Assessment in higher education : the potential for a community of practice to improve inter-marker reliability

The design, delivery and assessment of a complete educational scheme, such as a degree programme or a professional qualification course, is a complex matter. Maintaining alignment between the stated aims of the curriculum and the scoring of student achievement is an overarching concern. The potential for drift across individual aspects of an educational scheme (teaching, learning and assessment), together with emerging criticism in extant literature of the reliability of marking processes, suggests that, in practice, maintaining alignment might be more difficult than had previously been assumed. In this paper, the concept of a Community of Practice (CoP) is employed as an analytical lens through which the notion of a markers’ standardisation meeting that focuses on maintaining alignment between the curriculum, the marking scheme and the scoring of student scripts can be critically examined. Given that the aims and subject content of management learning are both multidimensional and contextual, such meetings have the potential to develop a shared approach to the elaboration and application of the marking scheme. A further role of the CoP is in the calibration of markers to accommodate further variations in student responses as they arise in the actual marking process. In this respect, the CoP has both descriptive and prescriptive potential in terms of aiding the development of markers of professional accounting examinations and also, we suggest, within accounting education more generally

The effect of audit committee characteristics on intellectual capital disclosure

This paper, using data from 100 UK listed firms, investigates the relationship between audit committee characteristics and intellectual capital (IC) disclosure. We find that IC disclosure is positively associated with audit committee characteristics of size and frequency of meetings, and negatively associated with audit committee directors’ shareholding. We find no significant relationship between IC disclosure and audit committee independence and financial expertise. We also observe variations in the association between audit committee characteristics and IC disclosure at its component level, which suggest that the underlying factors that drive various forms of IC disclosure, i.e. human capital, structural capital and relational capital, are different. These results have important implications for policy-makers who have a responsibility to ensure that shareholders are protected by prescribing appropriate corporate governance structures and accounting regulations/guidelines

Corporate political strategy : the roles of management accounting in relational work

Research has provided substantial evidence that firms engage in Corporate Political Activity/Strategy (CPA), as a form of relational work, to manage and influence political actors and shape political institutions in ways favourable to the firm. However, relatively little is known about how management accounting is mobilised in an organisation in order to support CPA attempts. This paper addresses this gap by investigating how management accounting is implicated in relational work. We explore this issue in a Brazilian organisation (Electra), which was privatised as part of a wider privatisation program in Brazil. We draw on the institutional work and CPA (in particular on Oliver and Holzinger’s [2008. The effectiveness of strategic political management: A dynamic capabilities framework. The Academy of Management Review, 33(2), 496–520. https://doi.org/10.5465/amr.2008.31193538] framework) literature. By doing so, we find that our focal firm used a multiplicity of relational strategy types (i.e. reactive, anticipatory, defensive, and proactive) in a more simultaneous way than has previously been reported in the literature. Moreover, we identify four roles that management accounting may play in organisations’ attempts to engage in CPA. These roles were intertwined with the relational strategies adopted in our focal company. This finding contrasts with the research in management accounting, which has dichotomised passive and active responses to external pressures. We show that these two responses were blended in our case, and management accounting may be concomitantly implicated in compliance and influence strategies. We further discuss these findings in relation to the literature on relational work/strategy and management accounting

Risk Appraisal and Venture Capital in High Technology New Ventures

This book is a 'crossover' treatment of quantitative and qualitative risk analysis within the setting of new high technology ventures in the UK. Reid and Smith have based their research on extensive fieldwork in patent-intensive, high-technology firms. This has included face-to-face interviews with leading investors, and is illustrated by two chapters of case studies. Their aim is to advance the understanding of methods of risk assessment and to illuminate current policy concerns about stimulating innovative output and securing intellectual property. This book is unique in being academic in intent and purpose, yet strongly grounded in practice, without becoming merely a practitioner volume. Reid and Smith find a considerable consensus in the venture capital industry on the spectrum of investments by risk, and on key commercial factors affecting risk. This book offers a useful and interdisciplinary approach to an increasingly popular field of study