Public-Sector Consolidated Financial Statements: An Analysis of the Comment Letters on IPSASB’s Exposure Draft No. 49

Public sector consolidated financial statements can be drafted according to different approaches, especially the “control approach” or “budgetary perspective.” Considering the growing importance of the International Public Sector Accounting Standards (IPSAS) in the international scenario, the aim of the article is to investigate these approaches through an analysis of the comment letters submitted to the Exposure Draft no. 49, which will replace the current IPSAS 6. The main finding concerns the acceptance of the key role played by the control approach, even though it needs to be better specified, in order to take into account the public sector characteristics.     

Fathers,adolescent daughters and gender in a low-income South African community

Knowledge about father–adolescent daughter relationships is mostly based on research in North-American and European contexts. Furthermore, it tends to rely on either fathers' or daughters' perspectives, and not on dyadic data. Informed by a social constructionist perspective, this study investigated the fatherhood constructions of fathers and adolescent daughters in a South African low-income community. We used Charmaz' social constructionist grounded theory method. Forty-two interviews were conducted separately with fourteen fathers and their adolescent daughters. Five conceptual categories were identified: (i) Predominance of fathers' provider role; (ii) Fathers and daughters having an ‘understanding’ in which daughters apparently complied with fathers authoritarian positions; (iii) explicit expressions of affection were mostly limited to special occasions; (iv) Fathers wished a better future for their daughters and attempted to keep them on track to such a future and (v) lastly, Fathers' expected daughters to follow their instructions and not their bad examples. Our findings highlight the influential and constricting role of dominant masculine and feminine gender notions in the discourses and practices of the fathers and adolescent daughters in our study. However, some evidence of contestations were present that suggests the potential of a shift towards more equitable gender relations.     

The peasants in turmoil: Khmer Rouge,state formation and the control of land in northwest Cambodia

Over the past 15 years, northwest Cambodia has seen dramatic agrarian expansion away from the central rice plain into the peripheral uplands fuelled by peasant in-migration. Against this background, we examine the nature of relations between the peasantry and the state. We first show the historical continuities of land control processes and how the use of violence in a post-conflict neoliberal context has legitimised ex-Khmer Rouge in controlling land distribution. Three case studies show the heterogeneity of local level sovereignties, which engage the peasants in different relations with authority. We examine how these processes result in the construction of different rural territories along the agricultural frontier and argue that, in this region of Cambodia, the struggles between Khmer Rouge and neoliberal modes of land control are central to state formation processes.     

Towards virtuous and ethical organisational performance in the context of corruption: A case study in the public sector

With the increasing number of ethical violations reported across the public sector, the emphasis on ethics and values in governance is on the rise. Corruption is widely accepted as a form of unethical behaviour that can have detrimental effects on organisations as well as society at large. Research calls for empirical studies focusing on the contextual factors surrounding corruption. Based on the Contextually Based Human Resource Theory and using the case study method, this paper examines the role of context through a systematic analysis of corruption in a public sector organisation. We integrate corruption and human resource literature to understand employee behaviour, employee relations, HRM strategies, and organisational outcomes in the context of organisational corruption.     

The Rise of Citizen Groups within the Administration and Parliament in Switzerland

This research note presents three newly interconnected and expanded datasets on interest groups’ (IGs) access to the Swiss political decision‐making process: (1) extra‐parliamentary committee seats occupied by IGs (1980, 2000, 2010), (2) parliamentary (committee) seats occupied by IG representatives (1992‐2015), and (3) consultation replies submitted by IGs (2008‐11). We show that the Swiss system of interest intermediation adapted to the multiplication and organizational consolidation of citizen groups, which defend non‐producer interests and do not provide selective benefits to their members (e.g. environmental groups). The share of access granted to citizen groups has increased in both the administration and parliament, across all federal departments and most legislative committees. Moreover, citizen groups benefit from a larger share of access in the recently revitalized parliament, compared to the administration. This suggests that economic groups’ decline in power is also related to the rise of citizen groups.     

法医精神病鉴定质量控制对策研究

法医精神病鉴定是一种经验型或技能型鉴定类型,大多数鉴定项目只能依靠鉴定人的经验进行判断,质量控制更显重要。遗憾的是,目前该专业并未像其他法医类鉴定那样实行认证认可制度,质量控制手段不多。为有效保障鉴定质量,必须围绕鉴定意见形成过程的各个阶段或环节进行过程控制与监督,重点关注“人、机、料、法、环”等要素。为此,建议在该行业内逐步恢复认证认可制度,完善质量体系建设,运用好各种内外部质量控制方法,严格把关鉴定人准入,实行鉴定人执业分类管理、强化鉴定人执业能力考核,以规范行业鉴定活动,维护行业司法鉴定的公信力。     

The Culture of Interest: A Proposed Addition and Revision of the Three‐Culture Model

Negotiation and conflict resolution theorists have classified world cultures according to three types for the purpose of describing and predicting some of the ways in which individuals and groups within broad, geographically based cultural groups behave in conflict and negotiation‐related situations. These three broad categories, called “cultural syndromes,” have described these cultures according to the relative value they place on these three concerns: honor, face, and dignity. Based on our examination of the literature on the cultural dimensions of negotiation and conflict management, our own practice, and an analysis of literature and practice pertaining to the place and utility of the honor, face, interest, and dignity attributes within and between cultural groups , we propose a reformulation of this typology. Our reformulation would replace the broad “dignity” category with a new category that we call “interest,” which we believe better characterizes Northern European and North American cultures. We also argue that a cultural orientation toward dignity is universal and not geographically unique and is thus shared by all three cultures. This new formulation, we believe, more accurately characterizes the global range of orientations toward negotiation and conflict resolution and would, if adopted, help scholars and practitioners better understand culturally divergent conflict orientations and behaviors as well as the ramifications of such differences for negotiation and conflict resolution practice.     

Buyer and Seller Differences in Business‐to‐Business Negotiations

The purpose of this article is twofold: first, to examine the differences between buyers' and sellers' use of negotiation tactics in face‐to‐face business‐to‐business (B2B) negotiations and second, to explore how negotiators' professed negotiation styles influence buyers' and sellers' use of tactics. The methodology is a multiple case study analysis of eighteen negotiators representing twelve companies in six real‐life buyer–seller negotiations in B2B settings analyzed using qualitative research methods, including both comparative analysis and frequency analysis. We found some difference between buyers' and sellers' use of negotiation tactics, which suggests this question deserves further empirical study. Buyers' and sellers' use of specific tactics differs according to which overall strategy the negotiators chose, and sellers generally use a greater number of negotiation tactics than buyers. The findings challenge previous findings that suggest that B2B negotiations are collaborative and that negotiators communicate in a collaborative manner. The findings also increase our understanding of buyers' and sellers' variable use of tactics in the course of everyday practice as well as the interplay between negotiation tactics and strategies.     

Critical Misunderstandings: Ineffective International Governance and the UK Nuclear Industry

In 2017, significant media and political interest was sparked by the UK decision to leave Euratom, the European Atomic Energy Community. While such interest in nuclear matters has to be welcomed, the apparent lack of knowledge displayed in the regulatory governance of the UK nuclear industry is disquieting. This article therefore offers an overview of the publicly funded UK nuclear industry and its regulatory governance including its links with European and global nuclear agencies to inform the debate and to identify critical issues in need of resolution.     

Coming out of the shadow? Studies of local governments in Central and Eastern Europe in European academic research

This article is an analysis of the changing role of research on local governments in Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) within mainstream European studies. It refers to dependency theory (Wallerstein, Prebish) as applied to scientific research. It classifies CEE as being in the semi-periphery of academic research. The empirical analysis consists of two parts: (1) qualitative review of the most important of the comparative studies of European local governments. It includes a discussion on the role of local governments and researchers from CEE in these studies; (2) quantitative based on an analysis of articles published in international journals and citations for those articles in Scopus. The analysis covers 14 countries (all new member states who joined the EU from 2004 onwards, plus the Balkan countries: Albania, Macedonia, and Serbia).