Int j acctg

Title from cover.Published: Springer, 1995; Greenwich, Conn. : JAI Press, 1996-2000; New York, N.Y. : Pergamon, 2000-Latest issue consulted: Vol. 37, no. 2 (2002) (surrogate).Published for: Center for International Education and Research in Accounting, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/journal/0020706

The drivers of Corporate Social Responsibility in the supply chain. A case study.

Purpose: The paper studies the way in which a SME integrates CSR into its corporate strategy, the practices it puts in place and how its CSR strategies reflect on its suppliers and customers relations. Methodology/Research limitations: A qualitative case study methodology is used. The use of a single case study limits the generalizing capacity of these findings. Findings: The entrepreneur’s ethical beliefs and value system play a fundamental role in shaping sustainable corporate strategy. Furthermore, the type of competitive strategy selected based on innovation, quality and responsibility clearly emerges both in terms of well defined management procedures and supply chain relations as a whole aimed at involving partners in the process of sustainable innovation. Originality/value: The paper presents a SME that has devised an original innovative business model. The study pivots on the issues of innovation and eco-sustainability in a context of drivers for CRS and business ethics. These values are considered fundamental at International level; the United Nations has declared 2011 the “International Year of Forestry”

Risky expertise in Chinese financialisation : haigui returnee migrants in the Shanghai financial market

By investigating the subjectivities of Chinese student-returnees (haigui) from Australia who pursue careers in the Shanghai financial market, this thesis explores the tensions resulting from the Chinese state’s engagement in contemporary financial capitalism. The thesis approaches financial expertise as an empirical object of analysis to ask how subjectivity is produced within the process of Chinese financialisation and how this impacts upon the Chinese state in the current conjuncture of capitalism. In the wake of the global economic crisis, the financial expert has often been portrayed as the faceless figure of a technocracy whose growing power has undermined and partially eclipsed the legitimacy of democratic representation and the state sovereignity, as happened in Greece in summer 2015. Yet, globally circulating narratives lack an analytic lens that can look beyond a western-centric view of capitalism. In China, despite the severe financial crackdown—which also begun in the summer of 2015—the state still seems firmly in control. To investigate the distinctiveness of Chinese financialisation I adopt a genealogical method that traces the history of expertise—and the figure of the expert—since the first period of Chinese modernisation, in the mid-nineteenth century. I argue that the contemporary production of experts marks a discontinuity within Chinese modernity. While in the modern period experts trained abroad were always considered strategic for the state political project, now such figures (haigui), even if still fostered and encouraged to return to China by state policies of education and migration, are pushed aside and considered superfluous to this same project. The findings in this thesis are based on ethnographic fieldwork in Shanghai, which included qualitative, semi-structured interviews with haigui from Australia as well as participant observation in brokerage rooms (branches of securities companies). These empirical investigations show that these returned financial experts are frequently unable to step into their preferred roles as consultants and mediators. They find themselves faced with a state securitised environment that they cannot penetrate, and a Chinese ecology of financial expertise dominated by guanxi (connections of influence within the party-state, often disguised). A common means by which haigui cope with this professional impasse is to turn to autonomous, self-managed investment in the stock market, abandoning their claim on expert advisory roles. Such autonomous financial action is not a path they would have necessarily sought. Since its inception in the wake of Deng Xiaoping’s reforms, I argue that the Chinese state has used the stock market as a means of securing social legitimation by providing a prearranged space where the disaggregated and vulnerable subjects left behind by the dismantlement of the collective work units of the Maoist period (danwei) can congregate. The two Chinese stock markets (Shanghai and Shenzhen) serve as devices from which some may derive a living or even wealth in the context of a dismantled welfare state. Once they enter the stock market arena, the haigui are assimilated into a pool of lowend, non-expert actors of Chinese mass financialisation, the so-called “scattered players” (sanhu) of the market. The investment strategies of haigui thus acquire the same characteristics of informal expertise and contingent practice associated with the sanhu. The thesis shows how the officially sponsored “Chinese dream” has taken the form of a “stock fever”—an irresistible tide which is sweeping these subjects towards a commitment to making money at all costs. Investing in the stock market gradually becomes, for the haigui as for the sanhu, a self-referential activity. The state gradually disappears from the horizon of their subjectivity, so that the stock game, the dream of enrichment, becomes absorbing and substitutes for other alternatives. As the language of money supplants and obliterates other loyalties among the haigui, the state risks losing its grasp on the subjectivity of these dethroned experts, who become first indifferent and alienated and then potential unruly subjects

Occupational health and safety for informal sector workers: the case of street traders in Nigeria

This study examined two important types of occupational hazards in the street trading activities in Nigeria which are (i) injuries sustained from road traffic accident and (ii) harassment of traders through indiscriminate arrest, seizure and confiscation of merchandise and occasional incarceration of sellers in police cells without trials. The data for the study was generated from a 2011 national survey of 3,873 street traders in Nigeria which was made possible through a research grant provided by the Covenant University’s Centre for Research and Development. In addition to the descriptive statistics used in profiling the street traders, the binary logistic regression approach was also used to estimate the log of odds of experiencing occupational hazards in street trading activities. The study found out that 25% of the traders have suffered injury, while 49.1% have experienced harassment from public authority officials. Given these findings, policy measures that are capable of enhancing the safety of street traders, and stem urban-ward migration have been proposed

Perspectives on the Global Financial Crisis From Emerging Managers and Public Policy Makers [Full Version]

This manuscript attempts to capture the perspectives of emerging managers and public policy makers as evinced in the perspectives of graduate students and others who were enrolled in my newly developed course on the global financial crisis—first offered in the 2010 Harvard Summer Economics Program—at a time when students were engaged in the midst and aftermath of the most severe U.S. and worldwide recession since the Great Depression of the early 1930s. The many perspectives gathered on the causes, consequences, remedies, and perhaps more importantly, a glimpse at student thoughts, concerns, and worries at the time—have been collected from the final paper that I assigned in the global crisis course over three cohorts of students including, (1) the Harvard Summer Economics Program of 2010 (Cohort 1), (2) A “Special Topics” course at the University of Massachusetts Boston during Spring semester 2012 (Cohort 2), and (3) the same course offered in the Harvard Summer Economics Program during the summer of 2012. While we have all heard the many opinions and perspectives on the global economic and financial crisis from academia, government, industry among others, we have yet to hear from emerging managers and public policy makers, as captured in this manuscript by the perceptions, beliefs, and positions of graduate students and others of similar standing who will likely hold the reins to managing the global economy and political and societal developments in the years to come. With this in mind, this manuscript attempts to fill the missing void of opinions and perspectives of the next generation of managers and public policy makers—as their opinions and views will likely influence the lives of all for years to come

Factors Influencing Customer Satisfaction towards E-shopping in Malaysia

Online shopping or e-shopping has changed the world of business and quite a few people have decided to work with these features. What their primary concerns precisely and the responses from the globalisation are the competency of incorporation while doing their businesses. E-shopping has also increased substantially in Malaysia in recent years. The rapid increase in the e-commerce industry in Malaysia has created the demand to emphasize on how to increase customer satisfaction while operating in the e-retailing environment. It is very important that customers are satisfied with the website, or else, they would not return. Therefore, a crucial fact to look into is that companies must ensure that their customers are satisfied with their purchases that are really essential from the ecommerce’s point of view. With is in mind, this study aimed at investigating customer satisfaction towards e-shopping in Malaysia. A total of 400 questionnaires were distributed among students randomly selected from various public and private universities located within Klang valley area. Total 369 questionnaires were returned, out of which 341 questionnaires were found usable for further analysis. Finally, SEM was employed to test the hypotheses. This study found that customer satisfaction towards e-shopping in Malaysia is to a great extent influenced by ease of use, trust, design of the website, online security and e-service quality. Finally, recommendations and future study direction is provided. Keywords: E-shopping, Customer satisfaction, Trust, Online security, E-service quality, Malaysia

Sustainability, innovation and finance: integration challenges

This book aims to provide an introduction to the main characteristics of the innovation and green financing promoting sustainable developments. Both innovative and green activities are phenomena with positive externalities and are, among other things, characterized by underfunding. The state, the regulator, has a significant role in boosting innovation and green ecosystems as well, including funding systems. Besides, green things are often innovative; therefore, they are a subset of innovative, creative companies/activities. The discipline is currently fragmented into the following: innovation macro- and microeconomics; sustainability studies macro and micro (e.g. SCR) level, innovation (corporate) management; innovation finance systems (crowdfunding, venture capital) and green approaches. The text tries to integrate the different approaches and methods, which would give it a novelty

The history of banking technologies in the UK: patterns of technological investment decision-making and expertise

The central role of banking in the 2008 credit crisis has been the source of much controversy about the quality and robustness of decision-making in the Financial Services sector. This paper aims to surface the influence of the historical evolution of expertise in the banking sector, on such decisions and, in so doing, to underline that the decision-making activity is strongly linked to the views of dominant expert groups in the industry in each era. The paper proposes that Technological Investment Decision Making (TIDM), as viewed historically, has been highly contingent to both technological developments in banking and the subsequent developments in banking expertise that provides the pool for decision-makers in the industry.The paper adopts an historical perspective to illustrate that, counter to popular belief, TIDM is a socially constructed process rather than the outcome of any normative exercise. History demonstrates that there is no optimal method for TIDM with rigour and accuracy of execution determining successful outcomes. On the contrary, in each era, the "right way" to perform TIDM has always been underpinned by the standpoints and beliefs of specialised practitioners who dominated the UK banking industry and by the received wisdom of a community of expert professionals, administrators and think tanks, dictating "realities" on the state of the economy, the role of banks and the value of technologies