What Costs Accountability? Financial Accountability, Mission and Fundraising in Nonprofits

Although greater calls for accountability have been articulated by academics, policy makers and donors in the recent years, a stream of thought has been questioning where the giving of an account should stop. In conveying the limits to the giving of an account (Messner, 2009) and associated transparency (Roberts, 2009), critical accounting scholars have also pointed to as yet unresolved contradictions intrinsic to accountability (McKernan, 2012), especially when it comes to be operationalised (Joannides, 2012). The impact of accountability's discharging on nonprofits' strategy or operations has to date been underexplored (Dhanni & Connelly, 2012; Tucker & Parker, 2013). Accordingly, this chapter seeks to contribute to this body of literature on the consequences of accountability on fundraising strategies in nonprofits, questioning whether accountability practice may hamper the effectiveness of the nonprofit sector by restraining the fundraising profession. Our chapter seeks to fill a dual theoretical gap. Firstly, only a number of publications have investigated the interplay between accountability and the making of organisational strategy (Parker, 2002, 2003b, 2011, 2012, 2013; Tucker & Parker, 2013). Therefore, we seek to fill a theoretical gap as to the impact of accountability on the conduct of straegic operations. By questioning whether accountability hampers fundraising strategy in non-profits we are also contributing to the literature balancing accountability and the mission. In this literature, it appears that money and the mission are often conflictual, financial managers being often seen by mission advocates as guardians shielding organisational resources (Chiapello, 1993, 1998; Lightbody, 2000, 2003). Another approach shows that making nonprofits accountable to capital and multiple stakeholders (donors, public authorities) leaders to changes in organisational culture (O'Dwyer & Unerman, 2007; Unerman & Bennett, 2004; Underman & O'Dwyer, 2006a, 2006b, 2008). By examining a small number of cases we show how accountability practices result in fundraising adapting and adjusting under such external pressures and constraints. We also show accountability systems may have a direct impact on the conduct of strategic operations, which might hamper mission conduct.

Strategic project evaluation for open pit mining ventures using real options and allied econometric techniques

Open pit mine operations are complex businesses that demand a constant assessment of risk. This is because the value of a mine project is typically influenced by many underlying economic and physical uncertainties, such as metal prices, metal grades, costs, schedules, quantities, and environmental issues, among others, which are not known with much certainty at the beginning of the project. Hence, mining projects present a considerable challenge to those involved in associated investment decisions, such as the owners of the mine and other stakeholders. In general terms, when an option exists to acquire a new or operating mining project, , the owners and stock holders of the mine project need to know the value of the mining project, which is the fundamental criterion for making final decisions about going ahead with the venture capital. However, obtaining the mine project’s value is not an easy task. The reason for this is that sophisticated valuation and mine optimisation techniques, which combine advanced theories in geostatistics, statistics, engineering, economics and finance, among others, need to be used by the mine analyst or mine planner in order to assess and quantify the existing uncertainty and, consequently, the risk involved in the project investment. Furthermore, current valuation and mine optimisation techniques do not complement each other. That is valuation techniques based on real options (RO) analysis assume an expected (constant) metal grade and ore tonnage during a specified period, while mine optimisation (MO) techniques assume expected (constant) metal prices and mining costs. These assumptions are not totally correct since both sources of uncertainty—that of the orebody (metal grade and reserves of mineral), and that about the future behaviour of metal prices and mining costs—are the ones that have great impact on the value of any mining project. Consequently, the key objective of this thesis is twofold. The first objective consists of analysing and understanding the main sources of uncertainty in an open pit mining project, such as the orebody (in situ metal grade), mining costs and metal price uncertainties, and their effect on the final project value. The second objective consists of breaking down the wall of isolation between economic valuation and mine optimisation techniques in order to generate a novel open pit mine evaluation framework called the ―Integrated Valuation / Optimisation Framework (IVOF)‖. One important characteristic of this new framework is that it incorporates the RO and MO valuation techniques into a single integrated process that quantifies and describes uncertainty and risk in a mine project evaluation process, giving a more realistic estimate of the project’s value. To achieve this, novel and advanced engineering and econometric methods are used to integrate financial and geological uncertainty into dynamic risk forecasting measures. The proposed mine valuation/optimisation technique is then applied to a real gold disseminated open pit mine deposit to estimate its value in the face of orebody, mining costs and metal price uncertainties.

Considering the importance of a systems approach to integrating ESD with campus operations

Society faces an unprecedented global education challenge to equip professionals with the knowledge and skills to address emerging 21st Century challenges, spanning climate change mitigation through to adaptation measures to deal with issues such as temperature and sea level rise, and diminishing fresh water and fossil fuel reserves. This paper discusses the potential for systemic and synergistic integration of curriculum with campus operations to accelerate curriculum renewal towards ESD, drawing on the authors' experiences within engineering education. The paper begins by a providing a brief overview of the need for timely curriculum renewal towards ESD in tertiary education. The paper then highlights some examples of academic barriers that need to be overcome for integration efforts to be successful, and opportunities for promoting the benefits of such integration. The paper concludes by discussing the rational for planning green campus initiatives within a larger system of curriculum renewal considerations, including awareness raising and developing a common understanding, identifying and mapping graduate attributes, curriculum auditing, content development and strategic renewal, and bridging and outreach.

The enterprise information security policy as a strategic business policy within the corporate strategic plan (extended abstract)

Information security has been recognized as a core requirement for corporate governance that is expected to facilitate not only the management of risks, but also as a corporate enabler that supports and contributes to the sustainability of organizational operations. In implementing information security, the enterprise information security policy is the set of principles and strategies that guide the course of action for the security activities and may be represented as a brief statement that defines program goals and sets information security and risk requirements. The enterprise information security policy (alternatively referred to as security policy in this paper) that represents the meta-policy of information security is an element of corporate ICT governance and is derived from the strategic requirements for risk management and corporate governance. Consistent alignment between the security policy and the other corporate business policies and strategies has to be maintained if information security is to be implemented according to evolving business objectives. This alignment may be facilitated by managing security policy alongside other corporate business policies within the strategic management cycle. There are however limitations in current approaches for developing and managing the security policy to facilitate consistent strategic alignment. This paper proposes a conceptual framework for security policy management by presenting propositions to positively affect security policy alignment with business policies and prescribing a security policy management approach that expounds on the propositions.

From production to purpose : using design led innovation to Build Strategic Potential in a Family-Owned SME

There is an evident need to develop the strategic capabilities of companies from within, to ensure competitive competence in a time where strategy is a necessity. This paper is based on the first 4 months of a longitudinal embedded case study of a family-owned Australian small to medium enterprise, in their journey towards design integration. The first author was embedded as a ‘Design Innovation Catalyst’ to collaborate on overcoming early barriers of strategic development, using design led innovation. Action research methodology, semi-structured interviews with seven out of eight employees and a reflective journal revealed the absence of a shared vision, conflicting drivers and a focus on operational efficiency rather than strategy. Through the Catalyst’s facilitation, a company vision, general awareness, practice and knowledge in strategic development have emerged as the first steps to generating strategic design competence within the firm.

Built to last or meant to end : intertemporal choice in strategic alliance portfolios

A salient but rarely explicitly studied characteristic of interfirm relationships is that they can intentionally be formed for finite periods of time. What determines firms' intertemporal choices between different alliance time horizons? Shadow of the future theorists suggest that when an alliance has an explicitly set short-term time frame, there is an increased risk that partners may behave opportunistically. This does not readily explain the high incidence of time-bound alliances being formed. Reconciling insights from the shadow of the future perspective with nascent research on the flexibility of temporary organizations, and shifting the focus from the level of individual transactions to that of strategic alliance portfolios, we argue that firms may be willing to accept a higher risk of opportunism when there are offsetting gains in strategic flexibility in managing their strategic alliance portfolio. Consequently, we hypothesize that environmental factors that increase the need for strategic flexibility—namely, dynamism and complexity in the environment—are likely to increase the relative share of time-bound alliances in strategic alliance portfolios. Our analysis of longitudinal data on the intertemporal alliance choices of a large sample of small and medium-sized enterprises provides support for this argument. Our findings fill an important gap in theory about time horizons in interfirm relationships and temporary organizations and show the importance of separating planned terminations from duration-based performance measures.

An open pit multistage mine production scheduling model for drilling, blasting and excavating operations

This paper proposes a new multi-resource multi-stage scheduling problem for optimising the open-pit drilling, blasting and excavating operations under equipment capacity constraints. The flow process is analysed based on the real-life data from an Australian iron ore mine site. The objective of the model is to maximise the throughput and minimise the total idle times of equipment at each stage. The following comprehensive mining attributes and constraints have been considered: types of equipment; operating capacities of equipment; ready times of equipment; speeds of equipment; block-sequence-dependent movement times of equipment; equipment-assignment-dependent operation times of blocks; distances between each pair of blocks; due windows of blocks; material properties of blocks; swell factors of blocks; and slope requirements of blocks. It is formulated by mixed integer programming and solved by ILOG-CPLEX optimiser. The proposed model is validated with extensive computational experiments to improve mine production efficiency at the operational level. The model also provides an intelligent decision support tool to account for the availability and usage of equipment units for drilling, blasting and excavating stages.