Browsing by Author "Cordery, Carolyn Joy"

Now showing 1 - 7 of 7

Open Access
The Annual General Meeting as an Accountability Mechanism
(Te Herenga Waka—Victoria University of Wellington, 2005) Cordery, Carolyn Joy
This review of Annual General Meetings (AGMs) as they evolved historically in English parishes and early joint-stock companies shows the manner in which they provided valuable opportunities to fulfil organisational accountability. AGMs enabled members to call elected governors to account and, in generating forums for organisational construction, supplied models which were foundational in early company law. As face-to-face meetings, AGMs were heterogeneous and presented non-financial information to augment publicly available financial information. Whilst low attendance at AGMs indicates apathy and modern technological advances may enable their replacement, recent calls to revise the legal requirement for an AGM have not gained traction. This paper therefore suggests a recommitment to the process of AGM accountability as practised in early public sector and profit-oriented organisations. This will enable today’s organisations to utilise the potential of the AGM as a formal and transparent mechanism to deliver accountability.
Open Access
Charity Financial Reporting Regulation: a Comparison of the United Kingdom and Her Former Colony, New Zealand
(Te Herenga Waka—Victoria University of Wellington, 2005) Cordery, Carolyn Joy; Baskerville-Morley, Rachel F
Charities are becoming more highly regulated worldwide and yet they are subject to diverse, country-specific, financial reporting standards. New Zealand is a jurisdiction that has treated all sectors alike in its approach to the financial regulation of charities, whilst the United Kingdom has, for some time, separated the regulation of charities from other entities. This paper provides a comparison of the histories of the evolution of regulation for charity reporting in the United Kingdom and New Zealand. The current process of international harmonization in both jurisdictions is premised on the principle that accounting conceptual frameworks should not be jurisdiction-specific, but charities have proved to be an exception. We suggest in this study that this exception is attributed to different drivers resulting in regulatory distinctions in two otherwise similar jurisdictions. Without persisting in the maintenance of sector neutrality, the inevitable divergence increases the load on preparers, attesters, and users and may lead to lower levels of accountability and transparency.
Open Access
An Ethnographic Study of Annual General Meetings in Not-for-Profit Organisations
(Te Herenga Waka—Victoria University of Wellington, 2007) Cordery, Carolyn Joy; Baskerville, Rachel F
Purpose: Accountability has been described as an institutional social practice to encourage stewardship reflection and as such it is a process that can be observed and reported upon. This paper describes observations of an accountability event, the Annual General Meeting (AGM), which has been largely absent from the literature. The method and results of empirical research as to how accountability was discharged in not-for-profit AGMs is provided. Methodology/Approach: The research utilised a critical ethnographic methodology to explore community-specific accountability. Findings: Sensemaking was identified as an important function of the meeting and accountability processes. Further, accountability was enhanced when not-for-profit entities adhered to foundational rules, provided opportunities for sensemaking, and was seen to be characterised by organisational transparency. Research limitations: This was a pilot study undertaken to develop the observation and coding model. Future research would include expanding this tool into AGMs of other organisational types. Originality: AGMs are required of many organisations, but they have seldom been researched. This paper provides an insight into the characteristics of sensemaking within meeting behaviours, and insights into the role of governors and organisational members in the discharge of accountability.
Open Access
Hegemony, Stakeholder Salience and the Construction of Accountability in the Charity Sector
(Te Herenga Waka—Victoria University of Wellington, 2005) Cordery, Carolyn Joy; Baskerville, Rachel F
This research reviews the manner in which accountability may be better constructed in the Charities Sector with detailed stakeholder analysis. This combines the adoption of Hayes’ (1996) four types of accountability by charities with a hegemonic application of the Mitchell, Agle, and Wood (1997) model of stakeholder salience. In applying these tools to a particular transgression event, it is demonstrated that the lower salience of beneficiaries of a charitable activity in crisis is due to their lack of coercive power through a lack of knowledge. This study illustrates the dynamic, myriad and heterogeneous nature of stakeholders in the not-for-profit sector.
Open Access
Light-handed charity regulation: its effect on reporting practice in New Zealand
(Te Herenga Waka—Victoria University of Wellington, 2011) Cordery, Carolyn Joy
Internationally, there has been a steady increase in the number of countries instigating charity regulation. While the Charity Commission for England and Wales was established by the Charitable Trusts Acts of 1853, since 2005 the Office of the Scottish Charity Regulator, Charity Commission for Northern Ireland and the Singaporean Charity Council were established almost contemporaneously with New Zealand’s Charities Commission. In other countries (such as Canada and the United States) tax authorities register and monitor charitable activity leading to a perception that charities need regulation if the donating public's trust and confidence is to increase. Public interest theory suggests that regulation increases organisational transparency through reducing information asymmetry, protects (or encourages) a competitive market, leading to a distribution of resources which is in the public interest (Gaffikin, 2005). While these arguments are commonly used to call for regulation in the private (for profit) sphere, nonetheless they may explain the increase in the number of bodies regulating charities internationally. Notwithstanding a need for regulation, the cost of complying with these regimes is often an issue, especially for small and medium-sized charities and therefore regulator tend to take a light-handed approach to small and medium charities' information provision (for example, Hind, 2011; Morgan, 2010a). Responding to the call by Hyndman and McDonnell (2009) for research into charities regulation, its rationale and operation, this paper ascertains the impact of a light-handed enforcement regime on small and medium charities' reporting. In so doing, it analyses the General Purpose Financial Reporting (GPFR) practices of a selection of 300 small and medium-sized charities registered with the New Zealand Charities Commission against the Charities Act requirements and hence the rationale for this regulator. It uses this analysis to predict how the regulator's activities might impact future reporting practices of charities.
Open Access
Managers Matter: Who Manages New Zealand's Volunteers?
(Te Herenga Waka—Victoria University of Wellington, 2010) Smith, Karen; Dutton, Nicholas; Cordery, Carolyn Joy
In partnership with Volunteering New Zealand, Victoria University of Wellington undertook a nationwide survey of volunteer managers between December 2009 and February 2010. The research was funded by a Tindall Foundation grant. The online survey was open to anyone involved in the management of volunteers. Over 800 individuals participated from a diverse range of sectors and positions across New Zealand. To benchmark the New Zealand volunteer management profession, selected findings are compared to similar overseas studies, from Canada (Zarinpoush et al., 2004), the UK (Machin and Ellis Paine, 2008), and globally (People First - Total Solutions, 2008).
Open Access
Tax and volunteering: empirical evidence to support recommendations to solve the current problems surrounding the tax treatment of volunteers’ reimbursements and honoraria in New Zealand
(Te Herenga Waka—Victoria University of Wellington, 2008) Tan, Letisha; Dunbar, David; Cordery, Carolyn Joy
On I November 2007 the Minister of Finance and the Minister of Revenue asked for submissions on ways to simply the current law on the taxation of reimbursement and honoraria paid volunteers in the non-profit sector. A number of proposals were outlined in a Inland Revenue Department issues paper released on 1 November. This working paper presents the results of a survey of 1537 individuals and 224 organisations who replied to a web based questionnaire that was conducted in August and September 2007. The results have been used to support a number of recommendations towards simplification and clarification of current tax law.