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Studies of organizational performance have overwhelmingly relied on evidence gathered from private sector firms. Nevertheless, the past several years have witnessed increasing interest in enhancing effectiveness and efficiency in the public sector, in turn generating considerable investment in the deployment of performance metrics in such settings. Though extant evidence provides many perceptive insights into the specifics of performance frameworks in public sector organizations, little is known about the measurement of organizational performance in police work. Our investigation drew upon the deployment of the balanced scorecard in Swedish Law Enforcement, an organization that long ago implemented the new paradigm of policing, which consisted of enhancing the quality of urban life on the mere making of arrests. Results from this investigation concur with other studies indicating that public sector organizations tend to assume a stakeholder perspective on performance measurement. In particular, Swedish Law Enforcement developed a set of measures of external success and internal performance that addressed present, past, and future time dimensions. Implementation of the balanced scorecard in police work, though, raised some problems. Our study details concern about the aggregation of non‐financial performance measures. More importantly, some crucial areas in the new concept of policing (such as community policing) were neglected by the system. Conversely, the system focused on monitoring some easy‐to‐measure indicators that provided a traditional view of police work while some crucial areas of policing were not measured. This focus ultimately lessened the operational potential of the balanced scorecard system. Our study also puts forward some suggestions for future research in this area.

Regulated markets and state-owned monopolies characterized the economies of many Southern European and Latin American territories around the end of the Middle Ages and the Renaissance. Strikingly, however, investigation into the functioning of cost accounting in such contexts has been widely neglected in accounting research. In this paper, we examine the role of early cost systems in regulated markets by focusing on the case of the soap production and distribution monopoly in the City of Seville (Spain). In 1423, the King of Castille granted the soap monopoly to the Duke of Alcalá as a reward for his war achievements, but the decision on the price of soap rested in the hands of the local government. Disputes between the Duke of Alcalá and the local government (the parties) about the fair price of a pound of soap were resolved through tests that replicated the soap production process and determined its cost through complex calculations. Drawing on the insights of institutional sociology, we found that the test and its accompanying cost calculations constituted an institution that legitimized the parties both in the public opinion and before the King. Further, our data revealed that the parties engaged in active agency before the King of Spain to shape in their favor the constitutive elements of the institution, such as the use of purpose-purchased or stored materials in the soap test; incorporation into the total cost the rents that would have been earned if the factory buildings were leased; and the salaries of some employees (i.e., slaves, factory administrator and priest).

During the period 1976-1988, Spain witnessed pervasive transformations that led the country from a military dictatorship to a fully fledged democracy. In turn, the audit profession experienced high demand which doubled the number of members of the Institute of Sworn Auditors of Spain (Instituto de Censores Jurados de Cuentas de España). In this unique social laboratory, we draw on the insights of human capital theory and the entrepreneurship literature to examine the profile of newly certified auditors at the time of receiving the audit certificate that enabled them to (i) become a licensed auditor and engage in public practice, or (ii) become an unlicensed auditor and leave the profession immediately after receiving the professional qualification. Our results indicate that those Spanish auditors who had high general or specific human capital and job stability and were at the younger or older ends of the age continuum were less likely to apply for audit licences than their counterparts (i.e. low general or specific human capital, middle aged, and unstable jobs). ; Publicado

Extant knowledge on gender and auditing overwhelmingly relies on evidence gathered from a limited group of Anglo-Saxon countries. It is widely admitted, however, that gender issues are affected by the institutional contexts of the investigation. The Anglo-Saxon settings, we contend, embrace a number of idiosyncratic, institutional characteristics that advise caution in the generalizability of results. Our study addresses the role of gender in Spanish audit practice during the period 1942 to 1988. The environment of the Spanish audit profession witnessed the peaceful transition from a dictatorship to a full-fledged democracy as well as the emergence of a free market economy from a system characterized by stiff economic autarchy and an overriding intervention of the state in the economy. We found that the dominant role of the state in Spanish society affected the structure of the audit profession and made impossible the emergence of an autonomous project. In particular, our findings reveal that the audit profession did not have an independent strategy about the role of women at work, but mimicked the attitudes deployed by the state during our observation period. ; Publicado

This paper is initially informed by an institutional sociological framework to analyze changes in accounting practices that took place in the Royal Tobacco Factory (RTF) of Seville during the period 1760–1790. We argue that the significantly greater development and use of accounting practices during that period can be linked to the move to the much larger and more purposefully built new factories, the decline in total tobacco consumption, and the pressure to increase revenue for the Spanish Crown while reducing production cost and maintaining high product quality to deter entry. These new accounting practices were developed in part with the intent of improving factory efficiency, but importantly, they enhanced the external legitimacy of the RTF in the face of the events mentioned above and contributed to the long survival of the RTF as a monopolist.

Many societies demand that independent professionals (e.g. auditors) certify the performance of firms. The value placed on such certification (i.e. the public perception of reliability/unreliability that may impact on an organization's success/failure) is not uniform, however, but contingent upon changing political contexts. This study presents and analyses data on the entire population of newspapers in Spain from 1966 to 1993, a time of peaceful transition from military dictatorship to capitalist democracy. Our results highlight the contingent nature of institutional life, demonstrating how changes in political contexts are associated with varying understandings of institutions. In particular, our findings support the prediction that, under a dictatorship, independently certified performance is not instrumental in organizational success or failure whereas, in a modern democracy, the certification process has a positive effect on the survival chances of firms. ; Publicado

The prediction that external accountability has a positive effect on organizational survival has been suggested by several organizational studies. Empirical testing of this proposition, however, has been overlooked by organizational analysts. The conceptual analysis of the notions of accountability and organizational survival has led to a set of a hypotheses that are supported by lifetime data models, estimated using primary archival data. These data describe accountability practices of the entire newspaper industry of Spain during the period 1966-1993. During that period, the country witnessed arare combination of radical and peaceful changes in its economic, social, and political structures. This setting constitutes a unique social laboratory to investigate organizational responses to environmental pressures. The findings show support for the notion that organizations that render accounts of their activities are invested of legitimacy, and this in tum increases their access to resources and extends their life chances.

The imperative for strategy implementation / Michael A. Hitt, Susan E. Jackson, Salvador Carmona, Leonard Bierman, Christina E. Shalley and Mike Wright -- Resources and governance -- Sourcing external knowledge : clusters, alliances, and acquisitions / Stephen Tallman and Anupama Phene -- A study of the long-term value of capabilities-based resources, intangible strategic assets, and firm performance / Brian R. Chabowski and G. Tomas M. Hult -- Ipos and corporate governance / Igor Filatotchev, Mike Wright and Garry D. Bruton -- Epistemics at work : the theory of mind in principal-agent relations / Stefan Linder, Nicolai Foss and Diago Stea -- Social construction of boundaries in the context of the official and unofficial economies / Katalin Takacs-Haynes and R. Duane Ireland -- Antitrust compliance / D. Daniel Sokol -- Managing human capital -- The aging workforce : implications for human resource management research and practice / Donald M. Truxillo, David M. Cadiz, and Jennifer R. Rineer -- Women at the top : will more women in senior roles impact organizational performance? / Carol T. Kulik and Isabel Metz -- Managing human capital : meta-analysis of links among human resource management practices and systems, human capital and performance / David J. Ketchen Jr., T. Russell Crook, Samuel Y. Todd, James G. Combs, and David J. Woehr -- Exploring the relationship between human resource management and organizational performance in the healthcare sector / Ian Kessler -- Evidence-based management at the bottom of the pyramid : why human resources standards and research must connect more closely / Wayne F. Cascio and John W. Boudreau -- Theory development by induction : goal-setting theory, 1990 to 2013 / Edwin A. Locke and Gary P. Latham -- Accounting-based control systems -- Management control systems and creativity / Antonio Davila and Angelo Ditillo -- Exploring the challenges of broadening accounting reports : insights from research / Brad Potter and Naomi Soderstrom -- Organizational design and control choices / Christian Hofmann and Laurence van Lent -- Estimation of discretionary accruals and the detection of earnings management / Paul Zarowin -- The future of strategy implementation / Michael A. Hitt, Susan E. Jackson, Salvador Carmona, Leonard Bierman, Christina E. Shalley and Mike Wright