Economics - Theses
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ItemManagement accounting in Australia: an investigation into the reasons for the gap between theory and practice( 1991)Even a brief glance at a cross-section of the many text-books dealing with cost and management accounting makes it evident that there is almost universal agreement among academics as to the "body of knowledge° which constitutes the area known as Cost and Management or Managerial Accounting. Furthermore, an examination of the contents of any of these major textbooks, such as Horngren and Foster (1987) and Shillinglaw (1982), through their sequence of revised editions over more than twenty years will reveal very little substantial change in their Table of Contents. In fact, this remarkable consensus of material has led Scapens(1983a), who had compared the topics covered in twenty four management accounting textbooks published in the previous six years, to coin the phrase the "Conventional Wisdom" of management accounting, at least as it is understood by academic textbook writers. (From Introduction)
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ItemEmployee participation and industrial democracy in Australian government employment: 1983-1988( 1990-05)The subject of employee participation in the public sector has been neglected in the academic literature of Australia. The present research aims to redress this deficiency. Its explicit focus is employee participation in Australian Government Employment (AGE) in the first six years of the Hawke Labor Government, that is, the period 1983-1988. The choice of this period is an important one. The election of the Hawke Government marks a turning point in Australian public administration: this was a government committed to the thoroughgoing reform of the public sector and employee participation was integrated into its reform agenda, albeit in the guise of industrial democracy. In the first part of the thesis the discussion clarifies the meaning and relationship between the concepts of employee participation and industrial democracy. This is followed by a review of the overseas literature on employee participation in public employment. In the second part, the development of employee participation in AGE is dealt with at a general level. This account spans the period 1901-1988, however, the account of the sub-period 1983-1988 is more detailed. In the third and fourth parts, the exposition becomes more specific. Detailed case studies of Australia Post and the Australian Taxation Office, which provide an account of the development of employee participation ranging from the national to the workplace level of each organization, are presented. In the final part, the discussion is drawn together and the lessons of the recent experience of employee participation in AGE are spelt out.
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ItemThe corporate treasury function: risk management and performance measurement( 1997-05)The Australian financial system has changed dramatically in recent years, creating both threats and opportunities for value adding activities. Many large corporations have set up a separate treasury division or department to handle their financing requirements. This thesis derives the rationale for a separate treasury function from theory of the firm. A framework has been developed by drawing upon both the old theory of the firm (transaction cost economics) and the new theory of the firm (agency theory) to determine the appropriate governance structure to manage financial arrangements. Formal analysis of corporate treasury functions and performance measurement research has not kept pace with the growth of treasury activities. Appropriate benchmarks provide management with information to manage financial risk and to more accurately assess treasury performance. A benchmark is required for core treasury tasks, including debt portfolio management. Optimal treasury benchmarks are difficult to determine, due to the complexity involved in measuring financial exposures for firms which derive income from physical, rather than financial assets. The inter-relationships between financial risks, including maturity, interest rate and currency risk, further compounds the problem. Decomposition of financial risk into these respective elements allows identification of the firm specific factors that influence financial exposure. Appropriate benchmarks for managing repricing, refunding and foreign exchange risk depend upon the trade-off between transaction costs, agency costs and information signalling costs. Theory suggests growth options in real assets within the firm's investment opportunity set provide opportunities for natural hedges that offset financial risk. However, empirical analysis of share price sensitivity to interest rates and an analysis of debt maturity structure indicates growth options and agency factors are less important than firm specific characteristics when setting up benchmark portfolios to manage financial risk. Treasuries are often classified as either active or passive managers, but a continuum of strategies is possible when managing financial risk, rather than points at either end of a spectrum. Tolerance levels around the benchmark constrain activity within a relevant range - the more active the treasury, the broader the range. Constraints allow the degree of activity to be fine-tuned. The decision to actively manage risk depends upon whether value can be added in risk-adjusted terms. This is a function not only of whether opportunities exist, but also whether value can be added consistently, compared with a passive approach. The majority of practising treasurers describe themselves as 'active hedgers'. Subject to caveats outlined in the thesis, field experiments conducted over a three year period indicate the ability of corporate treasurers to add value to the firm through outperforming a passive benchmark portfolio of debt is limited. Respondents to an international survey on corporate treasury control and performance standards cited difficulty in setting benchmarks, particularly risk-adjusted benchmarks, as the major reason for not measuring treasury performance. Empirical determinants of benchmark structures for repricing risk, refunding risk and currency risk have been identified. A better understanding of the factors that determine financial risk will assist management when they are designing or refining benchmarks to manage financial risk and measure treasury performance.
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ItemTariff and non-tariff barriers to trade in the beef, dairy & wheat industry in Japan, Taiwan & Thailand between 1974 & 1994;( 1995-02)This thesis results from a long interest and association with Australian export activities in the East Asian region. It has developed from an investigation into the relevance of tariffs to Australia’s export performance in East Asia into a thesis which explores the performance of Australia’s Statutory Marketing Authorities (SMA’s) in the beef, dairy and wheat sectors in Japan, Taiwan and Thailand, and the influence of Non-Tariff barriers on this performance. It is hoped that the data presented in the thesis will be a useful guide to the activities of SMA’s in East Asia between 1974 and 1994 and illustrate the success, or lack of it, that Australian exporters have had in overcoming the considerable barriers to agricultural trade with the region. More detailed analysis and assessments have been made of the statistical relevance of NTB’s, and the performance of SMA’s over the past ten years. However, this thesis sets out to charter a more diverse route through the intricacies and complexities of Australia’s export performance and admonish the notion that NTB’s are the pivotal factor to export success in East Asia.
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ItemWork team effectiveness in high technology manufacturing( 1995)The purpose of this study is to formulate and test a causal model of work team effectiveness among work team members at a large automotive manufacturing company. The study seeks to integrate previous work team theories, but adopt a more parsimonious approach to work team effectiveness by taking into account the developmental stage or “maturity” of the work teams being studied. The study examines also the issue of level of analysis. The level of analysis is an important issue for this study because of the multiple-level phenomena that comprise the model of work team effectiveness. This issue is examined from both theoretical and empirical perspectives. Having identified the development of the work teams in the study to be at the storming and norming stages of development (Tuckman, 1965), team development theory is used to formulate hypotheses about the criteria of work team effectiveness and its determinants. The dependent variables in the causal model comprise several work team effectiveness criteria that are identified by team development theory, such as team satisfaction, acceptance of team norms, team citizenship behaviour and work team viability. A fifth measure of work team effectiveness, team performance, is drawn from the broader theoretical literature on work teams. Team factors, such as role clarity, team cohesion, interpersonal conflict and team leadership, are predicted by team development theory to be important determinants of work team effectiveness at the storming and norming stages of development. Other independent variables in the model, such as task and organisational factors, are drawn again from the broader theoretical literature on work teams. The results of the study provide general support for the model of work team effectiveness. Moreover, several developmental hypotheses are confirmed. In particular, the results support the important role of team leadership, team cohesion and interpersonal conflict, and the reduced role of external leaders in predicting work team effectiveness at the storming and norming stages of development. The theoretical, methodological and practical implications of the study are discussed.
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ItemCapital expenditure decision making in divisionalised companies: a study of the role of managerial performance measures and other contextual influences( 1990)The accounting literature in the area of divisional performance measurement reflects a significant rift between theory and practice. Theoretical debate has tended to focus on dysfunctional decisions, particularly in the area of capital investment, that may be made by divisional managers seeking to maximise their divisional ROI result. The empirical evidence, however, still indicates the widespread use of ROI and other theoretically questionable performance measures in practice. This research is an attempt to shed light on the rift between theory and practice by studying the capital expenditure decision process intensively in three divisionalised companies. More specifically, an attempt is made to explore the use of accounting measures of managerial performance, the incidence of dysfunctional decision making factors that may mitigate the importance of accounting measurement of managerial performance as decision making. The development of a conceptual framework for the study is greatly influenced by the need to study the role of accounting within its organisational context (Hopwood, 1983; Kaplan, 1984). The conceptual framework has two key elements:1.The distribution of capital expenditure decision making authority within the divisionalised companies, and2. The general nature of organisational control systems. The distribution of authority is conceptually based on the distribution of knowledge and influence, rather than formal authority structures. The conceptualisation of organisational control is broad, and includes both formal and informal influences on managerial behaviour. The findings reflect a distribution of authority which is knowledge-based in relation to initiation and screening elements of the decision process. The findings also provide an insight into the influences on divisional management capital expenditure decisions. In particular they illustrate the role of managerial service histories, corporate familiarity with divisional operations, strategic planning and multiple performance measures within the organisational control system. The development of this understanding has potential to enable us to move beyond the simplified organisational contexts within which we teach and the control of divisionalised operations (Kaplan, 1986). The findings also provide a stimulus to further research – either hypothesis testing in contingency research, or further exploration through intensive field studies.
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ItemInformation and coordination: the economic organization of tourism( 1997)This study set out to explain the nature of economic coordination in tourism and explore the reasons which have prevented the development of the supply-side analysis of tourism and engendered much debate about whether tourism is an industry or not. A survey of the economics and alternative literatures on tourism reveals a wide variety of interpretations about the fundamental nature of tourism coordination problems. It also sets the premises of the study which claims that tourism constitutes an excessively diverse and volatile sector in which novelty plays an inherent, critical, role. The methodology proposed does not concentrate the analysis on one aspect, as has been done in past tourism studies, but undertakes to tackle the broader coordination of such a fragmented and turbulent system. This is approached initially by reviewing alternative theories of the firm and of industrial coordination. It identifies a basic methodological divergence between models based on conventional equilibrium principles and evolutionary alternatives. In the latter, structural uncertainty plays a fundamental role and economic agents take steps to deal with the prospects of ignorance. The thesis subsequently develops a learning theory coordination combining elements of evolutionary-cognitive models of knowledge production and coordination. What emerges is a theory of choice between alternative learning strategies. The firm undertakes the management of dynamic tradeoffs between learning strategies. Its boundaries evolve as it must decide between combinations of product and process learning heuristics and mix internal and external learning channels. The thesis develops the important notion that inter-firm networking is an especially important external learning strategy in systems where abstract commodity concepts are ill-developed. In such circumstances, firms can develop product-or process- related competences in appropriating innovation rents in either dimension. If many networking strategies can be sustained by different firms and these affect the nature of products and process technological standards, variation will be sustainable and Schumpeterian competition (with respect to both product and process technologies) will dominate. The thesis contrasts the transaction costs and evolutionary perspectives on tourism. It shows that the former overlooks diversity and generates context specific statements incompatible with its deterministic intentions. The evolutionary-cognitive perspective produces an original framework for the analysis of tourism coordination which makes the novel and critical claim that inter-firm networks constitute the salient feature of tourism coordination. This is important because it allows to provide a genuinely broad outlook on tourism diversity and fragmentation, and explains the process generating and constraining variation. It also becomes possible to distinguish and categorise alternative, external and tourism-specific, learning strategies corresponding to attempts to formulate rent-generating commodity standards. These inter-firm networks match well the diverse, and incompatible, predictions found in the literature about organizational patterns and structural development. /An innovative empirical application to a regional tourism system shows that it is indeed possible to categorise inter-firm networking behaviour according to learning strategies. It does so by correlating patterns of connections with participation in markets in which tourist-consumers and products have distinctive attributes.