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Unintended Consequences (unintended + consequence)
Selected AbstractsUNINTENDED CONSEQUENCES OF BARGAINING FOR ADOPTION ASSISTANCE PAYMENTSFAMILY COURT REVIEW, Issue 3 2005Hansen Mary Eschelbach Families that adopt children who are in foster care may receive monthly adoption assistance payments to offset the cost of raising the adopted child. The amount of the adoption assistance payment is the subject of bargaining between the family and the child welfare authority. This article uses a bargaining model to highlight factors that, in addition to the expected costs of raising the child, might influence the outcome of bargaining over adoption assistance payments. Findings indicate that married parents who adopt children already in their care have an advantage in bargaining, and single women who adopt their kin or foster children have a disadvantage in bargaining. [source] Unintended Consequences of Land Rights Reform: The Case of the 1998 Uganda Land ActDEVELOPMENT POLICY REVIEW, Issue 2 2004Diana Hunt Empirical studies of land rights privatisation have tended to underemphasise the unintended impacts of land rights reform relative to establishing whether the predicted impacts have occurred. This article, in reviewing some of the unintended consequences of the 1998 Uganda Land Act, draws attention to ways in which intended impacts may be undercut by lack of both consultation and foresight in anticipating responses to new legal provisions and by lack of adequate resourcing of the reform process. It also recognises that unintended outcomes may sometimes reflect appropriate adaptations of legal provisions at the local level, and briefly considers what light the Ugandan experience can throw on recent proposals for Normalisation of informal property rights in the Third World. [source] What Are the Unintended Consequences of Changing the Diagnostic Paradigm for Subarachnoid Hemorrhage After Brain Computed Tomography to Computed Tomographic Angiography in Place of Lumbar Puncture?ACADEMIC EMERGENCY MEDICINE, Issue 9 2010Jonathan A. Edlow MD First page of article [source] In reply to Commentary: "What Are the Unintended Consequences of Changing the Diagnostic Paradigm for Subarachnoid Hemorrhage After Brain Computed Tomography to Computed Topographic Angiography in Place of Lumbar Puncture?"ACADEMIC EMERGENCY MEDICINE, Issue 9 2010Robert F. McCormack MD No abstract is available for this article. [source] Facebook and Online Privacy: Attitudes, Behaviors, and Unintended ConsequencesJOURNAL OF COMPUTER-MEDIATED COMMUNICATION, Issue 1 2009Bernhard Debatin This article investigates Facebook users' awareness of privacy issues and perceived benefits and risks of utilizing Facebook. Research found that Facebook is deeply integrated in users' daily lives through specific routines and rituals. Users claimed to understand privacy issues, yet reported uploading large amounts of personal information. Risks to privacy invasion were ascribed more to others than to the self. However, users reporting privacy invasion were more likely to change privacy settings than those merely hearing about others' privacy invasions. Results suggest that this lax attitude may be based on a combination of high gratification, usage patterns, and a psychological mechanism similar to third-person effect. Safer use of social network services would thus require changes in user attitude. [source] Death at the Border: Efficacy and Unintended Consequences of US Immigration Control PolicyPOPULATION AND DEVELOPMENT REVIEW, Issue 4 2001Wayne A. Cornelius This article assesses the efficacy of the strategy of immigration control implemented by the US government since 1993 in reducing illegal entry attempts, and documents some of the unintended consequences of this strategy, especially a sharp increase in mortality among unauthorized migrants along certain segments of the Mexico,US border. The available data suggest that the current strategy of border enforcement has resulted in rechanneling flows of unauthorized migrants to more hazardous areas, raising fees charged by people-smugglers, and discouraging unauthorized migrants already in the US from returning to their places of origin. However, there is no evidence that the strategy is deterring or preventing significant numbers of new illegal entries, particularly given the absence of a serious effort to curtail employment of unauthorized migrants through worksite enforcement. An expanded temporary worker program, selective legalization of unauthorized Mexican workers residing in the United States, and other proposals under consideration by the US and Mexican governments are unlikely to reduce migrant deaths resulting from the current strategy of border enforcement. [source] The Kidney Allocation Score: Methodological Problems, Moral Concerns and Unintended ConsequencesAMERICAN JOURNAL OF TRANSPLANTATION, Issue 7 2009B. Hippen The growing disparity between the demand for and supply of kidneys for transplantation has generated interest in alternative systems of allocating kidneys from deceased donors. This personal viewpoint focuses attention on the Kidney Allocation Score (KAS) proposal promulgated by the UNOS/OPTN Kidney Committee. I identify several methodological and moral flaws in the proposed system, concluding that any iteration of the KAS proposal should be met with more skepticism than sanguinity. [source] Policy implications of the widespread practice of ,pre-drinking' or ,pre-gaming' before going to public drinking establishments,are current prevention strategies backfiring?ADDICTION, Issue 1 2009Samantha Wells ABSTRACT Aim To describe the research, policy and prevention implications of pre-drinking or pre-gaming; that is, planned heavy drinking prior to going to a public drinking establishment. Methods The authors describe the phenomenon of pre-drinking, motivations for pre-drinking and its associated risks using available research literature, media and popular internet vehicles. Results Heavy drinking prior to going out has emerged as a common and celebrated practice among young adults around the world. Apparent motivations are: (i) to avoid paying for high priced drinks at commercial drinking establishments; (ii) to achieve drunkenness and enhance and extend the night out; and (iii) to socialize with friends, reduce social anxiety or enhance male group bonding before going out. Limited existing research on pre-drinking suggests that it is associated with heavy drinking and harmful consequences. We argue that policies focused upon reducing drinking in licensed premises may have the unintended consequence of displacing drinking to pre-drinking environments, possibly resulting in greater harms. Conclusions Effective policy and prevention for drinking in licensed premises requires a comprehensive approach that takes into account the entire drinking occasion (not just drinking that occurs in the licensed environment), as well as the ,determined drunkenness' goal of some young people. [source] Union recognition in Ireland: one step forward or two steps back?INDUSTRIAL RELATIONS JOURNAL, Issue 3 2003Daryl D'Art In this paper a variety of union recognition procedures and their effect on union density levels in a number of countries are considered. The crucial importance of the national institutions that govern industrial relations are emphasised. While in Ireland, conditions such as social partnership and the buoyant economy of the 1990s would appear to favour union growth, the reverse has been the case. Recent legislation to establish more formal procedures for union recognition, we argue, is likely to be a dismal failure. Indeed, an unintended consequence of the Industrial Relations (Amendment) Act 2001 may be the exclusion of the union from the workplace and the legitimisation of a firm's non-union status. [source] Vertical Social Differentiation in Athens: Alternative or Complement to Community Segregation?INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF URBAN AND REGIONAL RESEARCH, Issue 4 2001Thomas Maloutas Vertical social differentiation is presented in the recent literature as an important element of reduced segregation in South European cities, and the supporting evidence originates mainly from Athens. The authors of this article question the claim about the common form and function of vertical social differentiation across South Europe, as well as its opposition to community segregation, and try to reveal the specificity of the processes leading to its formation in Athens. Since the mid-1970s, the dominant process of urban growth in Athens has been middle-class suburbanization. This process has reinforced community segregation and, at the same time, has triggered a filtering-down process in wide areas around the CBD, formerly occupied by upper and mainly intermediate professional categories. Interclass vertical segregation has subsequently appeared in these areas, where intermediate professional categories and lower middle-class households are now predominant. The fact that these areas do not represent a real choice for any of their resident groups shows that this vertical cohabitation has been the unintended consequence of changing segregation patterns, and hardly the outcome or the corollary of a growing process of sociospatial homogenization. Dans les textes récents, la différenciation sociale verticale est présentée comme un facteur important dans la réduction de la ségrégation urbaine en Europe du Sud, les éléments probants provenant essentiellement d'Athènes. Cet article conteste l'idée que la différenciation sociale verticale ait une forme ou une fonction commune en Europe méridionale, et qu'elle entrave la ségrégation horizontale; de plus, il tente d'exposer la spécificité des processus qui conduisent à sa formation à Athènes. Depuis le milieu des années 1970, l'expansion urbaine de la capitale grecque se caractérise par l'implantation en banlieue des classes supérieurs et moyennes. Ce processus a renforcé la ségrégation dans les quartiers et, parallèlement, a déclenché un processus de filtrage vers le bas dans de vastes zones entourant l'hypercentre, précédemment occupées par des catégories de professionnels libéraux supérieures et surtout moyennes. Une ségrégation verticale interclasse est ensuite apparue dans ces quartiers, des catégories de libéraux moyennes et des ménages de la petite bourgeoisie y prédominant désormais. Or, quel que soit le groupe de résidents, ces zones ne représentent pas un choix réel; cette cohabitation verticale est donc bien la conséquence imprévue de la modification des schémas de ségrégation, plutôt que le résultat ou le corollaire d'une homogénéisation socio-spatiale accentuée. [source] The Socio-Cultural Context of Drug Use and Implications for Drug PolicyINTERNATIONAL SOCIAL SCIENCE JOURNAL, Issue 169 2001Molly Charles Cultural diversity in India has nurtured the use of mind-altering substances over centuries, with-out causing any great alarm about drug abuse. This paper, using research conducted by the authors and other secondary data, attempts to present socio-cultural-religious, functional patterns of drug use in the country and examines some of the factors responsible for the drastic changes that have occurred since the 1980s. Specifically, it points out that the Narcotics Drugs and Psychotropic Substances (NDPS) Act, 1985, took the responsibility of drug abuse control away from the community to the near-defunct legal establishment; that by criminalising socio-religious-cultural-recreational use of opium and cannabis, it has promoted the pro-liferation of alcohol, heroin, and other moreharmful pharmaceutical drugs; that it has given a new lease of life to organised crime syndicates; and that denial of access to low cost, accessible health care at the hands of traditional healers is an unintended consequence needing immediate rectification. It makes certain policy recommendations to the UN bodies, their member states and to policy makers in India in particular. [source] Monetary and Fiscal Policy SwitchingJOURNAL OF MONEY, CREDIT AND BANKING, Issue 4 2007HESS CHUNG regime change; policy interactions; Taylor rule; fiscal theory of the price level A growing body of evidence finds that policy reaction functions vary substantially over different periods in the United States. This paper explores how moving to an environment in which monetary and fiscal regimes evolve according to a Markov process can change the impacts of policy shocks. In one regime monetary policy follows the Taylor principle and taxes rise strongly with debt; in another regime the Taylor principle fails to hold and taxes are exogenous. An example shows that a unique bounded non-Ricardian equilibrium exists in this environment. A computational model illustrates that because agents' decision rules embed the probability that policies will change in the future, monetary and tax shocks always produce wealth effects. When it is possible that fiscal policy will be unresponsive to debt at times, active monetary policy (like a Taylor rule) in one regime is not sufficient to insulate the economy against tax shocks in that regime and it can have the unintended consequence of amplifying and propagating the aggregate demand effects of tax shocks. The paper also considers the implications of policy switching for two empirical issues. [source] Assessing Effectiveness of National Flood Policy Through Spatiotemporal Monitoring of Socioeconomic Exposure,JOURNAL OF THE AMERICAN WATER RESOURCES ASSOCIATION, Issue 1 2009Lauren A. Patterson Abstract:, After a century of evolving flood policies, there has been a steady increase in flood losses, which has partly been driven by development in flood prone areas. National flood policy was revised in 1994 to focus on limiting and reducing the amount of development inside the 100-year floodplain, with the goal of decreasing flood losses, which can be measured and quantified in terms of population and property value inside the 100-year floodplain. Monitoring changes in these measurable indicators can inform where and how effective national floodplain management strategies have been. National flood policies are restricted to the spatial extent of the 100-year floodplain, thus there are no development regulations to protect against flooding adjacent to this boundary. No consistent monitoring has been undertaken to examine the effect of flood policy on development immediately outside the 100-year floodplain. We developed a standardized methodology, which leveraged national data to quantify changes in population and building tax value (exposure). We applied this approach to counties in North Carolina to assess (1) temporal changes, before and after the 1994 policy and (2) spatial changes, inside and adjacent to the 100-year floodplain. Temporal results indicate the Piedmont and Mountain Region had limited success at reducing exposure within the 100-year floodplain, while the Coastal Plain successfully reduced exposure. Spatially, there was a significant increase in exposure immediately outside the 100-year floodplain throughout North Carolina. The lack of consistent monitoring has resulted in the continuation of this unintended consequence, which could be a significant driver of increased flood losses as any flood even slightly higher than the 100-year floodplain will have a disproportionately large impact since development is outside the legal boundary of national flood policy. [source] Predicting moisture dynamics of fine understory fuels in a moist tropical rainforest system: results of a pilot study undertaken to identify proxy variables useful for rating fire dangerNEW PHYTOLOGIST, Issue 3 2010David Ray Summary ,The use of fire as a land management tool in the moist tropics often has the unintended consequence of degrading adjacent forest, particularly during severe droughts. Reliable models of fire danger are needed to help mitigate these impacts. ,Here, we studied the moisture dynamics of fine understory fuels in the east-central Brazilian Amazon during the 2003 dry season. Drying stations established under varying amounts of canopy cover (leaf area index (LAI) = 0 , 5.3) were subjected to a range of water inputs (5,15 mm) and models were developed to forecast litter moisture content (LMC). Predictions were then compared with independent field data. ,A multiple linear regression relating litter moisture content to forest structure (LAI), ambient vapor pressure deficit (VPDM) and an index of elapsed time since a precipitation event (d,1) was identified as the best-fit model (adjusted R2 = 0.89). Relative to the independent observations, model predictions were relatively unbiased when the LMC was , 50%, but consistently underestimated the LMC when the observed values were higher. ,The approach to predicting fire danger based on forest structure and meteorological variables is promising; however, additional information to the LAI, for example forest biomass, may be required to accurately capture the influence of forest structure on understory microclimate. [source] Labor Militancy in South Korea*ASIAN ECONOMIC JOURNAL, Issue 2 2005Bong Joon Yoon J51; J53 Korea has adopted the labor institutions of Japan, which are noted for ensuring industrial peace unparalleled elsewhere, fostering worker-management cooperation: company unionism, no temporary layoffs, synchronized annual contracts, seniority-based wages, and the bonus system. Yet the labor relations in Korea have been turbulent for the last 15 years, with its strike intensity exceeding that of any industrialized country during most of that period. Why is labor so militant in South Korea? This research identifies two types of factors responsible for Korean labor militancy. First are sociopolitical factors: abrupt decontrol of labor relations in 1987 for which labor and management were and continue to be ill prepared, and the dominance of the age-cohort of young, assertive workers in the workforce. The second factor is that Korean industrial policy and structure are shown to encourage union militancy as an unintended consequence. [source] A reflection on unintended consequences of workplace mediationCONFLICT RESOLUTION QUARTERLY, Issue 1 2005Jean Poitras This article conceptualizes the risk of inflated disciplinary action in the workplace, which may be associated with use of mediation as part of a dispute resolution system. It argues that some characteristics of mediation may compound with some features of the work environment to create such a risk. [source] The Political Ecology of Transition in Cambodia 1989,1999: War, Peace and Forest ExploitationDEVELOPMENT AND CHANGE, Issue 4 2000Philippe Le Billon Over the last decade, forests have played an important role in the transition from war to peace in Cambodia. Forest exploitation financed the continuation of war beyond the Cold War and regional dynamics, yet it also stimulated co-operation between conflicting parties. Timber represented a key stake in the rapacious transition from the (benign) socialism of the post-Khmer Rouge period to (exclusionary) capitalism, thereby becoming the most politicized resource of a reconstruction process that has failed to be either as green or as democratic as the international community had hoped. This article explores the social networks and power politics shaping forest exploitation, with the aim of casting light on the politics of transition. It also scrutinizes the unintended consequences of the international community's discourse of democracy, good governance, and sustainable development on forest access rights. The commodification of Cambodian forests is interpreted as a process of transforming nature into money through a political ecology of transition that legitimates an exclusionary form of capitalism. [source] Unintended Consequences of Land Rights Reform: The Case of the 1998 Uganda Land ActDEVELOPMENT POLICY REVIEW, Issue 2 2004Diana Hunt Empirical studies of land rights privatisation have tended to underemphasise the unintended impacts of land rights reform relative to establishing whether the predicted impacts have occurred. This article, in reviewing some of the unintended consequences of the 1998 Uganda Land Act, draws attention to ways in which intended impacts may be undercut by lack of both consultation and foresight in anticipating responses to new legal provisions and by lack of adequate resourcing of the reform process. It also recognises that unintended outcomes may sometimes reflect appropriate adaptations of legal provisions at the local level, and briefly considers what light the Ugandan experience can throw on recent proposals for Normalisation of informal property rights in the Third World. [source] Intended and unintended consequences of internal motivation to behave nonprejudiced: The case of benevolent discrimination,EUROPEAN JOURNAL OF SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY, Issue 6 2009Jennifer Fehr Internal motivation to behave nonprejudiced reduces prejudice. The present research looks at the impact of internal motivation in a special case of prejudiced behavior, namely benevolent discrimination. It was hypothesized that internal motivation does not reduce, but rather increases benevolent discrimination as long as individuals are not aware of its negative consequences. This is because of the positive intention required to show benevolent discrimination. Once the negative consequences have been made salient, internal motivation will facilitate self-criticism of one's own benevolently discriminating behavior, which will be reflected in a more critical reappraisal of previous benevolently discriminating behavior. The predictions were supported in three studies. Study 1 analyzed the impact of internal motivation on benevolent discrimination. Study 2 and 3 analyzed the effect of internal motivation on the critical reappraisal of one's own benevolently discriminating behavior. The implications for the regulation of benevolent discrimination in the broader context of social discrimination are discussed. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [source] Testing the Regulatory Model: The Expansion of Stansted AirportFISCAL STUDIES, Issue 4 2004DAVID STARKIE This paper examines the application of price-cap regulation to the UK airport industry, with particular reference to the expansion of London-Stansted. This expansion is relevant to the debate concerning investment incentives inherent in the RPI,X approach and whether the UK style of regulation encourages the ,sweating of assets' at the expense of new investment. Stansted's expansion also suggests a willingness of the authorities to accept the leveraging of market power in pursuit of perceived public-interest goals; it provides an insight into the behaviour of economic agents when capital market disciplines are mute; and it illustrates some unintended consequences that can follow from market intervention. [source] Salvadoran economic transnationalism: embedded strategies for household maintenance, immigrant incorporation, and entrepreneurial expansionGLOBAL NETWORKS, Issue 3 2001Patricia Landolt This article presents a case study of the transnational economic practices linking two Salvadoran settlements in the United States and El Salvador. It considers the relationship between economic transnationalism, immigrant settlement and economic development in the country of origin. Four processes are examined including: (1) the creation of border-spanning social networks by migrants and their home country counterparts; (2) the construction of transnational economic activities and institutions; (3) the broader transnational social formations in which these are embedded; and, (4) the cumulative and unintended consequences of economic transnationalism for migrant households, the immigrant community, and El Salvador. The article applies the concepts of social network, social capital, and embeddedness, to explain the sources and determinants of individual- and community-level variation in types of transnational economic practices. The conclusions drawn are that economic transnationalism is both part of a transnational settlement strategy and holds potential for economic development in the country of origin. [source] Governance Reform in Thailand: Questionable Assumptions, Uncertain OutcomesGOVERNANCE, Issue 3 2000Bidhya Bowornwathana This article examines the nature of governance reform in Thailand. The argument is that Thai citizens are not especially benefiting from the public reform initiatives of Thai governments because government reformers made fourquestionable assumptions about reform which have in turn produced uncertain outcomes and provided the opportunity for government reformers to avoid responsibility for their reform choices. First, the reformers support the belief that a global reform paradigm with ready-made reform packages exists which can be easily transplanted in the Thai public sector. Second, the reformers prefer to define success largely as reform output rather than reform outcomes or long term reform consequences. Third, Thai government reformers have overemphasized the efficiency aspects of the new public management at the expense of other governance goals. Fourth, governance reform in Thailand has been portrayed as a managerial problem instead of a political one. The author supports his arguments by drawing on theoretical debates in the international literature on administrative reform, and relating these debates to the Thai case. Governance reform in Thailand is still at an early stage, but the role of unintended consequences is important to administrative reform. Furthermore, the Thai case may reflect governance reform in other countries as well. [source] The Unintended Impact of Welfare Reform on the Medicaid Enrollment of Eligible ImmigrantsHEALTH SERVICES RESEARCH, Issue 5 2004Namratha R. Kandula Background. During welfare reform, Congress passed legislation barring legal immigrants who entered the United States after August 1996 from Medicaid for five years after immigration. This legislation intended to bar only new immigrants (post-1996 immigrants) from Medicaid. However it may have also deterred the enrollment of legal immigrants who immigrated before 1996 (pre-1996 immigrants) and who should have remained Medicaid eligible. Objectives. To compare the Medicaid enrollment of U.S.-born citizens to pre-1996 immigrants, before and after welfare reform, and to determine if variation in state Medicaid policies toward post-1996 immigrants modified the effects of welfare reform on pre-1996 immigrants. Data Source/Study Design. Secondary database analysis of cross-sectional data from 1994,2001 of the U.S. Census Bureau, Annual Demographic Survey of March Supplement of the Current Population Survey. Subjects. Low-income, U.S.-born adults (N=116,307) and low-income pre-1996 immigrants (N=24,367) before and after welfare reform. Measures. Self-reported Medicaid enrollment. Results. Before welfare reform, pre-1996 immigrants were less likely to enroll in Medicaid than the U.S.-born (OR=0.55; 95 percent CI, 0.51,0.59). After welfare reform, pre-1996 immigrants were even less likely to enroll in Medicaid. The proportion of immigrants in Medicaid dropped 3 percentage points after 1996; for the U.S.-born it dropped 1.6 percentage points (p=0.012). Except for California, state variation in Medicaid policy toward post-1996 immigrants did modify the effect of welfare reform on pre-1996 immigrants. Conclusions. Federal laws limiting the Medicaid eligibility of specific subgroups of immigrants appear to have had unintended consequences on Medicaid enrollment in the larger, still eligible immigrant community. Inclusive state policies may overcome this effect. [source] The impact on histopathology practice of new human tissue legislation in the UKHISTOPATHOLOGY, Issue 3 2006J C E Underwood The undisclosed or unauthorized retention of tissue from autopsies in the UK and elsewhere has caused considerable public concern and much distress to some families. Histopathologists involved in these cases have also been discomfited. These events have exposed deficiencies in prevailing legislation, principally in the Human Tissue Act 1961 and the Coroners Rules 1984. New human tissue legislation comes into force in the UK in September 2006. The Human Tissue Act 2004 and the Human Tissue (Scotland) Act 2006 make it unlawful to remove, store and use tissue from the dead without appropriate authority. The Human Tissue Act 2004, which does not apply in Scotland, also prohibits the removal, storage and use of tissue from living individuals for purposes specified in the Act unless appropriate consent has been obtained. The Coroners (Amendment) Rules 2005, which came into force in June 2005, introduced new arrangements for dealing with the retention of tissue from bodies undergoing coroner's autopsies. This new legislative regime is intended to create a climate in which pathologists, patients and the public can have confidence that tissue is used appropriately and, when necessary, with proper authority or valid consent. However, other than in Scotland, there may be unintended consequences arising from restrictions on archiving, for audit and diagnostic review, tissue samples from coronial autopsies. [source] The Rule of Law in the Realm and the Province of New York: Prelude to the American RevolutionHISTORY, Issue 301 2006HERBERT A. JOHNSON British and American views of public law have diverged greatly over the past two hundred years. This article examines the evolution of New York's adherence to the rule of fundamental law and the use of colonial common law courts to protect the rights of New York subjects against the prerogative power of the crown. As a conquered province from 1664 to 1683, New York was denied a legislature. Thereafter the colonial legislative bodies were active in making unsuccessful attempts to claim their birthright as Englishmen. In England the Glorious Revolution represented a major step in the development of parliamentary supremacy. In New York, however, it facilitated an ethnic insurrection followed by the realization that English governmental policy mandated the denial of basic rights of Englishmen to colonial residents. The Glorious Revolution simply made it possible for parliament, as well as the crown, to regulate colonial affairs without any constitutional restrictions prior to 1774. In terms of constitutional dynamics in eighteenth-century England, continued imperial rule through an untrammelled royal prerogative substantially increased the political power and revenues of the crown. Failing to consider the impact of monarchial power in a growing empire, the 1688,9 Convention Parliament laid the foundation for an unbalanced British government in the middle of the eighteenth century. Deprived of patronage and extraordinary revenues at home, the monarchs turned to regulation of their empire and to reaping increased financial benefit. Both of these unintended consequences of the Glorious Revolution threatened parliamentary supremacy, even as parliament's new-found power began to undermine the rule of law in the empire. [source] Culture Matters: How Our Culture Affects the Audit,ACCOUNTING PERSPECTIVES, Issue 3 2010PHILIP COWPERTHWAITE audit; culture; normes internationales Abstract If the influence of national cultures on the implementation of global standards is not taken into account, the result will be inconsistent implementation at best and outright failure at worst. The experiences in fields such as medicine, peacekeeping, aviation, and environmental protection offer insight into possible difficulties with the implementation, beginning in 2010, of International Standards on Auditing (ISAs) by members of the International Federation of Accountants. Some countries may have difficulty with implementation because of the differences between their cultural assumptions and those embodied in the standards to be adopted. It is too soon to know if and where that will happen, especially because the data on first experiences will not begin to be available until 2013. However, cultural-comparison data can be used to foresee which countries may have difficulty with implementation. But if unintended consequences do become evident, it will be important not to assume that the standards and the standard-setting process are defective; it is more likely that practitioners will need help in interpreting the ISAs in light of their local culture. A useful first step would be for standard-setting bodies to identify explicitly the cultural assumptions inherent in the standards they produce. The standard setters can then give that information to those responsible for standards implementation at the practitioner level to help promote consistent application of the standards globally. Question de culture : en quoi la culture influe sur l'audit Résumé Si l'on ne tient pas compte de l'influence des cultures nationales sur la mise en ,uvre de normes internationales, les résultatsde l'exercice seront incohérents, au mieux, ouse solderont par un échec pur et simple, au pire. Les expériences dans des domaines comme la médecine, le maintien de la paix, l'aviation et la protection de l'environnement nous livrent des indications quant aux problèmes que pourrait présenter la conversion, à compter de 2010, aux normes internationales d'audit et de certification établies par les membres de l'International Federation of Accountants (IFAC). Certains pays pourraient éprouver de la difficultéà instaurer ces normes en raison des différences entre leurs a priori culturels et ceux que véhiculent les normes devant être adoptées. Il est trop tôt pour dire si ces difficultés se manifesteront et à quel moment, notamment du fait que les données relatives aux premières expériences ne seront accessibles qu'à compter de 2013. Toutefois, des donnéesculturelles comparatives peuvent être utilisées pour prévoir quels pays risquent defaire face à des embûches dans la mise en ,uvre de ces normes. Toutefois, s'il émergedu processus des conséquences non souhaitées évidentes, il importera de ne pas en conclure que les normes et les processus de normalisation sont défectueux, mais plutôt que les professionnels en exerciceont besoin d'assistance pour interpréter les normes internationales à la lumière de leur culture nationale. Les organismes de normalisation pourraient faire un premier pas dans ce sens en définissant explicitement les a priori culturels inhérents aux normes qu'ils produisent. Les normalisateurs pourraient ensuite communiquer cette information aux responsables de la mise en ,uvre des normes chez lesprofessionnels en exercice et contribuer ainsi à promouvoir la cohérence dans l'application des normes à l'échelle mondiale. [source] Principal-Agent Problems in Humanitarian Intervention: Moral Hazards, Adverse Selection, and the Commitment DilemmaINTERNATIONAL STUDIES QUARTERLY, Issue 4 2009Robert W. Rauchhaus A number of recent studies have concluded that humanitarian intervention can produce unintended consequences that reduce or completely undermine conflict management efforts. Some analysts have argued that the incentive structure produced by third parties is a form of moral hazard. This paper evaluates the utility of moral hazard theory and a second type of principal-agent problem known as adverse selection. Whereas moral hazards occur when an insured party has an opportunity to take hidden action once a contract is in effect, adverse selection is the result of asymmetric information prior to entering into a contract. Failing to distinguish between these two types of principal-agent problems may lead to policy advice that is irrelevant or potentially harmful. Along with introducing the concept of adverse selection to the debate on humanitarian intervention, this study identifies a commitment dilemma that explains why third parties operating in weakly institutionalized environments may be unable to punish groups that take advantage of intervention. [source] Effects of Multiple Clients on the Reliability of Audit ReportsJOURNAL OF ACCOUNTING RESEARCH, Issue 1 2006ANNE BEYER ABSTRACT This paper demonstrates the existence of two different kinds of externalities induced by an auditor servicing multiple clients at the same time. First, we show that the capital market price for a client can increase in the number of qualified reports that his auditor issues to his other clients, thus producing a stock price externality. Second, when the audit firm has limited wealth, an additional client can actually decrease the audit quality and increase the average likelihood of audit failure relative to a single-client setting because of reporting externalities. Our analysis also demonstrates how requiring a more effective audit oversight mechanism can actually produce unintended consequences such as an increased likelihood of audit failures. [source] MIT Roundtable on Corporate Risk ManagementJOURNAL OF APPLIED CORPORATE FINANCE, Issue 4 2008Article first published online: 16 DEC 200 Against the backdrop of financial crisis, a distinguished group of academics and practitioners discusses the contribution of financial management and innovation to corporate growth and value, along with the pitfalls and unintended consequences of such innovation. The main focus of most panelists is the importance of a capital structure and risk management approach that complement the strategy and operations of the business. Instructive examples are provided by Judy Lewent, former CFO and head of strategic planning at Merck, and Lakshmi Shyam-Sunder, director of finance and risk management at the International Finance Corporation. But if these represent successful applications of finance theory, what about the large number of cases where the use of derivatives and other innovations has led to high leverage and apparent risk management failures? Part of the current trouble, as pointed out by Andrew Lo, can be attributed to the failure of risk managers and their models to account for highly improbable events,the so-called fat tails of the distribution. But, as Robert Merton suggests in closing, there is a more comprehensive explanation for today's problems: the tendency of market participants to respond to potentially risk-reducing financial innovation by increasing their risk-taking in other areas. "What we have here," says Merton, ,are two partly offsetting effects of innovation,one that is reducing the risk of companies and their investors, and another that is encouraging greater risk-taking. From a social or regulatory standpoint, the goal is to find the right balance between these two effects or forces. [source] Improving Decision Making by Means of Dissent,JOURNAL OF APPLIED SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY, Issue 1 2001Charlan Jeanne Nemeth Antidotes to problems associated with uniformity of viewpoints have generally involved dissent in one form or another (Katzenstein, 1996), one being "devil's advocate." Research on authentic dissent has documented additional advantages in that it stimulates divergent and original thought (Nemeth, 1995). In this study, authentic disscnt was compared with devil's advocate and with no dissent. Findings indicate that authentic dissent was superior in (a) stimulating a greater proportion of original thoughts, (b) considering the opposite position, and (c) direct attitude change. Devil's advocate was found to stimulate cognitive boistcring of the initial position, thus raising concerns about the unintended consequences of techniques such as devil's advocate and the subtle task facing attempts to foster original thought and yet maintain cohesion. 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