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Financial Reporting for Environmental and Social Responsibility:
A Normative Strategic Concept
--
Jean Raar
Corporate
responsibility demands that firms address environmental
and social values in their firms' policy and key performance
indicators. These are integrated through strategic planning
and require firms to merge the long-term environmental and
social values with short-term economic objectives and performance
measures. Each firm's strategy will differ. This paper provides
a normative reporting concept to connect the financial implications
associated with long-term planning for environmental and
social values, with short-term accounting reports. Reporting
variants adapted from total cost assessment, life cycle
costing and variable costing are integrated to offer upstream
information based on a product segment view.
©
2005 IUP. All Rights Reserved.
Innovation
in Business Performance Measurement: Review of Studies on
Trends and Practices
--
Keyur Thaker
Since
performance measurement systems play a key role in developing
strategic plans, evaluating the achievement of organizational
objectives and compensating managers, one of the most critical
challenges facing the corporate sector today is the choice
of performance measures. Despite the increasing adoption
of these performance measurement innovations, relatively
few studies have examined the economic relevance of the
new measures, the implementation issues arising from their
adoption, or the performance consequences from their use.
The author describes the emerging performance measurement
practices; highlights the current research on the use and
performance consequences of the new measures; discusses
the research done on the disclosure of performance measures;
and sets the background for further research in the area
of business performance measures. The fact which makes research
in the discipline of business performance measures unique
is that a major, influential and widely published part of
the research is sponsored by premier business schools across
the world or by top management consultancy firms and organizations,
in an organized manner although research in this discipline
is varied and broad-based rather than in-depth or built
upon others' work. This paper is a part of major research
on business performance and throws light on studies that
highlight the evolution of business performance measurement;
studies that compare the various performance measurement
systems and models; studies on disclosure and reporting
of business performance measures; studies highlighting the
practices of performance measurement and so on.
©
2005 IUP. All Rights Reserved.
A
Dialectic Between Economic Reality and Accounting System
Reform in Central and Eastern Europe: The Polish and Romanian
Cases
--
Katarzyna Kosmala
MacLullich and Clin Guru
The
transition towards a free-market economy and democratic
society in the Central and Eastern European (CEE) countries
encompasses complex processes of socioeconomic transformation
of centrally planned economy and the communist regime. The
reforms of the accounting systems in the CEE countries can
be envisaged as a multidimensional phenomenon incorporating
legal and educational changes at the national, institutional
and organizational levels. These reforms are shaped largely
by the cultural specificity of every country and their professional
and local traditions. In this paper, the authors develop
a framework for analysis of the accounting system reforms
in the CEE countries. Applying this framework, they explore
national accounting system reforms embedded in structural
local conditions in the two contrasting examples of the
CEE region: Poland and Romania. What emerges from the study
is the insights indicating that the accounting system reforms
represent an essential medium in reducing the resistance
to transition, particularly in the processes of familiarization
(socialization) with capitalist principles and ways of thinking,
supportive of a market-driven economy.
©
2005 IUP. All Rights Reserved.
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