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1 – 10 of 404Robert Funnell and Hien Chi Dao
This paper aims to outline some of the social, cultural, political and economic conditions in which four of only seven women who have become rectors of public universities in…
Abstract
Purpose
This paper aims to outline some of the social, cultural, political and economic conditions in which four of only seven women who have become rectors of public universities in Vietnam. Their experiences are described with a focus on the context of Vietnam in order to focus more clearly on non‐western starting points for theory about career development in higher education in Vietnam and other non‐western settings.
Design/methodology/approach
A combination of historical and personal accounts is used to situate the points of view of Vietnamese women and to argue for the processes of becoming a rector as an important and significant point for understanding how women gain entry to high‐status and previously all‐male domains.
Findings
Findings demonstrate that while family/career relationships are crucial in reporting these women's experiences, too much emphasis on these aspects can divert attention away from the conditions historically blocking the initial journey into high‐status parts of an organisation. These processes in which this is initiated cannot be fully contained within western theory and literature.
Research limitations/implications
The sample size of four is a limitation and the interviews do not extend to colleagues and family members, but the four women represent over half of the total population of Vietnamese women rectors. On balance though, the research contains implicit material that would be of interest to others in the area to build on with further case studies either in Vietnam or other Asian countries.
Practical implications
The experiences of the women rectors could provide examples lacking in Vietnamese society and in literature there. The experiences could be a role model for other women's pursuits of careers in Vietnam.
Social implications
The paper contributes in identifying processes of becoming and their reliance on social conditions from the personal powers can be generated. For this framework to be effective, factors such as management style adopted when women are “at the top” must be separated from conditions that have made the “journeys to the top” possible in the first place.
Originality/value
The paper is the first of its type on women's careers in Vietnam and contributes to the development of further studies into individual women, for women's groups and academic debate in Vietnamese society. The paper could provide some discussion on where strategies might be most appropriately devised and implemented to counter loss of small gains made in women's careers and within the values in Vietnamese society.
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In an aircraft propulsion mechanism, a rotatable shaft, a cross shaft mounted thereon, combustion chambers rotatably mounted on said cross shaft, an air‐cooling jacket for cach…
Abstract
In an aircraft propulsion mechanism, a rotatable shaft, a cross shaft mounted thereon, combustion chambers rotatably mounted on said cross shaft, an air‐cooling jacket for cach chamber, a funnel concentric with said rotatable shaft and open at its forward end, and radial tubes connecting said funnel to said jackets, each chamber having an air‐passage between said air‐cooling jacket and said chamber and open at both ends, and air from said outer air‐cooling jackets being discharged into said inner air‐passages near the entrance end thereof.
Andrea Bernardi and Brian Hilton
This paper analyses public sector accounting and organisation reforms, focusing on the departments in charge of defence, military procurement and war between 1850 and 2000 in…
Abstract
Purpose
This paper analyses public sector accounting and organisation reforms, focusing on the departments in charge of defence, military procurement and war between 1850 and 2000 in Britain. Over this period, three parliamentary acts, resulting from a power struggle between the Treasury and Parliament, produced the shift between two institutional logics: probity (spending properly) and performance (spending well). The purpose of this paper is to describe how the acts produced a shift between two institutional logics.
Design/methodology/approach
The authors adopt Quattrone’s (2015) procedural notion of institutional logics and the consequent concept of “unfolding rationality”. Using documents from the National Archives, the authors analyse three reforms: The Exchequer and Audit Departments Act 1866 (towards probity), The Exchequer and Audit Departments Act 1921 (towards performance) and the National Audit Office Act of 1983 (towards performance and probity).
Findings
For a long time, the actors narrated in this story argued and acted as if probity and performance were incompatible. The two are now treated as compatible and equally important. Before that, the “incompatibility” was a rhetorical, or “procedural”, device. The authors argue that a procedural rather than substantive notion of institutional logics is more suitable to explain the trajectory that was the result of constant negotiation among actors.
Practical implications
The study might contribute to the understanding of the increase in national defence-spending at continental level and the call for a common European Union (EU) military procurement strategy that followed the invasion of Ukraine. The war could produce changes in what is a traditional tension between two logics: sovereignty or efficiency.
Originality/value
The originality of this paper stands in highlighting the link between the institutional logic of public-administration accounting and military history. This link emerges also thanks to a very long time-horizon. Additionally, from a theoretical viewpoint, the authors have put Quattrone’s approach to the test in a context very different from the original one (the Jesuit order).
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Laurence Ferry and Henry Midgley
The study focusses on explaining why advocates for reform to state audit in the United Kingdom (UK) in the early 1980s, focussed on improving the links between the new National…
Abstract
Purpose
The study focusses on explaining why advocates for reform to state audit in the United Kingdom (UK) in the early 1980s, focussed on improving the links between the new National Audit Office (NAO) and Parliament, rather than on traditional notions of audit independence. The study shows how this focus on the auditor's link to Parliament depends on a particular concept of liberty and relates this to the wider literature on the place of audit in democratic society.
Design/methodology/approach
Understanding the issue of independence of audit in protecting the liberties and rights of citizens needs addressed. In this article, the authors investigate the creation of audit independence in the UK in the National Audit Act (1983). To do so, the authors employ a neo-Roman concept of liberty to historical archives ranging from the late 1960s to 1983.
Findings
The study shows that advocates for audit reform in the UK from the 1960s to the 1980s were arguing for an extension to Parliament's power to hold the executive to account and that their focus was influential on the way that the new NAO was established. Using a neo-Roman concept of liberty, the authors show that they believed Parliamentary surveillance of the executive was necessary to secure liberty within the UK.
Research limitations/implications
The neo-Roman republican concept of liberty extends previous studies in considering the importance of audit for public accountability, the preservation of liberty and democracy.
Practical implications
Public sector audit can be a fundamentally democratic activity. Auditors should be alert to the constitutional importance of their work and see parliamentary accountability as a key objective.
Originality/value
The neo-Roman concept of liberty extends previous studies in considering the importance of audit for public accountability, preservation of liberty and democracy.
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It's a deeply held belief that the small entrepreneur develops new businesses better than big companies. A more recent notion suggests that if big companies set up…
Abstract
It's a deeply held belief that the small entrepreneur develops new businesses better than big companies. A more recent notion suggests that if big companies set up “intrapreneurial” ventures, both the big company and the new venture can have the best of both worlds. However, it's been my experience, after 20 years of working with companies to help them diversify through new ventures, that it isn't all that easy.
This paper explores the value of financial statement auditing in the public sector. The study applies theory about auditing from the private sector as well as the public sector to…
Abstract
This paper explores the value of financial statement auditing in the public sector. The study applies theory about auditing from the private sector as well as the public sector to explore ways in which public sector auditing can be expected to be valuable. It shows that there are a number of complementary explanations that can be applied to examine the value of public audit, including agency, signaling, insurance, management control, governance and confirmation explanations. The evidence from research and history is generally consistent with the agency and management control explanations. There is some support for the signaling and insurance explanations, while research evidence suggests that governance has differing impact in the public sector compared to the private. The confirmation hypothesis is also potentially relevant. Reviewing the history of the development of public sector auditing functions shows that at least some developments were consistent with explanations such as agency theory and management control. Auditing in the public sector is an area where more research is valuable. The paper concludes with a discussion of issues for further investigation.
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Robert Kozielski, Grzegorz Mazurek, Anna Miotk and Artur Maciorowski
It seems that the Internet boom, which started at the end of the 1990s and finished with the spectacular collapse of the so-called dotcoms, is probably over. We are currently…
Abstract
It seems that the Internet boom, which started at the end of the 1990s and finished with the spectacular collapse of the so-called dotcoms, is probably over. We are currently enjoying a period of fast and stable growth. This is manifested by the growing number of both Internet users and companies which – to an ever-increasing extent – use the Internet as a form of communication (both internal and external), promotion, sales etc. Expenditures on Internet advertising are growing continuously and now constitute more than 25% of all advertising expenditure. A natural consequence of this development is the need for the standardisation and organisation of the world of the Internet. These activities will result in a greater awareness of the benefits which this medium provides, increasing the possibilities of its use, and – most importantly – the opportunity to evaluate the return on investments made on the Internet. Nowadays, it is clear that many companies are striving to increase the quality of their activities on the Internet or to improve the effectiveness of such activities. As a consequence, the number of companies that look for indices which would enable the making of more precise and effective decisions in the scope of online operations is growing.
This chapter is dedicated to the phenomenon of the increasing role of the Internet in business, including the scale of its use by Polish and international companies. We present the most commonly used measures of marketing activities on the Internet and in social media. This group includes the indices which make it possible to determine whether a company actually needs a website. Other measures allow for the improvement in the effectiveness of the activity on the Internet, whereas others specify the costs of activities on the Internet and often serve as the basis for settlements between a company and advertising agencies or companies specialising in website design. It is worth emphasising that the Paid, Earned, Shared, Owned (PESO) model, worked out by Don Bartholomew,1 is the basis for creation and description of indices concerning social media. This model has gained certain popularity in the social media industry. It does not, however, specify how individual indices should be named and calculated. It maps already existing indices and adapts them to specific levels of marketing communication measurement. All the measures indicated by the author of the model have been grouped into five major areas: exposure, engagement, brand awareness, action and recommendations. This model– similarly to all models of performance measurement – inspired by the sales funnel concept, adjusts certain standard indices and proposals of measurements for specific levels. Additionally, the measures are divided into four types, depending on who the owner of the content is: Paid (P) – refers to all forms of paid content; Owned (O) – all websites and web properties controlled by a company or brand; Earned (E) – the contents about a given brand created spontaneously by Internet users; and Shared (S) – the contents shared by Internet users.
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Ian Mann, Warwick Funnell and Robert Jupe
The purpose of this paper is to contest Edwards et al.’s (2002) findings that resistance to the introduction of double-entry bookkeeping and the form that it took when implemented…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to contest Edwards et al.’s (2002) findings that resistance to the introduction of double-entry bookkeeping and the form that it took when implemented by the British Government in the mid-nineteenth century was the result of ideological conflict between the privileged landed aristocracy and the rising merchant middle class.
Design/methodology/approach
The study draws upon a collection of documents preserved as part of the Grigg Family Papers located in London and the Thomson Papers held in the Mitchell Library in Sydney. It also draws on evidence contained within the British National Archive, the National Maritime Museum and British Parliamentary Papers which has been overlooked by previous studies of the introduction of DEB.
Findings
Conflict and delays in the adoption of double-entry bookkeeping were not primarily the product of “ideological” differences between the influential classes. Instead, this study finds that conflict was the result of a complex amalgam of class interests, ideology, personal antipathy, professional intolerance and ambition. Newly discovered evidence recognises the critical, largely forgotten, work of John Deas Thomson in developing a double-entry bookkeeping system for the Royal Navy and the importance of Sir James Graham’s determination that matters of economy would be emphasised in the Navy’s accounting.
Originality/value
This study establishes that crucial to the ultimate implementation of double-entry bookkeeping was the passionate, determined support of influential champions with strong liberal beliefs, most especially John Deas Thomson and Sir James Graham. Prominence was given to economy in government.
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