This article looks at the Enron affair in terms of what investors and experts fail to take into account to being able to predict Enron collapse. The authors show how analysts could have predicted Enron's difficulties in view of the incoherence observed in its strategic decisions, from the...

The implementation of management control devices in the public sector is a very difficult challenge, especially if these devices come from private sector. Through two case studies, this paper analyses how two public organizations have implemented management control systems. We point out that...

We analyze the relationship between legal institutions, innovation and growth. We compare a rigid (law set ex-ante) legal system and a exible one (law set after observing current technology). The exible system dominates in terms of welfare, amount of innovation and output growth at intermediate...

Motivated by the consequences of firm’s defensive behavior, we test the impact of market regulation on R&D effort. Our estimates show that this impact is positive, namely on high technology industries. Besides the view of monopolistic profits as innovation rewards, these results can be...

Accounting for research and development (R&D) costs is an open issue. SFAS n°2 mandates that all R&D costs are immediately expensed. International standards prescribe a capitalization of R&D costs if they meet certain criteria (IAS 38). The cost method is perfectly objective and verifiable. The...

Collective processes of organizational knowledge creation remain poorly explored. Yet efficient knowledge management has to focus on those processes as far as it aims at dealing with sustaining knowledge development and sharing rather than solely sustaining its memorization. In this paper, we...