Blockchain Papers

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Stan Davis, Tom Albright

This study examines organizational structural changes within the finance and accounting function following the adoption of new information system. Many accounting researchers have predicted changing environment and role for management accountants resulting from competition, regulation, and manufacturing and information technology (see Baker, 1992; Cooper, 1996; Cox, 1992; Drucker, 1990; Elliott, 1992; Epstein, 1993; Ezzamel, 1994; Flamholtz, 1992; Johnson and Kaplan, 1987; Kaplan, 1984, 1986; King et al., 1991; Madden and Holmes, 1991; McNair, 1996; Siegel et al., 1997; Shea and Kleinsorge, 1994; Spicer, 1992; Tyson, 1996; Weaving, 1995). Disagreement exists regarding the nature of the changes, and whether is actually taking place. Cooper (1996) foresees an increased need for management accounting, but decreased need for management accountants. He predicts the management accounting function will be decentralized to those on the shop floor. After new management accounting systems are in place, m uch of the day-to-day management accounting can be transferred to the workforce (Cooper, 1996: 36). Elliott (1992) also predicts an increased reliance on blue-collar workers as they become knowledge-workers, and part of the aggregate brainpower of the organization; they are supposed to help figure out how to improve quality, speed production, and contribute to customer satisfaction. The management accounting department may adopt supportive and monitoring role rather than more proactive decision-making role, as advocated by Kaplan (1995) and Boer (1995), among others. study of the evolving role of management accountants, King et al. (1991) report that a sea of change is taking place as management accountants become more proactive in the decision-making process. McNair (1996) disagrees with the premise that management accounting has become more relevant. In general, we see desire for change, but little evidence that management accounting has had the courage to let go of its ties to financial accounting and external reporting requirements (McNair, 1996: 40). According to McNair, there has been much discussion about changed emphasis in management accounting, but she describes the changes as old wine in new bottles. Since the early 1980s, numerous research projects have been conducted to gain better understanding of the management accounting function in organizations (Keating, 1995) and to develop theoretical basis for management accounting research in the future (Kaplan, 1986). This article seeks to add to that literature by identifying changes taking place in accounting functions as hypothesized by set of literature-based expectations. The most significant finding of the study is support for flattening the organizational hierarchy and developing networked organization within the accounting function. The levels of management within the accounting function at one site were reduced from four to two over the course of five years; accountants began reporting to supervisors located at sites worldwide. At the second site, shared services activities were centralized at one location for the North American continent. The centralization resulted in reduction of accounting function costs from 1.7 percent of sales to 1 percent of sales. Our study reveals that accountants became less involved in many routine tasks of cost accounting and began providing support role both to plant personnel and to business managers in making strategic decisions. The remainder of the article is divided into four sections. The next section develops three research propositions for fieldwork, based on review of the accounting, information technology (IT), and organizational literature. Then we consider research design issues including site selection, field research, and data sources. After this we present the field research findings in relation to our research propositions. The final section discusses conclusions, limitations, and opportunities for future research. …

Olivier Mériaux

This paper examines the recent changes in collective bargaining in France and the characteristics and conditions of the emergence of a post-Fordist bargaining system. For the last two years, die system of collective bargaining in France has been through an accelerated phase of change. The Aubry laws on 35 hours have revitalized the collective bargaining on working time and work organization by expanding the decentralization movement observed since the early 1980s: the number of enterprise agreements increased from 6,400 in 1987 to 13,300 in 1998 and 31,000 in 1999. The revival of collective bargaining through the government's political agenda has also rekindled the controversy over the respective roles of die agreement and the law in the production of standards governing labour relations. Due to the social partners' reticence about contractual commitment as well as the state's influence, industry-wide collective bargaining has for a long time been confined to a secondary role in relation to die legal provisions on which it could only improve or complement. From the early 1980s onwards, this hierarchy of standards based on me principle of favour was gradually weakened as enterprise agreements that allowed for working time beyond standards were legalized. This radically changed the function of bargaining. As a law- improvement tool, it became an instrument of change and decentralized adaptation to work rules, especially in the firm. Since less than 10 per cent of French employees were unionized, this change gave rise to numerous questions about me unequal distribution of capacities of action between employers and employees' representatives. The greater autonomy of enterprise regulation vis-a-vis die legal standards and industry-wide agreements cardes the risk of a return to employer self-regulation. This risk is all the greater as collective bargaining has become more complex and tends to be more oriented towards job regulation than distributive management of the capital-labour relationship. The social compromise of the Golden Age was based on a scheme of statutory bargaining that entalled a trade-off between wages and contribution to production, the organization of which was left to management by die union actor. With a focus on a compromise between employment and competitiveness — through reduction of working time in the case of France — post-Fordist collective bargaining deals simultaneously with all the parameters of me employment relation: working time, qualifications, quantitative job evolution, reorganization of production, wage policy, and investment strategies. Such an extension of the field of bargaining inevitably leads to a rethinking of the actors' doctrines and strategies, inasmuch as they had strongly incorporated the division between economie and social matters inherent in the Fordist compromise. For employers, this implies sharing, if not only a part of their managerial power, then at least information on the firm's economie strategies. For trade unions, these new contractual dynamics imply greater expertise and a renewal of modes of legitimation, which were previously based mainly on conventional wage demands. The new paradigm of collective bargaining, which is more autonomous, more complex and more demanding for industrial relations actors, undoubtedly calls for a greater consideration of local or regional dynamics. Previously, the decentraHzation of industrial relations was not accompanied by a regional framework sensitive to the negotiated regulation of labour relations. Yet, the growing importance of local forms of coordination in the performance of social Systems of production, as well as in managerial practices, tends to erase the firm's physical borders. The forms of outsourcing of activities that often come with a triangulation of labour relations (dissociation between the worker, the user of the workforce and the person responsible for the employment relationship) make the regulation typical of the Fordist era quite ineffectual. Neither the firm nor the industry is up to the emerging challenges of employment regulation in these new production organizations. Although the legal resources necessary for regionalizing collective bargaining do exist, the hegemony of industry federations and the structural weakness of local inter-industry authorities, both workers' and employers', still constitute a formidable obstacle.

김형기

The gap between Seoul metropolis and the local satellites has been widening in Korea. The crisis of the regional economies is mainly due to the super-centralization of politics, economy, and the culture. The lack of the ability to innovate in the regions is another important factor. Therefore the way out of the crisis is decentralization and regional innovation. Decentralization involves deconcentration, devolution, and local autonomy in the fields of economic activities, administration, public finance, and education & culture. Regional innovation involves establishing the regional innovation system, educational innovation, culture innovation, and political innovation. Without decentralization, regional innovation would be impossible. As a democratic alternative, 'decentralization and regional innovation' is a new vision of the regional development in Korea. It's vision coincides with those of endogenous development strategy, people-centred development strategy, and post-fordist development model. The philosophical base of 'decentralization and regional innovation' should be self-determination and self-management. We must pursue the policy of decentralization and regional innovation directed toward progressive values of participation, solidarity, and ecology. Against the market-oriented decentralization we should move toward a community-oriented decentralization. The core elements of alternative development model in the 21st century might be decentralization, innovation, participation, solidarity, and ecology.

Guillermo Guerra Martín

Many people think changes are always good. However, sometimes it is not so. Before making a change, one must ask what kind of change is it and how it will affect status quo. This paper tries to show how an institutional change that has been wrongly conceived could lead to a worse situation. The Venezuelan experience studied here is a ?show-window? of contradictory decentralization process, in which sub-national governments lack the faculties to generate their own income, and moreover, in which oil income continues to be almost the only source of governmental financing.

Kathleen Ashley

72ARTHURIANA century, priests were allowed to marry, but as the doctrine of transubstantiation was developed, the clerical wife herself was seen as a polluting presence for the minister ofthe altar. Since the priest handled the very body and blood ofChrist, he had to be absolutely pure, and part ofthis purity was abstention from sexual activity as well as withdrawal from the very temptation to engage in such activity. The clerical wife was seen as an ambigous, mixed hybrid. Peter Damián wrote that 'God recognizes only three kinds of women: virgins, wives, and widows.' One wonders just how Peter knows this. The clerical wife did not fit any of these categories, and so she could not arrive in God's presence. The last chapter deals with demonology, discussing angelic and demonic disembodiment and the idea that since demons have no body, they cannot be sexually defiled. Professor Elliott must be commended for the clarity of her prose in presenting original sources as well as intricate analytical unraveling of much of this material, which seemed arcane to this reader. It is astonishing that the church would use so many resources in proving or disproving the notion ofdemonic bodies and for the control ofnight emissions in the male clergy. This last was largely due to ignorance about the working of the body. The attempt to control women, however, is more serious because, as Professor Elliott shows, the next step was the burning ofwomen as witches, a further attempt to get rid of pollution. By using the analytic tools provided by Mary Douglas and Freud, Professor Elliott anchors her argument in the insights of modern psychoanalysis while she presents the material without polemics. She has given us a very important book that rewards careful reading. JACQUELINE DF. WEEVER Brooklyn College, CUNY JODY enders, The Medieval Theater ofCruelty: Rhetoric, Memory, Violence. Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 1999. Pp. 237. isbn: 0-8014-3334-7. $45. This is an intellectually challenging if not completely successful book that deserves serious consideration by medievalists, although it also aims for a broader audience interested in contemporary theories of violence. The most substantive section explores the role of violence in the memory systems of classical rhetoric. At the center of the book is a study of intentional violence—torture—in the medieval French mystères. Finally, these historical materials provoke 'an extensive meditation about the interplay among theatricality, pleasure, didacticism, morality and real life' (235). The reading of rhetoric and the discussion of drama combine to form a powerful argument about the functions of pain and violence in engendering the aesthetic; however, the speculations about the universality ofcruelty and the moral stance one should take toward it seem less fully achieved. For Enders, what is at stake is our 'well-intentioned deference to the concept of alterity' [of the Middle Ages] which, she argues, 'maywell have masked a very real denial ofthe contemporary spectacle ofviolence and ofcontemporary complicity in the history ofthat violence' (24). REVIEWS 73 Enders's first claim is that rhetoric had established an ideological connection between the subject of torture and the processes of inventio, memoria, and actio. Her second move is to suggest that such conceptual links between creative invention, dramatic catharsis, and human suffering that emerged from the rhetorical treatments oftorture (and circulated in the classical, medieval, and early Renaissance educational systems) subtended the dramatic representation of violence. The well-established rhetorical formulae that emphasized the efficacy of violent proofs for producing 'truth,' she argues, 'encouraged the dramatic representation ofviolence as a means ofcoercing theater audiences into accepting the various "truths" enacted didactically in mysteries, miracles, and even farces' (4). These are daring claims, and Enders must resort to such locutions as 'it is thus probable' or 'he may have done so' when making the link between rhetoric and theater. Despite the fragility of her own rhetoric at times, her analysis ofthe figure oftorture in rhetorical texts is compelling and forces a reexamination of scenes of violence and torture in the drama. Enders's discussion of torture's important place in the rhetorical tradition draws on poststructural theories ofthe violence ofrepresentation, which arc in turn based on the Nietzschean insight that pain produces...

Reidar Dale

Broad-focusing development programmes at a regional level have been a major thrust by governments of developing countries over the last three decades. Most of the programmes addressed here have been entirely or partly financed by donor agencies. They have tended to concentrate on augmenting activities of government line agencies, and have mainly emphasized physical and social infrastructure, standardized support facilities to enterprises and individuals, and, sometimes, land use zoning and other measures to regulate the spatial distribution of facilities and activities. This article suggests that regional development programmes may become more effective if they are designed as more flexible instruments for peoplecentred development, exploiting potential comparative advantages of innovation, networking and institution building in a broad sense. Basic organizational and management requirements for this would be a decentralized set-up, substantial freedom from government administration. flexible organizational form, process planning with compatible systems of monitoring and co-ordination, active facilitation of initiatives from below and democratically minded leaders with broad management competence.

Peter Gomber, Claudia Schmidt, Christof Weinhardt

In electronic commerce, the intraorganizational coordination of directly responsible units, for example profit centers or firms within an affiliated group, is of increasing importance. These organizational units can be modeled within a multiagent system (MAS), an interconnection of autonomous information systems. In this article, we investigate coordination mechanisms for MAS in decentralized transportation planning that ensure efficient allocation of scarce resources on the basis of local planning processes. In the domain of transportation, planning problems are characterized by large amounts of data, limitations of time for planning, and the intractability of computational problems. Auctions as market-like coordination mechanisms are discussed with respect to the trade-off between theoretical evidence on the quality of the allocation and computational tractability. Therefore, 2 pricing mechanisms are investigated, the generalized Vickrey auction and pricing per column.

Andrew Sancton

Although Jane Jacobs acknowledges the existence of metropolitan areas; her main unit of analysis for local politics is the center-city municipality. She is interested in how it can be decentralized, both to districts and to neighborhoods. Because she is suspicious of large organizations, she is not an advocate of expanding the size of center-city municipalities or of creating elaborate schemes for metropolitan government. Because she believes that city-regions should be more politically autonomous does not mean that she believes that each should have only one municipal government. Jacobs never confuses the municipality as an institution of local government with the city-region as an incubator of economic activity. She never suggests that the economic fate of cities is determined by municipalities, however they might be organized. By keeping the importance of municipal government in perspective, her work helps us resist arguments that central-city municipalities must be enlarged in size so as to enable their respective cities to compete globally.

John N. Hawkins

China’s educational leaders have long debated the pluses and minuses of decentralization of control and resources of China’s vast educational enterprise. During various periods of post‐1949 China, the central authorities have devolved control to the provinces, key cities, and rural communes, only to recentralize later usually due to political reforms. In this chapter various stages of the educational reform movement begun in 1985 will be considered and we will focus on what motivated the reforms in the context of China’s unique political culture. Some specific features of educational decentralization will be examined such as finance, curriculum and management. We conclude that while the current leadership appears to be committed to decentralization, they remain conflicted over the need to maintain control while at the same time respond creatively to the needs of the new market economy.

Andrew Chan

Foucault's concepts of freedom and resistance are examined to determine how they may feed into theorizing the Kantian `question of the present' for postmodern organizational analysis. This paper takes a measure of how reflexivity and creative self-representation materialize change in the ways critique is advanced in organization studies

Patrick L. Fitzgibbons, R. Marshall Austin

Review of histologic sections and cytologic smears is often a key component of civil litigation in cases of alleged negligence or medical malpractice. While the outcome of such cases may hinge on the testimony of expert witnesses, determining who is qualified to serve as an expert in such cases is generally left to the court. The Board of Governors of the College of American Pathologists has adopted separate statements for review of histologic slides and Papanicolaou (Pap) tests that outline some of the issues that should be considered in this context. These guidelines were developed in an effort to ensure accuracy and fairness in expert testimony when histologic or cytologic slides are reviewed as part of litigation.Departure from the standard of care in the practice of medicine is defined as conduct that falls below that which a reasonable physician would practice under similar circumstances. Finding a deviation from the standard of care in surgical pathology is in sharp contrast to a difference of opinion, which may not represent an error on the part of the original pathologist. When histologic slides are reviewed in the context of litigation, several issues must be considered before determining whether the standard of practice has been met or whether negligence has occurred. Such issues include the following:The following guidelines have been prepared by the College of American Pathologists to help ensure accuracy and fairness in expert testimony when histologic slides are reviewed for reasons of litigation, potential litigation, or disciplinary action.1. Individuals performing slide review in the context of litigation must have significant experience examining and reporting the disease and type of specimen under consideration. Those lacking such experience are not qualified to render an expert opinion on whether the original pathologist met the standard of care. Instead, the court should rely on the testimony of expert witnesses who have, at a minimum, the following qualifications:2. The standard of care should be that of a reasonable and prudent practitioner following normal practices at the time the original diagnosis was rendered. Finding a deviation from the standard of care requires showing that the diagnosis was inappropriate based on examination of the original slides and clinical information that was available to the pathologist. This finding should not be based on clinical outcome or subsequent changes in diagnostic criteria.3. To reduce the effect of hindsight bias, histologic slide review should be done without knowledge of clinical outcomes or the specifics of the claim. Disclosing a subsequent recurrence, metastasis, or other significant development to the reviewing expert witness before he or she has reviewed the slides introduces the possibility of bias into the review.4. Review should occur in an environment that, as closely as possible, approaches a normal practice environment. This may be in the reviewing pathologist's own office or laboratory, but can occur in other settings.5. When slides are reviewed for the purposes of litigation or the determination of negligence, the same slides that were the basis for the original interpretation must be the subject of the review.6. Fair and impartial review of histologic slides must not discriminate between defendant and plaintiff.7. Compensation of the physician-witness should reasonably reflect the time and effort expended by the witness in preparation, depositions, and trial. Compensation of a physician-witness must not be contingent on the outcome of the trial, as this introduces the possibility of bias and the appearance of possible impropriety.The Pap test is the most effective cancer screening test in medical history and remains the most effective screening method for the identification of premalignant cervicovaginal conditions. The Pap smear has been associated with a 70% to 80% decrease in the death rate from cervical cancer in the United States.If the Pap test is to continue as an effective cancer screening procedure, it must remain widely accessible and reasonably priced for all women, including those who are economically disadvantaged and at high risk for cervical cancer. There must also be an understanding of the inherent limitations of this procedure.The Pap test is a screening test that involves subjective interpretation by a cytotechnologist or pathologist of the 50 000 to 100 000 cells that are present on a typical Pap smear. Experience indicates an irreducible false-negative rate of at least 5%. Although rescreening can reduce the false-negative rate, zero-error performance can never be attained. Many factors, including the subjectivity involved in diagnosing difficult cases and sampling problems with specimen collection, prevent zero-error performance.The following guidelines should be used for review of Pap tests for litigation or potential litigation.1. The finding of a false-negative smear is not necessarily evidence of practice below the standard of care. The decision as to whether a false-negative smear is the result of negligence should be made not only on the basis of the individual result, but also in the context of the laboratory's overall performance on Pap tests.2. Atypical cells of undetermined significance represent a poorly defined diagnosis with poor interobserver and intraobserver reproducibility. Therefore, disputed cases of atypical squamous cells of undetermined significance and atypical glandular cells of undetermined significance are not likely to represent reasonable grounds for allegations of practice below the standard of care.3. Papanicolaou test slides being assessed for possible litigation should be reviewed without knowledge of clinical outcome and in an environment that simulates the normal screening practice as closely as possible. This may be accomplished through an unbiased screening review process that includes the contested case as one of a number of normal and abnormal Pap smears representing a variety of disease states. Review with knowledge of subsequent development of carcinoma biases the objectivity of the review and does not reflect standard practice.4. The standard of care should be that of the reasonable and prudent practitioner. Courts should recognize that a false-negative result is not sufficient proof of negligence. Rather, the courts should look to whether the overall Pap test practices of the laboratory meet the standard of care.5. Professional expert witnesses who do not have significant experience in cytopathology are not qualified to express an expert opinion on the standard of care. Instead, a court should rely on the testimony of expert physician-witnesses that have, at a minimum, the following qualifications:6. Compensation of the physician-witness should reasonably reflect the time and effort expended by the witness in preparation, depositions, and trial. Compensation of a physician-witness contingent on the outcome of the case introduces the possibility of bias and should not be permitted.7. The state should adopt a mechanism by which nonbinding arbitration would be required prior to the filing of any civil action alleging negligence in the taking, examining, or reviewing of a Pap test or the reporting of its results. The nonbinding arbitration mechanism should include the following features:If the state does not adopt such a plan, the parties should strongly consider mediation or nonbinding arbitration by a panel of individuals trained and having experience in cytopathology before proceeding with civil litigation relating to a Pap test.The usefulness of the Pap test guidelines in actual litigation has been demonstrated on numerous occasions in the 2 to 3 years since they were adopted by the College. Their credibility has been further strengthened by the adoption of similar guidelines with minor modifications by the American Society of Cytopathology,1 the American Society for Cytotechnology,2 and by more than 30 state pathology societies. Of particular significance has been the acknowledgment that a Pap test being reviewed should be examined “through an unbiased screening review process that includes the contested case as one of a number of normal and abnormal Pap smears representing a variety of disease states.”Multiple-slide, blinded rescreening panels3,4 have emerged as unbiased objective prelitigation tests and have been used in numerous cases before assertions of a breach of the standard of practice are entertained. The guidelines in general represent a science-based approach to protect the interests of patients, laboratories, and the public alike in maintaining and protecting medical history's most effective cancer screening test.

Stewart M. Oakley, A. Pocasangre, Carina Zamberlan Flores, Javier Monge · 5 authors

Within the last 15 years 34 waste stabilization pond systems have been built in Central America in the countries of El Salvador (6 systems), Honduras (12 systems), Guatemala (9 systems), and Nicaragua (8 systems); these systems were built for municipalities with populations ranging from 5,000 to 80,000 persons. There are 14 additional systems in the final design phase or under construction in the region, including the first designs for large cities: a 162 hectare facultative system for Managua, Nicaragua (population (1,000,000); and a 168 hectare system for San Pedro Sula, Honduras (population (640,000). Monitoring data from Honduras and Nicaragua show that treatment efficiency is generally comparable to tropical pond systems cited in the literature in other parts of the world, although fecal coliform removal has not been as good as theoretically predicted and the desludging of facultative ponds has been a significant operational cost. While waste stabilization ponds are generally considered the technology of choice for municipal wastewater treatment within Central America, there are, nevertheless, problem areas that need to be addressed if waste stabilization pond use is to have continued acceptance and long-term sustainability. These areas of concern at the regional level are: i) design guidelines using parameters from data developed in Central America; ii) effluent guidelines that are realistic for pond effluents for reuse or surface water discharge; iii) monitoring programs focusing specifically on pathogen removal; iv) cost-effective grit removal and sludge removal from facultative ponds; v) improving designs for pathogen removal; vi) the need for centralized (El Salvador and Nicaragua) versus decentralized (Guatemala and Honduras) mechanisms for financing and operation and maintenance; vii) the development of comparative cost data for construction, operation and maintenance, pond desludging, and microbiological monitoring; and viii) the development of training programs for design, operationand maintenance, and monitoring.

Glenn Durfee, Matthew Franklin

Digital content distribution systems will enable business models in the near future that cannot be predicted today. In this paper, we identify a new security problem that can be crucial to this enablement. The problem arises from the conflicting privacy and integrity goals of middlemen in digital distribution chains. Our solution is a novel system design that incorporates obfuscated digital contracts, semi-trusted contract certifiers, and zero-knowledge proofs of arithmetic relations. Our implementation and timing experiments demonstrate that our solution is practical and efficient.