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This case offers learning experiences for (1) following a business process diagram for car dealers' recording of sales and sales returns of new cars and the car manufacturer's subsequent recording of the same transactions and (2) querying a database to determine why dashboards maintained by the dealers and the manufacturer do not always agree. Scaffolding resources (videos and script with screenshots) enable learners with no querying experience to work the case as they develop basic query skills. For learners with query skills, the case (without scaffolding resources) can be used as a data analysis project covering all major query operations. The data can be queried in any structured query language (SQL) platform. The case offers practice and quiz questions for assessing business process skill and the query skills of joining tables, aggregating data, setting criteria, using built-in functions, developing expressions, and verifying query correctness. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This case is intended to impart basic spreadsheet skills to students that do not have them. It trains them to transform data, create formulas (with functions, IF statements, and absolute references), aggregate data, look up values, configure pivot tables, sort data, record macros, and extract spreadsheet tasks from conversation. These skills are needed for subsequent spreadsheet analyses for solving business problems. Suitable for students that can copy cells and develop simple formulas, the case offers pre- and post-assessment questions. The case provides scaffolding resources: flashcards for Excel features, a work plan template, a narrated video for getting started with the work plan, and guidance (scripts with screenshots and narrated videos) for performing the spreadsheet tasks. Using the context of a gradebook application, which is familiar to students, the case minimizes the cognitive load students experience because they are not trying to learn accounting and spreadsheet skills simultaneously. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

To authenticate to the full-text of this article, please visit this link: http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-8608.2009.01579.x Byline: William W. Keep ([dagger]), Gary P. Schneider ([dagger]) Abstract: Market relationships built on trust and governed by commonly accepted ethical norms are generally viewed as economically positive and beneficial to both parties; however, such relationships are occasionally the situs of a variety of unexpected and ethically questionable behaviours. This study examines the narratives provided by participants who share their experience as an exchange partner in a market relationship or as a close observer of an exchange partner in a market relationship to identify the use of short-term deceptions and ethics defections in managing these relationships. The data demonstrate a number of instances in which one exchange partner is willing to deceive another. Situations identified include deceiving current customers, new customers, current suppliers, governmental bodies, and employees and managers for the purposes of: protecting an existing relationship, pursuing a new relationship, ensuring product or service quality, and exerting control over a relationship. This research develops a general analytic framework for the occurrence of deception and defection from ethical norms in market relationships from elements of the study participants' narrative reports. This framework can be used by future researchers to design studies that examine the specific antecedents of these behaviours. Author Affiliation: ([dagger])School of Business, Quinnipiac University, Hamden, CT, USA

ABSTRACT Much has been written in the business press and in academic journals about the SarbanesOxley Act of 2002 ( SOA) and how it will affect corporate governance and the […]

ABSTRACT Businesses that experience problems with physical products they have purchased find that the legal system provides adequate redress for their grievances. Large verdicts or out of court settlements are [...]

ABSTRACT The Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002 (SOA) is a law that will affect the lives of top level company officers along with finance and accounting professionals. Top level officers are [...]

ABSTRACT The Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002 (SOA) is a law that will affect the lives of top level company officers along with finance and accounting professionals. Top level officers are [...]

ABSTRACT Most organizations use their Web sites to communicate in some way with their stakeholders. For-profit companies use their Web sites to sell products and services, not-for-profit organizations use their [...]

ABSTRACT Companies have been doing brand development for physical world products and services for many years. These experiences have led to a body of generally accepted approaches and processes that [...]

ABSTRACT This paper discusses cost accounting and its multiple uses in a governmental setting. The paper includes discussions about the applicability of cost data for outsourcing decisions, measuring efficiency, performance [...]

Using data envelopment analysis (DEA), we calculate sales efficiency for U.S. pharmaceutical firms and find it to be positively associated with those firms’ book-to-market ratios (a measure widely used in the finance literature to estimate the risk and growth potential of firms’ common stock). Thus, we conclude that sales-efficient firms in this industry are, on average, undervalued and suggest that the U.S. pharmaceutical industry is characterized by firms making off-balance sheet investments, which we argue leads to efficiency during our sample years (2009-2015). We also conduct longitudinal analyses and conclude that firms in our sample with smaller asset levels are more efficient. Finally, we conduct a slack analysis, which concludes that most of the overvalued companies exhibit inefficiencies in their utilization of research and development costs and selling, general, and administrative costs. Fewer of those firms exhibit inefficient utilization of their costs of goods sold. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

INTRODUCTION Business education has been largely function-centric since it emerged from its origins in Schools of Economics. The science of wealth became a practical apprenticeship in general business commerce. Curricula […], Business education has been largely function-centric since it emerged from its origins in Schools of Economics. Curricula were based on a core of fundamentals; studies in such areas as Accounting, Economics, Finance, Information Systems, Management, Marketing, and Operations Research. Beyond the core of fundamentals courses, graduate business programs offered breadth courses, electives courses, and a capstone course in strategy. Recent radical downsizing in corporate America and related innovations such as business process reengineering have led function-centric business organizations into the post industrial information age. Strategic value chain principles have been widely applied in many businesses. Enterprise-wide computing solutions have approached being, for the first time, a unifying business technology. Enterprise resource planning software (ERP) is becoming a way for firms to organize their strategy within this technology. This paper recommends that business schools grappling with curricular revision issues consider using the ERP structure of these software packages as an organizing theme for such revisions.

Over the past 75 years, accounting programs have developed a highly consistent sequencing of introductory course topics. In this curriculum model, the financial accounting topics precede the managerial accounting topics. This paper argues that the reverse order may be a more appropriate way to serve today's accounting students and their potential employers. Managers at all levels of organizations use managerial accounting knowledge more frequently than financial accounting knowledge. An ideal sequence of course topics would begin with conceptually easier material and progress to more difficult material. We argue that students in introductory courses understand managerial accounting more easily and find it more interesting than financial accounting. Beginning the sequence with financial accounting ignores this convention. The present sequencing was developed in response to the demands of professional certification examinations that accounting majors face. Many more introductory accounting students are not accounting majors than are. We argue that non-accounting majors would fare much better under a reversed sequencing. For example, the programs of many non-accounting majors require only one accounting course. With the present sequencing, these students take only financial accounting. For many of these students including engineers, health care professionals, and teachers the topics included in the managerial course would be much more useful. In conclusion, we also argue that the needs of accounting majors can be met by this reordering of topic coverage in the introductory accounting courses., INTRODUCTION As accounting programs have grown and developed over the past 75 years, they have gradually adopted a very consistent curriculum model for the introductory courses. In this curriculum model, [...]

Employees' concerns about the privacy of their electronic communications in the workplace have been increasing with the development of new technologies. More employees are using their employers' electronic communication facilities as networked computers with e-mail and file transfer capabilities become ubiquitous. The current state of the law clearly favors employers' property rights as owners of the facilities over employees' rights to privacy in communications. In academic institutions, faculty members--although they are employees--generally expect the right of academic freedom, a right to which few employees in nonacademic institutions are entitled. This paper argues that academic institutions may not wish to rely on existing precedents set in cases that have involved non-academic employers. The paper notes some legal precedents that have established standards for protected speech in an academic environment that differ from the standards more generally applied by the courts. The paper discusses how the principle of academic freedom may affect academic institutions' rights and obligations in managing their electronic communication facilities. The paper concludes with some suggestions for universities regarding how they might draft their policies on acceptable use to accommodate academic users' rights and expectations while providing the university with some level of protection from user abuses., INTRODUCTION Debates over the right to privacy have arisen as e-mail use has become ubiquitous in businesses and other organizations (Barker and Hammond, 1995; Greengard, 1996; Traynor, 1994). These debates [...]

Three developments in the U.S. business environment combine to create a need for research into how persons of different cultures experience the phenomenon of electronic communication. First, firms are increasing their use of electronic communications to replace face-to-face interactions. Second, drastic changes in U.S. work force demographics are underway changes that will increase the cultural diversity of the average U.S. workplace. Third, recent research in the communications literature has affected how educational institutions and other trainers identify and use different preferred communication styles to reach different cultural groups more effectively. This paper synthesizes these three developments and outlines a program of research into the interactions between culture and use of electronic communications technology for Hispanic labor force participants in U.S. firms. Hispanic workers comprise one major group of cultures that are expected to significantly increase their participation in U.S. business in the near future. The paper questions the implicit assumption that non-dominant cultural groups must subsume their values into those of the majority by acculturation., INTRODUCTION The paper begins with a discussion of how electronic communications have grown in recent years and some of the problems that researchers have identified with increasing use of these [...]

Preoperative colonization with Staphylococcus aureus (SA) increases risk of surgical site infection. Screening for SA followed by skin and nasal decolonization can help to reduce the risk of postoperative infections. Risk factors for colonization are, however, not completely understood. A case-control study using questionnaires and patient demographics specifically designed to observe SA colonization risk factors in a presurgical orthopedic population. A total of 115 subjects with a positive preoperative screen for SA nasal colonization prior to orthopedic surgery completed a questionnaire to assess for SA risk factors: these subjects served as our cases. An additional 476 controls completed similar questionnaires. Data collected included demographic, health, and lifestyle information. Multivariable logistic regression was used to generate odds ratios (OR) for risk of SA colonization. Several risk factors were identified. Male sex (OR 2.3; 95% confidence interval [CI], [1.4-3.8]) and diabetes (OR 3.8 [1.8-7.8]) significantly increased the risk of SA colonization. Older age, visiting public places (OR 0.2 [0.1-0.3]), recent antibiotic use (OR 0.2 [0.1-0.6]), and the presence of facial hair (OR 0.3 [0.1-0.6]) significantly lowered the risk of SA colonization. By identifying patients who may be at greater risk of SA colonization, we can better streamline our presurgical techniques to help reduce risk of surgical site infections and improve patient outcomes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the context of a kaiten-sushi restaurant, this guided learning experience minimizes learners' cognitive load as they construct a business process diagram (BPD) from the transcript of a conversation. The guidance provides a construction strategy, directs the construction, and illustrates the diagram. Instructors can vary the guidance to match learners' zones-of-proximal development (ZPD) or, when used with skilled learners, omit the guidance entirely. The guidance reduces the cognitive load of this experience, which is intended to enable learners to build mental schemas for developing BPDs in subsequent business situations. The guided experience is suitable for courses in which learners work with business processes, including accounting information systems (AIS), auditing, business analytics, and information systems (IS). Working through the experience requires students to think critically about the business process and implications of changes in the business process. The Teaching Notes include questions for assessing student proficiency in making inferences about the business process after they construct the BPD. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although students begin with a spreadsheet to analyze the effect of a change in credit score cutoff on loan performance on sales, they discover that this approach becomes unwieldy as the analysis becomes more complex. As more attributes from more sheets are required, the spreadsheet solution becomes difficult to implement or audit. The case thus motivates students to develop the database skills of importing the spreadsheet data into a database manager, joining tables, and performing the analysis using database querying. The case requires students to think critically to model the business situation in spreadsheet formulas and database query expressions, structure relationships among the attributes across data tables, and manipulate attributes to achieve the business objective. The case is suitable for courses in accounting systems, managerial accounting, decision making, and database systems. Objective questions are provided for assessing students' ability to analyze transaction records using both spreadsheet and database tools. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

To assess reliability of lumbar vertebral body computed tomography (CT) attenuation measurement between different observers. The International Society for Clinical Densitometry (ISCD) guidelines for DXA interpretation include assessment of "opportunistic CT" as a surrogate for DXA scan using L1 vertebral body attenuation, with threshold >150 and < 100 Hounsfield units (HU) estimating the likelihood of normal bone density and osteoporosis, respectively. ISCD guidelines include precision analysis of DXA, but there are no formal guidelines for assessing precision error when assessing bone mineral density (BMD) by CT attenuation of lumbar vertebral body. Measurement of precision have been published and we sought to determine inter-rater reliability and to assess precision by test-retest of the same patient. Utilizing Visage PACS to view CT images, six observers each measured CT attenuation of L1 and L5 vertebral bodies of the same set of 31 separate CT scans. Measurements were performed as previously described.3 Average HU within an elliptical region of interest (ROI) of the L1 and L5 vertebral bodies were recorded for each measurement, as well as L1 and L5 ROI area. Intra-class correlation (ICC) was calculated for each of these variables, with >0.9 indicating excellent agreement, 0.75-0.9 indicating good agreement, 0.5-0.75 indicating moderate agreement, and < 0.5 indicating poor agreement. ICC was calculated of L1 attenuation measured by a single observer on a separate set of 12 patients with CT scans done within 30 days of each other. Additionally we calculated root mean square–coefficient of variation (RMS-CV) of L1 vertebral body attenuation on this set of 12 patients. ICC of L1 attenuation and L5 attenuation were 0.94 and 0.92, respectively, indicating excellent agreement between observers. ICC of ROI areas at L1 and L5 ROI were 0.04 and 0.03, respectively, indicating poor agreement (Table 1). ICC of L1 CT attenuation on repeat scans within 30 days by a single observer was 0.97, indicating excellent agreement between two readings. Root mean square-SD was 14.6 HU. Least significant change was 40.4 HU. Percent coefficient of variation was 34.6. This study demonstrates that measurement of CT attenuation at L1 and L5 between different observers is reliable while area of region of interest at L1 and L5 between observers showed poor agreement. In test-retest of scans performed within 30 days on the same patient, a short time period in which little change is expected, measurement of CT attenuation also showed excellent agreement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]