Integrated Social Accounting for Nonprofits: A Case from Canada

Whereas social accounting has been strong in its critique of conventional accounting, to date it has not been as effective in developing accounting frameworks consistent with its principles. This is particularly true for nonprofit organizations. The costs of nonprofits can be easily measured; however, not captured by conventional accounting is the value of their nonmonetized resources such as volunteers. This paper argues that social accounting for nonprofits would benefit by creating accounting statements that combine the economic and social impact of an organization (referred to as an integrated approach). After discussing some historic examples of integrated social accounting, the paper presents a Canadian case study in which the value added by volunteers of a nonprofit organization is combined with its financial statements in an Expanded Value Added Statement. By combining social and economic information, a very different performance story of the organization emerges.     

Developing a strategy map for forensic accounting with fraud risk management: An integrated balanced scorecard-based decision model

Corporate fraud risk management strategy has increasingly become a sustainable business development goal. Recent reforms in forensic accounting technology for corporate fraud risk management globally have opened up new avenues for corporate governance and internal control mechanism implementation. This study thus presents an integrated methodology for forensic accounting implementation to improve the identification of the strategy map relationship between the Balanced Scorecard (BSC)-based perspective and criteria, by combining multiple-criteria decision making (MCDM) with the Decision Making Trial and Evaluation Laboratory (DEMATEL) and the Analytic Network Process (ANP) techniques. The results have implications for corporate decision-makers to effectively fulfil corporate governance quality assurance and anti-fraud through a forensic accounting strategy map illustration. From the evaluation and planning perspective, the in-depth analysis of strategy map is useful to obtain an interrelationship that takes as its starting point the practice professions of the decision maker to improve existing strategy alternatives and focus on the valuable strategy paths. In the evaluation planning application, a strategy map of forensic accounting presents the knowledge regarding key indicators’ priorities to achieve satisfactory strategy planning and to practice forensic accounting development linked to fraud risk management in Taiwan.     

The Making of National Health Insurance in Britain and Canada: Institutional Analysis and its Limits

Scholars examining the development of health insurance reform programs from an institutionalist perspective have drawn attention to the importance of state structures and administrative capacities in shaping social policy outcomes. Focusing on the introduction of the British National Health Insurance Act of 1911 and the Canadian Hospital Insurance Act of 1957, I suggest that institutionalist analysis can obscure the historical record in three ways. Analysts may ignore the multiple institutional mechanisms that were available to policy makers at the time; they may overlook the contentiousness of policy battles; and they may underestimate the extent to which similar institutions have functioned in very different ways. In the case of Britain, I argue that national health insurance was part of a package of social reforms designed to halt the slide of Britain from a position of preeminence in the world economy. The introduction of Canadian health insurance coincided with an increased role for local and federal states in fostering economic development within the nation. Institutional structures, cultural values, and political power were all resources used within both states to create a consensus behind the new national agenda.     

Making a place for escort work: a case study

This case study focused on the steps taken by a Canadian city bordering the United States to manage the commercial sex component of an adult entertainment package that draws many American visitors. It explored how the city dealt with the potential of community stigmatization resulting from its growing reputation as a place for easily accessible sex trade. The distinctive Canadian laws related to the sex industry, the predominantly laissez-faire attitude toward people's sex lives, and concerns about maintaining the atmosphere of safety and privacy protection preferred by many residents set boundaries to the approach that could be taken. The specific historical, geographic, social, and political location of the city figured prominently in its choice of a normalization rather than a spatialization strategy.     

Managing Epistemic Risk in Forensic Science: Sociological Aspects and Issues

The last decades have seen a notable increase in the use of scientific evidence in criminal investigation, a development which has captured the imagination of the media, publics and policymakers alike. Yet behind the authoritative image of forensic science lies a highly fluid and indeterminate landscape which invites sociological interest. In what follows, I aim to provide a sense of why it holds appeal to sociology, and to also outline a more updated research agenda in the light of continuing developments and deliberation within both sociological and forensic scientific circles. This renewed agenda revolves around the topic of risk. I outline recent developments which represent new approaches to the problem of epistemic risk in forensic science. With reference to a specific example (the ‘Case Assessment and Interpretation’ method of evidence assessment), I argue for the importance of studying risk-aware practices in forensic investigation, and how these help to reveal further how forensic science can be regarded as a complicated, heterogeneous and highly socialised human activity, in stark contrast to the immutable and technologically sophisticated image often promulgated in popular accounts.     

There Comes a Time: Biography and the Founding of a Movement Organization

The social movement literature lacks a historically sensitive analysis of pathways to founding and leading a movement organization. I connect biography and history to explain the timing and form of organizational emergence. I show how Robert Welch’s founding of the conspiratorial John Birch Society was pre-dated by moral shocks, a supportive culture and social network, experience organizing people in committees, as well as some dumb luck (in the form of fortuitous timing), all of which grew his reputation in the latent conservative movement. A national reputation allowed him to gather resources and unite regionally dispersed radical rightists into a coherent national organization.     

The Permeable Border: Examining Responses to North American Integration in Video Art

Abstract

In this essay, I suggest that artistic production provides valuable insights into the nature of the Canada-US border during the late-twentieth century when significant changes were occurring to dominant understandings of Canada in relation to North America. Focusing on the medium of video art, I trace the sustained engagement of Canadian contemporary artists to respond to and comment on the move towards continental integration through free trade. I contextualize my discussion in relation to trade developments that opened Canada’s border with the US, such as the 1989 implementation of the Canada-US Free Trade Agreement. This agreement, along with the later North American Free Trade Agreement, led to increasing continental integration at the end of the twentieth century, as well as hope for hemispheric integration with the subsequent negotiations towards the Free Trade Area of the Americas. With attention to works by Lisa Steele and Kim Tomczak, Eva Manly, and Clive Robertson, I foreground cultural contributions to redefining the Canada-US borderlands. Here, I chart the artists’ intention to echo narratives of the border’s porousness and address the power dynamics between the Canadian state and its trade partners. Examining themes of cultural imperialism, colonialism, and national identity, I point to the importance of cultural production in assessing the borderlands and, more broadly, histories of free trade in North America.     

Resource-Based Crisis Management: The Important Role of the CEO's Reputation

This study provides empirical support for the positive power of a CEO's reputation as a strategic resource during and after a corporate crisis. Specifically, it demonstrates that a CEO's favorable reputation relieves many stakeholders' negative perceptions in a postcrisis situation. In addition, this study tests whether a particular type of CEO reputation will be more effective than another in dealing with different types of threats that a crisis poses to corporate reputation. This study introduces a resource-based approach to crisis that provides a wide, comprehensive set of strategies based on a variety of an organization's competitive resources.     

Professors and politics: Noam Chomsky’s contested reputation in the United States and Canada

There is an extensive literature comparing the politics, sociology and economics of the United States and Canada, but very little work comparing the role that public intellectuals play in the space of public opinion and how their ideas are received in both nations simultaneously. Noam Chomsky provides a theoretically useful example of an established academic and public intellectual whose reputation is deeply contested in both countries. Our comparative case study offers leverage to contribute to debates on the sociology of knowledge, reputations, intellectuals, and the politics of professors using data from six major Canadian and American newspapers from 1995–2009 and an innovative coding of media portrayal. Earlier work has demonstrated that Chomsky is discussed as a public intellectual more prominently in Canada than in the United States (McLaughlin and Townsley in Canadian Review of Sociology, 48(4):341–368, 2011). Here we examine the comparative construction of a “public intellectual” reputation in the context of significant political change. We document small differences between the Canadian and American receptions of Chomsky, show change in the patterns of portrayal and number of publications over time, and offer an analysis of differences between political attacks and consecrations. We demonstrate more engagement with Chomsky’s political view in Canada than in the United States, a rise in Chomsky’s fame post 9/11, and illustrate clear political patterns in attempts to marginalize him.     

The Use of Incarceration in Canada: A Test of Political and Social Threat Explanations on the Variation in Prison Admissions across Canadian Provinces, 2001–2010

Recent scholarship has indicated that political and ethnic threat theories—which maintain that the use of prison is not only determined by the extent of crime in society but also by various features related to power, ideology, and access to resources—provide powerful accounts as to why the use of punishment varies within and between societies. However, no study to date has tested these theories within Canada, a country in which such theories are quite plausible. This study begins to fill this void by assessing these theoretical claims using a pooled time series analysis of the variation in imprisonment rates across Canadian provinces from the years 2001 to 2010. After accounting for several measures including charge rates, the results show that Canadian incarceration rates are largely driven by ethnic threat. The size of the Aboriginal and visible minority populations across each province are the most significant determinants of the variation in punishment. Furthermore, we find a nonlinear relationship consistent with a political version of the threat hypothesis. Results, however, do not support political accounts which stress the power of right‐wing parties or a conservative public.     

The reputational benefits of instructing information: The first test of the revised model of reputation repair

Situational Crisis Communication Theory (SCCT) prescribes crisis response strategies for organizations facing crisis. A meta-analysis of SCCT suggests using the prescribed responses has, at most, a small effect on reputation, while a few studies have shown that the base crisis responses (instructing information and adjusting information) may have a larger effect on reputation. This experiment compares the effects of SCCT’s prescribed responses, instructing information, and adjusting information on reputation in an experiment with 989 participants recruited from mTurk. It finds that instructing information has a very large effect on reputation, while adjusting information has a small but significant effect on reputation. In this sample, SCCT’s prescribed response strategies have no significant effect on reputation. The experiment proposes the revised model of reputation repair (REMREP) as a tool for understanding how crisis influences reputation. The model incorporates virtuousness and offensiveness, which demonstrates the importance of organizational virtuousness in handling a crisis. Implications for theory and practitioners are discussed.     

REPUTATION EFFECTS IN THE MARKET OF CERTIFIERS: EVIDENCE FROM THE AUDIT INDUSTRY

Certifiers verify unobserved product characteristics for buyers and thereby alleviate informational asymmetries and facilitate trade. When sellers pay for the certification, however, certifiers can be tempted to bias their opinion to favor sellers. Indeed, accounting scandals and inflated credit ratings suggest sellers may prefer to select dishonest certifiers. I test this proposition by estimating the effect of adverse quality signals on audit demand. Exploiting the natural experiment of Arthur Andersen's demise, I find that auditors with worse quality signals experience a fall in demand. This suggests that reputation effects are at work even in the presence of conflicts of interest. (JEL L15, L8, M4)     

Symbolic Interactionism in Canada: Shared Meaning and the Perpetuation of Ideas

In this paper I critically discuss Helmes‐Hayes and Milne's institutional perspective, as well as Neil McLaughlin's emphasis on scientific intellectual movements and Coserian intellectual sects, in explaining the emergence and potential future of symbolic interactionist theory in Canada. I contest claims that the interactionism is on the verge of disappearing and instead offer an explanation grounded in insights about shared meaning. I conclude that it is ironic that debates over the presumed demise of symbolic interaction may well contribute to its continued existence within the canon of Canadian sociology.     

Exploring cultural economies of internationalization: the role of ‘iconic individuals’ and ‘brand leaders’ in the globalization of headhunting

Understanding the internationalization of professional services like advertising, architecture, accounting, consulting and legal services continues to attract considerable attention in academic and policy circles. Research in geography and management studies has emphasized the different organizational strategies adopted by firms as they seek to develop and maintain a competitive position within an increasingly global economy. In this article we develop a new strand in this literature by adopting a cultural economy approach to argue that an important, yet comparatively neglected, aspect of the internationalization strategies of transnational professional service firms is the role of certain ‘iconic individuals’ and ‘brand leaders’ in influencing the practice of internationalization. Drawing on empirical research into the burgeoning European executive search (headhunting) industry we identify a cadre of such individuals and brand leaders that act as resources other firms leverage when internationalizing. This highlights the importance of a cultural economy perspective in theories of the internationalization of professional services and its value in moving discussions beyond purely economic analyses of competitive advantage.     

Caring in forensic nursing. Expanding the holistic model

Nurses have practiced forensic nursing for many years without formal recognition of the domain as a discipline for specialized study. Forensic nursing expands the traditional concept of holism to include the medical-legal aspects of potential or actual client problems. The American Nurses Association (ANA) and the International Association of Forensic Nurses (IAFN) recently have designated forensic nursing as a unique specialty. Recognition of forensic nursing as a specialty area of practice within nursing mandates that the specialty define and explicate its major conceptual base. A concept germane to the practice of forensic nursing is that of caring. Caring as a central concept to the role of this specialty is discussed, and the implications for its inclusion in a curriculum preparing forensic nurses are explored.     

Organized Civil Society: A Cross-national Evaluation of Non-Governmental Organization Density on Governmental Corruption

Using a globally representative sample of nations between 1997 and 2004, I demonstrate that the presence of an active civil society works to decrease governmental corruption. The presence of a robust civil society holds governments accountable, informs its citizens, and provides a suitable outlet for people to voice their concerns and be heard. I analyze data using a pooled time-series, cross-sectional (TSCS) analysis. Results show that civil society strength has a significant impact on governmental corruption. These results remain significant when accounting for economic development, political institutions, and cultural-geographic controls. By emphasizing the role organized civil society plays in a broad sample of nations, this study refines our understanding of the role that non-state actors assume in the health and maintenance of their own societies. Consequently, this project demonstrates the importance of including the role of civil society in future studies of governmental corruption.     

Financial control in religious organizations: A status report

Several recent high profile cases of financial mismanagement in religious organizations have highlighted the need for all religious nonprofit organizations (NPOs) to have strong internal accounting controls. These organizations are often small, rely on a great deal of volunteer support, and as a result may not have the professional oversight to adequately monitor the resources of the organization or the behavior of its leaders. The purpose of this article is to assess the current state of financial control for one segment of religious NPOs, churches, and give some suggestions for improvement. In this study over 530 churches of widely varying sizes responded to an extensive survey about specific internal controls they may or may not have in place. The results are assessed in light of preferred practices. Readers can use this information to strengthen current practices and provide a greater level of assurance that an organization is directing its resources toward its mission.     

COMMUNICATING THREAT: The Canadian State and Terrorism

Canada's position vis‐à‐vis September 11 differs substantially from the United States’ in both circumstance and rhetoric. Although Canada was not the target of the terrorist attack, the United States is Canada's closest neighbor. In the words of the Prime Minister in the weeks following September 11, the United States is “more like family than friends.” Given this, how has the terrorist threat been interpreted for and communicated to the public by the Canadian state? Through ethnographic content analyses of the documents (speeches and press releases) found on the Prime Minister's Office (PMO) Web site, we consider the communications by the Canadian state with respect to the events of September 11. We analyze this information within the overarching frameworks of risk and trust. In terms of risk, we examine the Prime Minister's communications and the framing of this communication as it relates to the discourse of probable harm and/or benefit. As for trust, we consider the emphasis on reputation and how this affects the information provided and its delivery. These risk/trust underpinnings speak to the Canadian state's construction of security, security threats, and the construction of the Canadian state more generally.