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The Library of Congress has one of the largest library collections in the world. Describes the catalog, which is available online on the World Wide Web. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: Organisations operate in diverse cultural environment, which is a challenging task due to absence of cultural knowledge and difficulty in adapting the native culture that usually leads to expatriate failure. In this context cultural intelligence plays an important role in the adjustment of employees. The purpose of the study is to examine the mediating role played by cultural intelligence between cross-cultural training and cross-cultural adjustment relationship. It further analyses the moderating role of cross-cultural training and types of expatriate between cultural intelligence and cross-cultural adjustment relationship. Design/methodology/approach: Set in a large culturally diverse emerging economy context, data have been gathered from 530 managers working in banking sector. Data have been duly assessed for reliability and validity. Findings: The results revealed that cultural intelligence mediates cross-cultural training and cross-cultural adjustment relationship. Evidence from the analysis further suggests that cross-cultural training and types of expatriate moderate the relationship between cultural intelligence and cross-cultural adjustment. Lastly, the managerial and theoretical implications have been put forth for practical and academic perusal. Research limitations/implications: The study is cross-sectional in nature and data have been collected from single source. Practical implications: Organisations should design such training programmes, which motivate the managers to successfully complete out of home state assignment and help them to adapt in the cross-cultural situations. Social implications: Culturally intelligent employees/managers are able to communicate with people belonging to diverse culture, which results in building trust, loyalty and cordial relationship amongst the people. This will create the feeling of unity in the society thereby bringing national as well as global peace. Originality/value: The study develops the extant literature on cross-cultural training and types of expatriate as effective intercultural instruments to enhance the capability of the managers to interact and adjust in host region environment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to explain the origins and evolution of auditing and control by linking the changes in the manner in which the audits were conducted with the changes in the institutional function and development of the English East India Company (EIC).Design/methodology/approach Using Sunder’s contract theory of a firm as an interpretive framework, this paper introduces to the debate material documenting the evolution of the auditing practice during a period of 40 years using the single case of the EIC.Findings Auditing in the EIC evolved from a simple adjudication on allowable expenditures to ex post verification of transactions, and from using volunteers to paid auditors. Initially, the company was organized into a series of separate, terminable stocks, and simple verification by volunteer auditors chosen from among the shareholders was sufficient to secure the latter’s interests. When the increasing number, size, and complexity of transactions by the EIC rendered the adjudication approach insufficient, ex post verification of financial transactions was added. With a clearer separation between ownership and control at the time of the introduction of permanent joint stock, the audit function assumed a more professional form.Originality/value This paper contributes to the research on the early modern period at a time of the formation and rapid development of the first joint-stock organization. It offers a dynamic picture of the evolution of control and auditing as a response to the growth of business, organizations, and the attendant challenges of governance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose -- The purpose of this paper is to seek to extend the work of Robson (1991,1992) by exploring the accounting implications of the way in which subsets of non-financial accounting numbers are constructed. In particular, the study investigates whether the different procedures for organising subsets of a set of accounting data may lead to different conclusions about (the same) reality. Design/methodology/approach -- The empirical analysis focuses on the procedures by which organisations translate work-related injury outcomes to accounting numbers. First, existing procedures are problematised within their institutional context. This highlights complementary elements of translation and neo-institutional theory that together explain how institutional factors might operate to constrain the problematising process. An empirical analysis of workers' compensation data covering a ten year period is then conducted to calculate and contrast performance using two competing logics of accounting for injury. Findings -- The findings demonstrate that different representations of reality may result not only from accounting choices as to "what" is measured, but also from accounting choices as to "how subsets of measured data are organised". Specifically, different ways of organising injury data into subsets led to different representations of the reality of overall injury performance. The evidence further suggests taken-for-granted assumptions and institutionalised practices may prevent adequate problematisation of the underpinning logic that guides the procedures for organising translations of work-related injury and illness to accounting numbers. Practical implications -- The results suggest the existing logic of accounting for injury fails to recognise the financial or non-financial complexity of non-fatal injury outcomes. "Lost time injury" measures are revealed as neither valid nor reliable measures of injury (or safety) and therefore inappropriate for informing the occupational health and safety (OHS) decisions of managers, boards and external stakeholders. These findings reveal an urgent need for change in injury accounting practice and, in turn, raise serious concerns about the increasingly institutionalised global template for external disclosure of OHS performance information. Originality/value -- This paper takes a novel look at the construction of social performance measures and suggests further attention to the construction of accounting subsets is warranted. In demonstrating serious problems in accounting logic that underpin existing, and deeply institutionalised, measurement and reporting practices, the findings reinforce the need to routinely re-problematise accounting practices. Failure to critically review those accounting translations that underpin decision-making may prove a fatal mistake. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose – This research studies a plastic recycling system from a reverse logistics angle and investigates the potential benefits of a multimodality strategy to the network design of plastic recycling. This research aims to quantify the impact of multimodality on the network, to provide decision support for the design of more sustainable plastic recycling networks in the future. Design/methodology/approach – A MILP model is developed to assess different plastic waste collection, treatment and transportation scenarios. Comprehensive costs of the network are considered, including emission costs. A baseline scenario represents the optimized current situation while other scenarios allow multimodality options (barge and train) to be applied. Findings – Results show that transportation cost contributes to about 7 percent of the total cost and multimodality can bring a reduction of almost 20 percent in transportation costs (CO2-eq emissions included). In our illustrative case with two plastic separation methods, the post-separation channel benefits more from a multimodality strategy than the source-separation channel. This relates to the locations and availability of intermediate facilities and the quantity of waste transported on each route. Originality/value – This study applies a reverse logistics network model to design a plastic recycling network with special structures and incorporates a multimodality strategy to improve sustainability. Emission costs (carbon emission equivalents times carbon tax) are added to the total cost of the network to be optimized. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to address the lack of knowledge of the accounting occupational group in England prior to the formation of professional accounting bodies. It aims to do so by focusing on attempts made by writing masters and accountants to establish a recognisable persona in the public domain, in England, during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, and to enhance that identity by behaving in a manner designed to persuade the public of the professionalism associated with themselves and their work. Design/methodology/approach – The study is based principally on the contents of early accounting treatises and secondary sources drawn from beyond the accounting literature. Notions of identity, credentialism and jurisdiction are employed to help understand and evaluate the occupational history of the writing master and accountant occupational group. Findings – Writing masters and accountants emerged as specialist pedagogues providing the expert business knowledge required in the counting houses of entities that flourished as the result of rapid commercial expansion during the early modern period. Their demise as an occupational group may be attributed to a range of factors, amongst which an emphasis on personal identity, the neglect of group identity and derogation of the writing craft were most important. Research limitations/implications – The paper highlights Early English Books Online (available at: http://eebo.chadwyck.com/home), Eighteenth Century Collections Online (available at: www.gale.cengage.com/DigitalCollections/products/ecco/index.htm) and the seventeenth and eighteenth century Burney Collection Newspapers as first class electronic resources now available for studying accounting history from the sixteenth century through to the eighteenth century. Originality/value – The paper advances knowledge of accounting history by: profiling commercial educators active in England in the early modern period; studying the devices they employed to achieve upward social and economic trajectory; explaining the failure of an embryonic professionalisation initiative; and demonstrating the contingent nature of the professionalisation process. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose - This paper aims to evaluate the evolution of buyer-supplier relationships from adversarial toward relational, or service-centered, emphasis for large-scale organizations. Design/methodology/approach - This paper uses the historical method to review historical changes through synthesized qualitative (i.e. field notes and industry interviews) and quantitative (i.e. company reports, Compustat queries, trade reports, and survey) research. Findings - Technology and information sharing in B2B relationships engender integrated value chains. Within these value chains, service-centered view of B2C relationships have been adopted in B2B relationships, resulting in changes in supplier roles and how they are measured. Research limitations/implications - By focusing on large scale buyer-supplier relationships within supply chains (e.g. Wal-Mart, Royal Phillips, ElecSound, China Minmetals, The People's Republic of China), which may affect the generalizability to small-business applications, this paper provides some guidance on which customer levels (in a value chain) an organization should focus. The evolution of buyer-supplier relationships towards more cooperative relationships results in changing roles such as co-managed inventory, where suppliers are authorized to write themselves orders. Practical implications - This paper is a very useful source of information for practitioners and educators about recent trends in large-scale buyer- supplier relationships, including slotting allowances, co-managed inventory practices, and selling teams. It also provides a buyer-seller trust matrix that can be used for teaching or developing relational strategy in organizations and classrooms. Originality/value - This paper provides description of changes in sales force roles and measures, including the roles of responsiveness, empowerment, trust (both supplier and supplier representative), and information sharing not previously found in the literature. Survey research establishes the external validity of the qualitative research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The early decades of the twentieth century witnessed a significant transformation in managerial control practices within the US department store. New principles of scientific management, already employed on the factory floor, were now implemented on the retail "shop floor": The purpose of this paper is to provide insights into this transition by examining three such scientific management initiatives introduced by store management during this era. The paper draws on a number of sources in its historical examination of early department store scientific management initiatives. These include archival records, published literature of the era, and particularly the proceedings of meetings of the annual Controllers Congress of the National Retail Dry Goods Association (US). The paper finds how notions of the rationality of science reined over such store operations as inventory valuation, credit control and overhead expense allocation. Traditional positions of power were recast and new managerial roles created in the name of science. The paper illustrates the insights that can be gained from an examination of scientific management practices in an alternative arena to the factory floor. Further historical research in the area of retail management may rove productive not only for our understanding of this site but also our knowledge of the process by which new managerial initiatives become assimilated The study of the managerial practices of such vast organizational forms proves fruitful not only for the history scholar. Given the centrality of the department store in the creation of a contemporary culture of consumption, such examination becomes all the more insightfuL [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Observes that in today's digital world, not many things continue to operate in the traditional manner. This is because the ways of living and working demand new technology, new tools and new methods. This is the case for libraries too. They have to adapt to this new digital world because their traditional way of working with books and papers cannot cover any more new customer demands and their applications. The advent of the virtual library is usually presented as a positive development for library users. Presents a new way of organizing such a virtual library, an interactive support software and an application using fractals and chaos models of the way this new approach can be used. Focuses on such applications because their important feature is not their final picture but the way in which this picture is generated, and changes through time. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Describes the development of a Web-based reference collection for an academic community. Includes such topics as collection development policies, tailoring the site to a specific audience, staff motivation, and site design. Discusses successes, failures and modifications during the first two years of the project. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Presents information on the main types of published information. Use of printed information; Automation of information; Information format; Details on the Internet and online services; Advantages and disadvantages of online information services; Use of the Compact Disk-Read Only Memory (CD-ROM); Advantages and disadvantages of the CD-ROM.