Analyzing the performance of non-listed real estate funds: an panel data analysis

The rapid growth of non-listed real estate funds over the last several years has contributed towards establishing this sector as a major investment vehicle for gaining exposure to commercial real estate. Academic research has not kept up with this development, however, as there are still only a few published studies on non-listed real estate funds. This paper aims to identify the factors driving the total return over a seven-year period. Influential factors tested in our analysis include the weighted underlying direct property returns in each country and sector as well as fund size, investment style gearing and the distribution yield. Furthermore, we analyze the interaction of non-listed real estate funds with the performance of the overall economy and that of competing asset classes and found that lagged GDP growth and stock market returns as well as contemporaneous government bond rates are significant and positive predictors of annual fund performance.

Warfarin susceptibility in the lesser bandicoot rat (Bandicota bengalensis)

Warfarin is a first generation anticoagulant that relies on multiple feeding events to achieve lethality in susceptible rodents. For the Bandicoot rat, warfarin susceptibility baselines were established using the lethal feeding period (LFP) test methodology. Against a 0.003% warfarin formulation, LFP50 values of 2 and 4 days, and LFP99 values of 16 and 10 days were obtained for males and females respectively. However, consumption of rodenticide was significantly reduced after the 4th and 5th days of test, at a time when animals would be expected to experience symptoms of warfarin toxicity. This would seriously compromise the Probit analysis, particularly for estimates of higher percentiles. Possible modifications to the methodology are discussed to overcome this problem. Although the majority of animals were highly susceptible to warfarin, one female animal that survived a high dose of active ingredient (79.1 mg kg-1) may bode for future resistance

Genotypic variation in photosynthetic and leaf traits in cocoa

The photosynthetic characteristics of eight contrasting cocoa genotypes were studied with the aim of examining genotypic variation in maximum (light-saturated) photosynthetic rates, light-response curve parameters and water use efficiency. Photosynthetic traits were derived from single leaf gas exchange measurements using a portable infra-red gas analyser. All measurements were conducted in a common greenhouse environment. Significant variation was observed in light-saturated photosynthesis ranging from 3.4 to 5.7 µmol CO2 m-2 s-1 for the clones IMC 47 and SCA 6, respectively. Furthermore, analyses of photosynthetic light response curves indicated genotypic differences in light saturation point and quantum efficiency (i.e. the efficiency of light use). Stomatal conductance was a significant factor underlying genotypic differences in assimilation. Genotypic variation was also observed in a number of leaf traits, including specific leaf area (the ratio of leaf area to leaf weight), chlorophyll concentration and nitrogen content. There was a positive correlation between leaf nitrogen per unit area and light-saturated photosynthesis. Water use efficiency, defined as the ratio of photosynthetic rate to transpiration rate, also varied significantly between clones (ranging from 3.1 mmol mol-1 H2O for the clone IMC 47 to 4.2 mmol mol-1 H2O for the clone ICS 1). Water use efficiency was a negative function of specific leaf area, suggesting that low specific leaf area might be a useful criterion for selection for increased water use efficiency. It is concluded that both variation in water use efficiency and the photosynthetic response to light have the potential to be exploited in breeding programmes.

Where Does All the Knowledge Go in Small Knowledge-intensive Professional Service Firms?

Small knowledge-intensive professional service firms are becoming increasingly important agents of innovation in construction. There is thus an urgent need to better understand the nature and process of innovation in such firms. First, this paper presents a review of the relevant literature. It is concluded that this literature is often not appropriate for SKIPSFs, as it neglects the critical role of knowledge and knowledge workers in innovation within SKIPSFs. Second, a knowledge-based innovation model is presented as a holistic, system-oriented framework to better investigate how the SKIPSFs create, manage and exploit innovation. This model is to be tested with case study research.

Performance drivers of UK unlisted property funds

An unlisted property fund is a private investment vehicle which aims to provide direct property total returns and may also employ financial leverage which will accentuate performance. They have become a far more prevalent institutional property investment conduit since the early 2000’s. Investors have been primarily attracted to them due to the ease of executing a property exposure, both domestically and internationally, and for their diversification benefits given the capital intensive nature of constructing a well diversified commercial property investment portfolio. However, despite their greater prominence there has been little academic research conducted on the performance and risks of unlisted property fund investments. This can be attributed to a paucity of available data and limited time series where it exists. In this study we have made use of a unique dataset of institutional UK unlisted non-listed property funds over the period 2003Q4 to 2011Q4, using a panel modelling framework in order to determine the key factors which impact on fund performance. The sample provided a rich set of unlisted property fund factors including market exposures, direct property characteristics and the level of financial leverage employed. The findings from the panel regression analysis show that a small number of variables are able to account for the performance of unlisted property funds. These variables should be considered by investors when assessing the risk and return of these vehicles. The impact of financial leverage upon the performance of these vehicles through the recent global financial crisis and subsequent UK commercial property market downturn was also studied. The findings indicate a significant asymmetric effect of employing debt finance within unlisted property funds.

Fair trade and European public procurement: legal principles and governance dynamics

Purpose The article examines principles of Fair Trade in public procurement in Europe, focusing on legal dimensions related to the European Public Procurement Directives. Design/methodology/approach The article situates public procurement of Fair Trade products in relation to the rise of non-state regulatory initiatives, highlighting how they have entered into new governance dynamics in the public sector and play a part in changing practices in sustainable procurement. A review of legal position on Fair Trade in procurement law is informed by academic research and campaigning experience from the Fair Trade Advocacy Office. Findings Key findings are that the introduction of Fair Trade products into European public procurement has been marked by legal ambiguity, having developed outside comprehensive policy or legal guidelines. Following a 2012 ruling by the Court of Justice of the European Union, it is suggested that the legal position for Fair Trade in procurement has become clearer, and that forthcoming change to the Public Procurement Directives may facilitate the uptake of fair trade products by public authorities. However potential for future expansion of the public sector ‘market’ for Fair Trade is approached with caution: purchasing Fair Trade products as a marker of sustainability, which started to be embedded within procurement practice in the 2000s, is challenged by current European public austerity measures. Research limitations/implications Suggestions for future research include the need for systematic cross-institutional and multi-country comparison of the legal and governance dimensions of procurement practice with regard to Fair Trade. Practical implications A clarification of current state-of-play with regard to legal aspects of fair trade in public procurement of utility for policy and advocacy discussion. Originality/value The article provides needed elaboration on an under researched topic area of value to academia and policy makers.

Proceedings of the inaugural construction management and economics ‘Past, Present and Future’ conference CME25, 16-18 July 2007, University of Reading, UK

This conference was an unusual and interesting event. Celebrating 25 years of Construction Management and Economics provides us with an opportunity to reflect on the research that has been reported over the years, to consider where we are now, and to think about the future of academic research in this area. Hence the sub-title of this conference: “past, present and future”. Looking through these papers, some things are clear. First, the range of topics considered interesting has expanded hugely since the journal was first published. Second, the research methods are also more diverse. Third, the involvement of wider groups of stakeholder is evident. There is a danger that this might lead to dilution of the field. But my instinct has always been to argue against the notion that Construction Management and Economics represents a discipline, as such. Granted, there are plenty of university departments around the world that would justify the idea of a discipline. But the vast majority of academic departments who contribute to the life of this journal carry different names to this. Indeed, the range and breadth of methodological approaches to the research reported in Construction Management and Economics indicates that there are several different academic disciplines being brought to bear on the construction sector. Some papers are based on economics, some on psychology and others on operational research, sociology, law, statistics, information technology, and so on. This is why I maintain that construction management is not an academic discipline, but a field of study to which a range of academic disciplines are applied. This may be why it is so interesting to be involved in this journal. The problems to which the papers are applied develop and grow. But the broad topics of the earliest papers in the journal are still relevant today. What has changed a lot is our interpretation of the problems that confront the construction sector all over the world, and the methodological approaches to resolving them. There is a constant difficulty in dealing with topics as inherently practical as these. While the demands of the academic world are driven by the need for the rigorous application of sound methods, the demands of the practical world are quite different. It can be difficult to meet the needs of both sets of stakeholders at the same time. However, increasing numbers of postgraduate courses in our area result in larger numbers of practitioners with a deeper appreciation of what research is all about, and how to interpret and apply the lessons from research. It also seems that there are contributions coming not just from construction-related university departments, but also from departments with identifiable methodological traditions of their own. I like to think that our authors can publish in journals beyond the construction-related areas, to disseminate their theoretical insights into other disciplines, and to contribute to the strength of this journal by citing our articles in more mono-disciplinary journals. This would contribute to the future of the journal in a very strong and developmental way. The greatest danger we face is in excessive self-citation, i.e. referring only to sources within the CM&E literature or, worse, referring only to other articles in the same journal. The only way to ensure a strong and influential position for journals and university departments like ours is to be sure that our work is informing other academic disciplines. This is what I would see as the future, our logical next step. If, as a community of researchers, we are not producing papers that challenge and inform the fundamentals of research methods and analytical processes, then no matter how practically relevant our output is to the industry, it will remain derivative and secondary, based on the methodological insights of others. The balancing act between methodological rigour and practical relevance is a difficult one, but not, of course, a balance that has to be struck in every single paper.

Private climate change reporting: an emerging discourse of risk and opportunity?

Purpose – This paper aims to explore the nature of the emerging discourse of private climate change reporting, which takes place in one-on-one meetings between institutional investors and their investee companies. Design/methodology/approach – Semi-structured interviews were conducted with representatives from 20 UK investment institutions to derive data which was then coded and analysed, in order to derive a picture of the emerging discourse of private climate change reporting, using an interpretive methodological approach, in addition to explorative analysis using NVivo software. Findings – The authors find that private climate change reporting is dominated by a discourse of risk and risk management. This emerging risk discourse derives from institutional investors' belief that climate change represents a material risk, that it is the most salient sustainability issue, and that their clients require them to manage climate change-related risk within their portfolio investment. It is found that institutional investors are using the private reporting process to compensate for the acknowledged inadequacies of public climate change reporting. Contrary to evidence indicating corporate capture of public sustainability reporting, these findings suggest that the emerging private climate change reporting discourse is being captured by the institutional investment community. There is also evidence of an emerging discourse of opportunity in private climate change reporting as the institutional investors are increasingly aware of a range of ways in which climate change presents material opportunities for their investee companies to exploit. Lastly, the authors find an absence of any ethical discourse, such that private climate change reporting reinforces rather than challenges the “business case” status quo. Originality/value – Although there is a wealth of sustainability reporting research, there is no academic research on private climate change reporting. This paper attempts to fill this gap by providing rich interview evidence regarding the nature of the emerging private climate change reporting discourse.

Are informed citizens more trusting? Transparency of performance data and trust towards a British police force

In Britain, substantial cuts in police budgets alongside controversial handling of incidents such as politically sensitive enquiries, public disorder and relations with the media have recently triggered much debate about public knowledge and trust in the police. To date, however, little academic research has investigated how knowledge of police performance impacts citizens’ trust. We address this long-standing lacuna by exploring citizens’ trust before and after exposure to real performance data in the context of a British police force. The results reveal that being informed of performance data affects citizens’ trust significantly. Furthermore, direction and degree of change in trust are related to variations across the different elements of the reported performance criteria. Interestingly, the volatility of citizens’ trust is related to initial performance perceptions (such that citizens with low initial perceptions of police performance react more significantly to evidence of both good and bad performance than citizens with high initial perceptions), and citizens’ intentions to support the police do not always correlate with their cognitive and affective trust towards the police. In discussing our findings, we explore the implications of how being transparent with performance data can both hinder and be helpful in developing citizens’ trust towards a public organisation such as the police. From our study, we pose a number of ethical challenges that practitioners face when deciding what data to highlight, to whom, and for what purpose.

Private climate change reporting: a discourse of risk and opportunity

Purpose – This paper aims to explore the nature of the emerging discourse of private climate change reporting, which takes place in one-on-one meetings between institutional investors and their investee companies. Design/methodology/approach – Semi-structured interviews were conducted with representatives from 20 UK investment institutions to derive data which was then coded and analysed, in order to derive a picture of the emerging discourse of private climate change reporting, using an interpretive methodological approach, in addition to explorative analysis using NVivo software. Findings – The authors find that private climate change reporting is dominated by a discourse of risk and risk management. This emerging risk discourse derives from institutional investors' belief that climate change represents a material risk, that it is the most salient sustainability issue, and that their clients require them to manage climate change-related risk within their portfolio investment. It is found that institutional investors are using the private reporting process to compensate for the acknowledged inadequacies of public climate change reporting. Contrary to evidence indicating corporate capture of public sustainability reporting, these findings suggest that the emerging private climate change reporting discourse is being captured by the institutional investment community. There is also evidence of an emerging discourse of opportunity in private climate change reporting as the institutional investors are increasingly aware of a range of ways in which climate change presents material opportunities for their investee companies to exploit. Lastly, the authors find an absence of any ethical discourse, such that private climate change reporting reinforces rather than challenges the “business case” status quo. Originality/value – Although there is a wealth of sustainability reporting research, there is no academic research on private climate change reporting. This paper attempts to fill this gap by providing rich interview evidence regarding the nature of the emerging private climate change reporting discourse.

Site-specific and geographical segmental social, environmental and ethical disclosures by the Ghanaian mining sector

Purpose: This paper explores the extent of site-specific and geographic segmental social, environmental and ethical reporting by mining companies operating in Ghana. We aim to: (i) establish a picture of corporate transparency relating to geographic segmentation of social, environmental and ethical reporting which is specific to operating sites and country of operation, and; (ii) gauge the impact of the introduction of integrated reporting on site-specific social, environmental and ethical reporting. Methodology/Approach: We conducted an interpretive content analysis of the annual/integrated reports of mining companies for the years 2009, 2010 and 2011 in order to extract site-specific social, environmental and ethical information relating to the companies’ mining operations in Ghana. Findings and Implications: We found that site-specific social, environmental and ethical reporting is extremely patchy and inconsistent between the companies’ reports studied. We also found that there was no information relating to certain sites, which were in operation, according to the Ghana Minerals Commission. This could simply be because operations were not in progress. Alternatively it could be that decisions are made concerning which site-specific information is reported according to a certain benchmark. One policy implication arising from this research is that IFRS should require geographic segmental reporting of material social, environmental and ethical information in order to bring IFRS into line with global developments in integrated reporting. Originality: Although there is a wealth of sustainability reporting research and an emergent literature on integrated reporting, there is currently no academic research exploring site-specific social, environmental and ethical reporting

Knowledge process outsourcing in financial services: The vendor perspective

This research reports the findings from a study on nine knowledge process outsourcing (KPO) vendors working in the financial services industry. It delineates financial business processes along a low to high-end continuum. Findings suggest that KPO vendors are gradually moving along the value pathway offering more complex intellectual value activity based products and services to clients. However, they face many challenges including gaining the confidence of potential clients about outsourcing knowledge-intensive work, and finding effective solutions to mitigate outsourcing risk. Our paper concludes by developing a taxonomy of KPO scenarios to provide a backdrop for further academic research and to illustrate current practice.

When bookkeepers become beekeepers: why bee accountability

Accounting for biodiversity has received increasing attention from the academic accounting community in recent years. Despite a stream of research investigating the quality and quantity of biodiversity reporting in general, no academic research has focused on reporting related to one specific species. This paper explores the quality and quantity of corporate disclosures relating to bees. Society is becoming increasingly concerned about the accelerating fall in bee populations around the world. Colony Collapse Disorder has been spreading through global bee populations since 2006, decimating commercial hives. Concerns are fuelled by fears that pollinators may become extinct which would have dire consequences for the majority of world food production, leaving human pollination, at immense cost, the only alternative. On the basis of these fears, companies as well as other organisations, have started to establish programmes aimed at rejuvenating global bee populations. In this paper we explore the bee-related disclosures provided by a large selection of UK listed companies. We assess the extent to which companies believe they have a role to play in enhancing and protecting bee populations. Further we consider whether corporate accountability in this area derives solely from a business case or whether there is a deeper societal connection with bees as a species which is encouraging companies to protect their survival. The paper investigates the historical and philosophical connection between bees and human beings, for example the ways industrial production has been likened to honey production. We draw parallels between bees and human industrial organisation as well as between the role and responsibilities of the bookkeeper and the beekeeper.

Spanish as a World Language: The Interplay of Globalized Localization and Localized Globalization.

This article argues that two movements in constant interplay operate within the historical trajectory of the Spanish language: the localization that becomes globalized and the globalization that becomes localized. Equally, this article illustrates how, at the same time that Spanish is expanding in the world, new idiosyncratic and localized forms of the language are emerging. This article deals with the issues of standardization and language ideology, language contact, and redefinition of identities. The article focuses on three geographic loci: Spain, where Spanish opposes Catalan, Basque, and Galician; the United States, where migrants' Spanish dialects converge and confront English and each other; and finally, Latin America, where Spanish is in contact with Portuguese, indigenous, and Afro-Hispanic languages. The concepts that structure the discussion explain both language expansion and contraction as well as the conflict and constant negotiation between a language's standardized forms and its regional and social varieties.