Paul A. Copley and Edward B. Douthett,
We examine the relevance of governmental accounting information to the citizenry by analyzing the association between various financial and non-financial measures of local…
Abstract
We examine the relevance of governmental accounting information to the citizenry by analyzing the association between various financial and non-financial measures of local government performance and residential property values. The link between government performance measures and residential property values is based on a model of housing value capitalization developed by Yinger (1982). Using a model of firstdifferences, we find that changes in housing values are associated with government financial measures, including reported surplus and changes in outstanding debt. Further, we find that changes in housing values are also associated with non-financial measures of performance by county schools. Overall our results suggest that both financial and non-financial government performance measures are economically relevant to citizen property owners.
Ken W. Brown and Thomas M. Margavio
This study provides public administrators with an introduction into research of the determinants of audit fees. A working knowledge of external audit cost determinants can help…
Abstract
This study provides public administrators with an introduction into research of the determinants of audit fees. A working knowledge of external audit cost determinants can help public administrators hone their evaluation skills for use in audit-procurement. Most prior research on audit cost determinants has focused on the few hundred cities in the nation with populations exceeding 50,000. As a result, this study investigated the audit costs incurred by small cities with populations less than 50,000.
Besides providing a glimpse of small-city auditing practices, the study tested the significance of the Single Audit Act in audit-fee determination. Missouri municipalities with populations between 2,000 and 50,000 provided the sample for the study. Because Missouri is one of the few states in the nation that neither legislates nor monitors municipal auditing, it represents an unregulated audit market in which town officials decide on the need for an audit, the firm to conduct the audit, and the process by which the audit firm is selected. The results of a nine-variable regression model suggested that the size of the town, the existence of a city administrator, the complexity of the town's operation, the method of accounting, the timing and completion time of the audit, and audit-firm specialization in municipal auditing were important determinants of audit fees.
James M. Kurtenbach and Robin W. Roberts
Accounting researchers have performed many studies related to public sector budgeting and financial management. Public sector accounting research seeks to explain the role of…
Abstract
Accounting researchers have performed many studies related to public sector budgeting and financial management. Public sector accounting research seeks to explain the role of accounting and auditing in the public sector. For example, researchers examine issues such as (1) the use of accounting information by elected officials, (2) the demand for auditing, and (3) the determination of bond ratings. This review of the public sector accounting literature describes some of the theoretical foundations utilized in public sector accounting research and reviews a sample of selected empirical studies.
K. K. Raman and Wanda A. Wallace
The relationship between the size of state audit budgets, audit responsibilities, professional characteristics of staff, risk, and tax and expenditure limitations is explored…
Abstract
The relationship between the size of state audit budgets, audit responsibilities, professional characteristics of staff, risk, and tax and expenditure limitations is explored. Bivariate relationships are examined and then a model is estimated which controls for size, complexity, financial risk factors, and political risk factors. This provides a framework for considering the incremental influence of specialized audit inputs. Both "brand names" and size have been used in past research to proxy for quality dimensions intended to differentiate the audit product provided by different suppliers. This research extends such work by considering characteristics of the auditing services as reflected by specific inputs and by using cost data rather than audit fee data. The states are observed to differ in their responses to financial and political factors by spending resources on peer review, continuing professional education, certifications of professional staff, and expertise in both the computer science area and in law. A positive association of cost and auditor differentiation, implicit in past audit fee literature is corroborated.
Scott L. Roberts and Betsy VanDeusen-MacLeod
In order to comply with the new Common Core standards, it is imperative teachers, particularly those at the elementary levels, incorporate English/Language Arts (ELA) in their…
Abstract
In order to comply with the new Common Core standards, it is imperative teachers, particularly those at the elementary levels, incorporate English/Language Arts (ELA) in their social studies classes. These reading, writing, speaking, and listening foci, through the use of informational texts, necessitate strategies to help students meet these standards. They also help students learn social studies content and gain historical understanding. Teachers can meet these standards through an adapted Jigsaw strategy using primary source materials. We review a modified Jigsaw strategy; we call a “Source-Focused Jigsaw.” An aspect of this type of Jigsaw is its allowance of students to focus on the similarities and differences between multiple documents, which is a specific emphasis of the Common Core Standards. This strategy allows young learners to think like a historian and to understand various sources often contain different information. They also learn multiple sources may be necessary to for decision-making. The authors provide lesson examples of its use with social studies informational texts and ELA.
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This paper aims to offer a new history of management by tracing a religious dimension of scientific management. The thesis is that the good was foundational for bringing…
Abstract
Purpose
This paper aims to offer a new history of management by tracing a religious dimension of scientific management. The thesis is that the good was foundational for bringing scientific management to success in Taylor’s native Quaker Philadelphia in the 1880s. The paper’s main contribution is to contrast the philosophical origins of Taylor’s ideas in scientific management to his native Quaker roots, and how Taylor, over time, into the 1910s, wrestled with this issue.
Design/methodology/approach
The paper is situated in historical interpretivism and subjectivism, leaning on contextual and narrative research on religious morality.
Findings
Quaker morality prevented managerial opportunism at Taylor’s Midvale Steel in the 1880s. Conversely, by the 1900s and 1910s, interest conflicts between workers and managers escalated when scientific management moved out of its traditional cultural contexts of Quaker Philadelphia and spread across the USA. The historical implication is, already for Taylor’s time, that scientific management never was the “one-best way” of management.
Research limitations/implications
Future research needs to deepen and broaden research on scientific management when tracing the significance of religion and culture in management thought.
Practical implications
The paper has implications for modern studies of business morality by uncovering the practical relevance of religious business ethics at the outset of management studies.
Social implications
The historic emergence of scientific management points to a theory of institutional evolution and economic growth, when religiously grounded governance of the firm deinstitutionalized, and institutional economic governance, with different but superior economic advantages, progressed by the 1900s.
Originality/value
The paper suggests an alternative version of the intellectual heritage of management studies by tracing the legacy of Taylor’s Quakerism and how religious and cultural ideas contributed to the formation of science in management.
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Julie Nichols and Quenten Agius
Embedded in built environment discourse, this chapter examines the traditional knowledge and resilience of the Ngadjuri Nation Peoples through an Elder’s narrative of…
Abstract
Embedded in built environment discourse, this chapter examines the traditional knowledge and resilience of the Ngadjuri Nation Peoples through an Elder’s narrative of reconciliation as well as resistance in their subsisting colonial settlement. Removed from ‘Country’ in the 1840s, Ngadjuri Aboriginal community endured colonial industries of open-cut copper mining and large-scale pastoralism as irreparable destruction to their cultural landscapes. European processes in the resources sectors reshaped natural topographies, deconstructing Ngadjuri Songlines and Ancestral Dreaming stories. Burra’s colonial stone buildings of settlement, painstakingly cut and composed from materials of the surrounding ecological terrain, prompted new narratives from Ngadjuri as a way of alleviating scars. Broadly speaking, this chapter aims to show how cultural heritage of two communities is provocatively and conceptually unpacked through the vernacular buildings’ cross-cultural foundations. That is, an under-reported narrative was unwittingly bestowed on the colonial-built forms with hidden meanings that deserve further investigation. This chapter offers a counternarrative to colonial histories revealing Ngadjuri’s methods for reconnecting to Country and culture after generations of disempowerment. It explores how within the materiality of colonial structures, the Ngadjuri entwined their remediated storylines – revealing a data curation that had avoided popular discourse in the galleries, libraries, archives, and museums [GLAM] sector representation. This example implies there are bodies of knowledge in built cultural heritage hidden elsewhere on our Aboriginal Nations and the challenges it presents GLAM in their Indigenisation processes.
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Julie Nichols, Jeffrey Newchurch, Robert Rigney, Tinesha Miller and Bonita Sansbury
This chapter came about, after five years of working with the Ngadjuri community on speculative student cultural centre designs. Ideation for those conversations and studio-based…
Abstract
This chapter came about, after five years of working with the Ngadjuri community on speculative student cultural centre designs. Ideation for those conversations and studio-based interactions, in addition to time and cultural tours spent on Country, revealed a variety of opinions and hopes that exist within the Ngadjuri community for a place to celebrate their cultural heritage. This heritage has an incredible history, and the idea of a cultural centre has been topical since the late Uncle Vince Copley Senior worked with other Ngadjuri community members such as Robert Rigney, on Country and in an advocacy role for Ngadjuri more than 30 years ago. This series of yarnings from a two-part transcription process re-awakens those desires of Elders now passed. The transcriptions are complemented with literature around yarning as a research methodology that delivers current, immediate, and insightful personal thoughts, although only as personal as the lead yarner wishes to share. In addition, the literature contextualises the key themes of which the yarnings divulge. Research has indicated how yarning interactions and interrelationships create a unique dynamic between the researcher and the community members. It is these rich experiences where knowledge is shared in a two-way exchange that is noteworthy for the galleries, libraries, archives, and museums [GLAM] sector. GLAM sector priorities must implement policy to pursue future Indigenisation of their epistemological methods and ontological systems. To address any future data curation of Ngadjuri cultural heritage materials on Country or in GLAM, hearing the personal stories and desires seemed timely and necessary.
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Noreen Shafiq, Ioan M. Ohlsson and Paul Mathias
The purpose of this paper is to investigate the predictors of punitive attitudes towards young offenders among police officers. This included an examination of variables such as…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to investigate the predictors of punitive attitudes towards young offenders among police officers. This included an examination of variables such as officers’ coping styles, mental health, rank and age. It was predicted that indirect coping styles, mental health difficulties, higher age and higher rank would negatively impact on punitive attitudes towards young offenders. Officers reporting direct coping strategies, low levels of mental health difficulties, lower rank and lower age were expected to have less punitive and more rehabilitative attitudes towards young offenders.
Design/methodology/approach
A sample of 83 police officers and community support officers from the UK completed standardised self-report measures.
Findings
Indirect coping strategies, high levels of mental health difficulties and high rank were all associated with more punitive attitudes, whilst age had no impact.
Research limitations/implications
Results are discussed with regard to their research and real world implications. These include an impact of these findings on the job performance, community safety, approaches to policing, and the well-being of police officers. The importance of mental well-being, direct coping and positive attitudes towards young offenders is indicated in order for police officers to employ more proactive, consistent and fair behaviour with this group, leading to less punitive outcomes for young offenders, as well as improved police-youth relations.
Originality/value
The research findings link mental health, coping styles and rank to officers’ attitudes towards young offenders, which had not been fully examined in the literature previously. Results suggest that mental well-being and direct coping styles may serve as a protective factor against the development of punitive attitudes. This highlights the importance of providing support for mental well-being, as well as training in the areas of effective coping styles and issues surrounding young offenders.
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This paper presents a study of the audit delay experienced by 289 U.S. local governments. The study extends prior research by considering explanatory variables thought to be…
Abstract
This paper presents a study of the audit delay experienced by 289 U.S. local governments. The study extends prior research by considering explanatory variables thought to be correlates of audit quality and by comparing city and county delay. Models of audit delay and audit fees are estimated using two-stage least squares regression. The study finds that audit delay is positively associated with correlates of audit quality and that cities experience less delay than do counties. The results indicate that, while audit fees have no explanatory power concerning audit delay, delay exerts a positive influence on fees.