1,720,981 research outputs found
The design and use of management control systems in a Chinese multinational corporation: a neo-institutional perspective
No full textThis study investigates the role of management control systems (MCS) in a Chinese multinational construction company (International GS). In particular it explores how MCS rules and mechanisms for overseas operation (e.g. budgetary control, cost control, performance measurement and incentive system and localized management) are designed in the case company’s head office in China (GSLZ), and how these formal rules and mechanisms are implemented in one of its overseas subsidiaries in Ghana (GSJN). In-depth semi-structured interviews were carried out with top and middle managers in both research sites, alongside reviews of documents. A neo-institutionalist theoretical framework, drawn from Scott’s (2013) theoretical concepts of regulative, normative and cultural-cognitive institutions, are combined with the notion of contextualization (Tsui, 2006, 2007) to interpret and analyse the case study findings.Findings from the head office show how regulative and normative institutional pressures conflictingly and simultaneously circumscribed the company’s MCS design. Whilst the MCS rules were designed in accordance to regulatory pressures and in particular as a result of the government’s pursuance of a ‘marketization’ policy, it also revealed an authoritative control mode emphasising centralization, compliance and military approaches. The study of MCS implementation further showed that although rules were imposed in the Ghanaian subsidiary, practical variations emerged as a response to the contradictions in the setting of MCS rules and mechanisms, and localized management control practices were also established to adapt to the local political and market needs. However, this study further reveals that a specific logic (i.e. ‘policy orientation’) pervaded the Chinese managers’ design and use of MCS, leading to a problematic role of MCS in practice and a failure to achieve the objectives of localized management. Informed by Scott’s idea of a cultural-cognitive institutional order, this study further contends that the Chinese managers’ specific logic arose because their cognition were shaped by, and reflected, certain intrinsic notions derived from the interactions between regulative and normative institutions. Furthermore, this study argues that the unique Chinese culture, as the fundamental institutional logic, provides the infrastructure on which not only beliefs, but norms and rules rests. Two characteristics of Chinese culture (i.e. paternalism and Guanxi) have been identified to explain the rationalities behind the problems of MCS design and use in the case company.Due to the increasing presence of Chinese multinational corporations in emerging and less-developed economies, this study aims to offer new insights in the study of MCS development and dissemination in non-western contexts. Moreover, the particular focus on a construction company brings new evidence since this sector, in spite of its size and importance in modern economies, rarely features in management accounting and control research. Lastly, this study contributes to extant cross-cultural accounting work. Whilst recent work remains influenced (and limited) by Hofstede's notions of national culture (Baskerville, 2003; Joannides, Berland and Wickramasinghe, 2010), this study highlights how the underlying facets of Chinese culture are relevant to the design and use of MCS in Chinese multinational corporations
Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
Get PDFThe present study examines one of the fundamental aspects of author co-citation analysis (ACA) - the way co-citation
counts are defined. Co-citation counting provides the data on which all subsequent statistical analyses and mappings
are based, and we compare ACA results based on two different types of co-citation counting - the traditional type that
only counts the first one among a cited work's authors on the one hand and a non-traditional type that takes into
account the first 5 authors of a cited work on the other hand. Results indicate that the picture produced through this non-traditional author co-citation counting contains more coherent author groups and is therefore considerably clearer. However, this picture represents fewer specialties in the research field being studied than that produced through the traditional first-author co-citation counting when the same number of top-ranked authors is selected and analyzed. Reasons for these effects are discussed
Variations on the Author
Get PDF“Variations on the Author” discusses two of Eduardo Coutinho’s recent films (Um Dia na Vida, from 2010, and Últimas Conversas, posthumously released in 2015) and their contribution to the general question of documentary authorship. The director’s filmography is characterized by a consistent yet self-effacing form of authorial self-inscription: Coutinho often features as an interviewer that rather than express opinions propels discourses; an interviewer that is good at listening. This mode of self-inscription characterizes him as an author who is not expressive but who is nonetheless markedly present on the screen. In Um Dia na Vida, however, Coutinho is completely absent form the image, while Últimas Conversas, on the contrary, includes a confessional prologue that moves the director from the margins to the center of his films. This article examines the ways in which these works stand out in the filmography of a director who offers new insights into the notion of cinematic authorship
Appropriate Similarity Measures for Author Cocitation Analysis
Get PDFWe provide a number of new insights into the methodological discussion about author cocitation analysis. We first argue that the use of the Pearson correlation for measuring the similarity between authors’ cocitation profiles is not very satisfactory. We then discuss what kind of similarity measures may be used as an alternative to the Pearson correlation. We consider three similarity measures in particular. One is the well-known cosine. The other two similarity measures have not been used before in the bibliometric literature. Finally, we show by means of an example that our findings have a high practical relevance.information science;Pearson correlation;cosine;similarity measure;author cocitation analysis
Dispelling the Myths Behind First-author Citation Counts
Get PDFWe conducted a full-scale evaluative citation analysis study of scholars in the XML research field to explore just how different from each other author rankings resulting from different citation counting methods actually are, and to demonstrate the capability of emerging data and tools on the Web in supporting more realistic citation counting methods. Our results contest some common arguments for the continued
use of first-author citation counts in the evaluation of scholars, such as high correlations between author rankings by first-author citation counts and other citation
counting methods, and high costs of using more realistic citation counting methods that are not well-supported by the ISI databases. It is argued that increasingly available digital full text research papers make it possible for citation analysis studies to go beyond what the ISI databases have directly supported and to employ more
sophisticated methods
koamabayili/VECTRON-author-checklist: VECTRON author checklist
No full textWe have done our best to complete the author checklist relating to the use of animals in the hut study. Note that the objective for the hut study was to evaluate the IRS treatment applications for residual efficacy against Anopheles mosquitoes, including the local An. coluzzii mosquito population. Cows were only used to attract mosquitoes into the huts and no tests were carried out directly on the cows. The author checklist is intended for use with studies where experiments are carried out on animals, which is why we have had such difficulty in completing this for the hut study, as many of the questions do not relate to how the cows were used
Author-wise bibliometric analysis based on entropy.
No full textAuthor-wise bibliometric analysis based on entropy.</p
- …
