Effective management of scarce resources: a case study of American collegiate sport clubs

Purpose – An effective management accounting information system (MAIS), as well as the accounting discourse related to it, can support, facilitate, enable, and constrain diverse business discourses. This paper aims to examine the discursive and organisational effects of an organisation accounting upon absent accounting artefacts, i.e. accounting without accounting. Situated within the discursive literature, this paper examines the construction of competing articulations of the organisation by focusing on what accounting does or does not do within an organisation. In particular, the paper acknowledges the fundamental importance of the accounting discourse in supporting, facilitating, enabling, and constraining competing organisational discourses, as it illustrates how the absence of accounting centralises power within the organisation. Design/methodology/approach – From a rhetorical, discursive perspective, the authors develop an in-depth qualitative case study in a manufacturing organisation where MAIS has been abandoned for approximately two years. Interpretive research approaches, from a post-structural perspective, provided the base for the structure of the research. The authors studied how other organisational discourses (such as entrepreneurship and growth), which are traditionally constructed with reference to accounting and other artefacts, continued to be produced and sustained. The non-use and non-availability of management accounting information created a vacuum that needed to be filled. The lack of discursive counterpoints and counter-evidence provided by MAIS created a vacuum of information, allowing powerful, proxy discourses to prevail in the organisation, increasing risks to business management. Findings – The absence of MAIS to support an accounting discourse requires that contingent discourses “fill in the discursive gap”. Despite appearances, they are no substitute for the accounting discourse. Thus, over time, the entrepreneurial, growth and partners' discourses lose credibility, without the corresponding use of management accounting information and its associated discourse. Originality/value – There are at least two main contributions from the case study and the findings presented in this paper: first, they provide a new perspective for studying MAIS, as a specific organisational discourse among other discourses that shape people relationship within the organisation as an examination of accounting without accounting. Second, this discussion reinforces the relevance of accounting discourse for other organisational discourses, supporting, facilitating, enabling, and constraining them, by demonstrating the effects of its absence.

Download Full-text

Sustainability-Oriented Innovations in Food Waste Management Technology

Sustainability ◽

10.3390/su13010210 ◽

2020 ◽

Vol 13 (1) ◽

pp. 210

Author(s):

Carlos Martin-Rios ◽

Anastasia Hofmann ◽

Naomi Mackenzie

Keyword(s):

Food Waste ◽

Value Chain ◽

Cost Effective ◽

Third Party ◽

World Population ◽

Scarce Resources ◽

Innovation Activities ◽

Food And Agriculture ◽

Food And Agriculture Organization

Food is essential to our survival, yet the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) estimates that about 820 million people were undernourished in 2018. In this context, food waste generation is a particularly salient issue. Wasting food means missing opportunities to feed the growing world population and consuming scarce resources, such as land, water and energy used in the production, processing, distribution and consumption of food. Firms in HORECA (hospitality, restaurant and catering) represent a considerable share of total food waste and, more importantly, are characterized by an overall low sense of awareness about the sustainability-oriented innovation opportunities and challenges of minimizing food waste. This article draws on an in-depth case study to explore the use of technological advancements in downstream value chain. This case study draws on a tech startup providing services for HORECA companies to address a new way for companies to solve the food waste challenge. Adopting technological innovations to quantify and minimize wastage via collaborations with third-party companies can be a strategic and cost-effective way to supplement a company’s open innovation activities.

Download Full-text

The Growth of Maritime Archaeology in Mexico: A Case Study

10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199336005.013.0042 ◽

2012 ◽

Author(s):

Pilar Luna Erreguerena

Keyword(s):

Sixteenth Century ◽

Cultural Heritage ◽

Maritime Archaeology ◽

Effective Management ◽

International Treaties ◽

Heritage Sites ◽

Open Sea ◽

Archaeological Work ◽

Submerged Cultural Heritage

Mexico's underwater cultural heritage represents a vast and splendid universe varying from prehistoric to modern remains. But one of its main cultural riches is contained in its coastal and open-sea waters, where hundreds of ships have wrecked since the sixteenth century. Most of the underwater archaeological work undertaken since the 1980s has been in marine waters, especially the Gulf of Mexico. This article explains the discourse of maritime archaeology in Mexico through various phases such as the pre Colombian navigation, the European navigation, and stages of underwater recovery and underwater archaeology in the Mexican waters. In Mexico, the effective management of submerged heritage sites has proved difficult. Although it has no specific laws, Mexico has gained a better awareness regarding the importance of preserving its submerged cultural heritage and has signed and ratified diverse international treaties and the future looks promising.

Download Full-text

A new concept of irrigation response units for effective management of surface and groundwater resources: a case study from the multi-country Fergana Valley, Central Asia

Irrigation Science ◽

10.1007/s00271-016-0521-9 ◽

2016 ◽

Vol 35 (1) ◽

pp. 55-68 ◽

Cited By ~ 4

Author(s):

Usman Khalid Awan ◽

Mirzakhayot Ibrakhimov ◽

Bogachan Benli ◽

John P. A. Lamers ◽

Umar Waqas Liaqat

Keyword(s):

Central Asia ◽

Groundwater Resources ◽

Effective Management ◽

Surface And Groundwater

Download Full-text

The Mnemonic Imagination and Second-Generation Migrant Experience

10.1093/oso/9780190468712.003.0008 ◽

2017 ◽

Author(s):

Emily Keightley ◽

Michael Pickering

Keyword(s):

Cultural Context ◽

Second Generation ◽

Cross Cultural ◽

Effective Management ◽

Ethnographic Case Study ◽

The Past ◽

Considerable Resistance ◽

Professional Photographer ◽

Generation Migrant

Drawing on our concept of the mnemonic imagination, this chapter shows how the past is reactivated and pieced together into a relatively coherent narrative in the interests of identity and the effective management of change. In forming the synthetic hub of remembering and imagining, the mnemonic imagination is mobilized in bringing past, present, and future into meaningful correspondence. This chapter illustrates how this happens via an ethnographic case study involving Kia Kapoor, a second-generation Indian woman in her early 30s living in England, who uses her work as a professional photographer to help her negotiate her own difficult past as someone caught between two cultures. The case demonstrates mnemonic imagining at work in a particular cross-generational and cross-cultural context, taking into account how it can be thwarted by various obstacles and how, through considerable resistance and struggle, it can help overcome the consequences of radical sociocultural disruption.

Download Full-text

An “old fight”: A case study of enduring struggle in early childhood education

Contemporary Issues in Early Childhood ◽

10.1177/1463949118822052 ◽

2019 ◽

Vol 21 (3) ◽

pp. 224-241

Author(s):

Mark Nagasawa

Keyword(s):

Early Care And Education ◽

Early Care ◽

Public Attention ◽

Education Policies ◽

Scarce Resources ◽

Policy Practice ◽

The Us ◽

The Usa ◽

Bakhtinian Theory

This is a case study of political struggles over early care and education in the USA using a combination of archival, interview, and observational data from a study conducted in the US state of Arizona. This case analysis illustrates how a combination of the episodic nature of public attention paid to early care and education in the USA, internal tensions within US early care and education between its educational and caring purposes, and competition over scarce resources has worked to undermine the development of universal early care and education in the USA. The study is framed by Dorothy Holland and Jean Lave’s ideas of enduring struggles and locally contested practice, and uses an analytic strategy informed by Bakhtinian theory to illustrate how understanding the cultural logics involved in locally contested practice can be of use to the practice of policy advocacy, specifically engaging adversaries with what Bakhtin called an “excess of seeing” - understanding beneath the surface. While focused on one state in one national context, this analysis may have transnational relevance by raising comparative questions about early care and education policies and policy practice in other localities.

Download Full-text

Visitor Satisfaction with a Public Green Infrastructure and Urban Nature Space in Perth, Western Australia

Land ◽

10.3390/land7040159 ◽

2018 ◽

Vol 7 (4) ◽

pp. 159 ◽

Cited By ~ 9

Author(s):

Jackie Parker ◽

Greg Simpson

Keyword(s):

Western Australia ◽

Green Infrastructure ◽

Central Business District ◽

Self Report ◽

Urban Nature ◽

Urban Centers ◽

Scarce Resources ◽

Visitor Satisfaction ◽

Business District

The widely applied Importance-Performance Analysis (IPA) provides relatively simple and straightforward techniques to assess how well the attributes of a good or service perform in meeting the expectations of consumers, clients, users, and visitors. Surprisingly, IPA has rarely been applied to inform the management of urban public green infrastructure (PGI) or urban nature (UN) spaces. This case study explores the visitor satisfaction levels of people using a PGI space that incorporates UN, close to the central business district of Perth, Western Australia. With diminishing opportunities to acquire new PGI spaces within ever more densely populated urban centers, understanding, efficiently managing, and continuously improving existing spaces is crucial to accessing the benefits and services that PGI and UN provide for humankind. An intercept survey conducted within the Lake Claremont PGI space utilized a self-report questionnaire to gather qualitative and quantitative data (n = 393). This case study demonstrates how the IPA tool can assist urban planners and land managers to collect information about the attributes of quality PGI and UN spaces to monitor levels of service, to increase overall efficiency of site management, to inform future management decisions, and to optimize the allocation of scarce resources. The satisfaction of PGI users was analyzed using the IPA tool to determine where performance and/or resourcing of PGI attributes were not congruent with the expectations of PGI users (generally in the form of over-servicing or under-servicing). The IPA demonstrated that a majority of PGI users perceived the study site to be high performing and were satisfied with many of the assessed attributes. The survey identified the potential for some improvement of the amenity and/or infrastructure installations at the site, as well as directing attention towards a more effective utilization of scarce resources. Optimizing the management of PGI spaces will enhance opportunities for individuals to obtain the physiological, psychological, and emotional benefits that arise from experiencing quality urban PGI spaces. This case study promotes the important contribution that high-quality PGI spaces, which include remnant and restored UN spaces, make to the development of resilient and sustainable urban centers.

Download Full-text

The River Chief System and River Pollution Control in China: A Case Study of Foshan

Water ◽

10.3390/w11081606 ◽

2019 ◽

Vol 11 (8) ◽

pp. 1606 ◽

Cited By ~ 5

Author(s):

Hui Liu ◽

Yongqin David Chen ◽

Tao Liu ◽

Lu Lin

Keyword(s):

Management Practice ◽

Policy Instruments ◽

River Pollution ◽

Effective Management ◽

Pearl River Delta Region ◽

Tai Lake ◽

Accountability Mechanism ◽

The Pearl River

The river chief system (RCS) has been innovatively implemented in Wuxi, China since 2007 for the eutrophication control of Tai Lake. In 2016, RCS was eventually promoted throughout China to reinforce river and lake protection. The success of this new river management system is generally attributed to collaboration, accountability, and differentiation effects. This research takes Foshan in the Pearl River Delta region as a case study to examine the feasibility and weaknesses in the implementation of the RCS. Prior to the formal adoption of RCS, a coordinating organization for river improvement undertaking was established in Foshan to overcome fragmentation in water management. Compared with this practice, the new RCS can strengthen the collaboration of administrative authorities and establish a considerably sophisticated and effective management structure. Emphasis on evaluation and accountability mechanisms guarantees that management goals can be achieved. However, similar to the previous one, the new system remains a temporary management practice and its outcomes depend partially on the commitment and capability of each river chief. The imperfect evaluation and accountability mechanism also weaken its long-term effectiveness in improving river water quality. Therefore, some corresponding policy instruments are needed to ensure that RCS can be implemented smoothly.

Download Full-text