Suchergebnisse

Context The poor survivorship of animals released into the wild for translocation, reintroduction or rehabilitation may be cited as a reason not to release experimental animals, but there is only limited information available on the fate of ex-research animals returned to the wild. Aims This study tested the hypothesis that there is no difference in the recapture of bandicoots used for physiological experiments and control bandicoots. Methods Six adult male bandicoots were trapped and maintained in captivity for three weeks for physiological experiments, then released at the capture site. Sixteen other bandicoots were captured and released immediately. Seven weeks after the release of the bandicoots used for physiological studies, follow-up trapping was carried out, and the survival, body mass and distance moved of recaptured bandicoots was recorded. Key results Survivorship did not differ statistically between bandicoots used for physiological experiments and control bandicoots, with five of six experimental bandicoots (83%) and 11 of 16 control bandicoots (69%) recaptured. Bandicoots used for physiological experiments lost a significantly greater proportion of body mass than control animals, but this occurred in captivity, not after release. The distance between recaptures for both groups (0–224 m) was consistent with previously published observations. Conclusions My results suggest that bandicoots maintained in captivity for non-invasive physiological experiments can be successfully released, with survivorship at least as high as that of control animals. Implications This study provides researchers, wildlife managers, and animal ethics committees with information to assist with making judgements concerning the fate of ex-research animals.

As part of a broader current of critique of the economic and political dynamics of prison privatisation — a critique that initially emanated from the USA — this paper focuses on Scotland and on research carried out at its then only private penal institution, HMP Kilmarnock. The authors dismantle the government's case for extending prison privatisation by drilling deep into the experience of Kilmarnock and demonstrating the deleterious effects of marketisation for prison officers and prisoners alike. Degraded pay and conditions and systemic understaffing corroded morale, exposed staff and inmates to risk, and contributed to massive officer turnover. Compelling evidence comes from sources ordinarily unavailable to critical researchers, such as internal company and government documentation.

The Scottish Parliament recently considered proposals, which, if implemented, would lead to a considerable expansion of prison privatization. Both the Scottish Prison Service and the Scottish Executive used what they claimed to be an independently verified cost saving of £700 million as the major justification for these proposals. The way this figure was constructed and used provides an example of the increasing tendency on the part of government to quantify what cannot be quantified, to 'make the invisible visible'. This article uses several methods to interrogate this figure of £700 million, particularly the role played by 'net present value' in its construction. Its fuller significance emerges from an understanding of the contexts of the Private Finance Initiative and Public Private Partnership, the experience of prison privatization and the foreclosure of alternatives to privatization. This article is based upon an analysis of government documentation, interview evidence with key players and testimony given by them to a cross-party committee charged with investigating these proposals.

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to introduce the themes and aims of this Accounting, Auditing & Accountability (AAAJ) special issue and comments on the papers included in the issue. The paper provides a thematic outline along which the future researchers can undertake more empirical research examining how neoliberalism shapes, and shaped by, management accounting. Design/methodology/approach: This entails a brief review of the previous critical accounting works that refer to liberalism and neoliberalism to identify and highlight the specific themes and trajectories of neoliberal implications of management accounting has been and can be explored. This is followed by a brief commentary on the papers the authors have included in this special issue; these commentaries explain how these papers capture various dimensions of enabling and enacting neoliberal governmentality. Findings: The authors found that management accounting is now entering new territories beyond its conventional disciplinary enclosures of confinement, reconfiguring its functionalities to enable and enact a circulatory mode of neoliberal governmentality. These new functionalities then produce and reproduce entrepreneurial selves in myriad forms of social connections, networks and platforms within and beyond formal organizational settings, amid plethora of conducts, counter-conducts and resistances and new forms of identities and subjectivities. Research limitations/implications: This review can be read in relation to the papers included in the special issue as the whole issue will inspire more ideas, frameworks and methodologies for further studies. Originality/value: There is little research reviewing and commenting how management accounting now being enacted and enabled with new functionalities operating new territories and reconfiguring forms of governmentality. This paper inspires a new agenda on this project.

This paper examines the recent phenomenon of social impact bonds (SIBs). Social impact bonds are an attempt to marketize/financialize certain contemporary, intractable "social problems", such as homelessness and criminal recidivism. SIBs rely on a vast array of accounting technologies including budgets, future cash flows, discounting, performance measurement and auditing. As such, they represent a potentially powerful and problematic use of accounting to enact government policy. This paper contains a case study of the most recent in a series of SIBs, the London Homelessness SIB, focusing on St Mungo's, a London-based charitable foundation that was one of two service providers (charities) funded by the SIB. The case study is intended to enable a critical reflection on the rationalities that underpin the SIB. For this purpose, the paper draws upon Michel Foucault's work on biopolitics and neoliberalism. The SIB is thoroughly neoliberal in that it is constructed upon an assumption that there is no such thing as a social problem, only individuals who fail. The SIB transforms all participants in the bond, except perhaps the homeless themselves, into entrepreneurs. The homeless are instead "failed entrepreneurs" who become securitised into the potential future cash flows of investors.

This paper sets out an archival account of events leading up to the mass agencification of the British civil service by the Thatcher administration (1979‐1990). This account holds lessons for contemporary understandings of the ideological roots and institutional structures of corporatisation. When Thatcher came to power in 1979, she wanted to make government "efficient" through the adoption of "business‐like" practices. We show that this project was grounded in her Methodist upbringing and the emerging neoliberal economic theories of Friedrich Hayek and Milton Friedman. Thatcher's efforts to instil a "market mentality" were met with stubborn resistance from a bloc of Ministers and senior civil servants. We find that Thatcher used agencification to break this resistance. Agencification removed Ministerial control over service delivery and saw "business‐like" managers placed in charge of the newly created agencies. This curtailed the workings of democracy. Like Thatcher's agencification, corporatisation today imperils democracy in pursuit of "efficiency".

AbstractThis paper sets out an archival account of events leading up to the mass agencification of the British civil service by the Thatcher administration (1979–1990). This account holds lessons for contemporary understandings of the ideological roots and institutional structures of corporatization. When Thatcher came to power in 1979, she wanted to make government "efficient" through the adoption of "business‐like" practices. We show that this project was grounded in her Methodist upbringing and the emerging neoliberal economic theories of Friedrich Hayek and Milton Friedman. Thatcher's efforts to instill a "market mentality" were met with stubborn resistance from a bloc of Ministers and senior civil servants. We find that Thatcher used agencification to break this resistance. Agencification removed Ministerial control over service delivery and saw "business‐like" managers placed in charge of the newly created agencies. This curtailed the workings of democracy. Like Thatcher's agencification, corporatization today imperils democracy in pursuit of "efficiency."