The End of Enterprise Risk Management

Enterprise risk management (ERM) has grown in significance since the mid-1990s to become a key resource in the conceptualization and design of risk management systems. We argue that this emphasis is misplaced and contributes to the problem of a divide between analysis and action. ERM may be relevant for regulators and others in need of proof of good governance, but its formulations have become progressively detached from the reality of modern financial organizations. We argue that buy-side risk management practices provide an alternative conception of risk management which is more grounded in operations and which avoids the problems of actionability created by controls-based ERM.

Creativity, risk and the research impact agenda in the United Kingdom

This article describes the recent requirement for UK universities to account for the social and economic impact of their research, and asks whether this impact agenda may change the conduct of research itself. Three critical issues are highlighted: the epistemology of impact; the problem of quantifying qualities; and the likelihood of impact growing in significance and changing the landscape of research – so-called ‘impact creep’. Overall, the article identifies some features of the research impact agenda that pose risks to creativity and risk-taking by academics

An analysis of the common characteristics of intervention strategies used in secondary education

This paper considers the question ‘what are the common characteristics of intervention strategies used in secondary education?’ This is an important question because understanding the characteristics of intervention strategies allows for a clearer understanding of the resource cost and unintended implications (Outhwaite, et al., 2020) of the use of intervention strategies in secondary schools. Although this paper doesn’t explore the resource cost or implications of these strategies it provides a framework through which practitioners can begin to analyse the intervention strategies used in their own settings. The study aims to identify the common characteristics of intervention strategies within a sample of intervention strategies taken from one comprehensive secondary school in the Northwest of England. This practitioner enquiry was conducted using thematic analysis to identify the characteristics of a sample of intervention strategies, alongside the study of commonality within the sample by looking at which characteristics are more prevalent when compared to the average number within the same sample. The research is situated within ‘post-positivism’ which “straddles both the positivist and interpretivist paradigms” (Grix, 2004) and makes use of both interpretivist and positivist methods through thematic analysis of characteristics and he statistical analysis of commonality. The two most common characteristics within the sample were found to be reactivity to a trigger or stimulus such as underperformance in a test, which was present in all 23 intervention strategies. Having a measurable outcome such as improving reading age, was present in 22 of the 23 intervention strategies in the sample making it the second most common characteristic from this sample. The least common characteristic was for intervention strategies to focus on child’s motivations – for example intervention strategies that make use of things students are interested in such as football. This was only present in 5 of the 23 intervention strategies

A Designer's Log: Case Studies in Instructional Design

Books and articles on instructional design in online learning abound but rarely do we get such a comprehensive picture of what instructional designers do, how they do it, and the problems they solve as their university changes. Power documents the emergence of an adapted instructional design model for transforming courses from single-mode to dual-mode instruction, making this designer’s log a unique contribution to the fi eld of online learning

Afterword: Audit Society 2.0?

Purpose: The purpose of this study is to briefly reflect on the continuing relevance of the arguments of “The Audit Society” thesis after 25 years and to consider whether they need to be adapted in the face of advances in digitization. Design/Methodology/approach: This essay develops a series of critical reflections on the main arguments in “The Audit Society” (Oxford University Press, 1997). Findings: There is a need for critical accounting and management research to explore how audit society themes require adjustment in the face of “surveillance capitalism” and how the boundaries between accounting, security and surveillance are becoming blurred. Originality/value: This essay is a personal and self-critical account of the genesis of The Audit Society thesis which looks forward to how this thesis can develop. It also offers a defence of the value of books in enabling the travelling of ideas across fields

Modelling the microfoundations of the audit society: organizations and the logic of the audit trail

We live in an “audit society” in which performance accounting and auditing requirements continue to expand, despite widespread criticism by academics and practitioners alike. Macro-institutional theories are good at explaining why organizations adopt practices whose efficacy is dubious by appealing to the power of their legitimizing and symbolic properties. Yet these theories are less able to explain how adoption happens and why practices of accounting and auditing persist and amplify, despite being objects of critique. This article addresses this puzzle by supplementing macro-institutional explanations of the audit society with a micro-foundational analysis grounded in a process model. The model theorizes the humble notion of the audit trail as a process that not only produces auditable accounts but is also a logic that is formative of organizational actors’ dispositions to reproduce those accounts. The analysis contributes to debates about organizational micro-processes and micro-foundations by proposing that this logic of the audit trail is strongly performative of the conditions of its own reproduction and expansion. In explaining the persistence and amplification of the audit society, the model also shows how accounting and auditing are not inherently value-subverting and may be value-enhancing

Brazilian WHOQOL-OLD module version: a Rasch analysis of a new instrument

OBJECTIVE: To evaluate the Brazilian version of WHOQOL-OLD Module and to test potential changes to the instrument to increase its psychometric adequacy. METHODS: A total of 424 older adults living in a city in Southern Brazil completed the WHOQOL-OLD instrument, in 2005. Rasch analysis was used to explore the psychometric performance of the scale, as implemented by the RUMM2020 software. Item-trait interaction, threshold disorders, presence of differential item functioning and item fit, were analyzed. RESULTS: Two ("death and dying" and "sensory abilities") out of six domains showed inadequate item-trait interactions. Rescoring the response scale and deleting the most misperforming items led to scale improvement. The evaluation of domains and items individually showed that the "intimacy" domain does perform well in contrast to the findings using the classical approach. In addition, the "sensory abilities" domain does not derive an interval measure in its current format. CONCLUSIONS: Unidimensionality and local independence were seen in all domains. Changes in the response scale and deletion of problematic items improved the scale's performance

European sea bass (Dicentrarchus labrax) skin and scale transcriptomes

Fish skin and their appendages, the mineralized scales, are important organs for protection and homeostasis, but little is known about their specific transcript or protein repertoire. This study used RNA-seq to generate transcriptome data for skin and scales in the European sea bass (Dicentrarchus labrax), an important species for fisheries and aquaculture. RNA was extracted from the pectoral skin and from scales collected above the midline of immature one-year old sea bass. More than 20 x 10(6) reads were obtained for each tissue, using RNA-seq Illumina technology. De novo assembly resulted in 31,842 transcripts (of 500 base pairs or greater) for skin and 20,423 transcripts for scale. This dataset provides a useful resource for both aquaculture and fish conservation studies and for research into the physiology and molecular biology of fish skin and scales. (C) 2017 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Foundation for Science and Technology of Portugal (FCT) [PTDC/AAG-GLO/4003/2012, CCMAR/Multi/04326/2013, SFRH/BPD/84033/2012