Auditors' Assessment of Management's Disposition: An Attributional Analysis*

Auditors' assessment of management's dispositions presumably affects their subsequent judgments. However, little is known about the process by which auditors infer characteristics of management. This paper proposes the theory of correspondent inferences [25] as a framework for examining auditors' assessment of management's dispositions; the model is tested in a laboratory experiment using experienced audit managers. The results are consistent with the proposed theoretical framework. Implications for future research are discussed.     

Continuity of Mental Health Care Across Military Transitions

Multiple deployments, a prominent characteristic of operations Enduring Freedom, Iraqi Freedom, and New Dawn, have been linked to increased risk for various mental health conditions. It is also well known that military transitions, such as a change of duty station or discharge, are an inevitable part of military life. While military transitions can be stressful for any service member or veteran, those with mental health conditions face additional challenges. Transition stress can exacerbate a mental health condition that in turn hinders ability to manage the transition, resulting in a cycle of stress. As a result, those receiving mental health care while transitioning often experience difficulty continuing treatment post-transition. This article describes a unique and innovative transition coaching program designed to address this emerging issue.     

STOCHASTIC COST-VOLUME-PROFIT ANALYSIS WITH A LINEAR DEMAND FUNCTION

In this paper we incorporate a linear demand function to model the price-volume causal relationship into stochastic cost-volume-profit (CVP) analysis. We assume that the objective function is to maximize expected profit; other objective functions are also discussed and compared. A linear stochastic model follows from which probabilistic statements can be easily obtained if the random variables are assumed to be multivariate normal. The basic framework is shown to be a special case of project value maximization where project value is the cash flow of the project discounted for time and risk according to the capital asset pricing model. Moreover, an intertemporal extension that considers inventory is developed. In summary, a new approach to stochastic CVP analysis that incorporates the management decision process in an uncertain environment is developed.     

A Screening Methodology for the Identification and Ranking of Infrastructure Vulnerabilities Due to Terrorism

The extreme importance of critical infrastructures to modern society is widely recognized. These infrastructures are complex and interdependent. Protecting the critical infrastructures from terrorism presents an enormous challenge. Recognizing that society cannot afford the costs associated with absolute protection, it is necessary to identify and prioritize the vulnerabilities in these infrastructures. This article presents a methodology for the identification and prioritization of vulnerabilities in infrastructures. We model the infrastructures as interconnected digraphs and employ graph theory to identify the candidate vulnerable scenarios. These scenarios are screened for the susceptibility of their elements to a terrorist attack, and a prioritized list of vulnerabilities is produced. The prioritization methodology is based on multiattribute utility theory. The impact of losing infrastructure services is evaluated using a value tree that reflects the perceptions and values of the decisionmaker and the relevant stakeholders. These results, which are conditional on a specified threat, are provided to the decisionmaker for use in risk management. The methodology is illustrated through the presentation of a portion of the analysis conducted on the campus of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.     

GM Foods and the Misperception of Risk Perception

Public opposition to genetically modified (GM) food and crops is widely interpreted as the result of the public's misperception of the risks. With scientific assessment pointing to no unique risks from GM crops and foods, a strategy of accurate risk communication from trusted sources has been advocated. This is based on the assumption that the benefits of GM crops and foods are self-evident. Informed by the interpretation of some qualitative interviews with lay people, we use data from the Eurobarometer survey on biotechnology to explore the hypothesis that it is not so much the perception of risks as the absence of benefits that is the basis of the widespread rejection of GM foods and crops by the European public. Some respondents perceive both risks and benefits, and may be trading off these attributes along the lines of a rational choice model. However, for others, one attribute-benefit-appears to dominate their judgments: the lexicographic heuristic. For these respondents, their perception of risk is of limited importance in the formation of attitudes toward GM food and crops. The implication is that the absence of perceived benefits from GM foods and crops calls into question the relevance of risk communication strategies for bringing about change in public opinion.     

Just-in-time scheduling with controllable processing times on parallel machines

We study scheduling problems with controllable processing times on parallel machines. Our objectives are to maximize the weighted number of jobs that are completed exactly at their due date and to minimize the total resource allocation cost. We consider four different models for treating the two criteria. We prove that three of these problems are NP\mathcal{NP} -hard even on a single machine, but somewhat surprisingly, the problem of maximizing an integrated objective function can be solved in polynomial time even for the general case of a fixed number of unrelated parallel machines. For the three NP\mathcal{NP} -hard versions of the problem, with a fixed number of machines and a discrete resource type, we provide a pseudo-polynomial time optimization algorithm, which is converted to a fully polynomial time approximation scheme.     

Using Frontier Analysis to Evaluate Company Performance

The measurement of performance is critical to nearly all managerial disciplines. Yet little is known about the aggregation characteristics of the components of performance and how our notion of a ‘good performing firm’ relates to what we use as a dependent variable. In this paper we propose an approach to the measurement of performance that uses the logic of frontier analysis and the technique of data envelopment analysis. The approach is shown to be a reasonable representation of the multidimensional nature of performance and is shown to replicate, effectively, the components that strategic management scholars typically consider when discussing performance. It is also shown to be superior to the simpler alternatives based on traditional approaches to performance measurement.