The music industry is squaring off in court against the dot-corns that allow music fans to download their favorite songs. Some say old copyright law can’t be applied to new and fast-changing technology. But so far, judges have had no trouble finding infringement.
John Gibeaut
U.S. District Judge Thomas Penfield Jackson (at right) was quickly thrust into the digital age when the Microsoft case landed before him. Jackson, it turns out, was a quick study. As more high-tech cases flood the courts, there are growing questions about whether other judges will fare as well.
Debra Baker
Some 3,000 immigrants are lost in the legal limbo known as indefinite detention. They don’t qualify for entry into this country, but there is nowhere else to send them. Critics blame the Immigration and Naturalization Service and a 1996 law for the catch-22. Some legislators say it’s time to revisit the issue.
Margaret Graham Tebo
Robert Brock’s lawsuit seeking reparations for slavery never got anywhere. Now the Washington, D.C., legal activist (at right) heads a group that lobbies for legislative redress. He and others make the legal case that African-Americans deserve damages for wrongs endured by their ancestors. Theirs is a growing movement that may be key to the nation’s search for racial harmony.
Jeffrey Ghannam
The 10-year-old Americans With Disabilities Act is suffering from growing pains. Court decisions have narrowed its reach and aided employers, who win most ADA discrimination cases. Now a U.S. Supreme Court case and legislative proposals could further limit the act. But activists like John Kemp (right) say don’t tamper with it.
Margaret Graham Tebo
The battle to curb urban sprawl has made lawyers’ lives more difficult. Now development deals involve a cast of players, including environmental groups, politicians from neighboring communities and zoning officials. Lawyers will have to master negotiating skills as well as become familiar with a dizzying array of land-use requirements.
William C. Smith
Just days before hostilities erupted in the Middle East, an ABA Journal reporter accompanied three Palestinian refugees across the Israeli border to visit their ancestral village. like the Abu Laban family (right), they seek a right to return home. International law is on the refugees* side, but it may be ignored at the bargaining table. Without resolution, the refugee camps will likely remain flash points for unrest.
Jeffrey Ghannam
There have been many approaches that have sought to identify the principles of best practice organizational management. The Horizontal Organization (HO) has been proposed as a method that draws on ideas from marketing, production, organizational behaviour and human resource management. It identifies specific value propositions with a customer-oriented focus and then develops process efficiency and continuous improvements, flattened structures with a team-based focus, human resource policies concerned with empowerment and a supportive and committed culture to help institutionalize change. The key distinguishing feature is to move away from traditional vertical, functional structures to lateral structures, processes and information to support the HO. This essay reviews three approaches, which when taken together, distil the key elements of the HO. These are Ostroff (1999). The horizontal organization, New York, Oxford University Press; Schonberger (1996). World class manufacturing: The Next decade, New York, The Free Press; and Galbraith (2005).Designing the customer-centric organization, a guide to strategy, structure, and process, San Francisco, Jossey-Bass. Of particular interest is how these authors envisage a role for management accounting in the design and application of the HO. The essay will review the essence of HO and critically examine the extent to which there have been complementary developments in management accounting, and how effective practice and research have been in developing a horizontal dimension to management accounting. It is concluded that innovations in management accounting, such as activity-based accounting and holistic performance measurement like balanced scorecards, have not had any significant affects on those developing ideas related to HO. Reasons why this is so are canvassed and areas where accounting innovations may provide valuable input to implementing the HO are discussed. Recent developments in management practices that elaborate on HO and implications for a horizontal dimension to accounting are examined.
Robert H. ChenhallaEmail:robert.chenhall@buseco.monash.edu.au
[a]Department of Accounting; Finance, Monash University, Clayon, Victoria, Australia
