TY - JOUR A1 - Smieliauskas, Wally A1 - Bewley, Kathryn A1 - Gronewold, Ulfert A1 - Menzefricke, Ulrich T1 - Misleading Forecasts in Accounting Estimates BT - a Form of Ethical Blindness in Accounting Standards? JF - Journal of business ethics N2 - The current financial reporting environment, with its increasing use of accounting estimates, including fair value estimates, suggests that unethical accounting estimates may be a growing concern. This paper provides explanations and empirical evidence for why some types of accounting estimates in financial reporting may promote a form of ethical blindness. These types of ethical blindness can have an escalating effect that corrupts not only an individual or organization but also the accounting profession and the public interest it serves. Ethical blindness in the standards of professional accountants may be a factor in the extent of misreporting, and may have taken on new urgency as a result of the proposals to change the conceptual framework for financial reporting using international standards. The social consequences for users of financial statements can be huge. The acquittal of former Nortel executives on fraud charges related to accounting manipulations is viewed by many as legitimizing accounting gamesmanship. This decision illustrates that the courts may not be the best place to deal with ethical reporting issues. The courts may be relied on for only the most egregious unethical conduct and, even then, the accounting profession is ill equipped to assist the legal system in prosecuting accounting fraud unless the standards have been clarified. We argue that the problem of unethical reporting should be addressed by the accounting profession itself, preferably as a key part of the conceptual framework that supports accounting and auditing standards, and the codes of ethical conduct that underpin the professionalism of accountants. KW - Ethical accounting estimates KW - Estimation uncertainty KW - IASB accounting conceptual framework KW - Accounting standards KW - Auditing standards Y1 - 2016 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1007/s10551-016-3289-1 SN - 0167-4544 SN - 1573-0697 VL - 152 IS - 2 SP - 437 EP - 457 PB - Springer CY - Dordrecht ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Ganghof, Steffen T1 - The Regime-Trilemma: On the Relationship between the Executive and Legislature in advanced Democracies JF - Politische Vierteljahresschrift : Zeitschrift der Deutschen Vereinigung für Politische Wissenschaft N2 - A comprehensive typology of basic executive formats is presented and linked to a discussion of tradeoffs in the design of executive-legislative relations. The focus is on the tradeoffs between three goals: (1) programmatic parties, (2) identifiable cabinets and (3) issue -specific legislative coalitions. To include semi-presidentialism into the typology in a logically consistent manner, a heretofore neglected executive format has to be defined, which is labelled semi-parliamentarism. Based on a discussion of Australian states, it is argued that semi-parliamentarism has the potential to mitigate the trilemma. KW - executive-legislative relations KW - semi-parliamentarism KW - bicameralism Y1 - 2016 U6 - https://doi.org/10.5771/0032-3470-2016-1-27 SN - 0032-3470 SN - 1862-2860 VL - 57 SP - 27 EP - + PB - Nomos CY - Hannover ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Seyfried, Markus T1 - Setting a fox to guard the henhouse? Determinants in elections for presidents of supreme audit institutions Evidence from the German federal states (1991-2011) JF - Managerial auditing journal N2 - Purpose - The purpose of this paper is to provide evidence regarding the selection procedures for and characteristics of senior officials in supreme audit institutions (SIAs). Design/methodology/approach - This study follows a quantitative approach using original data collected for presidential elections of SIAs in the 16 federal states in Germany. A fractional logit model is calculated to test different theoretical assumptions in relation to structural, political and individual factors. Findings - The descriptive results confirm the findings of prior research that presidential candidates are elected with very high approval rates. The main determinants are the vote share of the ruling coalition and the executive experience of the presidential candidate. Research limitations/implications - This study focuses on 16 federal states in Germany, but an international comparative perspective covering subnational levels would further augment analysis through the variance of selection procedures and electoral outcomes. Social implications - Independence of auditors is a fundamental issue for the control of the executive, but it seems that there are inevitable trade-offs therein, such as between knowledge of the auditing objects or the politicization of the election process and the independence of the auditor. Originality/value - This study provides novel empirical insights into the election and selection procedures for senior SIA officials at the subnational level, and shows that the executive exerts strong, but functionally reasonable, influence on candidate selection. KW - Independence KW - President KW - Sub-national KW - Supreme audit institutions Y1 - 2016 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1108/MAJ-03-2015-1168 SN - 0268-6902 SN - 1758-7735 VL - 31 SP - 492 EP - 511 PB - Emerald Group Publishing Limited CY - Bingley ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Sprinz, Detlef F. A1 - de Mesquita, Bruce Bueno A1 - Kallbekken, Steffen A1 - Stokman, Frans A1 - Saelen, Hakon A1 - Thomson, Robert T1 - Predicting Paris: Multi-Method Approaches to Forecast the Outcomes of Global Climate Negotiations JF - Politics and Governance N2 - We examine the negotiations held under the auspices of the United Nations Framework Convention of Climate Change in Paris, December 2015. Prior to these negotiations, there was considerable uncertainty about whether an agreement would be reached, particularly given that the world’s leaders failed to do so in the 2009 negotiations held in Copenhagen. Amid this uncertainty, we applied three different methods to predict the outcomes: an expert survey and two negotiation simulation models, namely the Exchange Model and the Predictioneer’s Game. After the event, these predictions were assessed against the coded texts that were agreed in Paris. The evidence suggests that combining experts’ predictions to reach a collective expert prediction makes for significantly more accurate predictions than individual experts’ predictions. The differences in the performance between the two different negotiation simulation models were not statistically significant. KW - climate policy KW - climate regime KW - expert survey KW - forecasting KW - global negotiations KW - Paris agreement KW - prediction KW - simulation Y1 - 2016 U6 - https://doi.org/10.17645/pag.v4i3.654 SN - 2183-2463 VL - 4 SP - 172 EP - 187 PB - Cogitatio Press CY - Lisbon ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Possamai, Adam A1 - Turner, Bryan S. A1 - Roose, Joshua M. A1 - Dagistanli, Selda A1 - Voyce, Malcolm T1 - "Shari'a" in Cyberspace. A Case Study from Australia JF - Sociologica : Italian Journal of Sociology online N2 - New forms of communication and greater accessibility of Islamic texts on-line allow Muslims to shape their own religiosity, to become less dependent on established sources of authority, and thereby to become more aware of their own cultural diversity as a community. New practices of transnational Islam, and the growth of new concepts of Muslim identities currently emerging in the on-line community, are relatively free from immediate constraints. This article provides the result of a sociological analysis of three Internet sites in Sydney which deliver on-line fatwas. Even if cyberspace has allowed the Muslim world to be de-territorialised and provides a way for people to distance themselves from traditional communities if they wish, this research points out a variety of approaches, including one case which is aiming at re-localising an Australian Muslim system of values. This case highlights ways in which first generation Muslims are re-territorialising Shari'a in a specific western country. KW - Shari'a KW - Fatwas KW - Cyberspace KW - De-territorialisation Process Y1 - 2016 U6 - https://doi.org/10.2383/83882 SN - 1971-8853 VL - 63 SP - 143 EP - 159 PB - Società editrice il Mulino CY - Bologna ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Weinbach, Christine T1 - Limited Inclusion as the General Case: Ascriptive Person Categories in the Political System of the Functional Differentiated Society JF - Tutorials in Quantitative Methods for Psychology N2 - Der vorliegende Beitrag interessiert sich aus differenzierungstheoretischer Perspektive am bundesdeutschen Beispiel für die Funktion askriptiver Personenkategorien im Politiksystem der funktional differenzierten Gesellschaft. Den Ausgangspunkt bildet die Geldabhängigkeit von Organisationen, welche die limitierte Inklusion von Individuen in die lebenslaufrelevanten Funktionssysteme zum Normalfall macht. Der nationale Wohlfahrtsstaat reagiert darauf mit der Regulierung des Arbeitsmarktzugangs durch die askriptiven Personenkategorien nationale Zugehörigkeit und Geschlecht, und erzeugt so eigene Formen limitierter Inklusion. Diese Personenkategorien werden im europäisierten Wohlfahrtsstaat durch die askriptive Personenkategorie des rationalen Akteurs mit individueller Agency, der sein Wollen in die Vertragslogiken des Arbeits marktes und des aktivierenden Sozialstaates stellt, ersetzt und der Arbeitsmarktzugang extensiviert. Bei allen Unterschieden zwischen dem nationalen und dem europäisierten Wohlfahrtsstaat begreift der Beitrag askriptive Personenkategorien als normative Strukturen einer Ebene sekundärer Ordnungsbildung, die sich zwischen Funktionssystem- und Organisationsebene schiebt und auf der Kategorien sozialer Ungleichheit im Wohlfahrtstaatsstaat produziert werden. The present article asks from the perspective of differentiation theory for the function of ascriptive person categories within the political system of the functionally differentiated society. For this purpose it takes the Federal German as a case study. The article starts with the fact of money dependence of organisations and that this leads to the generally limited inclusion of the individuals into the functional systems, which are life course relevant. The national welfare state refers to the limited inclusion and regulates excess to the labour market via the ascriptive person categories national affiliation and gender, and by this it produces own modes of limited inclusion. The Europeanised welfare state expands the excess to the labour market. Simultaneously it replaces the national person categories by the person category of the rational actor with individual agency who puts his or her own willingness into the contract logics of labour marked and activating welfare state. Despite all differences between the national and the Europeanised welfare state the article conceives ascriptive person categories as normative structures of a secondary order formation which is slot between the levels of functional and organisational systems. On this secondary order level categories of social inequality are reproduced. Y1 - 2016 U6 - https://doi.org/10.5771/0038-6073-2016-2-159 SN - 0038-6073 VL - 67 SP - 159 EP - + PB - University of Montreal, Department of Psychology CY - Baden-Baden ER - TY - JOUR A1 - de Guevara, Berit Bliesemann T1 - visits in zones of conflict and intervention JF - Journal of intervention and statebuilding N2 - This article explores the practice and political significance of politicians’ journeys to conflict zones. It focuses on the German example, looking at field trips to theatres of international intervention as a way of first-hand knowledge in policymaking. Paying tribute to Lisa Smirl and her work on humanitarian spaces, objects and imaginaries and on liminality in aid worker biographies, two connected arguments are developed. First, through the exploration of the routinized practices of politicians’ field trips the article shows how these journeys not only remain confined to the ‘auxiliary space’ of aid/intervention, but that it is furthermore a staged reality of this auxiliary space that most politicians experience on their journeys. The question is then asked, second, what politicians actually experience on their journeys and how their experiences relate to their policy knowledge about conflict and intervention. It is shown that political field trips enable sensory/affectual, liminoid and liminal experiences, which have functions such as authority accumulation, agenda setting, community building, and civilizing domestic politics, while at the same time reinforcing, in most cases, pre-existing conflict and intervention imaginaries. KW - field trips KW - on-site visits KW - battlefield tourism KW - sensory experience KW - affect KW - conflict knowledge KW - spaces of aid KW - liminality KW - German Bundestag KW - parliamentarians KW - German foreign policy KW - Lisa Smirl Y1 - 2016 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1080/17502977.2015.1137394 SN - 1750-2977 SN - 1750-2985 VL - 10 SP - 56 EP - 76 PB - Soil Science Society of America CY - Abingdon ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Ganghof, Steffen T1 - Research Design in Political Science - Causal perspectives versus contrastive theory testing JF - Austrian journal of political science N2 - Die politikwissenschaftliche Literatur unterscheidet zwei Grundtypen von Forschungsdesigns: x- und y-zentriert. Dieser Beitrag argumentiert, dass ein „kontrastives“ Forschungsdesign als dritter Grundtyp abgegrenzt werden sollte. Die drei Designs unterscheiden sich durch die Anzahl der betrachteten Theorien und dadurch, ob mehrere Theorien konkurrierend oder komplementär sind. Die typologische Abgrenzung des kontrastiven Designs verdeutlicht auch die Vor- und Nachteile x- und y-zentrierter Designs. Anhand verschiedener Beispielstudien (experimentell und nicht-experimentell, quantitativ und qualitativ) werden die Charakteristika der drei Designs sowie ihre Kombinationsmöglichkeiten herausgearbeitet. Darüber hinaus wird das kontrastive Design als verbindendes Element zwischen den quantitativen und qualitativen Forschungs-„Kulturen“ hervorgehoben. The political science literature distinguishes two basic types of research designs: x- and y-centered. The article argues for the distinction of a third basic type: the "contrastive" design. The three designs differ in the number of relevant theories and in whether they see theories as competing or complementary. The typological differentiation of the contrastive research design helps to clarify the pros and cons of x- and y-centered designs. The article uses exemplary studies (experimental and observational, quantitative and qualitative) to illustrate the characteristics of the three designs as well as the possibilities of combining them. The contrastive design also constitutes a common element of the quantitative and qualitative research, "cultures". KW - Forschungsdesign, kausale Perspektiven, Theorietest, x-zentriert, y-zentriert, Experimente KW - research design KW - causal perspectives KW - theory test KW - effects of causes KW - causes of effects KW - experiments Y1 - 2016 U6 - https://doi.org/10.15203/ozp.1037.vol45iss1 SN - 2313-5433 VL - 45 SP - 1 EP - 12 PB - Österreichische Gesellschaft für Politikwissenschaft CY - Wien ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Hustedt, Thurid A1 - Seyfried, Markus T1 - Co-ordination across internal organizational boundaries: how the EU Commission co-ordinates climate policies JF - Journal of European public policy N2 - Through an analysis of climate policy-making in the European Commission (EU), this article argues that co-ordination in the Commission displays the same characteristics as the co-ordination across ministries in central governments, i.e., the properties of negative co-ordination. The article is based on a survey among Commission officials. Overall, the article reveals that a public administration perspective on the Commission proves invaluable to gain insights on how decisions are made at the European Union level. The article contributes to the emerging literature viewing the Commission as an ordinary bureaucracy - as opposed to a unique supranational organization. KW - Bureaucratic organization KW - climate change policy KW - co-ordination KW - Directorate General KW - EU policy-making KW - European Commission Y1 - 2016 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1080/13501763.2015.1074605 SN - 1350-1763 SN - 1466-4429 VL - 23 SP - 888 EP - 905 PB - Springer Publishing Company CY - Abingdon ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Borgnäs, Kajsa T1 - The Policy Influence of Sustainability Indicators: Examining Use and Influence of Indicators in German Sustainability Policy Making JF - German politics N2 - In 2002 Germany adopted an ambitious national sustainability strategy, covering all three sustainability spheres and circling around 21 key indicators. The strategy stands out because of its relative stability over five consecutive government constellations, its high status and increasingly coercive nature. This article analyses the strategy's role in the policy process, focusing on the use and influence of indicators as a central steering tool. Contrasting rationalist and constructivist perspectives on the role of knowledge in policy, two factors, namely the level of consensus about policy goals and the institutional setting of the indicators, are found to explain differences in use and influence both across indicators and over time. Moreover, the study argues that the indicators have been part of a continuous process of ‘structuring’ in which conceptual and instrumental use together help structure the sustainability challenge in such a way that it becomes more manageable for government policy. Y1 - 2016 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1080/09644008.2016.1193160 SN - 0964-4008 SN - 1743-8993 VL - 25 SP - 480 EP - 499 PB - Elsevier CY - Abingdon ER -