Managing Costs through Structural Re-arrangement of Hospitals: An Activity Based Management Perspective

We examine a structural deficiency in the healthcare system that hinders implementation of a meaningful cost accounting system, and suggest an alternative organizational arragement that can facilitate introducing cost control mechanisms. We argue that hospitals need structural rearrangement so that cost-driving activities can be traced, and their costs allocated to responsibility centers. We suggest that this structural rearrangement is a precondition for implementing any meaningful activity-based cost management system. We also suggest a basic framework for value analysis of activities for healthcare providers, and discuss how this framework can be used as a vehicle for controlling diagnostic costs

The Impact of Group Selection on Student Performance and Satisfaction

Investigates whether the performance and attitudes of students could be improved by giving them some control over the group selection process. Groups were formed either by randomly combining paired friends or by randomly assigning all students. Students completed a group exercise and a group case. The dependent variables were the project grades and student satisfaction. Student satisfaction was measured using a questionnaire. The results show that attitudes of students were more positive when they were allowed to choose a single friend in the group. The project grades were significantly higher when students were paired, and this result was true regardless of their grade point averages. The interaction between group selection and grade point average is explained, and the paper concludes that the best group selection is to pair friends and then combine them to form groups with high ability rather than randomly assigning students to groups

Implementing Activity-based Costing and its Implications for a Service Firm in the Tme Share Exchange Industry

This study reports on how an activity-based cost accounting (ABC) system was implemented in a service firm in the timeshare exchange industry. In addition, the study highlights the similarities of implementing ABC in a service firm and a manufacturing firm. An important contribution of this field study is to illustrate the separation of labor activities into those that are productive versus those that are not. Further, the study shows the importance of separately allocating the non-productive activities, which are traceable to the primary service lines from those that are not traceable to them. This is analogous to separating the product sustaining activities from the facility sustaining activities when implementing ABC in a manufacturing firm. The Results and Discussion section illustrates the implications of using the ABC information for making decisions about service mix in operating departments, for assessing the implication of employee productivity on service cost, and for service pricing

Using machine learning to update soil survey

Soil survey in the recent past seems to be taking a paradigm shift with the advent of various geospatial and pedometric techniques. The impetus for this includes both the usability and the limitations associated with traditional soil survey products. This research explores the use of machine learning and GIS tools for updating an existing soil survey of Monroe County in Southeastern Ohio. A soil-landscape modeling framework was adopted to predict soil series based on a number of high-resolution geospatial environmental correlates. Base data layers included the existent soil survey, climate attribute surfaces (precipitation and evapotranspiration), historic vegetation, terrain attributes derived from digital elevation models, and bedrock geology. The old soil survey was randomly sampled to generate a pre-classified training set containing the target soil series and their environmental correlates. Two machine learning algorithms (J48 and Random Forests) were used to build classification models. The built models were then applied to the entire county to generate digital soil maps. The models predicted the correct dominant soil series about 60 percent of the time. When compared with the existent soil survey map, the digital soil map was able to predict even the components with in a soil mapunit. Machine learning can efficiently be used to get new insights into the traditional soil maps and can be used as a guide for further field investigations

The Role of Organizational Reality in Implementing Technology

Reports on the structurational model of technology which shows how workers who had the power to make the implementation successful affected the data that was collected and the extent to which management was able to use the technology to influence their work. Systems for recording job-related data; Analyzing organizational processes; Application of the structurational theory

Business Process Change and the Role of the Management Accountant

The role if the management accountant (MA) is undergoing a transition from that if a number-crunching preparer of financial statements and cost reports to that if a business partner. The MA is increasingly expected to analyze and explain the business implications if financial information and is becoming more involved in strategic planning, performance evaluation, and business process reengineering. Changes in the business environment have caused many companies to modify their strategic objectives and redesign their existing business processes. Firms can initiate and manage business process change (BPC) using different approaches. This article identifies the particular management accounting activities and skills required to support different approaches to BPC

Corporate Governance, Transparency and Performance of Malaysian Companies

The paper aims to examine the effect of good corporate governance practices on corporate transparency and performance Malaysian listed companies