Critical theory

No abstract available

Understanding absences and ambiguities of Post-decision Project Evaluation in the UK's PPPs: drawing from the sociology of ignorance

Purpose - We explore the under-researched area of post-decision evaluation in PPPs (Public Private Partnerships), focusing upon how and whether Post-decision Project Evaluation (PdPE) is considered and provided for in UK public infrastructure projects.Design/methodology/approach – Our research design sought insights from overviewing UK PPP planning and more focused exploration of PPP operational practice. We combine extensive analysis of planning documents for operational UK PPP projects with interviews of different stakeholders in PPP projects in one city. Mobilising an open critical perspective, documents were analysed over a period using ethnographic content analysis and interviews were analysed using thematic analysis consistent therewith. We theorise absence and ambiguities of PdPE drawing on the sociology of ignorance.Findings – We find a long-standing absence or lack of PdPE in PPP projects throughout planning and operational practice, reflecting a dynamic, multi-faceted ignorance. Concerning planning practice, our documentary analysis evidences a trend in PdPE from its absence in the early years (which may indicate some natural or genuine ignorance) to different levels or forms of weak inclusion later. Regarding this inclusion, we find strategic ignorance played a substantive role, involving “deliberate engineering” by both public sector and private partners. Interview findings indicate a lack of clarity over PdPE and its under-development in PPP practice, deficiencies again suggestive of natural and strategic ignorance.Originality/value – We draw from the sociology of ignorance vis-à-vis accounting’s absence and ambiguity in the context of PPP, contributing to an under-researched area

Directors\u27 Monitoring Role, Ownership Concentration and Audit fees

The research objective is to analyse different factors potentially involved in influencing the size of audit fees. The association between the Board of Directors and the shareholders of listed companies should be effectively developed and there should be a higher spirit of compliance with the governance code. The empirical model is constructed to assess the theoretical and statistical relationship between audit fees and corporate governance characteristics over a period of four years (for FTSE 350 companies excluding financial institutions between 2012 and 2015). Different testing techniques are used for robustness reasons. We found that Board of Directors\u27 characteristics are significant in relation to audit fees. Some of the Audit Committee characteristics are affected by the collegiality principle in relation to the Board of Directors\u27 characteristics. The consultative role of audit committee directors is dominated by the role of the Board of Directors. Mandatory audit fees, and not total auditors\u27 remuneration is included in this study. While other studies assess mainly one corporate governance mechanism in relation to audit fees, we include the corporate governance mechanisms that are directly related to auditors\u27 scope. This paper can be used as a tool for audit practitioners and corporate executives to seek a better auditor-client relationship

Democracy, accountability, accounting and trust: A critical perspective reflecting on a UK Parliamentary inquiry into the role of government accounts

Democracy is a contestable concept. Variants have been mobilised/appraised in critical discourse. Concurrently, in efforts to operationalise democracy, accountability is demanded, and thus accounting, relying on a notion of trust. Advocating more studies into ‘democracy’ and ‘accountability’ in practice, we focus on the UK’s parliamentary democracy, entailing the UK legislature’s scrutiny of the executive, in turn entailing an accounting that in reasonable terms can be trusted vis-à-vis this role. We analyse hearings before the UK’s Public Administration and Constitutional Affairs Committee (PACAC) over 2017–19, encompassing a Parliamentary Inquiry into the role of Government accounts. We construct an immanent critique, seeking to uncover deficiencies in ‘democratic’ practices in the terms by which they are justified. Here, a working of Mayer, Davis, and Schoorman (1995) conceptualisation of trust (considered integral to official discourse on Government accounting’s support role vis-à-vis democracy/accountability), informing analysis of PACAC’s discourse, help build critique. PACAC probed the Government’s annual reports and accounts, finding them deficient in terms of their promised integrity, benevolence and competence, entailing diminished trust: gaps in democratic purpose, accountability for democracy and competence were indicated. Elaborating, we suggest implied ways forward. We expand to consider further insights vis-à-vis radical orientation towards the democracy-accounting nexus

Reports on payments to governments: a report on early developments and experiences.

We are concerned in this report to review and discuss aspects of the Reports submitted in line with the Payments to Governments Regulations. We consider the process of transposition of this Accounting Law into UK law and the early implementation or operationalization of this law in the UK. Recommendations drawn from the study will be useful for Publish What You Pay (PWYP) and other interested stakeholders in communications with government, regulators and standard setters and in general campaign activity. This is the commissioned report for Publish What You Pay

Cross-sectional study of the provision of interventional oncology services in the UK

Objective: To map out the current provision of interventional oncology (IO) services in the UK. Design: Cross-sectional multicentre study. Setting: All National Health Service (NHS) trusts in England and Scottish, Welsh and Northern Ireland health boards. Participants: Interventional radiology (IR) departments in all NHS trusts/health boards in the UK. Results: A total of 179 NHS trusts/health boards were contacted. We received a 100% response rate. Only 19 (11%) institutions had an IO lead. 144 trusts (80%) provided IO services or had a formal pathway of referral in place for patients to a recipient trust. 21 trusts (12%) had plans to provide an IO service or formal referral pathway in the next 12 months only. 14 trusts (8%) did not have a pathway of referral and no plans to implement one. 70 trusts (39%) offered supportive and disease-modifying procedures. One trust had a formal referral pathway for supportive procedures. 73 trusts (41%) provided only supportive procedures (diagnostic or therapeutic). Of these, 43 (59%) had a referral pathway for disease-modifying IO procedures, either from a regional cancer network or through IR networks and 30 trusts (41%) did not have a referral pathway for disease-modifying procedures. Conclusion: The provision of IO services in the UK is promising; however, collaborative networks are necessary to ensure disease-modifying IO procedures are made accessible to all patients and to facilitate larger registry data for research with commissioning of new services

The Future City: A Selection of Views on the Reorganization of Government in Greater Winnipeg

Book: pp.54; digital file.This is a collection of short essays on the potential workings and outcomes of the Unicity scheme then proposed by the Manitoba provincial government, and attempts to give careful consideration and critique of the scheme. Essays are written by researchers and academics from the University of Winnipeg, members of the local media and the private sector. The paper argues that amalgamation into a regional government will have both positive and negative effects. Generally, the provision of equitable levels of services and effective planning for the entire region are viewed positively, while the potential for Unicity to become too unwieldy and too under-representative of marginalized communities is seen as a cause for concern. An additional criticism that arises from these essays, is that partisan politics will become more firmly rooted at the municipal level in Winnipeg, on account of Unicity’s proposed parliamentary-style city council. The test of Unicity, therefore, is the degree to which the proposed community committees and ward representation are able to flourish. The editor concludes by saying that the Unicity has the potential to be a framework for a new, more democratic style of politics through greater citizen engagement. This end must be actively pursued, he writes, otherwise the new framework will be governed by the same old politics that characterized Greater Winnipeg in recent years

Computational approaches to semantic change

Semantic change — how the meanings of words change over time — has preoccupied scholars since well before modern linguistics emerged in the late 19th and early 20th century, ushering in a new methodological turn in the study of language change. Compared to changes in sound and grammar, semantic change is the least  understood. Ever since, the study of semantic change has progressed steadily, accumulating a vast store of knowledge for over a century, encompassing many languages and language families. Historical linguists also early on realized the potential of computers as research tools, with papers at the very first international conferences in computational linguistics in the 1960s. Such computational studies still tended to be small-scale, method-oriented, and qualitative. However, recent years have witnessed a sea-change in this regard. Big-data empirical quantitative investigations are now coming to the forefront, enabled by enormous advances in storage capability and processing power. Diachronic corpora have grown beyond imagination, defying exploration by traditional manual qualitative methods, and language technology has become increasingly data-driven and semantics-oriented. These developments present a golden opportunity for the empirical study of semantic change over both long and short time spans. A major challenge presently is to integrate the hard-earned  knowledge and expertise of traditional historical linguistics with  cutting-edge methodology explored primarily in computational linguistics. The idea for the present volume came out of a concrete response to this challenge.  The 1st International Workshop on Computational Approaches to Historical Language Change (LChange'19), at ACL 2019, brought together scholars from both fields. This volume offers a survey of this exciting new direction in the study of semantic change, a discussion of the many remaining challenges that we face in pursuing it, and considerably updated and extended versions of a selection of the contributions to the LChange'19 workshop, addressing both more theoretical problems —  e.g., discovery of "laws of semantic change" — and practical applications, such as information retrieval in longitudinal text archives

Computational approaches to semantic change

Semantic change — how the meanings of words change over time — has preoccupied scholars since well before modern linguistics emerged in the late 19th and early 20th century, ushering in a new methodological turn in the study of language change. Compared to changes in sound and grammar, semantic change is the least  understood. Ever since, the study of semantic change has progressed steadily, accumulating a vast store of knowledge for over a century, encompassing many languages and language families. Historical linguists also early on realized the potential of computers as research tools, with papers at the very first international conferences in computational linguistics in the 1960s. Such computational studies still tended to be small-scale, method-oriented, and qualitative. However, recent years have witnessed a sea-change in this regard. Big-data empirical quantitative investigations are now coming to the forefront, enabled by enormous advances in storage capability and processing power. Diachronic corpora have grown beyond imagination, defying exploration by traditional manual qualitative methods, and language technology has become increasingly data-driven and semantics-oriented. These developments present a golden opportunity for the empirical study of semantic change over both long and short time spans. A major challenge presently is to integrate the hard-earned  knowledge and expertise of traditional historical linguistics with  cutting-edge methodology explored primarily in computational linguistics. The idea for the present volume came out of a concrete response to this challenge.  The 1st International Workshop on Computational Approaches to Historical Language Change (LChange'19), at ACL 2019, brought together scholars from both fields. This volume offers a survey of this exciting new direction in the study of semantic change, a discussion of the many remaining challenges that we face in pursuing it, and considerably updated and extended versions of a selection of the contributions to the LChange'19 workshop, addressing both more theoretical problems —  e.g., discovery of "laws of semantic change" — and practical applications, such as information retrieval in longitudinal text archives