Search

This paper questions the validity of allegations by the General Accounting Office in 1979 that OSHA was then allocating more of its resources to investigating worker complaints than the quality of those complaints warranted. Specifically, the author finds that complaint-initiated inspections and "general schedule" inspections (those made on the basis of targeting criteria developed by OSHA) were similarly productive in uncovering safety violations in 1977-79. The findings also suggest that the interindustry distribution of complaints closely matched the distribution of general schedule inspections; complaints were not used by unionized workers as a weapon in negotiations; and the 1980 changes in complaint handling that were enacted in response to the GAO's report did not improve the "yield" of complaint-initiated inspections relative to that of general schedule inspections. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Drawing on both contingency and institutional theories, this paper examines how professionals in an institutionalized environment are coordinated and controlled and what forces shape the structures organizations adopt for this coordination and control. According to contingency theory, the coordination and control of organizational members is shaped by the task environment and the technical nature of the work they perform, while institutional theory proposes that an organization's need to demonstrate conformity to institutionalized expectations of rational practice also influences its choice of control and coordination mechanisms. We use both theoretical perspectives to develop hypotheses that are tested with data from a study of 96 audit teams in the United States General Accounting Office (GAO). Results show that the more institutionalized the environment, (a) the more the organization relies on a bureaucratic mode of control, (b) the greater the task difficulty and team interdependence and the more the organization relies on personal and group modes of control, and (c) the more the organization relies on personal and group modes of control to improve audit-team performance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A model for measuring the efficiency of Decision Making Units (= DMU's) is presented, along with related methods of implementation and interpretation. The term DMU is intended to emphasize an orientation toward managed entities in the public and/or not-for-profit sectors. The proposed approach is applicable to the multiple outputs and designated inputs which are common for such DMU's. A priori weights, or imputations of a market-price-value character are not required. A mathematical programming model applied to observational data provides a new way of obtaining empirical estimates of extremal relations -- such as the production functions and/or efficient production possibility surfaces that are a cornerstone of modern economics. The resulting extremal relations are used to envelop the observations in order to obtain the efficiency measures that form a focus of the present paper. An illustrative application utilizes data from Program Follow Through (= PFT). A large scale social experiment in public school education, it was designed to test the advantages of PFT relative to designated NFT (= Non-Follow Through) counterparts in various parts of the U.S. It is possible that the resulting observations are contaminated with inefficiencies due to the way DMU's were managed en route to assessing whether PFT (as a program) is superior to its NFT alternative. A further mathematical programming development is therefore undertaken to distinguish between "management efficiency" and "program efficiency." This is done via procedures referred to as Data Envelopment Analysis (= DEA) in which one first obtains boundaries or envelopes from the data for PFT and NFT, respectively. These boundaries provide a basis for estimating the relative efficiency of the DMU's operating under these programs. These DMU's are then adjusted up to their program boundaries, after which a new inter-program envelope is obtained for evaluating the PFT and NFT programs with the estimated managerial inefficiencies eliminated. The claimed superiority of PFT fails to be validated in this illustrative application. Our DEA approach, however, suggests the additional possibility of new approaches obtained from PFT-NFT combinations which may be superior to either of them alone. Validating such possibilities cannot be done only by statistical or other modelings. It requires recourse to field studies, including audits (e.g., of a U.S. General Accounting Office variety) and therefore ways in which the results of a DEA approach may be used to guide such further studies (or audits) are also indicated. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article refers to studies by Poole and Pierce concerning the United States Federal Reserve Board and focuses on the monetary policy of Chairman Arthur Burns in the 1970s. The central bank is characterized as having a penchant for secrecy and obfuscation. The agency's stance against an audit by the General Accounting Office, Freedom of Information, and Government in the Sunshine is attributed to distrust of the legislative branch of government and efforts to preserve the Federal Reserve's independence. Topics include the Federal Reserve's short-run perspective on monetary policy and how it affected interest rates, the money supply, and forecasts of the gross national product.

Purpose ? This paper seeks to provide an overview of the growing popularity of slotting fees and their potential for abuse that led to congressional hearings as well as investigations by the Federal Trade Commission and the General Accounting Office, respectively. It also aims to discuss the widespread use of promotional allowances and their potential for abuse, leading to accounting irregularities. Design/methodology/approach ? It focuses on how promotional allowances have been improperly accounted for at Royal Ahold, Fleming Companies and AmerisourceBergen Corp. By reviewing how the Financial Accounting Standard Board (FASB) overhauled the accounting rules, it sheds some light on the magnitude of these practices. Findings ? The FASB failed to go far enough in its crack-down. It reveals that heavy reliance on these allowances by financially weak retailers can be a red flag to current and potential investors, both professional and individual. However, the post-Enron accounting rule changes and the Sarbanes-Oxley Act are forcing CEOs and CFOs of publicly traded companies to rethink how to account for these allowances. Additionally, while the vast majority of grocery chains dabble in the slotting ritual, the world's largest retailer and the world's largest commissary do not demand and do not accept slotting fees. Originality/value ? By reviewing a limited sample of the literature, this study offers some guidelines for conducting future research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article presents response from the authors to the criticism of their article on the concept of social accounting, published in the April 1973 issue of the journal "The Accounting Review." The primary purpose of the authors' paper was to clarify the concept of social accounting. The authors agrees that the accounting literature does indeed reflect a misunderstanding of the most feasible role of accountants in the evaluation of the effectiveness of social programs (EESP). Moreover, the literature reflects the fact that accountants have also misunderstood the purposes and objectives of social accounting and thus of EESP. One can only speculate about the extent to which these conceptual misunderstandings have contributed to the ill-conceived suggestions concerning most feasible roles. But a U.S. General Accounting Office report cited simply reinforce the authors' view that accountants have neither the training nor the experience necessary to conduct nonfinancial program evaluation or to steer the social accounting bandwagon or to evaluate the effectiveness of the management and operation of social programs.

This paper uses a unique survey of 205 child care centers conducted by the U.S. General Accounting Office to estimate flexible-form cost functions for child care. Our model allows us to estimate the tradeoff between cost and such quality factors as the child/staff ratio, child group size, and staff characteristics. The coefficient on the child/staff ratio indicates that decreasing the average child/staff ratio from, for instance, an 11 to 1 ratio to a 10 to 1 ratio, would lead lo an increase in costs of roughly 3.4 percent. Staff turnover, education, and experience also had statistically significant effects on cost. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on the management for rivers and fisheries. Fisheries biologist Donald Tennant found out that constructed dams and diversion of water threaten the life of aquatic species. According to the U.S. General Accounting Office (GAO), more than 36 states could encounter shortage of water by 2013. A network of scientist of United Nations, the International Panel on Climate Change, estimates that up to two billion people in the world will experience major shortage of water by 2050. It cites that ramification of rivers could have a serious effect on aquatic species. Moreover, the concern for health of rivers result to the rise of water professionals who specialize on the instream flow issues.

Synthesizing agency theory and prospect theory, we examined the effects of stock-based incentives on CEO earnings manipulation behaviors. In analyses of data compiled from the public companies listed in Compustat's Executive Compensation Database and a U.S. General Accounting Office restatements database, we found that CEOs were more likely to manipulate firm earnings when they had more out-of-the-money options and lower stock ownership. Firm performance and CEO tenure interacted with out-of-the-money options and ownership to influence CEO earnings manipulation behaviors. Our findings inform agency-based views by providing evidence that, under certain conditions, stock-based managerial incentives lead to incentive misalignment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article describes reports on biennial budgeting and the reform of the budget process of the U.S. federal government. The U.S. General Accounting Office report is a review of state government use of biennial budget processes. The report of the U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Government Operations is a compilation of the issues and recent testimony on 19 budget reform proposals. It is important to note that the state trend is clearly toward annual rather than biennial budgeting.

The State and Local Fiscal Assistance Act of 1972 appropriates $30.2 billion over five years to 38,000 state and local units of general-purpose government in the U.S. Under a grant from the Ford Foundation, the Brookings Institution has been monitoring the distributional, fiscal, and political effects of this program. The second of these three categories--fiscal effects--involves studying the uses of these funds by recipient state and local governments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Government preference for military veterans in hiring, a means to honor them for their service and sacrifices, potentially conflicts with other values of the public service, including its diversity and quality. Census data for 1990, 2000, and 2006–2009 show that veterans are at least three times as likely to hold federal jobs as, but only 10% more likely to hold state and local government jobs than, comparable individuals without military service. Veterans’ preference has substantially increased the percentage of federal employees who are men and has probably decreased the percentages who are Asians, gay men, and immigrants, but its effects on the composition of state and local governments are small. Federal personnel data for the past decade show that veteran new hires are older and less educated than nonveteran new hires, and that they do not advance as far in the first 15 years of their careers as nonveterans hired into the same grades at the same time, suggesting that veterans’ preference may be lowering the performance of the federal civil service. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Payment limits have played an important role in U.S. farm policy deliberations for the last thirty years. Current limits are largely nonbinding. Proposals to strengthen and enforce limits are currently in discussion. We evaluate the likely effects of such proposals on acreage for corn, soybeans, wheat, cotton, and rice in several important producing states. Our results generally indicate that payment limits are unlikely to significantly affect acreage in most cases; exceptions occur for cotton and rice, where the probability that limits would be binding is much greater and thus more likely to affect production. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A report issued by the U.S. General Accounting Office (GAO) in 2003 identified auditors' industry expertise as a critical factor for firms choosing an auditor, and highlighted the extreme levels of auditor concentration in some industries. We posit that the investment opportunity set (IOS) plays a fundamental role in determining whether an industry is an attractive target for auditor specialization. When industry-specific IOS is high, specialist auditors make costly investments in industry-specific knowledge, allowing them to offer a differentiated product and to create entry barriers for other audit firms. When the IOS of firms within an industry is relatively homogeneous, auditors can transfer such knowledge across clients in the industry more easily, resulting in cost savings and scale economies. However, greater homogeneity of IOS in an industry can also increase a client's aversion to sharing an auditor with its competitors because of concerns about transfers of proprietary information, suggesting that industries with relatively homogeneous IOS are less likely to be dominated by a single auditor. We show that auditor concentration in an industry relates positively to both the level and homogeneity of IOS in the industry, while auditor dominance relates negatively to industry 105 homogeneity. Further, we find that audit fees are positively associated with both levels and homogeneity of industry IOS. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article outlines some of the best explanations for Black Monday on October 19, 1987. A report by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission's Office of Economic Analysis identified a legislative bill as a fundamental economic event contributing to the market decline on October 14 and on the days that followed. The General Accounting Office found that the trading system used by the New York Stock Exchange came to a complete halt four times during the day for intervals of three to 13 minutes.

Levinson (1998) finds that large states with lenient balanced budget rules experience less cyclical variability. He concludes that state fiscal policy works. However, Levinson's finding is not robust to alternative methods of detrending the data. In addition, the 1984 Advisory Commission on Intergovernmental Relations (ACIR) analysis of state budget rules used by Levinson (and other researchers) is of questionable merit. Reestimation of Levinson's regressions using budget rule classifications in a U.S. General Accounting Office (GAO) study reverses his result. The results from this study suggest that existing empirical work using the ACIR index should be revisited. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This research offers a limited empirical study of online service in federal government agencies. The authors are interested in the evolution of online governance and what factors influence the adoption and elaboration of online services. Information about online agency services was gathered primarily from online U.S. General Accounting Office reports and testimony offered between 1993 and 2000. The authors examine online activities that carry out three governmental functions: providing services, collecting information, and soliciting stakeholder comment. Four principal cases were selected: the Social Security Administration's Online PEBES, the Department of Education's National Student Loan Data System, the Securities and Exchange Commission, and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. The analysis of these cases identifies a partial sequence of steps or stages in development of online services. It appears that this sequence is a result of both learning and the imposition of certain standards of performance based on best practices and legislative mandates. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Discusses conflicts between the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and the U.S. General Accounting Office (GAO). Refusal of the CIA to cooperate with a review of computer security systems throughout the federal government; Past instances in which the GAO had been denied access to Agency information; Prevention of the GAO from auditing, investigating and reviewing the CIA.

Two key organizational properties have long been studied: (I) the manner in which instrumental work processes are performed, and (2) the symbolic display of rational practice in response to institutional pressures. However, the relationship between these properties has proven to he contentious. For example. at different times, the sociology of professions. institutional theory aid loose coupling perspectives have proposed that they should be decoupled and then loosely coupled with one another. Extending beyond these contending propositions, it has also been reasoned that a duality inheres in many elements of organizational structure such that they may be simultaneously instrumental and symbolic in chancier. To evaluate the relationship among institutional pressures, instrumental work processes and coordination practices. we administered a questionnaire to audit teams in the US General Accounting Office (GAO). Statistical results, augmented with field interviews, suggest that instrumental work processes are loosely coupled with, rather than decoupled from, institutional pressures aid their attendant symbolic displays of rational practice. Extending beyond the loose coupling concept, we also Found that institutional pressures incite the symbolic facets of instrumental tasks and coordination practices. while GAO professional activities both embody and incite the instrumental facets of institutional pressures. Implications for future research in alternative organizational contexts are explored. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Summarizes and discusses the September 1993 National Performance Review's (NPR) principal themes and recommendations regarding financial management and budgeting, and the General Accounting Office's (GAO) comments about them. Organizational, financial and information systems improvements; Additional actions essential to successful implementation of needed reform in financial management.

The profession of the government auditor has been, is, and will continue to be making adjustments in its traditional patterns of work. Society and its needs are changing, government is changing, and professional work in government--in this case auditing--also is changing. This article shows that the U.S. General Accounting Office is learning by experience how to audit government programs having economic and social purposes in order to find out how useful they really are. It reveals the interesting diversity of a GAO auditor's assignments, tells how GAO work is planned, discusses finer points of new auditor disciplines, traces the development of the GAO organization from the days of green eye-shades to auditing by computer, and ends with a glimpse of new directions GAO services to the Congress may be expected to take. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Presents articles on the topic of education in physics in a special physics news supplement for 1984. The trend toward computers in physics education, including projects at the University of Maryland and at the nonprofit Technical Education Center; Societies promoting research in physics education; Highlights of the United States General Accounting Office (GAO) report on federal programs for teacher retraining workshops.

Comments on the US General Accounting Office's (GAO) report to Senator John Glenn on the status of federal protections for human research subjects. Lack of data to measure the effectiveness of human subject protection regulations; Glenn's growing interest in the protection of human subjects; Sponsorship of research on human subjects by government agencies.