CATEGORY WIDTH COGNITIVE STYLE AS A FACTOR IN ACCOUNTANTS' PERCEPTIONS OF ACCOUNTING INFORMATION
This paper reports the findings of a laboratory experiment designed to investigate the relationship of category width (CW) cognitive style with accountants' perceptions of accounting information. Subjects drawn from large accounting firms in Sydney, Brisbane, and Melbourne, Australia, were classified into broad, medium, and narrow categories following the test devised by Pettigrew [19]. Subjects were requested to state their level of confidence in decisions they had made after receiving (1) conventional accounting information or (2) conventional accounting information and human resources accounting (HRA) information using a one-group pretest-posttest design. The results indicated a significant relationship between CW cognitive style and the accountants' confidence in their decisions. Furthermore, CW cognitive style moderated the accounting-information/decision-making relationship.
An empirical study of the usefulness of human resources turnover costs in australian accounting firms
Abstract This paper reports the results of a laboratory experiment designed to evaluate the usefulness of applying Human Resources Accounting (HRA) to the problem of labour turnover management decision making in a sample of Australian accounting firms. Useful was defined as a reduction in uncertainty and an increase in relevance and sufficiency. Using a pretest-post-test research design, 57 volunteer accountants responsible for personnel decisions were individually administered (1) a two-part pilot tested case study with and without Human Resources Turnover Costs (HRTC); (2) a questionnaire which measured subjects' response to levels of uncertainty, relevance and sufficiency of the information. Three specific hypotheses tested warranted the conclusion that HRTC information significantly reduced accountants' levels of uncertainty and increased their levels of relevance and sufficiency.
European Neutrality in Historical Perspective
This chapter places the neutrality policies of the established European neutral states—Austria, Finland, Ireland, Sweden and Switzerland—in historical context. It explores the origins of neutrality in the idea of non-belligerency in war and the history of neutrality in modern European international politics, highlighting the way in which quite a wide variety of states were or sought to be neutral at various points in the nineteenth century or the first half of the twentieth century. The chapter then shows how the Cold War division of Europe resulted in Austria, Finland, Ireland, Sweden and Switzerland (along with Yugoslavia) emerging as a distinctive neutral group of states between the two blocs. The chapter also reviews how the European neutral states’ foreign and security policies have adapted since the end of the Cold War. It finishes with some conclusions about neutrality in general and the neutrality of the established European neutral states in particular.