Inscribing the organization:representations in dispute between accounting and production

This paper assumes that a primary function of management accounting is the representation of "accounting facts" for purposes such as organizational control. Accountants are able to offer conventional techniques of control, such as standard costing, as a consequence of their ability to deploy accounting representations within managerial and economic models of organizational processes. Accounting competes, at times, with other 'professional' groups, such as production planning or quality management people, in this role of representing the organization to management. The paper develops its arguments around a case illustration of cost accounting set in a low technology manufacturing environment. The research relates to a case organization in which accountants are attempting to establish the reliability of accounting inscriptions of a simple manufacturing process. The case research focuses on the documents, the inscriptions that vie for managements' attention. It is these sometimes messy and inaccurate representations which enable control of complex and heterogeneous activities at a distance. At the end of our site visits we observe quality management systems in the ascendancy over the accountants' standard costing systems. © 2006 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Improved production of industrially relevant recombinant proteins: application of multi-factorial design of experiments and scalable process modelling

The work described in this thesis focuses on the use of a design-of-experiments approach in a multi-well mini-bioreactor to enable the rapid establishments of high yielding production phase conditions in yeast, which is an increasingly popular host system in both academic and industrial laboratories. Using green fluorescent protein secreted from the yeast, Pichia pastoris, a scalable predictive model of protein yield per cell was derived from 13 sets of conditions each with three factors (temperature, pH and dissolved oxygen) at 3 levels and was directly transferable to a 7 L bioreactor. This was in clear contrast to the situation in shake flasks, where the process parameters cannot be tightly controlled. By further optimisating both the accumulation of cell density in batch and improving the fed-batch induction regime, additional yield improvement was found to be additive to the per cell yield of the model. A separate study also demonstrated that improving biomass improved product yield in a second yeast species, Saccharomyces cerevisiae. Investigations of cell wall hydrophobicity in high cell density P. pastoris cultures indicated that cell wall hydrophobin (protein) compositional changes with growth phase becoming more hydrophobic in log growth than in lag or stationary phases. This is possibly due to an increased occurrence of proteins associated with cell division. Finally, the modelling approach was validated in mammalian cells, showing its flexibility and robustness. In summary, the strategy presented in this thesis has the benefit of reducing process development time in recombinant protein production, directly from bench to bioreactor.

Resource enclavity and corporate social responsibility in Sub-Saharan Africa:the case of oil production in Ghana

Why has Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) yielded such disappointing outcomes in oil-rich sub-Saharan Africa? Over the past decades, a sizable body of literature has emerged which draws attention to the shortcomings of oil-related development and complementary CSR exercises in the region. Most critiques on the topic, however, assess specific interventions and/or policies but fail to evaluate the complex decision-making processes, dictated heavily by setting, which produce such actions altogether. This thesis attributes CSR outcomes in oil-rich sub-Saharan Africa to the unique context in which the decisions underpinning actions take place. In doing so, the analysis borrows ideas from a diverse body of literature spanning the international development, accounting, management and political science disciplines. To explore these ideas further, the thesis focuses on the case of Ghana. The most recent “addition” to sub-Saharan Africa’s oil club, Ghana provides a rare glimpse of how decisions underpinning CSR have been identified, evolved and reshaped from the outset. To provide a comprehensive picture of CSR in the sector and its impacts at the local level, interviews and focus groups were conducted with a range of stakeholder groups. As is the case throughout sub-Saharan Africa, in Ghana, oil production occurs in offshore “enclaves”, which are disconnected geographically from local communities. This thesis argues that these dynamics have important implications for CSR. Findings point to companies also being disconnected ideologically from local development needs, which, in part explains the questionable CSR that has become such a contentious issue in the debate on oil and development in sub-Saharan Africa in recent years. The enclave-type setting in which oil production occurs appears to have stifled creativity and innovation in the area of CSR. This, along with institutional weaknesses, regulatory deficiencies and the Government of Ghana’s failure to adequately respond to local-level concerns, has produced these outcomes.