planned behaviour. The potential key role that supporting processes and culture play as partial mediators for risk inclusion is particularly interesting. The research extends prior research by constructing a framework that makes that implementation of RM processes in the MA&C system more effective. It also proposes a validation process that can lessen the model risk possible.

The purpose of this paper is to help organizations capitalize on the potential advantages of age diversity by offering insight into two new moderators in the age diversity, work group performance relationship – status congruity and cognition-based trust.

The authors surveyed 197 employees and 56 supervisors across 59 work groups to test for the moderating effects of status congruity and cognition-based trust on the age diversity, work group performance relationship.

The results demonstrated, on the one hand, that under conditions of status congruity (i.e. when there were high levels of perceived status legitimacy and veridicality) and/or when perceptions of cognition-based trust were high within the group, the relationship between age diversity and work group performance was positive. On the other hand, under conditions of status incongruity and/or low levels of cognition-based trust, this relationship was negative.

The findings contribute to the literature by being the first to provide empirical evidence for the theorized effects of status on the performance of age-diverse work groups and also by demonstrating the effects of cognition-based trust in a new context – age-diverse work groups.

Arising from the study’s findings are several strategies, which are expected to help organizations enhance perceptions of status congruity and/or trust and ultimately the performance of their age-diverse work groups.

The paper is the first to empirically demonstrate the moderating effects of status congruity and cognition-based trust on the age diversity, work group performance relationship. The study also establishes important distinctions between the effects of objective status differences vs status perceptions.

Imagine a social inclusion project that encourages people recovering from mental distress to take risks. Suppose, too, that it was staffed by people with little prior experience of working in mental health services. That's the unorthodox approach taken by the Mainstream project. Mike Carr explains how it works and how, despite initial scepticism from some mental health practitioners, they have amassed a clear body of evidence to show that it works.