STRATEGIC MANAGEMENT ACCOUNTING LITERATURE

STRATEGIC MANAGEMENT ACCOUNTING LITERATURE

Strategic management is explained as wide variety, outward and futuristic approach which will also try to cope with latest internal issues in the organization and might also comprise of non-financial measures. It is a possibility that strategic management accounting ideas has been developed as a way to answer the popular discussion, ‘crisis’, of management accounting. Strategic management accounting has been defined as the preparation and evaluation of the financial information and its affect on the company’s product markets and the cost structures and competitors’ cost and examining the company’s and its competitors’ strategies in the market over a time period.


This sort of strategic cost analysis i.e. profit or/and revenue, has been suggested by a number of experts. Porter, despite having a non-accounting scientific background, should be considered as one of the major contribution in this field. Some of the main development issues include, life cycle costing, target costing, activity based cost and balanced business scorecard and these issues can carry potential of strategic kind, strategic investment appraisals, different product and competitor and customer evaluation.


Normative ideas are not the only similarity between management account and strategic accounting. In management accounting, promoting different perspectives in reporting as well as synchronizing complexity are equally important in the global competition. A main characteristic of management accounting of the international companies is the global value chain. Strategic management and management accounting are a part of similar control and management processes (for example, short and long term planning of profit in the preparation of budget). Strategic managements is fit for strategic level and management accounting is best handled at the tactical level however the relationship is not as simple as is implied by the classical planning model. Apart from controlling current strategies, management control systems, if used interactively, can also be used to establish new strategies. Additionally the process of budgeting is strategic by calculating and assessing strategic plans; accounting has a huge influence of the firm’s utilization capacity as it is an instrument for implementing and motivating or promoting values in the organization.



Traditionally, management accounting and strategic planning have been thought of as different parts of the management process as strategy is external and management accounting is internal for a firm. Management accounting is historic, calculable and short term whereas strategy is futuristic, qualitative and long term oriented. Management accounting splits company into different department whereas strategy looks into the whole firm and value chain and creates synergy therefore the disciplines for developing strategic management accounting can largely be found here: it should have these characteristics, should be futuristic, focus external issues as well as total value chain and should be long term oriented and include non-financial measures. Next, the outline of strategic management accounting will be examined issue by issue in a manner of theoretical literature review.
THE AGENDA OF STRATEGIC MANAGEMENT ACCOUNTING

The activity based costing (ABC) endorsed by Cooper and Kaplan has collected most of the exposure of the strategic oriented management accounting advancements. Given that ABC has developed into general management process that is called activity based cost management (ABCM or ABM). The spirit of ABM cannot be found in just the costing but the whole process of cost management. ABC has also encouraged porter’s value chain thinking regardless of their conceptual differences.

The ABC can be also be used in analyzing and reconfiguration of the company’s value chain and the famous business process management also theoretically suits well the ABC. The potential for more precise product information is the first place where strategic significance of the activity based cost management can be found which may facilitate in leading towards better pricing, product mix decisions and profitability secondly it may also be functional in customer and profitability analysis with respect to its segments. Thirdly central strategic essentials of the ABCM are a close association among the reengineering of the value chain, activity chain or the process of the firm. This idea can be put forward that this kind of strategic benefits and momentum of change from activity based approach can be increased well through the preliminary activity analysis phase and for this utilization of any scheduled activity based costing is not required.

The supporters of the practice of strategic cost analysis or management were Shank and Govindrajan that put down the porter’s suggestion. With their accordance SCM involves three major steps that are identification of value chain, the diagnosis if its cost drivers and development of sustainable competitive advantage. These three steps are connected to the broader strategic cost management that is fretful with the value chain. The relationship of group of activities that create value and extended from raw materials to the finished products and their availability to consumers is called the value chain.

In SCM there are so many strategic issues for instance, the management accountant’s bad education and also the managements’ lack of knowledge make them reluctant to use management accounting information and people, impractical informational requirements, load of the schedule reporting needs and finally the overhead nature of the management accounting function has proved to be the barrier in the advancement of strategic management accounting.


It has also asked to the accounting managers whether they should have involvement in generating the strategic information at all or it should only be tackled by the other functions in an appropriate way enough? The company is required to recognize the place of their supporters in the total value chain and bring development in the management accounting information with respect to their advocates. The importance is given to the interaction with supplier and customer association. The most wide ranging single framework for strategic management information has been perhaps created by shank and Govindrajan. Although the confirmed experimental significance has been so far quite narrow and very little accounting data has been evaluated by the value chain.
Japan has also come up with the major contribution to SMA in the form of target costing(TC) and this need to be look as a brad idea not just a method to set target costs. This could be seen as a method to put together and organize the corporate activities which flows the information in a flexible manner among the market and market research, product research and design, production and accounting. With this they are intensely linked into the strategic planning and management progressions. The target costing process divide into three main activities that are future pricing protuberance, profit forecast and developing experience.


The TC process is divided into price driven costing, product level target costing and component level target costing. Target costs in practical world are practiced in product planning phase during value engineering and when the product is in the production phase it is achieved through continuous improvement. T cost management is one of the disciplines of strategic management accounting and its uniqueness is defined through culture bounded ness. The attributes which are to be mentioned are its customer oriented background, cross functional orientation and importance of organizational learning and the Japanese method of carrying it out systematically. Motivation and achievements are emphasized and cannot be just control activities.



A tool of strategic analysis is life cycle thinking and its application is being done in management accounting in the form of life cycle cost analysis. Product life cycle has not got a time frame defined and its activities are carried from the starting point which is initial research and development to the ending point where sales and support to costumers are provided, on the other hand in accounting a fixed time frame is used which is usually calendar based. The Product life cycle costing (PLCC) monitors all the costs which are associated to the product from the initial development and research to the customer services which are provided to the consumer and this is also used for life cycle budgeting which estimates those costs. Pricing decision can be made on the basis of information and data provided by Life cycle accounting budgeting, furthermore it helps in knowing all the costs which are estimated or accounted in different facets of life cycle. Without question it points out all the early, usual costs commitments and makes easier to find out the connections between value chain and the product life cycle.
Also, competitive advantage and strategic positioning are related ideas and utilizing these has necessitated management accounting information of strategic level for the companies themselves and also for their competitors. This type of information is also required to find out about the share in the market and competitors’ pricing, volume, and cost issues. It has also been suggested that this information should be incorporated in the reports on management accounting. Over the years various researchers have suggested different forms of competitor accounting. The information on competitors is obtained through openly available sources like press, annual reports, statistics and official institutions, in addition to informal sources such as sales persons and other customers, business functions, other suppliers and competitors, analyzing products of competitors or other shared financial sources, physical observation, consultants, industry specialists, trade centers, old employees belonging to competitors, etc. However, some have questioned the reliability of competitor accounting.
A much broader theory of benchmarking is very similar to competitor accounting, however, it usually relies on cooperation between organizations. Competitor accounting may also be defined as a particular form of strategic level benchmarking based on accounting, in which the cooperation with the entity of this comparison activity is not included.
A very important consideration for the companies in successful launch of new products in the markets is the right time with the right price and rational profit margin. The decisions dealing with new products are a crucial part of long term strategies and plans. Accounting has generally supported product mix and pricing decisions in the perspective of product strategies and it is considered as a relevant approach in full costing. Therefore, analysis of product life cycle, costing based on activity and target costing are very helpful approaches in this situation. Additionally, some researchers have suggested another product called attribute costing. All of the activities by a company and all of the utilized resources should provide advantage to the customers for which they are prepared to pay in this approach. Therefore, the company should try to find the costs related to enterprise resources and activities to these advantages and not simply to products as followed by traditional approach, with the purpose of comparing the profits generated by these advantages with their costs. As a result, each product may be seen as a package of features being offered to the consumer for which the customer is ready to pay. Derived demands are demands of goods for their fundamental features. The importance used in this type of analysis is based on the strategic approach by the company. The costs were categorised into activity, product-volume, capacity and costs related to decision, whereas the benefits were divided into outlet, product and other benefits in the research.
The concept of pricing based on value also employs very similar thinking as it is also based on the benefits obtained by the consumer in utilising the product in a special way. This technique is primarily used in business-to-business marketing and watchful analysis of the benefits to the consumer is required in this approach. This is because of the reason that different consumers or segments could assess the benefits in a various ways. Also, different compositions of the product can produce varying benefits. Some researchers have segregated the value based pricing into four different phases which are: understanding the total use condition of the customer, define and analyze the factors that decide the benefits to the customer in this use, define and analyze the factors that decide the costs of the customer in use of this product and lastly determine the tradeoffs in cost/benefit in use by the customer.
Inside strategic positioning, one of the crucial issues is the selection of targeted customers. The customers can be classified into various segments for instance by their geographical locations, by the services supplied or the by the channel of distribution carried. Activity-based costing can be utilized successfully for analyzing sales and other overheads including administration as compared to traditional cost accounting methods. Traditional methodology advocates the allocation of all the cost are into customers and the total cost of a firm equates the aggregated sum of customer costs. Hierarchical activity-based costing is another approach to divide the activities into different dimensions such as market, customer, channel, enterprises, parts and orders. Whereas, profitability and costs related to direct-material could be classified into market and aggregate profitability, channel, contribution of segment or customer profitability and gross margin.
Customer focus, quality, learning, innovation, time and education are the crucial success variables on which success and competitiveness of the company depends because management accounting and financial aspect is just one part of management control and management control system respectively.
Activities of a business show results usually due to financial measures rather than activities. The employment regarding nonfinancial measures in performance management and control has been the part of discussion in recent time and it is expected to draw sound measurement results of processes and business activities which could be developed and controlled in a better way. Customer satisfaction, manufacturing excellence, quality, on time deliveries, technology, marketplace leadership etc are important success factors for implementing such actions. Applied strategies and performances are linked together by concrete measures and they are defined accordingly and their connection has been beneficial for non financial measures. Financial measures and non-financial measures posses contradictions in results and on comparison basis, their implications are considered as negative.
The performance measures of financial and non-financial measures are brought together by a special balanced scorecard .similar thoughts have brought earlier under the title of “tableu de board” in France suggesting the idea regarding control panel .Later Performance Pyramid System was introduced and developed which utilizes ideas similar to the former system. Balanced scorecard uses operative and physical measures out of four areas such as customer, internal, innovation and financial which are now removed from corporate strategies and vision.
However, balanced score card is viewed as organized approach for performance measurement of firm and provides rationale for the satisfaction of its financial need. In the long run, customer’s need should be satisfied along with such organization with the help of sound value chain. Also, the non-financial measures indicate strategic and operational changes and appraised benefits and costs include the linkage between management, strategy, non-financial measures and accounting.
Evident links could be found between strategies, management accounting and capital budgeting decisions which have quite an impact on the company’s long term performance. Net present value which is derived from the discounted cash flows, are a reliable measure to determine and evaluate the method of capital investments. According to this, a company should invest in any venture that gives a positive return and net present value. However the link between the applied strategy and capital budget is very important. It also has a limited impact in the traditional budgeting literature. Certain issues may come up where investment is justified by the DCF method and measured by accounting methods later. Investment areas such as manufacturing technology needs very careful management and conceiving because the drawbacks of such an investment can be hard to predict and calculate later on. Thus, strategic management accounting agenda can be linked to show an insight of the customers, markets, future products and capital investment decisions.


The Western firms are blamed for causing a fall in the global competition because they are late in adopting modern manufacturing technologies. One reason why this is so is because of the lack of usage of investment appraisal methods as described above. It is suggested to carefully analyze the results of the possible advantages of the investments before actually carrying them out. The technological decisions have been connected to the strategic analysis of investments and it is preferable to carry out extra cautious appraisal methods, along with the monetary and non monetary evaluation of the judgment. The benefits that cannot easily be analyzed statistically were also analyzed by some managers. Strategic positioning and cost driver analysis are also two types of appraisal methods to help in the process of investment appraisal. A systematic formal analysis has been deviced for investment decisions which links the different aspects of strategic management accounting. Under this analysis are three other aspects as well. Those being market & competitor analysis, value chain analysis and cost driver analysis. Time still remains one of the key factors affecting investment decisions and this has been analyzed by the break even time analysis (BET). This analysis covers some of the ideas from that of DCF, payback period and life cycle analysis. Studies have also been conducted on how to achieve alignment between individual unit strategies and the corporate strategies by the management control systems.

CONTINGENCY AND SUBJESTIVIST APPROACHES TO STRATEGY
AND MANAGEMENT ACCOUNTING


Contingency and subjectivist approaches have also been taken up to study strategic management from a different perspective, along with the other analytical and usual approaches which have been used before. The contingency theory can also be classifies as a normal approach but it cans still be considered as different from SMA, which focuses more on the strategic decision making, Studies that are associated with the contingency approach focus on evaluating and describing the process of the accounting systems, how they should be built so as to be aligned with the decision making process. While studying the meaning of management accounting in the process of decision making, for instance, it is said that the management uses more of a qualitative, general, oral and an extrinsic approach to derive the issues that come up as well as the quantitative and in depth information in the process of implementation.


The control mechanisms are greatly affected by the intense competition that is there. The rapid and steady changes that occur in the environment encourage frequent future reporting. The growing complexity of the organization also leads to expanding the accounting system though the addition of new components, while the environment any discontinuities in the environment would call for a changed and new method of accounting. There has also been research conducted on the links between various strategies and measures to determine the incentive plans. Long run subjective measures were considered to be appropriate to devise strategies and the short term statistical measures were used to harvest the strategies. To build the strategy, budgeting is useful to plan for the short run but not for purposes of surveillance control. The managers of the unit play a vital role to prepare and review the budgets. The strategic planning is also an important aspect due to the conditions that depend on the growth conditions of uncertainty. Lastly, the decisions of capital budgeting are dependent on the qualitative and subjective issues. The harvest mission and management control attributes were compared to get a result which showed contrast between them.


Link between the factors such as differentiation and cost leadership of Porters generic strategies and the OST management were highlighted. In this, the methods of cost accounting such as standard costing and costing of the product was linked to the cost leadership and marketing cost analysis and other issues that can be related to this differentiation. There were certain connections and relationships highlighted between the various archetypes and these were linked to their respective control of management. The estimated information, the determination of strategic planning, scheduled and usual budget revisions were all normal for prosecutors and other archetypes and the control of the cost and the oriented planning techniques for the opposite archetype. Different styles of strategic management of huge firms were devised along with strategic planning, control of the finances, strategic control style, which was also responsible for a huge impact of the management control system present in the archetypes.



The literature of strategic management literature is composed of the normative and technical strategy analysis data. Hence it is quite mechanical and objectivist by nature. In this way, the interpretative and incremental strategy perspective can be seen with a more detailed insight and can actually add to the understanding of strategic management accounting. Certain studies have been conducted to evaluate the extent of usefulness of this system. In the theories that take a subjective approach, accounting is used for the purpose of strategy implementation, in instances such as coal mining or where the attention is to be directed towards the strategically related issues or to offer language and help for permission when negotiations take place in firms. Considering this view, it can be argue that strategic management account could help stabilize the learning in organization and the change procedures that promote the value through the various languages offered.







THEORETICAL CONCLUSIONS
There are certain avenues and fields which have a significant position in the strategic management accounting literature. Some of these are value chain, cost driver and product attribute analysis, target cost management, balanced scorecard, competitor accounting and strategic investment appraisal. Studies have shown that there is proof about the increasing company adoptions of strategies such as activity-based cost management, target cost management and customer profitability analysis. Methods such as implementation of competitor accounting, strategic investment appraisal, value chain, cost driver and product attribute analysis and life cycle accounting are said to come across a lot of problems because they are generally different from the practices and systems already present.

The profitability of consumer analysis and ABC appear to be closely linked to the practices of management of traditional accounting and these practices could be easily applied in both technical and psychological way. On the other hand if balanced score is compared with the profitability analysis, this might need more changes to respond to the modern traditional customs related to management, thinking, accounting etc. the reason behind this are certain aspects other than finance. Some of the organizations might have previously involved in collecting the information that is required for balanced score card. Therefore from the accountant’s perspective this might be an obvious question of collecting the data and then reporting it



In respect to the literature review that was conducted, we could say that the strategy of management accounting is entirely different from nature. It rather includes various different avenues. Sometimes these avenues are very close leading to overlapping. In 70’s and 80’s the strategic decisions that were taken mainly relied on the literature of the strategies of management accounting. From a particular perspective this was strongly criticized. Another reason behind this was variations in competitive environment.



The nature of decision making and management is very complex, thus, management accounting which supports accounting of strategic management could be framed to have a more realistic view not to mention that the complexity of the nature has to be taken into consideration. Strategic management actually includes planning and it involves uncertainty as well as act as hindrance in achieving objectives, in this case the rational factor would be the actions that are taken by the organization or the individuals all the relevant and appropriate information is not provided to the people who are responsible for decision making. The information is either abrupt or not presented in a suitable manner. Other concepts have been gradually given importance such as values, objectives, commitment of individuals etc. all of these are given consideration and relative importance in literature of strategic management. As mentioned earlier the force of this strategy is indirectly related to the nature. The effects of strategic management can be noticed such as shared values, promotion or stopping of strategies, in creation and other intended as well as unintended issues. A change in the factor of contingency could guide the practitioners of accounting management and academics to the importance of seeking as well as attractive developments. It is noticed that to change the systems that are institutionalized are very difficult. Such as change in the accounting systems of particular organization. Reasons might be economical of how to change system in a different way. The external factors also influence the organization through anticipated or unanticipated processes

CASE FINDINGS AND INTERPRETATIONS
ENVIRONMENT, STRATEGIC MANAGEMENT, CULTURE, MANAGEMENT
PHILOSOPHIES AND ORGANIZATIONAL ARRANGEMENTS
After the late 90’s the industries expanded widely leading to many challenges as well as opportunities. The industry got a chance to get restricted. With the help of deregulation, a new environment was created and advance technologies and services entered the industry. The need for Target Company then emerged and its competitors would not only be involved in supplying products for current customers but for the potential customers. The suppliers are to supply the entire systems along with the services. This successful strategy has led to higher growth, increasing profitability but at the same time uncertainty. Growth would not only mean increase in the sales but globalization world wide and international marketing along with high productivity, investment in research and development etc. this type of growth will lead to further strong challenges for practices as well as control systems. This site would be thus operating under high uncertainty which would lead to great institutional isomorphism.
Nonetheless, engineers were differentiate as precise people and number oriented, a subject thought to be a fine thing meant for accounting, which makes desired precise calculations with the intention of generating order in doubtful world of target company. Innovative traditions of responding were usually permissible and promoted in accounting and as well in the customs of target company. With respect to planning issues the firm was thought to be exemplary and imaginative. A very main attribute of target company was cross functional teamwork. It is endorsed by management, matrix organization structure and character of the business also makes it a necessity.
The company under discussion stressed a lot on both cost strategies and differentiation, although there is a much governing role of differentiation. Thus the study showed that case site was based on differentiation strategy, however it was trying to increase its operational competence concurrently. By concentrating, the company was reformed into its core competitors and was using these core competencies as a base to build the infra structure of a global organization and hence it could be perceive as containing a global organization. Although new developments and leadership based on modern technology are the bases of accomplishment but customer's voice is a very importance and vital factor. In this regard the strategy resembles so as to the plan of prospector. The target firm can easily be classified into build strategy. Thinking of Global core competence makes one realize the increasing significance of interconnected business rather than that of solitary units. This stress can be appreciated in various sections of this paper. There is a vast and clear system of annual planning which includes budgeting, and strategic planning in target company. The managing practice can be global organization epitomes and strategic planning. Planning is done with extensive participation and obligation to the plan is sturdily accentuated, which rings a bell to strongly ethnicity or crescive reproduction, differentiation and prospector prototypes.

Target company was distinguish as a corporation with engineer’s culture. The latest bunch in the cooperation consists of Engineers. Thus, production, products and the technology have conventionally been measured as very significant in target company, on the other hand the financial and commercial factors have played negligible parts. Nonetheless, engineers were differentiate as precise people and number oriented, a subject thought to be a fine thing meant for accounting, which makes desired precise calculations with the intention of generating order in doubtful world of target company. Innovative traditions of responding were usually permissible and promoted in accounting and as well in the customs of target company. With respect to planning issues the firm was thought to be exemplary and imaginative. A very main attribute of target company was cross functional teamwork. It is endorsed by management, matrix organization structure and character of the business also makes it a necessity.


In target company, suggestions of process management, continuous improvement and complete quality management, customer focus and value management were applied. As a result, the business culture of target company has the back of an innovative type of acting and thinking process, which works for the management accounting too, but the engineer’s culture was governing and problems related to finance were not judged as they should have been while decision making. The corporate thinking process appeared to emphasize on the general necessity for the management accounting towards product processes and customers. In recent years, the philosophy of orientation towards customers has been profoundly encouraged by leading management. This design is an integral piece of an attempt made extensively corporate wide, to generate a tradition for constant improvement. The corporate values were four in number: continuous learning, customer satisfaction, achievement and respect for individual. It was anticipated from the organization to get re-engineered so as to generate more value, furthermore, the strategies and corporate values should be maintained by the performance management. One part of this plan is also the business process based management philosophy. Finance & control function has also got an implication in the process of development of general business. Besides the traditional process of support it was affirmed that finance & control function must contribute in the processes of customers and products. People have cynic feelings about innovative managerial technologies, like activity based costing and management process. Nevertheless, the corporate values which were endorsed were generally well appreciated and understood. Diffusion of the philosophy of customer orientation had hitherto arrived at the higher level of corporation. The former thought processes which were based on technology were still sturdy in the subordinate levels of organization. Customer orientation also, was a rational result of innovative business stage in which liberalization of market had made numerous new clients challenging against each other via discriminating themselves in the course of their services.

The institutional theory suggested that new response outlines could be used because of style, competitors or generally to manage uncertainty. Without inquiring about the sagacity of execution in target company, it can be concluded that innovative managerial technologies are only observed as empty trends and mottos in target company particularly, in finance & control function. The real organizational reaction models changed gradually which was never in a fashion. From the dissimilarity between cultures of real and promoted organizations convincing proof can be found.
The aimed organization was prearranged as a matrix arrangement and in addition, it was evidently taken to global association sort. Problems started to appear and being reported as the management accounting system was not supporting the quickly varying matrix structure and also due to the huge regular actions of reporting. As it was growing harder to sustain them all with a single system and clean stress in between dimensions exist, for e.g. in the form of separate local reporting systems, all because of the variations in the requirements of the associations. In line to promote these various viewpoints in world wide aim firm exists, the need was getting bigger. With the help of general administration accounting methods, it was getting harder to support complicated and varying associational structure. On the other hand, the crosses functional joint effort is lead to be activated by association, and a perception of being psychologically as little and supple was developed about the associational structure.
MANAGEMENT ACCOUNTING AND STRATEGY
The one that was proposed in the document is very dissimilar to the aimed organization’s tactically oriented growth and performance of management accounting. It was noticed that the formal tactical arrangement procedure was not of a dynamic type as contributed by the management accounting, it was on an unimportant stage instead. When the bigger strategies were converted to bigger yielding plans, it happened particularly in that duration. Symbols of tactical management accounting may have been apparent, in wider terms, at the time when management accounting was utilized in quantifying the tactical strategies and alternatives, as well as the upcoming clients and business. It was accounted to be very hard and tiring to create extended range computations due to the enormous amount of doubtfulness, environmental variation and commercial expansion, although upcoming orientation was considered as very significant. In strategic decision making, the major indispensable matter were the leading logic of the top administration (individual and interpersonal familiarity, untainted determination, strong hallucinations of the upcoming age, technology and business circumstances), consequently, it was difficult for the accounting calculations to support it.
Most of the important strategic challenges faced by management accounting of the case site could at last be listed down, basically there is need of one of the such well structured strategic management system, for example sharing and defining products according to strategies about sales and related issues.
A strategy is required which should support business which at a time does several analyzing issues and multiple possibilities which involve financial as well as non financial matters. The strategy which enhances purposes and assurance, as well as considers the profit of the organization, with possible accomplishment of goals and targets .which has the powers and characteristics of dealing with reservations related to strategies. These deals in manipulative and organize their global value chain, able to completely and accurately distribute the resources for better implementing supporting strategies, which focused on products and customer related issue’s organization. .
Strategy planning is something should be done formal and long process as the results are to be seen in long run, which are important according to group views as well as for core management. The above mention statement is agreed upon by different writers. Basically budgeting was considered as planning and cooperating tool, but it isn’t for managing performance and operations. Strategic planning is a tool for controlling mechanism and systems, build-mission, and global organization type. Future forecasting is better managed when you study latest periodical research in way you study monthly and quarterly reports and statement gathered from management accounting. This focuses on importance and benefits of judging the available data, updating the budget during a year. This was previously said to be traditional for strategic management and implementation of expectation and estimations



In addition to implementing and controlling existing strategies, the formal management control system can be used by the management to develop new strategies by driving the organizational attention towards strategic uncertainties. Therefore managements who have a clear vision of their business effectively utilize control systems as they use only a single control system to interact and other systems are used for diagnostic purposes and the interactive control systems can also develop new strategies.

Strategic planning processes have been made by certain value chain analyses however they are not in management accounting’s perspective. Creating visible dependencies between different functions was one of the reasons why value chain thinking was assessed as something possibly useful. Value chain involved in a business is so complicated and the network of interdependencies is so huge that the possible usefulness of the value chain was believed as very limited. The value chain was much easier and simpler in sister businesses and such concepts also proved to be useful. The interview method did not prove to be useful in finding any evidence for activities such as strategic cost management. Strategic cost management was practiced and used in an unintentional way in the general management decisions. The thinking related to value chain thinking was left alone and distant from the finance world and people’s control when the accounting thinking was dominated by the institutionalized business unite reporting structure which included huge integrations. People who were interviewed followed value chain thinking as furor just as ABC.

The philosophy of target cost was initially instigated in this particular industry through the means of definition; cost management’s significance is increasing with the passage of time and price erosion is comprehended entirely by this industry. Target costs and prices are incorporated in corporate budgeting and planning theoretically and a few unique programs associated to cost management have been instigated. The findings of research project illuminates queries related to the prevalent cost management practice conducted by western entities as well as accentuates on the necessity of streamlining it with the practices conducted by Japanese entities. In a few instances, cost analysis associated to product life cycle has been conducted beforehand or on extemporized manner not guided by recognized reporting system in the midst of the product development phase. Nevertheless, it has been observed that profitability has escalated because the demanded volume of a product has surpassed the forecasted volume based on which production is carried out; this condition of gain is the sole reason due to which no post investigation has been conducted to explicate this unusual occurrence. Moreover, it was deemed that R&D expenditure on life cycle costing was very challenging because with the passage of time a single product becomes the basis for a product family with diverse and various products; the R&D expenditure on the initial product has to be intensified and the following products would be articulate based on that initial product’s developments which will reduce expenditures.


One significant facet associated to the life cycle philosophy is the necessity of measuring the life time profitability pertaining to the consumers. Nevertheless, this measurement is very intricate in nature because of the lengthy business association with consumers as well as the performance of an industry. Companies conducted competitor analysis due to its estimated effectiveness; it was however performed by the marketing personnel and not the accounting staff, and for this purpose information was assembled from all available resources. One of these resources was the annual reports published by competing firms from which financial data was extracted. These functions were buttressed by the presence of trade finance department of a company which acted as an essential link amidst controlling and financing necessities along with the competitor’s analysis. Seminar sessions based on competing firms along with games based on simulation were deemed as unique type of competitor’s analysis. One of the widely implemented means of analyzing competing firms was benchmarking.


Instances regarding implementation of coherent theory associated to product attribute costing were not identified in any particular case study; however, the necessity and prospect of management accountants for the evaluation of novel products and business lines was considered effective. The requirement was to assess the involved timing, threats, and economic outcomes spurred by diverse actions; therefore, management accounting acts as a buttressing information channel amidst R&D tasks and consumers so as to tackle this predicament. The decisions regarding product attributes and processes which would be taken in imminent times can be bolstered through the means of life cycle accounting of target costing. The novel product decisions were recommended to being present in the market in which this target company functioned. It was also recommended that a support of management accounting should also be necessary when undertaking to enter in novel markets and in this matter the predicaments were the ambiguity along with developing the comprehension of management accountants. Novel pricing techniques were presently under discussion in this target company, and more vigorously in software businesses. A few development based projects had been conducted on the basis of which value-based pricing technique was formulated; hence, according to which product’s usage by consumer along with the usage circumstances will dictate the prices as complementary or supplementary in contrast to the conventional cost-based prices.


The prospective development of management accounting was considered to be majorly dependent on customer analysis. The core matters in this regard were the customers, analysis regarding long term feasibility of a customer’s business, and the segmental profitability analysis. It was deemed very essential to formulate apposite global customer standing along with segmental profitability analysis in this particular target company, whilst business units being the chief element of official monthly reporting. On the basis of business units, the prevailing reporting methodology on monthly basis presented reports on transfer price-based customer (or account) profitability. On extempore basis customer profitability analysis was generated for an array of customers presented in other regions of the globe. This particular target company encountered a predicament in customer profitability analysis due to its cost structure which incorporated a major portion of R&D expenditure.


The customer analysis prominently integrates the exertions targeted towards global value chain along with underlining the business group profitability; therefore, because of this particular tendency it is an effective measure so as to accentuate on global structure and supplant the centrifugal tendencies possessed by single units.


When the markets associated to the industry encountered liberalization, then the necessity of assessing the customer’s long term feasibility aroused. Public or state owned entities were included in the old customers as many of them were highly rated. The customers after the occurrence of liberalization are not as much loyal as they were previously and a vast concentration of them is not feasible in the long run; hence, augmenting the threat. Furthermore, for this target company’s prosperous future it was crucial to comprehend the present as well as future demands of the customers’ which will certainly facilitate in taking appropriate action patterns leading to formulation of products aligned to these requirements. This notion was the prime factor due to which management accounting functions were propelled to take prominent part in analyzing and planning customers’ future business. Albeit the financial records pertaining to the customers were feasible for their analysis, but they were only helpful in case of old customers and not the new ones because there was not past record available of their business activity. A number of completely hypothetical business plans were formulated for the customers, the function of a management accountant in this case is to actively participate in the discussion on the basis of his financial expertise; moreover, the management accountant is deemed to participate in the discussion by formulating theoretical financial and cash flow statements which should be appropriately aligned to the pertinent presumptions of the customer regarding investment plans and cost structure. Another effective means for gaining favorable results from the financial and commercial bids for a customer is to formulate a business plan. Although this type of advancement for the management accounting was in initial phases but the indications were deemed as favorable.


In this instance the prime motive of the management accounting alongside value chain was to extend the functioning area outside this target company; furthermore, integrating with other similar but slightly distinctive functions which will ultimately enhance the elucidation level of the management accounting. Nevertheless, a major predicament which had the tendency of thwarting this task was the absence of an appropriate tool which could be implemented to discern the unprecedented and demanding level of job description.


In estimating operative efficiency, people involvement, and customer satisfaction of this target company non-financial performance tools were extensively implemented. These tools were implemented on group basis; furthermore, they were coalesced with the conventional financial tools. Amidst all these tools unit specific non-financial tools were also implemented.


The aim of implementing this particular scorecard was to assess the level of practices after splitting the objectives into tangible measures as well as integrating them with the present functions of this target company. The non-financial tools were deemed to be effective due to the fact that processes and functions become unambiguous and observable with the tendency of contradicting the conventional belies.


The tasks and functions of the management accountant were quite insignificant with the involvement of these particular measures. Accounting personnel stated their expertise and abilities along with mentioning their presumptions regarding the consistency of non-financial measurements.


In this target company, no adequate and standardized strategic investment evaluations were observed. The global corporate strategy and arrangement of unit investments along with it, market elements; furthermore, the dogmatic beliefs of the executives controlled the practice of strategic capital budgeting decisions which should ideally be aligned to quantitative aspects and adequate investment analysis. These particular presumptions were inspired by the literatures regarding global strategy, building strategic mission and related uncertainty, core competence, subjectivist view, and group-unit tensions.

CONCLUSIONS
The reason for electing this particular case site as a representation of the generally implemented conditions was to explicate novel strategic management accounting practice. Nevertheless, an insignificant level of confirmation regarding strategic management accounting was extracted. A few literature-based ideas were contemplated which were quite similar to the actual strategic level; however, they were dubious to be implemented in this target company in the form of management accounting (TC and product attribute analysis, SCM, strategic investment appraisal). As the tactical level of the ideas escalated, the involvement of management accounting in them was quite sure to be insubstantial (for instance BSC, competitor analysis, and SCM). Furthermore, the likelihood of implementing the proposed novel practice was bleak if it was deemed complex analogous to conventional practice by the concerned authority. Apart of few omissions, case site required minor level of strategic management accounting and unusual means were observed in presenting the pertinent accounting practices like customer interface and budgeting. It can easily be comprehended that budgeting was implemented as a tool for directing the expansion of novel strategic proposals as it possesses the strategic pertinence. The concern towards customers provided two vital elements; customer analysis and customer profitability accounting.
Relative accounting methods which can be use in inventive way comprises of strategic kind of accounting topics. Some of the uses of these methods are that profits are being forecasted interactively, the effectiveness of a whole business group was being highlighted through global customer profitability analysis and customer businesses can be scrutinized with the help of cash flow and breakeven analysis. The management accounting function has relatively weak participation in the strategy process of the target company and with very few interference of accounting management accounting impetus took place.

The companies required business and performance management-oriented management accounting rather than strategic management accounting because performance management-oriented management accounting can be used very often and it is very functioning and uncomplicated by nature. Regardless of these planned research settings, the presented normative strategic management accounting does not get as such support.
Finally some imperative strategic and prepared challenges were pointed out for the management accounting of the case site these include
1) The requirement for clear strategic control and procedures
2) Multiple perspectives all together analyzed to support the business
3) Supporting strategic target and obligation
4) Interactive scanning of strategic uncertainties
5) Resource allocation is controlled and synchronized by the global value chain
6) Strategy process linked with product and customer processes of the target company that makes them capable to give some real considerable content.

Management accounting is developed in a multifaceted way which is reflected by the environmental and strategic modifications and contemporary administrative philosophies and the organizational structure and culture and constant modifications in a target company are also influenced heavily by it. The normative agenda of strategic management accounting comprises of both likeness and differences which can be used as a structure for classifying the case findings among the practices of Target Company. Nevertheless a target company is a very successful firm and according to the literature the strategic management accounting tools recommended not to use and even not needed in the case site.


With this intelligence it can be sated that normative strategic management accounting literature is not highly supported. There were quite a few obstacle and challenges related to the submission and execution of strategic management accounting. According to the speechifying appropriate generalization, there is a significance of some of the recommended business unit or plant level SMA-tools in deliberate framework and they can inquiry about high street industry, global, core capability and separable strategy. Within this frame work improvement, managerial learning, artistic quality, employee commitment, technology and skill blending and revolution, encouragement of strategic objective, synchronization of global corporate value chain and societal lobbying all are linked to managerial concern.Same kind of thoughts regarding global challenges for management accounting was previously presented by e.g. Dent in 1996 and quite a few restrictions were set to the development of normative strategic management accounting by the one-sided nature of the strategic management.
The target company’s management accounting performance and systems were chiefly in linkage with the recommended strategic distinctiveness of the contingency theory but the instrument through which a system is controlled could be very diverse than which could be predicted from rational-based suppositions. Other thing that put pressure on management accounting that cause target market to change are environmental evolution and uncertainty.
There are also some problems and restrictions faced by management accounting system due to the organizational complications and organizational evolution but there is a high possibility through which we can enlarge the innovative ways of management accounting practices and these are the culture of the entrepreneur it self and feeling of freedom however the leading engineer culture also set and nevertheless provide a key structure to the managerial roles of accounting. Latest adapted managerial attitudes also increase the performance measurement demand. The management circumstances which are undeceive and unclear which are often faced by the companies might direct toward mimetic behavior and institutional practice in order to over these circumstances. Also the new exposure of environment with global synchronization and issues for managing, new guidelines and also new opponents-related reporting pressures are all cause because of transformation in environment and strategic choices.
The mimetic behavior or legitimization hard work can be influenced the alteration of customer direction and other executives’ viewpoints and strategy formulation can also affect it. Sometimes new trends and supported and encouraged and than implemented even though they are not accepted deeply by all workers. The institutionalized practices which are rooted deep inside can be change gradually with conflicts.
Research design and data collection

In order to collect the experiential data postal questionnaires were used through which ample information was gathered for the statistical analysis because through questionnaires the large numbers of respondents were accessed easily. There were also one on one interviews were taken to process the questionnaires to check previous mistakes and consistency of the analysis outcome of the previous post and also search for the details from some respondents. In order to erase the interruption which are raising because of the differences among industry sectors these questionnaires were studied by seven intellectuals and later decided to focus on just one sector which is the food and drinks manufacturing companies because they were appropriate for this rationale


“FAME” Financial Analysis Made Easy”) was used as a model structure to make available the widespread knowledge of public and private companies. The criterion used in selecting companies and adding in the sample was a SIC UK industry code of “15” which is for the production of food products and drinks. Being active and a free company the can employ at least 30 people.
In May 2001 secretaries of 658 companies received a letter and that letter fulfill all the criterion required to acquire names of those people who are perfect and suitable to fill these questionnaires. Out of 658 companies two letters were returned to them trough post stating that receivers have change their address and six companies asked to be detached from the survey and it remained with the potential response of 650 companies. 148 names were received in the end of June of those people who are accountable for the direction of management accounting function. Questionnaires were sent with the caption of “For the attention of The Management Accountant” to all 650 companies and were concentrated on the names found or in case not have been found.

Respondents were required to use [5] (MAPs) by a five point Liker-type scale (1 signifying “never” and 5 signifying “very frequently to point out the regularity and occurrence of the 38 management accounting practices they use. Respondents were also require to rate the significance of all these techniques by using a scale “not important”, “moderately important” or “important”. The 38 MAPs were classified into five groups: costing method, budgeting, performance assessment, information for decision making, and strategic examination. There were also separate questions asked to individuals regarding the messaging of management accounting information
The reason for a covering letter is to give details of the study and make sure that the information given is very confidential.




After three weeks the second copy of those questionnaires were sent to all the people who did not responded previously and by the end of September 98 responses were received from the management accountants. Further telephone calls were made to all non respondents and third copy was sent and in end of October, 122 completed functional questionnaires were received from management accountants who gave the utilizable answers that make up the rate of 18.8 % which was substantial.

Non-response bias is a possible hazard to the conclusions of a postal study. t-tests were conducted on corporation dimension calculated by revenue, fixed assets, and the number of workers for the year 2001 finishing, just for the evaluation of the probability of bias. In between the two models for each dimension calculation, no major difference was noted. Moreover, the replies to the main questions in the survey from the repliers who gave the answers just when the follow-up telephone calls were made, and the ones who gave out their opinion without the follow-up calls, were contrasted. Amid the two groups of replies, there was no major variation. The two models are originated from the same population and there is no hazard to the result from the presence of non- rejoinder bias, which is the conclusion by us.
4. Survey findings
4.1 Costing systems
From a long time, there has been criticism on the customary absorption estimation systems. The selection of suitable overhead recovery rates i.e. plant wide or further specific, and then, the argument regarding the requirement to ecover/allocate (soak up) overheads wholly, these two have been long-present matters to be solved. When SSAP 9 was taken into practice, the trivial costing against the absorption costing argument “ran out of stream” in the UK, the differentiation in between non-variable and variable costs is “very much alive” in performance, which is, however, what we look for our hope. The troubles of customary absorption were again taken into prime focus in the previous two decades.
The main critic this time is the fact that these systems cannot be relied on to measure the exact cost for decision making and activity based costing (ABC) has been made and promoted. Target costing and the “costing of quality” were promoted as tools to fight against the increasing levels of competition.

Respondents were asked to indicate how significant the seven methods of costing are to determine the level to which costing systems are used by practitioners to attain more exact information on costing for the purpose of making a decision. Their findings are shown in Panel A of Table I. It can be observed that 48 percent of the firms (29 per cent þ 19 per cent) have a high level of contrasting between variable/incremental costs and fixed/non-incremental costs for the purpose of making any decision. This contrast and difference has been pointed out by about 83 percent of the respondents who classified these as either being very important to the firm or moderately important. In contrast to this, just a few emphasized the high use of plant-wide, multiple-rate or ABC methods so as to allocate the overhead and variable costs to the objects. It was also observed that these variable overheads were not so frequent. It was derived from these two surveys that variable costing is more widely used than the numerous absorption cost techniques. Even though the ABC costing techniques have a low level of usage, being around 76% of rare usage, it is still seen as very important and about 44%, 51% and 46% of those who answered considered these three techniques very significant or moderately important.

It was surveyed that activity based costing (ABC) was executed in about 18percent in the US food sector firms and 12 percent in Holland food sector firms. Although the respondents recognize the importance of overhead variable costs, they don’t consider it so important to implement them very often. This may demonstrate that overheads are considered a part of the non routine costing and pricing strategies which are carried out less frequently. However, in the food industry, managers often classify direct and variable costs separately for ad hoc decision making. Similarly, the quality costing is seen to have a lot of significance but is not allocated very often. Lastly, it can be concluded that the mathematical ways to measure cost relationships is not seen as very important and is therefore not carried out very often.
4.2 Budgeting
A lot of emphasis has been given to the use of management accounting in the literature of management accounting. It has been considered as a key technique for the controlling and planning of the activities of an organization. The execution of the ABC techniques was followed by another technique called the activity based budgeting (ABB). Panel B of Table I shows how the people responded to the survey in which questionnaires asked people their opinion on the significance of planning and budgeting to control costs, the “what if” analysis in regard to budgeting, flexible budgeting, zero based budgeting and the budget planning for long run strategic plans.

The survey indicates that around 84 percent and 73 percent firms use budgeting either frequently or very frequently for the purpose of planning and controlling respectively. By combing the results, it can be observed that more than 90 percent of the respondents It can be stated that almost all the firms consider budgeting as an integral part of planning and control. Around 32 percent consider the use of flexible budget as often or very often and it is considered a significant part. However, on the other hand, 29 percent of the firms do not adjust their budgets. Similarly, the concept of “what if” analysis is very significant but it is not used very often.

The ABB technique was either given a lot of significance or was considered moderately important by a vast majority of the interviewees. These added up to about 63 percent. However, just 19 percent said that the use of the strategy was often or very frequent. When the usage of both, ABB and ABC techniques was compared, it was derived that the companies who had a frequent usage level of ABC also had high levels of usage for ABB. It is possible that firms initially start using ABC and then go on to use the activity analysis during the execution of ABC to prepare their budgets. It is observed that ABB is more significant and often used as compared to ABC. This gives support to the point mentioned earlier than budgeting is more important rather than costing. It is not often observed that zero based budgeting is being executed but about 58 percent of the respondents consider it insignificant. Lastly, around 83 percent considered budgeting as an integral part of long run strategic planning.




4.3 Performance evaluation
Perhaps the most critical challenge faced by the companies is the selection of the measures to guide and evaluate the business units running. Management accounting is responsible for reporting all the needed information so as to determine the performance of the business unit. However a lot of criticisms have been raised against the units that use monetary measures such as profits, return on investments, standard costing and variance analysis. The basic reason for the criticism is that they measure short run costs and accounting manipulations and they do not take account of the capital costs and non monetary measures such as efficiency of the labor, innovation of the company or the satisfaction levels of the customer.
A number of “economic value” means have been employed to include the capital cost in the financial measures. The concept of Residual income was given in 1950s, however, the idea of “Economic Value Added” (EVAw) has been promoted more recently as its proprietary adaptation. EVAw is described as the difference of adjusted operating income and capital charge, and suggests that the action of the manager will add economic value when the final profits surpass the increased capital cost. This was described as key “organisational glue” in the merger of Grand Met and Guinness to form Diageo.
A group of researchers launched the Balanced Scorecard (BSC) as a technique for integrating non-financial and financial performance actions. In this model, it was suggested that the performance of a business unit may be gauged from four angles: customer-related, financial, learning and growth, and internal business processes. Financial actions are traditionally compared between successive performance periods to recognize if there has been an improvement or decline. The fundamental assumption that the preceding period is a suitable comparator can guide to the determination of issues and inefficiencies. The Xerox company introduced the idea of benchmarking to overcome this problem and it was made a popular tool for organisational improvement. The concept of benchmarking requires identification of a “best practice” either externally or internally and subsequently analyzing as to how it can be utilized for improving the future and present performance.
The respondents were asked to grade the importance and usage of the five measures: EVAw; financial measures; benchmarks; and non-financial measures pertaining to operations and innovation, to customers, and to employees respectively. The result is shown in Panel C of Table III.
As very much expected, majority of the respondents (78 %) have rated the financial measures as “important” and almost the same number reported that these measures were used regularly. The survey revealed that non-financial measures associated to operations and innovation and to customers are unmistakably very dominant with 87 % (42 % þ 45 % respectively) and 77% rated them as “moderately important”. The domination of non-financial performance measures related customer validates the findings of researchers. It also confirms the importance of this performance in supply chain management for companies in the food sector. The differentiation / innovation in product validates the results of several other researchers. On the other hand, a considerable minority of companies (38 % for both measures categories) show such measures as “rarely” or “never”.
The possible explanation to this exciting difference in results is that non-financial performance evaluation is regular and significant for some respondents while it is simply irregular “tokenism” for others. The absence of measures related to the employee is even further noticeable, with 41 % of the respondents responding with “never”. It was reported that 72 % of food companies in UK did not measure satisfaction of its employees. This result is not contradictory to the casualisation of the workforce in the food industry as highlighted by some researchers. The results obtained by us also indicate that neither benchmarking nor EVAw have yet become popular even though the Self-Assessment and Benchmarking Initiative have been taken as explained in Section 2 above.
4.4 Information for decision making
Out of the declared management accounting objectives in the 1970s, one was to make available related information for decision making internally. For routine or interim decisions, the management accountants can utilize various well known techniques like product analysis of profitability, analysis of cost-volume-profit (CVP), analysis of customer profitability, and models for stock control. For long term capital investment decisions, the management accountants can provide accounting rates for the payback and return periods in addition to more complex reports based on discounted cash flow. Moreover, information related to non-financial aspects, like output quality, lead-times and flexibility of processes could influence projects of capital investment. Lastly, various risk analysis methods like computer simulation, probability analyses and “what if” analysis may also be used.

Panel D shows the summary of the answers to questions regarding decision making. A huge number of companies conduct a ‘often’ or ‘very often’ customer profitability or a product profitability analysis i.e. 69% and 51% respectively. Answerers rated this analsysi as ‘important’ i.e. 72% and 59% respectively. A CVP analysis proposed for the food industry was seen as ‘moderately important’ or ‘important’ by 86% of the responders and astonishingly 44% chose ‘often’ to show that these analyses are frequently used. Stock control models are widely ‘sometime used’ or ‘moderately important’.

Decisions relating to capital investments include conventional accounting practices which are used by 44% of the responders. These accounting practices such as payback period and accounting rate of return are used to assess some of the main capital projects whereas the figure for discounted cash flow models including net present value and internal rate of return is 19%. The obvious disbelief of advanced investment appraisal is supported by the fact that 42% of the respondents said that calculating the cost of capital was ‘not important’. The low importance associated with the financial performance of a company as compared to companies in different industries was found in accordance to what many experts had said. Moreover, only 82% of the responders find non-financial factors associated to capital projects as ‘important’ or ‘moderately important’ and such factors are reported and documented ‘often’ or ‘very often’ by only 33% of the companies. The most famous technique for assessing the risky projects is the ‘what if’ analysis however it is ‘often’ or ‘very often’ used by only 22% of the responders.

4.5 Strategic analysis

Typical management accounting systems have faced criticism because their reporting focus is the internal process and they do not give very little or no attention to the external factors and also does not consider the impact of the decisions of the competitors’ on their cost structures and current and future processes of the company. Strategic management accounting is now synonymously used with the external oriented approach but there is no theoretical framework that comprises strategic management accounting. Here, in this study, we will look at the characteristics of strategic management accounting. They are: a relation between the customers and external environment; focus on the competitors; and a forward-looking, long term orientation. Respondents were given eight strategic management practices and were required to answer with respect to its importance and their usage. Results are shown in Panel E of Table III.


43% of the companies ‘often’ or ‘very often’ do long term forecasting. This followed in frequency by the strengths and weaknesses’ analysis of the competitors i.e. 21% and competitive position’s analysis i.e. 33%. It can be said that lateral competitive analysis and traditional long term planning is undertaken by the food companies than in related stakeholder, life cycle, industry or analysis of the value chain. Scoring high of Importance, usage frequency, competitive position analysis of the value chain and assessment the competitor’s strengths and weaknesses point out that the application of this practice is extensive and may become more frequent. These results are not astonishing keeping in mind the improved chain cooperation particularly in the food industry.

4.6 Communication of management accounting information

The major challenges that confront the reporting timing of management accounting are: providing timely and perfect online information to the shop floor; increasing aptness of data reporting and altering the system of information gathering to make it instantaneous and in line with the other systems. It was found out in a number of food industry interviews that even though the accountants were responding quickly to the informational marketing requests, this was not the case in the non-routine information condition.


The management accountants in order to investigate these issues were required to evaluate their business’ importance at 4 levels of ease of use of internal reports. Table II results show how ‘important’ it is to provide thorough information of management accounting on a usual, systematic and short term basis as answered by 91% of the respondents. 86% of the responders said that the capability to provide ‘detailed information immediately on request’ was ‘important’ or ‘moderately important’, however the ‘I rating’ has decreased to 37% from 91%. Only 11% rated instant updating and the stipulation of real-time information as ‘important’. Even though the real-time reporting is quite uncommon, it is well known that the organizations have made changes to modify their information dispersion channels; 48% of the responders answered that is ‘important’ that the detailed management accounting information should be reported to the line manager directly. This response verifies the unreliable evidence of management accounting’s widespread ownership which by accounting experts is becoming increasingly less subject to ‘analysis and fltering.’

The Net Generation

As a shortcut, textism has been adopted by the Net Generation in electronic communication.
Two studies have examined if the writing quality is associated with the stated use of textism in day-to-day electronic communication. 718 young people were asked about their monthly use of contextual and linguistic textism, instant messaging, cell minutes, and text messaging.
Additionally, the national survey carried out in 2009 reveals that the utilization of cell phones for the purpose of texting was more than for talking by U.S. teens (Nielsen Mobile, 2009). The actual figure for receiving or sending text messages was 2,899 on an average as against receiving or making 191 phone calls only. Similarly, a national survey of U.S. teens indicate that 47% out of the 2,089 teens could create text messages without looking at the cell phone and the use of cell phone for texting was more than that for talking by the 13- to 17-year-olds (Harris Interactive, 2008).
Since the text messages are limited to 160 characters, therefore, they include many shortcuts (thus they are called as “short messaging system” or SMS). Multiple complex keystrokes are used for composing them on cell phones. They have become a component of common communication jargon. The examples are that the words are abbreviated (e.g., wed instead of Wednesday), some letters are removed (e.g., comin for coming), acronyms are used (e.g., LOL, IMHO), symbols are used in place of words (e.g., & for and), apostrophes are not used (e.g., dont for don’t), “emoticons” are created using special sequence of characters for expressing emotions (e.g.,  for being happy), capital letters are used for expressing strong fellings (e.g., I AM HAPPY), and particular symbols are placed before and after some words to increase the intensity of feeling (e.g., I **like** you).
The use of these shortcuts have been condemned by the media and the educators because it is causing the Generation Txt, youth, as labeled by Thurlow (2003) to lose their ability to write English prose that is widely acceptable. Thurlow (2006) analyzed more than 100 articles in one of his articles called ‘From Statistical Panic to Moral Panic’ on the said topic. He found that the text messaging tone was very damaging to the subject of English.

An article in USA Today Magazine (2008) ‘Texting, Testing Destroys Kids’ Writing Styles’ showed supporting the claims by quoting Jacquie Ream, who is the author of book called K.I.S.S: Keep it Short and Simple (2005), that kids are not learning how to spell instead they are learning shorthand and acronyms because the written word is being destroyed by text messaging. Students are typing one line at a time in their cellphones, not writing letters. When texting, feelings are not communicated with words but with emotions which are smiley faces made sideways. Kids are using the shorthand jargon which is not even used as a complete thought (p.8). Crystal (2008) responded to this through his book Txting: The Gr8 Db8 (2008) by arguing that texting should not be considered an important element when children having real problems in English literacy are being discussed. If a child has a writing and reading problem, use of technology that is demanding sophisticated writing and reading abilities cannot predispose of that child. And even if the child starts to text, this would help him in writing instead of becoming a hindrance (p. 157).

Pew American and Internet Life Project surveyed 12 to 17 year olds (Lenhart, Arafeh, Smith, & Macgill, 2008) the result of which supported this assertion. It was found that 86% teens believed that for success in life proper writing is important, 64% teens said that informal writing has become incorporated in their school writing in which 50% of them remove the punctuation and capitalization, 38% use shortcuts for instance LOL, and 25% use emoticons. 11% teens said that electronic communication harmed their writing whereas 73% said that no impact had been felt.
The message given by media that text messaging is destroying ability to write (Thurlow, 2006) also suggests that when youth use the language shortcut for writing they are generating bad habits of writing because of which they would be unable to write successfully in Standard English prose. Low-Road/High-Road Transfer of Learning Theory was suggested by Saloman and Perkins (1989) in which low-road transfer means an automatic or learned transfer of skills when the two tasks to be performed are closely related. In contrast, high-road transfer means that the skills acquired previously are used more consciously when writing. In addition to this, Brown, Collins and Duguid (1989) said that unintentional transfer of skills takes place under situated learning or leaning by doing. These two theories when combined together suggest that people who are using excess shortcuts in everyday writing are predicted to transfer those texting skills to the Standard English prose writing which as a result would lower their ability to write properly. In addition, low-road transfer occurs when task is situated similarly to informal messaging which leads to more informal writing abilities. In comparison, when the task is situated dissimilarly to informal text messaging, impact on writing abilities is less according to the high-road transfer theory.
Method
Participants
relevant comparisons.
Method
Participants
The data of two very similar researches is combined in this particular study. Each of the studies whose data has been used was a part of bigger study which had similar questions and these questions are explored in this current report. An anonymous online survey was presented to the sample of participants aged 11 and above. In this particular study the people who participated in those studies and were in between the age of 18 to 25 was included to make pertinent comparisons.

Participants of Study 1: 1,319 contestants participated in Study 1, which included 335 people between 18- to 25 years of age; 62% females and 38% males. As per ethnic background, this sample stood for the population of basin of Los Angeles containing a blend of (14%) African Americans, (30%) Whites, (38%) Latino/as, (14%) Asians and (5%) people of mixed/other background.
Educationally, among them who had college degree were 25%, those who had a little time in college were 65%, and 10% were those who did not take any college or courses. Participants who completed their surveys entirely were included in sample.

Study 2 participants. In Study 2, the 1,226 participants included 383 18- to 25-year-olds,
Participants of Study 2: 1,226 participants were included in Study 2, out of the total 383 and aged between 18- 25 years, 57% were females and 43% were males. According to ethnic background, 20% were African Americans, 38% Latino/as, 10% Asians, 5% mixed or other background and 27% Whites. Educationally, 16% had a degree of college, 18% did not take any courses of college, and 66% took some college. Similarly only those partakers who completed their surveys entirely were included in sample.

There weren't any demographic differences among the participants of two studies with respect to gender: χ2 (1, N = 718) = 1.79, p > .05; or
Ethnicity: χ2 (4, N = 721) = 6.69, p > .05. However, there was a considerable difference in two studies educationally, in which Study 1 had more educated participants than Study 2: χ2(2, N = 718) = 13.86, p <.001; Cramer’s V = .14 (Nolan & Heinzen, 2007.

Measures
The bigger surveys integrated various procedures, but merely a subset was exercised to address hypothesis for this particular report.
Reported use of communication tools. The people who took part were inquired about the minutes they use their cell phone and the number of text messages they do monthly. For each one of these, if the supplied number was bigger than three standard deviations, mean was rounded off to precisely that particular whole number. By and large, after making those large responses correct, the result was that they sent an average of 588.69 text messages monthly (range = 0 to 3,474; SD = 839.58) and average minutes they talked on the cell phone were 706.21 monthly (range = 0 to 4,013; SD = 736.23).

Formal writing sample. In both the studies, every subject was requested to put in writing a reaction to following prompt: “Write a note to the manager of the company whose product you use and act as if you would like to put a complain about quality of the service you get or about the product and what you expect from them to take necessary measures about that.”
Sufficient room was on hand, and proper samples of writing were taken in consideration and the mean of analyses was 327.41 (SD = 348.24) characters for Study 1 and for Study 2 it was 327.46 (SD = 367.17).

Informal writing sample. In Study 2 another response was also asked which was to explain in detail about the feeling of being unhappy. What do you do formerly whenever you became unhappy? And what should be done to again become happy?” Average of informal sample writing was considered to be 260.33 (SD = 368.52) characters or roughly 67 characters less than formal samples of writing. Reported general daily use of textisms. Contestants were inquired about how frequently they use different kinds of textisms in electronic communication they do daily together with IM, text messaging and e-mail. Four textisms types were included: (a) short forms such as L8R or LOL; (b) lowercase “i” instead of uppercase I being used as personal pronoun; (c) eliminating apostrophes from abbreviations like instead of don’t , the use of “dont”; and (d) decreasing the words like the use of tht” instead or “u” in lieu of you. Additionally, three contextual type of textisms were also included which represented emotions and feelings including (a) putting in smilies or emoticons like , (b) use of peculiar characters to indicate the emotional condition like ::hug:: or *frown*, and (c) use of all capital letters signifying strong emotions like I AM IRRITATED. A scale was provided from 1 to 5 depicting very often, often, sometimes, rarely, and never and the participants evaluated their personal use of every textism in electronic communication. All these seven extensive classes of textisms depicted the characteristic kinds of shortcuts which are used in the daily communication. No effort was done to distinguish more delicately between textisms for instance unscrambling shortened words in minor groups plus homophones, contractions, accent stylizations and g-clippings. (Plester et al., 2009).
Linguistic Textisms: It have been reported that, student which little collage education as well as those without have poor formal writing skill because of excess use of shortened words while communicating through electronic means. Students which a collage degree don’t have any significant effect. The most effect of linguistic textisms was on the formal writing skills of individual with little college education. In addition to this, it was also reported that in case of informal communication using the lowercase “i” was a one of the reasons of worsening of informal writings for the individual which have some college education and for the individual with no college study leaving apostrophes was the reason of bettering informal writings. Using linguistic textisms have no effect on the writing skills of individuals having a college degree.


Contextual Textism: in case of formal writing, using of smilies is one of the reason behind better formal communication for individuals which have not been to college and it was also reported that people which have no collage education do most use of these emotional states and also contextual textism which have related to improvement in informal writing. There were no changes in writing quality of any other segment.



Communication use: individual which have been to some collage, due to excess text messaging there have been a decline in the ability of formal writing but there is improvement informal writing. Where as all the participants which are found using text messages have improved their informal writing. Moreover, participants which have some collage or have a college degree, due to instant message there ability of writing formally have gone worse.


As in case of informal writing the founding was totally opposite of those which were reported in formal writing. For all the participants which uses text messages have better writing according to Low-Road Theory of Situated Learning. As for those with no college the use of both contextual and linguistic textism have bee related to improvement in informal writing. As in case of informal writing for individual have some college, there was increase in use of lowercase “i” which resulted in worsening of informal writing. There was no relationship found between informal writing and textisms as in case of individual with college degree. The results, at least in case of no college participants, use of contextual and linguistic textisms have improved their informal writing.



The conclusion of all the results suggests us that there are different relationships between textisms and writing in case of both formal as well as informal and the variations due to various levels of educations. It is found there is positive or direct relationship in case of informal writing and negative as for formal writing. On of the reason could be that, while writing a letter which is formal, as we could consider in case of writing letter to file a complain against defective purchase, due to normal communication is filled with linguistic textisms and he have no collage degree he many face difficulty to fully express what he wants to say. In contrast, if a person is writing about some which brings happiness or an emotional topic, the individual not gone to college will benefit form his daily using of both contextual and linguistic textism. in nature, this is possible that young individual can change their style according to the audience or as in case of or study, the formality for formal writing (Androutsopoulos, 2006; Paolillo, 2001; Ferreira da Cruz, 2008). This can also be concluded that individual with no college experience, the capability of using contextual and linguistic textisms, which are in fact a good way to express large information in short way, may help them in producing better with having less education.




It have been seen that there is a great difference in use of computer in case of children and adults. Majority of the children uses computer for two main purposes that is for entertainment and for contacting with peers using different instant messaging soft wares like MSN Messenger. Children even in its eights sit on computer to chat or converse online, most of the time for hours. they use different accessories like webcam and other audio devices concurrently most of the time. Most of the children do enjoy instant messaging but there have been problems due to different features that relates to a very different way it is used.

There have been rise in use of IM (Instant Messaging) programs. This is the reason of attraction for both scholars and media[1]. There have been many researches which have studies on the different uses of IM and their impact on social life, work places [2,3], young and teenagers [1,4,5]. The thing which is still not noticed is that IM is been used by the youngest users of Internet.




As mentioned earlier children as young as eight use computer to chat and most of the time for many hours. The most used IM among the young children l is Microsoft Internet Messenger. This choice have been noticed during research when interview were conducted with children and different studies all around the world also shows such preference [5,6,7]

The focus of this study is to explain how children use new forms of communication, they way they personalize settings, and different usability problems that are encountered while chatting through MSN Messenger.
There is a swift growth in the usage of Instant Messaging programs (IM). The scholars and media are being thoughtful towards this particular truth. A latest medium of communication is introduced in the form of IM, and in order to talk about its social implications by the youth and the teenagers [1, 4, 5], particularly in the place of work [2, 3], the publication of numerous research took place. Most of the users of IM are the youth, which is not really observed by anyone.

In order to have an online conversation, or “chatting”, young kids up to the age of eight years, sit in front of their computers, and usually they spend hours in this particular activity. The Microsoft Internet Messenger is among the IM programs, which is used by most of the young children. This is revealed when the children were interviewed for the purpose of this research, moreover, it is also supported by the number of publications took place worldwide on the youth and on-line communication.

Main aspects of IM found in the literature
The main facets of IM which are covered by the literature
Following are the problems which were researched and resolved in the past publications, with respect to the several facets that are involved in the use of IM.

• Linguistic Implications: papers from Sweden [7], Spain [5], United States [8] and the United Kingdom [6].

• Social Implications: According to the propositions of most of the research, acceptance of IM is more important than approval of IM, because of the rapid and steady improvement of digital communications technologies [1, 4, 5, 9, 10, 12], on the other hand this new form of communication [6] is also evaluated critically by some researches.

• College students’ use of IM in the workplace [2, 6].

• The fear over the young kids who use IM, could stuck in the trap of the criminals: the children because of their immaturity does not understand this fact and it is very easy to acquire personal and confidential data from them, as they are desperate to have a meeting with the people they meet on an internet conversation, which is not that reliable [6, 10].

• Some papers advert to research on the blueprint and usability for the public in general.

The significance of analyzing and testing children’s attitude, with respect to the use of computers:
It is the assumption of some people that “the evaluation of the utility of a children’s product can be done by them just because they have got children or once they were children, but usually it does not really helps.” For an instance a condition was analyzed in which an educational software was used in testing the drag and drop interactivity. In which different types of fruits were supposed to choose by the children to place in a mixer. The virtual items were left on the top of the mixer by the children, so that they can drop them in; which was not really expected by the software developers [17].


The means of processing information by the children [19], or the problems confronted by them [17, 18], is not actually exposed, because no such assessment is done for this particular objective. A research is required to have a close look at the usage of IM by the youth, as there is no difference in the IM and others in the above respect.

Numbers of conversation windows are opened by them at the same time, or sometimes they chat with more than one “buddy” in a single window. As per a record of a child, eleven dialog windows were opened in front of her at the same time. The multimedia resources, that are the facility of audio and video, are used effectively for this purpose. All the devices are being used by them at the same time, which includes; keyboard, webcam, microphone, earphone or loudspeakers; and they would like to have these devices, if they are not available to them.

It has been noticed that during conversation with number of contacts, or when carrying out any activity, the children maximize all the dialogue boxes that are present on the screen. The activity might include web browsing Thus, in this way the whole screen is taken up. The program of msn messenger is not particularly created to be used by young children. The program of instant messaging is a source of great enjoyment for them but at the same time many features that are present are causing problems of usability to them. Kids usually encounter many difficulties while running this program. It is actually being used in a different manner as compare to how adults use this program. The types of difficulties that are involved are related to ways they are using it.

Personal configurations
7.1.2. Nicks (nicknames)

Nick names are the names by which the internet messenger users are known. The type of nick that a user chooses to set varies, depending on the state of mind, status and so on. The nick names normally their own names which can either be in parts or full. These nicks are not only used in instant messaging but children also use them to attract the second person. Nicks not only consist of words but comprises of images such as emotional faces, other than this, punctuations and different sort of drawings are used that give a slight visual effects. The way kids create their nicks is shown by a fine example. Considering a girl who was a daughter of a pregnant mother. The lady, at the point of interview was unsure about the gender of her baby as illustrated by the fig 5. the marks of punctuations were used by her which were placed both before and after her real name. The resultant drawing was some what similar to a face of a cat. There was no reason placing it except that it looked attractive. The icons shown between the phrase are both the genders that represent a sister or a brother.


Language related issues
Issues related to language
The grammatical conventions are not considered important by the children. They pay no attention when using instant messaging. Similar is the case with adults and teenagers. Certain Abbreviations, phonetic substitutions or acronyms are used instead of it. Children know that this type of writing is not appreciated in school but still convention as a means of communication is not used by them

Along with others, sentences such as “how are you doing”? Would become “how u doing”? similarly the word “before” is change to “b4” which makes the conversation fast [7,8,20].

9. Software usability problems
Too much usage of emotions by an individual gives rise to problems. This is because the number of images that a single instant messenger user can use is limited. More over, the sentences that contain more images and a few letters are often difficult to read.

There are several type of emotions that are saved and used by the individuals. Every time a message is typed a user uses different emotions and expressions as they provide an immediate shortcut. The Portuguese use the word “FOI” instead of “WAS” and “OI” is used instead of “HI”. If a single emotion is available as a substitute, a child would write “OI” and an animated image would show after the letter “F” when “FOI” is typed. It is obvious that numerous emotions are used when typing a message. How ever, this program does not allow number of images that exceed five per IM. The entire sentence should then be briefed by rewriting it or parting them.

As per the research study done on a group of eighteen kids, only a kid of ten years did not like to use emoticons, however, all others considered emoticons as “cool”. As per MSN’s attribute, only five emoticons are allowed in an IM and to overcome this thing, kids ask their contacts to use the capital letters as the shortcuts do not appear in uppercase message and it allows them to send the messages that exceed the above-said emoticon attribute of MSN. A nine years old girl Karen was of the view that the presence and involvement of emoticons creates trouble in creating a nick name and she was very upset a day before when she wanted to have a cool nick name and an emoticon kept on interfering . No matter these emoticons add a smart touch to the text, there is always a room for improvement in order to make them user-friendly.
In addition to this, typing less obvious shortcuts to save the emoticons can help in avoiding the said problem. However, it needs to be explained more clearly to the young users as every time they save a new emoticon to process further.

Another problem being faced by the children at this age group was they were having difficulty in identifying their contact windows correctly. They can’t completely rely on the nick names as they keep on changing every now and then. A nine year old girl, Daniel desperately wanted a way out to identify her contacts in a constant manner rather than checking the email address before typing any message. In addition to this issue, Natalie demonstrated that she had to keep her eyes only 20 centimeters away from the screen in order to make sure that to whom she was talking to. Constantly fluctuating nick names of the contacts may lead to social problems as well because the messages may be interchanged i.e A’s message could be typed on B’s window and vice versa.

Study showed that most of the users were not very happy with the use of Nudges and they found it quite irritating in some manner. In a group of eighteen children, all were unaware of blocking this Nudge option except for an eleven year old boy who knew how to block this attribute of MSN, the reason being that the way to block the nudge was technical to understand. Nudge option is specially used at times when the person at the other side takes a longer time to reply back or when there is no other person available to chat. Another irritating attribute of MSN was the pop up window of “MSN Today” and the children seem to be very interesting in exploring the techniques to configure their IM settings in addition to learn about blocking the pop up stuff.

Characteristics of Ethical Leaders

In contemporary situation of instability around the globe; it has been witnessed that a greater number of managers, executives, and business personnel belonging to different levels of functioning are conscious about values and ethics and are inclined towards instigating a value creation process by dedicating their efforts and time. Thus, this wider perception of ethical leadership enables these individuals in clarifying and ascertaining their personal values and ethics. A list has been presented below which offers a structure for initiating ethical leadership. It has been formulated by observing as well as conversing with professionals and students for twenty-five continuous years along with perusal of business literature. The list has been formulated from the viewpoint of a leader; they provide a thorough comprehension regarding ethical leadership which is very much intricate and transcends the general idea of “good values and character”.
Ethical Leaders:
1. Articulate and embody the purpose and values of the organization.
Nowadays it is vital for leaders to motivate their subordinates by narrating a persuasive and ethically rich instances and stories, and it is equal crucial that they should also align themselves to those ethical instances and stories. In contemporary business environment envisioning such dedication seems very farfetched due to that fact that individuals belonging to business environment are not used to integrating such values in themselves. Thus, a majority of political leaders are unsuccessful in aligning themselves to those instances and stories which they mention in their speeches. Furthermore, recently leaders in business environment have been criticized after news associated to their bad conduct and scandals have emerged. Chief Executive Officers in contemporary organizations are deemed as role models for ethical values in every single society.
In the year 2004, on the basis of a sequential instances associated to unethical and immoral actions performed by the personnel of Citigroup in Japan; new Chief Executive Officer, Chuck Prince dismissed numerous personnel, publicly acknowledged it is vital for leaders to motivate their subordinates by narrating a persuasive and ethically rich instances and stories, and it is equal crucial that they should also align themselves to those ethical instances and stories.
accountability and apologized the Japanese officials.2 His message was not only acclaimed in Japan but also gained support from the top tier officials of Citigroup in instigating an unprecedented practice of “shared responsibility” which emphasized that every personnel will take ownership of the ideas and decisions which can influence the organizations functioning.
2. Focus on organizational success rather than on personal ego.
Leaders who are ethically conscious also have the comprehension of their worth amidst the wider spectrum of stakeholders and related constituents. Thus, the notion does not entirely focuses on the leader alone, it encompasses much more than that by focusing on aims and objectives of the overall organization. These ethically responsible leaders also comprehend that in core essence values lies in the success of organization’s personnel.
In the year 1998, former Chief Executive Officer and Chairman of PepsiCo, Roger Enrico demonstrated his devotedness towards the firm’s personnel by electing to give up all of his income and keeping just $1 for himself. He requested PepsiCo that this benevolent act of his should result in a contribution of $1 million in the scholarship fund by the firm so as to buttress the personnel in bearing the educational expenses of their children.3
In an analogous way, JetBlue’s founders initiated to provide their incomes to funds created for personnel financial assistance. Presently, their whole income goes to JetBlue Crewmember Catastrophic Plan fund, so as to facilitate the personnel in coping up with those crises and catastrophes which are not entailed in the insurance policies.4 The purpose of sharing these instances is to delineate that ethically conscious leaders comprehend the magnitude of those factors which are liable to influence personnel loyalty and take apposite measures accordingly which will ultimately enhance the firm’s success.
3. Find the best people and develop them.
This particular function has been entailed in diverse models which are associated to the subject matter of leadership. Ethically conscious leaders are concerned in uncovering and selecting the best employees because they deem it as a crucial necessity which will certainly facilitate the selected employee in not only enhancing his expertise but will also enable him to support other employees as well. Searching the best employees entails the importance of character and ethics as judgment tools in the selection phase.
It has been told to us by various CEOs that evaluating the honesty and reliability of someone are way more vital than assessing the know-how and abilities they have. Still, in numerous firms, the employees are appointed on the basis of skills with small considerations of integrity issues.
4. Create a living conversation about ethics, values and the creation of value for stakeholders.
Possessing a laminated visa card in the pocket or good observance of ethics is thought to be a full and final solution of “ethics problem” by many business administrators. Enron and various other companies in trouble already had these solutions in their agenda. But what they did not possess was a general dialogue and communications between all the levels of business in which having discussions and arguments about the fundamentals of value construction, opinions of stakeholders and communal expectations was are normal practice. There is an erroneous belief that morals and ethics are “squishy and soft” ingredient of management. It couldn't be any more false than this.
In such organizations where principles and ethics are given importance and where they are discussed , the workers there actually account themselves and others around them about whether they are acting upon values and ethics or not. And, they anticipate the managers of organization to observe the same practices. Actually doing such discussions implies that people should have awareness of options but they should prefer every time to settle with the group only because it inspires them and has an importance for them. If one wants to direct morally, a very strong will is needed to actually make these discussions and communications happen.
The chronicle of the former CEO of Johnson and Johnson Jim Burke and the Tylenol product (1980s) is well known, in which, regardless of financial costs and loss, all the possibly fiddled products were pulled off the market and thus they kept together the trust of public.
The less famous backdrop of this tale is vital to understand the end result. Johnson & Johnson had conducted a bunch of meetings internationally known as “challenge meetings” some time prior to the Tylenol crisis in which the administrators and managers argued about the “Credo”, a description of their aims and values of what and who they really want to be, as a firm. This chat about morals at Johnson & Johnson made the choices of Jim Burke easier and vivid than they could ever have been about managing the circumstances.

5. Create mechanisms of dissent.
Many executives actually don’t comprehend their power merely by high value of the positions they are on. Stanley Milgram a famous psychologists had depicted a long time ago that even when there is no accountability for defiance still people mostly comply with what they think to be as legitimate authorities. To get past the “Authority Trap” what is vital is to create a peculiar and well formed process for the workers to contradict if they think that some market , process or region is not working properly.
This should become a very important part of the customs of organization and not merely a document of compliance agenda. Some corporation have tried to provide the telephone and e-mail process from unknown identification and numbers to know the opinions of workers without the interference of administration which is the real barrier in huge organizations. Many managers have also tried “skip level” conferences in which they talk with the people in various levels of cooperation to have a more practical view.

Famed “workout” procedure of General Electric—it is where the employees meet to come to a decision about how to make it a better company and fix the troubles being faced—was a method for the workers of front line to contradict the authorities and management already present. All these developments showed the way to healthier judgments, more focused employees, and augmented probability of evading the mistakes causing damage.
A company which focuses sincerely on their reason of existence and their values , always have some system available for pushing back to keep away from decaying of the company’s values. If there would have been some resourceful customs for employees to utter about their disappointments with the procedures and actions of others in a company they would have indeed, prevented from some of the very recent corporate disgrace. This system of dissent are developed according to the leadership style followed in a company or by its culture but this comes under the responsibility of a good leader to craft values in today’s corporate world.
6. Take a charitable understanding of others’ values.
It can become easy for ethical leaders to recognize that why different alternatives are picked by different people but they still have a strong hold on recognizing what people do and why. Nelson Mandela; after spending twenty-seven years in South African prison, still able to recognize good things in jailers. Nelson also protested against a ferocious and an inhuman jailor who later got transferred from the Robins Island and before he left, the jailor came back to Mandela and stated “I just want to wish you people good luck.”Mandela took this statement as an indication that every person possesses some good in them even after trapped in immoral systems. Mandela took it as his accountability to recognize good among people and try to bring it out. Once a CEO of a company stated that we should not take ethical leadership a mechanism for stopping people from doing wrong instead we should use it to facilitate and appreciate people in doing right.
7. Make tough calls while being imaginative.
It is a duty of Ethical leaders to take difficult unavoidable everyday decisions from the reorientation to creating company’s strategies and also creating value schemes which help in making decision for individual employee regarding his working in an organization. Ethical leaders always take challenges by making difficult decisions they never get scared in attempting them and never avoid them by making excuses. The ethical leaders always come together to do the right thing for their followers and for the organization.
Ethical leaders are just being enjoyable and loving, this idea contradict with reality. Moral mind's eye is the most significant task done by ethical leaders often. The German Bank was originated by this moral mind’s eye by mohammad yunus. He implemented the same systematize banking practice of lending money to people with collateral against it and it laid the industry of micro lending to poor as he turned it on his head.
German bank has a leading loan reimbursement percentage in the banking industry and it initiated lending programs for poor women of Bangladesh to start their own small businesses and their program helped millions of women to stand on their own feet and able to feed themselves and just because of this purpose the slogan of German bank was “poverty belongs to museum”.
In organizations leadership exists mainly in the people of higher positions like CEO and board levels. Few years back, a new firm inclusive strict obligation made by the CEO of DuPont in order to lessen factory emanations. Plant engineers insisted CEO that decreasing the emissions of the company cannot be reduced at any cost so the CEO and president of the company decided to shut down that plant which make many people lost their jobs.
CEO was notified about the possible solutions regarding the requirements by the plant engineers weeks later. They may be cost saving too. although we are unaware of the hard work that was done by the engineers (whose name are not disclosed), we can definitely view the outcomes with respect to imagination and leadership.
8. Know the limits of the values and ethical principles they live.
Each and every value has its boundaries and in a given situation it may work sometime and it may not work too. The limitation of a certain value is very much related to the audience and the environment in which these values are practiced. Ethical leaders can provide us with solid evidences and reason about their chosen action and they have an exact sense about the limits of values that they live in. Majority of the problems that a manger faces are due to cultural differences and not understanding the limitations of the values.
One of the most common examples is of not understanding the limitation of “putting the shareholders first.” Keeping the prices of the stock high artificially and not provided not only to customer but also to the stakeholders the long lasting value which creates fanaticism instead of providing good and clear judgment. Ethics is something which is not a different thing but is attached to us and is part of an individual’s life. No one can substitute practical sense, judgment, and sound advice which have influence on our actions.
9. Frame actions in ethical terms.
The leadership provided by the ethical leaders in their own view is considered to be a completely ethical task. Due to this it is very important that differences and the rights claimed by other are taken seriously. In addition to this we should also understand the effect of behavior of an individual upon others and also the effect of character on others. Sometimes the ethical leader also recognizes the weakness and poor guidepost in the values they practices.
It is considered that responsibility of provided moral judgment is on the shoulders of the ethical leaders. But is important to understand here that, it is easy to coat an action in terms of ethics and consider it to be right. There are numerous views about ethics and one of them is that, it is inviolable and universally accepted principles that are not to be violated. There is a need for hard work to understand the implementation of these values and principles in today global complex business environment.
There is often difference between values, individual, principles and cultures which results in conflicts. It is important for an ethical leader to have a humanistic view rather than going for righteousness. In addition to this it is also important to have an open mind to understand and learn and to have conversations and discussion with those which belongs to a different culture and have a different view points. Ethics is something that we discovery by coming in contact with different individuals. It provides us with realization of importance of improvement there new ideas.
10. Connect the basic value proposition to stakeholder support and societal legitimacy.
The leader must understand and act in terms of corporate strategy rather then taking business and ethics separately. It is linking basic raison d’être of a corporation with the methods thought which value is created in a society. It is a fact that an ethichal leader will never give an exuse of it’s just a business.
Regardless of extreme opposition from various groups, Lee Scott the CEO of Wal-Mart got an approval in the year 2004 to establish a new store in west side Chicago with partnering with the black community leaders. The basic reason was to fulfill the need of employment and jobs of the community and that side of the town. It was due to the support of community that helped Wal-Mart in wining the approval form the City Council. Wal-Mart also encourages the subcontractors to make there facility locally and hire majority of the employees for the local residence.
Guiding people to understand their expectations and ideas, building worth for the shareholders, as well as performing these errands with the concentration and significance that “ethics” defines, all of these things are concerned to Ethical leadership that is focused on “raising the bar”. The things lacking in our present leaders is they do not give room for errors, for hilarity, as well as kindness, all that was said. By the character in their daily lives, Ethical leaders, who are common people, set examples of taking the world to a higher level. The questions like what is our individuality, what re we plus what can we be, how to spend lives and the that way we may make it improved, Ethical leaders talk to us regarding these all querries.










Becoming an EthicalLeader
We are honored to know several decision-makers that we can categorize as ethical leaders. A thoughtful and unfathomable knowledge of ethical standards, principles, and personality at the heart of headship, these all things are commonly present in those decision-makers. Improving others as well as allowing them to chase their own expectations and ideas, these are all considered as work by them. They are capable of achieving tasks in complex cultures and associations. However, their connection with the admirers, the talents and procedures they make use of in directing them, their study of the frameworks, and their own logic of personality, these are all permeated by the ethical core.

It is fairly easy to become an ethical leader. The readiness and potency to admit liability for the outcomes of your deeds and a dedication is required in order to examine your own performance and morals is just required for it.
The message given to us by ethical leaders pertains to our personality, our present and our future, the way we live now and the way we could spend a better life.
additionally on yourself. The “responsibility principle” is an essential feature for “managing for stakeholders” to be valuable in present business community. The ethical leaders must shoulder responsibility and think about the consequences of their activities on employees, suppliers, customers, societies and others who are concerned. The “responsibility principle” would be pointless in a situation where the business was only looking after the interest of the shareholders.
To qualify as an ethical leader, one must ask the following questions to himself:
(1) Which principles and values are important to me?
(2) Are these values reflected by the way my time is spent?
(3) What opinion is carried by my peers and subordinates about my values?
(4) What methods and procedures have been instituted by me to ensure that my subordinates are able to challenge my authority?
(5) Under what circumstances would I be prepared to give up my job due to ethical reasons?
(6) What do I intend to achieve with my leadership?
(7) What should be the opinion of people on my leadership qualities when I leave the organization?
(8) Is it possible for me to preach my close relatives about my leadership style and give examples from my daily work practices for them to become ethical leaders?

Facebook Language

Majority of teens who belong to Generation Z are not allowed by law to handle a car. And among the ones who were born in between the years 1992-2010, some are not even able to manage the seatbelts. All this does not point to the fact that they are not aware and are making opinions about the brands and their products. Among five children, this year almost four are available on social networks, half of the teens shop mostly on internet and in U.S. 96% of the teens aged between 12-17 will at least use internet once a month.
The most troublesome generation of current history is Generation Z. Unlike generations before them, who used to wait for the ideas, teens of Generations Z even before they pass the elementary school become tastemakers. Modern media has knock down all hurdles of communication about the brands and the products they make. If you are able to write, what you can do is to share it with others and sharing is what Generation Z is all about.
Take the example of Silly Bands which makes the rubber bands of animal shapes used as bracelets. It is also a low-priced brand. The trend became popular at first in the children of nine-ten years but it didn’t take much time that it became famous among the fashion models who even wore them during their modeling and Moms during their social meetings.
What steps can be taken to mix with it and particularly gain the attention of this fast forward generation to have their undivided support? Below mentioned are three things that the companies can practice to make the Generation Z satisfied.
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1. Generation Z is Not Brand Loyal
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If the companies expect loyalty and faithfulness from Generation Z merely in the marketing campaigns and the image of the brand, they are mistaken badly and their efforts will go in vain. All this doesn’t matter at all to the Generation Z. What matters is actually the product and not the marketing of the product.
For example, recently in the past four-five years, when you walked down the hallways of high schools of Generation Y, you could still find the admired girls dressed in Abercrombie & Fitch or some peppy girls in the clothes similar to American Eagles and Gothic girls in the Hot Topic. But that’s not what you observe in Generation Z teens. When you peek through their schools hallway you can always see some girl wearing the shoes just like Jessica Alba's in TMZ, some sweater which is hand-made and from Etsy or a tank from the target. So, Generation Z basically disapproves “badge brands.”
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2. The Age of the Curator
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With their huge modification of iPods, the people of Generation Y condensed the coins of music to one song from the whole album. Following the footsteps Generation Z is exactly doing the same thing with any and everything they buy. And what you get in the end in their reading, watching and wearing —are their very own made version of world.
There isn’t any running away from the Generation Z. They are the guardians of tremendous potential, who plan and share each and everything from books to watching movies and ultimately they will do the same about plans of health care, home renovations and cars. You can also take an example to the two movies released in summer of the year 2009. One of them is Year one and the other is Paranormal Activity. Year one was starred by Michael Cera and Jack Black, and its marketing was principally: “Hey, it’s the guy from Juno and Jack Black. You’re just going to love it.” The other one, Paranormal Activity, just went on building up the heights of success after every film festival and finally it was on the loose in 13 towns with colleges. After that the supporters in various other places were asked to make their choice on where should the movie go next. Ultimately it was released nationally, and while having a shooting budget of merely $15,000, it amassed a business of grossing $193 million and was listed among the most money-making movies of all times. On the other hand, Year One had awful reviews on its first appearance and it made merely $62 million which hardly recovered the costs of its production. Value of production and platform from which it comes holds no meanings to Generation Z. They have their own merit to judge every product and its contents.

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3. Enhance and Enable Curation
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What does the Generation Z bother about? Sharing and finding best things in the whole world. They are not merely customers, they are guardians. Not only do they find out different brands and their products but they also assess them with unbiased objectivity, observing them thoroughly and then sharing the results with everyone. If you delight a member of Generation Z with some peculiar service or a product you have earned yourself a very big support. Consequently, the dealers need to simplify what Generation Z consumers like. It has never been straightforward to express your views online whether it is the likes of Facebook, tweets of twitter or some Polyvore expression of brand collages.
Never smother any discussion, nor try to control the chat about what your products are — encourage it. The bad will come along with good but whenever it does, it shall be genuine. This simplicity will ultimately aid in long term accomplishments of the brand. In any case, encouraging the “open brand” culture will bring about well informed and extra zealous curators.
Facebook Features
What social networks including Facebook require is a registration and the making of your own personal profile. The only obligation to connect to Facebook, is a working and genuine email address. Once the user has signed up he or she can further join various school, regional or international networks. School networks require valid email address of school. On Facebook, the user can also search for a friend or anyone and see their photographs but what has already programmed is that they can just see the photos and profiles of users included in their network.
Inside one's own profile, the users can list the history of their education and work, put notes, share albums, personal details, interests and converse with other users on ‘‘the wall.’’ There is section of news feed in which the posts on walls done by others, changes in profiles made by other users, addition or deletion of photos and other people becoming friends is also mentioned. ‘‘Tagging’’ a photo enables those particular photographs to show in profiles of other people who are tagged. Privacy features are also provided by the facebook. It is optional and can be used by the user to limit the access of other users to their profile. These facilitate the users to choose what they want others to see and what not. The information in these sites of social networking like Facebook is mediated public site, which is the technology to gather people publically. Mediated public has various unique features including the audience which does not show itself, ability to search, ability to copy and perseverance.
The ‘‘conversations’’ which are done can be recorded, tempered with and can be seen by anyone else too. The photographs and the comments given on these networks can stay the identity of the people even if they change altogether. Moreover, when people comment on these sites they usually refer to the audience who generally accepts that particular belief. What they don’t comprehend is that the audience comprises of all people including those who do not share the same belief and those who have some kind of authority on them.
And those people can have totally opposite views from whatever has been said and accepted socially. The profiles on Facebook basically depict a culture and they can lead to misconception which is partly because of the invisible audience. What the students think is totally normal among themselves and other school fellows can be apprehended completely different by the parents, employers or the school teachers. The feature to restrict your audience by using privacy settings is a very important element of Facebook. Nonetheless, this ability cannot make us understand about how this information can be used, either good or bad. A very few people take the advantage and use those privacy features available on the social networking sites.
Facebook a social networking community is not only used by students but by other people too like University president or etc. An extensive criticism was made on a photo of University president that was uploaded by one of the student on Facebook.
Students have faced privacy and safety issues on their accounts including some illegal and disreputable acts. There have been incidents of harassment and hunting and students have faced issue of accepting strangers to come in their lives. This is particularly done by putting on personal information on the facebook accounts by the students. Moreover, another new activity has been published on these social networking websites. This is distinguished by the classic name, address and phone number. Lots of discussions are being made on this forum and revelation of photographs, political views, sexual orientation which opens the doors for strangers to enter into the lives of each other.
Complication of the scenario is multiplied when it is viewed that the members of the person regard their expressions as a means of seeking out information and might use this information. The students need to consider an important point that this social site is used by their employers, law enforcement officials, and administrators and they may seek information which is not included in their resumes and are not covered as their background profile. However, students regard this assumption and judgment wrong that information which is extracted by the outsiders through the comments, photographs being uploaded on Facebook in unreasonable. A point is made that the faculty members, administrators etc should not view the postings made by the students as it generally done their group mates and friends.
Theoretical Importance of Connectedness
Social behavior underlies the various principles of motivation to identify the need of the connectedness of human beings. Social psychology gives importance to the motivational principles for enhancing the connections among individuals. Moreover, these connections are taken as a feeling of attachment and strong bonding between the people. This connectedness is more precisely considered to bring element of positivity and boosting the emotional level and focusing on the need of remaining in touch with their relations. Various researches which are conducted previously show that the social presence and awareness about each other are related to connectedness. This concept of “connectedness” is shown by its relationship with the two important features that are “social presence” and “awareness”. It is argued by Rettie that most significant among them is connectedness as it leads to communication and developing of the technology used for communication. The major distinguishing factor between connectedness and social presence is that communication in connectedness is instant and does takes long as it becomes available to all the members who are online at that time and it does not necessarily needs a direct exchange of messages.
RELATED WORK ON MICRO-BLOGGING AND INSTANT MESSAGING USAGE
There have been very less identification about the socio-technical developments and scientific research which figures out the phenomena of social networking websites and the micro blogs available on web pages with the increasing population. Hence, it has been observed that researches have not focused on analysis of network structures along with how these web sites can be used as a marketing tool and help in running campaigns during political elections. The main purpose of this research is to come up with the understanding and knowhow of the new communication modes like micro blogging and how the behavior of people have changed for making communications and interacting between them. Moreover, the research also focuses on the information that is being shared on social networking sites like Facebook through asynchronous communication tools.
It has been observed that there is an increase in the intimacy level in social networking platform which means that sharing and providing other to see, friends and family or even other unknown individuals, your personal and private information online. A social networking platform can support a reasonable interaction and conversation with different individuals that have common interest and/or probably met somewhere before. Through these platforms there had been increased percentage that a person can find and interact with an individual.
A survey was conducted on the subject of blogs. Blogs are an online or electronic journal maintained by a person and the person that maintains the journal is call blogger. There have been many survey conducted to find the main reason behind practices of novel communication style and the motivation behind adoption. Few surveys conducted in order to try and segment the users of blogs according to the information that they share and the characteristics that they show on a known micro-blogging platform. In contracts, an information seeker is one who follows each post regularly but they do not give any personal or private information in short time intervals. The group which is found to e the largest if categorized according to amount of information shared are the daily chatters. Daily chatters post messages and information daily. There is some facts that shows us that almost 13% of the information shared and the message posted have URL. There have also some researches, in addition to the structure of the messages posted, that analysis the emotional feeling that is related to different messages types. Another for of online information share is instant messages which had gained reputation in recent past. The buddy list of an instant messenger helped in increase in awareness of individual to see whether a person is available or not in a peer network. In addition to this there are many scholars that consider that monitoring this kind of information is to create and maintain the feeling of social connection with other individuals. Effect emotional effects of information shared and individual posts on instant messages had also been analyzed.
Various literatures are available related to the concept of social capital which is defined in different ways in accordance to different fields. One of the definitions of social capital is that it is the summation of all the resources which include both actual and virtual which can help a group or an individual by having a durable institutionalized relationship, based on integrity and honesty, of mutual recognition and acquaintance. There are many studies that have researched on the reasons, effects and cause of social capital. The other definition considers the social capital as a positive and beneficial effect of communication and interaction between different individuals in a virtual environment or a social network and is the reason why it is research that often by different individuals.
We can find difference in the possible link between a e-mail and social network site but few of there function may seen overlapping. E-mail provides us with communicating both formal as well as informal ways and also supports regular or on-off contact between different individuals or/and correspondents.
Internet use by university undergraduates suggest that equilibrium is yet to be reached.
As far as social networking sites are concerned they mostly requires a network to be created or the users must incorporate in a network that already exist to communicate and interact with each other. Most of the networks on a social site are social or personal in nature so is the information that they exchange and share. The difference exists but both email and social network site have their importance so they both should coexist. A research was conducted in relation to the use of internet by an undergraduate university student which suggested that equilibrium in the use of both is to be achieved.
The users have been adopting various types of technologies for the purpose of communication with each other. The reason behind using different forms rather then using one medium is very much unclear. The question that arises here is that what kinds of needs are being fulfilled through each of the medium. Previously we have compared satisfaction that is obtained through Facebook and from the use of instant messaging.
Understanding Uses and
Gratifications in Social Media
According to recent and different statistical facts the uses of social media have very widely spread in society and it is penetrating in a high rate. By reviewing few literatures we can identify that there are two significant trends.
First of that trend is that a users tens to use wide variety of tools for the purpose of communication rather that embrace a single social media form. Through this trend we can understand that one social media doesn’t replaces other rather they become a bundle of social media that are use for both online and offline communication. Second trend show us that the used like to use new types of tools and adopts them for the purpose of communication.
As discussed earlier the use of a social network sites have become common and is widespread. According to Pew more then 55% of teen living in America have a Facebook or a MySpace profile, both of them are the most acceptable and used SNSs in North America. This fact suggests us that use and adoption of a technology have a social trend. A social network starts gaining popularity and has a very high penetration and is also used daily and after a period it started diminishing as other form of media starts gaining popularity. Taking a n example of instant messaging (IM), it use have been decreasing due to increase in use of SNSs as a medium of communication. IM is not completely replaced by SNSs but have become a secondary way of communication.

According to the two trends, it is put forward that that every social media has its own prejudice. This can be in terms of different communication ways that it provides its users with and also the social importance. Each kind of media ha sits own requirements of exclusive communication, therefore its users cannot consider any two forms of media as complete substitutes. To determine the uses of the computer mediated communications, a study has been presented to show how different needs of different users are being satisfied. This study has been obtained with the help of facebook with that which is collected from IM and the gratifications that are offered, some comparative study is conducted. This will assist us in knowing the relation between two types of social media. Not only this, but it will also help us to identify the possible reasons of the users of using both technologies at the same time. Apart from this, other issues that include literature regarding the students of the university, increase use of facebook and disclosing one’s personal details there, will also be discussed.
With the help of uses and gratifications (U&G) theory, which was developed to study the traditional media, like televisions and the newspapers, can help us to know the reasons of using media by individuals and how it has been successful to satisfy their needs. Frameworks to the new, modern media have been applied by the recent studies.
Uses and Gratifications Theory
Mass media was viewed by the mass communication of the early theories (e.g., the hypodermic needle theory) as having an instant and identical influence on the perceived users, making them unable to form opinions of their own (McQuail & Windahl, 1993). This was because of the consistent that force its users to trust and become homogenous. In addition they caused its audience to have a little will power to deny its influence. This goal directedness of the member of its audience is what differentiates U&G from the early theories of communications:
The theory focuses on the fact that what is the behavior of the people with the media relatively to what pressure it has on its users. By considering the audience as using the media to fulfill their needs, the basics for investigative gratifications that are obtained through media are placed. An example can be of the audience member that wants to escape. There are particular media that are available that could gratify the need in a suitable way. A lot of research that has been carried out in the past on U&G has its focus on the television and other different customary media. With extensive acceptance of the modern media, like the virtual worlds, SNSs and IM, a vital research from the perspective is rising.
The purpose of this research is to ascertain those motivational factors that influence the individuals to shift on new media from the traditional media and what gratifications are provided by them. Interactivity is the key characteristic of new media that differentiates it with the traditional media as the people are now able to respond to communication partner or source. Prosumer, which means that the user has to power to control distribution and production of content, has emerged in new media as the distinction between producer and consumer is blurred. The gratifications that are provided to new media user comparatively to those of conventional media can be seen in the fact that in new media the audience member are in a better position to have control of the content and how it is being used.
A research was conducted to anlayse the usage pattern of Facebook, which showed that new relationships are not developed on Facebook, rather the main purpose behind using Facebook was to remain in touch with offline contacts. 2,000 students were inquired about their purpose of using Facebook. The results revealed that students used the website for social searching (visiting the profiles of offline contacts), which is quite opposite to social browsing (forming new relationships). According to many students they were using Facebook just to maintain contact with their old friends, like students from high school.
Nevertheless, one will not deny the fact that Facebook is used for both purposes i.e. for maintaining contact with class mates and high school acquaintance (social capital is being maintained), and nourishing close relationships that are preexistent (bonding social capital). With respect to the bonding social capital, if the users want to keep sight on the activities of friends, wishing birthdays once receiving notification, etc, then Facebook is a low-maintenance way to do so since minimum efforts are required on behalf of the user. With respect to the maintenance of social capital, users can carry on with their weak ties by using Facebook, for instance, new and valuable resources and information can be provided by the high school acquaintances. To summarize, the function of sociability is well served by Facebook since the users are now able to remain in contact with all the offline people either living far or near.
Motivations for Joining Facebook
U&G differentiates between gratification sought and gratification attained. Gratification sought, which also sometimes mean ‘motives’ or ‘needs’, refer to the satisfaction that is expected by the audience to be derived from an instrument before actually interacting with it. Gratification attained, on the other hand is the satisfaction which is actually derived through the usage of a specific instrument or channel. There is a difference between the gratification attained and the gratification sought and thus the gap between both calculates the level of satisfaction and dissatisfaction that is experienced by individuals from their use of a specific channel.
When the gratification attains exceeds the satisfaction sought of an instrument or channel, it results in repeated usage by the consumers and also a means of predicting their habits. If the channel or instrument does not provide the satisfaction that is expected of it then this will result in diminishing usage and eventual stoppage which will depict the audience’s disappointment. The audience will then try to find out another channel that is able to give them the gratification that fulfills their expectation. It is important to comprehend the difference between both the types of gratifications in order to recognize how the numerous types of channels are used by different individuals, what is expected of them and what is the gratification that is actually derived out of the various products.
The change and creation of media habits as well as the importance of media and its part in the lives of individuals can be defined by the research carried. Focus has been placed on attained gratification by most research of U&G tradition and research to examine the reason of starting using a different new channel has been greatly ignored. Some of the only researches that stressed on gratification attained that could be found in the review of the SNS literature while no research could be found that investigated the reason of joining new medium. What is important is to find the reasons that result into adoption and this could be obtained by examining the reasons for joining an SNS.
Questions about the kind of gratification that were expected to be derived out of the channel by the users before the actual use and if there was one similar or numerous motives for most individuals to adopt its usage need to be answered. Many of the research questions can not be answered correctly and debates can not end conclusively because social media are a fast paced goal. As it is not possible to project self in one perfect way on social networking sites or to place a hyperlink on a website. Below are some of the examples that are recurring in researches:

• Close, strong, personal social online relationships are likely to be also close, strong, personal social offline relationships.
• People who are likely to communicate and interact more online will also communicate more offline.

• There always be only few close friends and the majority would be weak.

• A difference is always likely to exist between what individuals actually do and what they say they do according to the examination relating to privacy worries on social network sites.