Depreciation in the Canadian airline industry

This case is designed to help students enhance their analytical skills and link accounting policy choices with corporate strategy. Written initially for MBA students and senior analysts attending executive education sessions, it provides participants with 1) industry background for the Canadian airline sector, and 2) historical and selected financial and non-financial information from the annual reports and initial public offering documents of three players in this industry. Participants are invited to reflect on the theoretical and practical reasons underlying the choice of a depre

Industry Identification through Ratio Analysis

This case is designed to help students "see through the numbers". Written initially for MBA students and senior analysts attending executive education sessions, it provides participants with (1) a common-size balance sheet and selected financial ratios for ten anonymous Canadian public companies, and (2) a list of ten diverse industry sectors. Participants are invited to reflect on the meanings of the different ratios provided in order to match the anonymous companies with their corresponding industry sector. Seeing through the numbers fosters the development of participants' analyt

Managing legitimacy following loss of human life: Loblaw and Rana Plaza

Purpose: This qualitative paper is about social reporting in response to an incident that involved the loss of human life. It examines Loblaw’s disclosures following the Rana Plaza building collapse that killed over 1,100 Bangladeshi workers. Design/methodology/approach: This article draws on Suchman’s (1995) comprehensive legitimacy typology to interpret Loblaw’s disclosures about the collapse in both mass media coverage of the tragedy and the company’s quarterly, annual and corporate social responsibility (CSR) reports. Findings: Loblaw worked on many fronts to secure stakeholders’ support in the aftermath of the fatal incident. Through their social disclosures, Loblaw simultaneously managed exchange, dispositional, consequential, procedural, structural, personal and cognitive legitimacy, striving to demonstrate that, notwithstanding the incident, the company was still conforming to its social contract. Practical implications: This research operationalizes all aspects of Suchman’s legitimacy typology in the context of social reporting. In particular, the paper further develops the concept of cognitive legitimacy. This should be of benefit to other CSR researchers. Social implications: The loss of human life during business operations is one of the most terrible events an organization can face. Corporate activities leading to loss of human life are obviously far from being socially acceptable. Stakeholders are likely to disapprove such activities and reconsider their support, which can threaten the survival of the organization. It is thus of utmost importance to understand the strategies used by corporate managers in their attempt to secure ongoing stakeholder support. Originality/value: This paper innovates by focusing specifically on social disclosures about a negative event. In so doing, it also contributes to a small, but important, literature within CSR research that examines incidents resulting in the loss of human life. The paper adapts and applies Suchman’s legitimacy framework to interpret social reporting in response to a specific instance of loss of life, the Rana Plaza building collapse. Finally, this paper mobilizes the notion of cognitive dissonance to further develop Suchman’s notion of cognitive legitimacy

Hours spent on household tasks by business school graduates

It has been suggested that household and family responsibilities may adversely impact the career success achieved by women. This paper examines the number of hours spent weekly on household tasks by male and female business school graduates. Analysis of variance and multiple regression revealed that the presence of children increases the number of hours spent on household tasks by all graduates, but the effect is most pronounced for female graduates. The presence of children adds from three to ten hours per week to the workload of male graduates and from ten to 20 hours per week to the workload of female graduates. Effective organizational initiatives and changes in expectations within families and society are needed so that graduates of business schools, particularly women, can accommodate the careers for which they have been educated as well as their household responsibilities