June 2014

Finding opportunities in risk management

By Torben Juul Andersen, Maxine Garvey, and Oliviero Roggi
For decades, the press has been full of fascinating and colorful stories about prominent and heralded enterprises ending up in scandal and bankruptcy. These include the diversion of corporate funds in the Maxwell Group in the early 1990s, the trading losses that made Barings Bank extinct in the mid-1990s, the accounting frauds at WorldCom in the late 1990s, and the spectacular collapse of Enron in the early 2000s.

Professionals’ implication in corporate corruption

By Claudia Gabbioneta, Rajshree Prakash, and Royston Greenwood
Professional service firms have been implicated in numerous cases of corporate fraud. Enron is probably the most striking – albeit by no means the only – example of this involvement. Arthur Andersen (who audited Enron’s financial statements) was accused of helping the company ‘design accounting techniques or models’ that Enron used to boost its performance.

Philippines pork barrel scam and contending ideologies of accountability

By Garry Rodan
When Benigno Aquino III was elected Philippine President in 2010, combating entrenched corruption was uppermost on his projected reform agenda. Hitherto, it has been unclear what the full extent and nature of reform ambitions of his administration might be.

McNae’s Essential Law for Journalists – diamond anniversary

In 1954, “hacking” meant horse riding or a coughing fit, “twitter” was what birds did, and Lord Justice Leveson was in short trousers. And the first edition of Essential Law for Journalists by Leonard McNae published, costing 10s 6d.

Life in occupied Paris during World War II

By David Ball
If you were a fifty-year-old intellectual, a well-known writer of left-wing articles and literary essays, and your country was occupied by the Nazis and its more-or-less legal government collaborated with them — and now the editor of the leading literary magazine of the time pressed you to contribute an essay to his review, would you do so?

“Stretch” Johnson, my father

By Wendy Johnson
In the grim period of McCarthyism during the 50s, Howard “Stretch” Johnson, my father, fought for freedom of thought and speech, protesting the persecution of artists and intellectuals. Despite the fact that he had grown away from the Communist Party, with the 22nd Congress of the Communist Party and the revelations of Stalin’s bloody deeds, Stretch stood trial and refused to denounce his comrades.

Songs of the Alaskan Inuit

Music today is usually categorized by the genre to which it most stylistically relates. A quick scroll through the iTunes genres sections reveals the familiar categories, among them Rock, Pop, R&B/Soul, Country, Classical, and Alternative. Songs or musical compilations today seem to have a readily apparent identity.

Russia’s ‘spring’ of 2014

By Sascha-Dominik Bachmann
Russia’s offensive policy of territorial annexation (of the Crimea), the threat of using military force and the actual support of separatist groups on the territory of Ukraine has left the West and NATO practically helpless to respond. NATO seems to be unwilling to agree on a more robust response, thus revealing a political division among its member states.

Feynman diagrams and the fly in the ointment

By Tom Lancaster and Stephen J. Blundell
Sometimes it’s the fly in the ointment, the thing that spoils the purity of the whole picture, which leads to the big advances in science. That’s exactly what happened at a conference in Shelter Island, New York in 1947 when a group of physicists gathered to discuss the latest breakthroughs in their field which seemed at first sight to make everything more complicated.

Preparing for BIALL 2014

By Katherine Marshall and Isabel Jones
On 12 June 2014, hundreds of librarians and resource co-ordinators will gather in the historic spa town of Harrogate to attend the annual British and Irish Association of Law Librarians Conference (BIALL). The meeting provides an opportunity for delegates to convene and discuss the pressing issues in their field.

May 2014: a ‘political earthquake’?

By David Denver and Mark Garnett
The latest European Parliament and local council elections, held on Thursday 22 May, has shown, once again, that it would be foolish to make any predictions about political future contests in Britain. The two most striking aspects of the results were the advances made by UKIP and the collapse of Liberal Democrat support.

How much do you know about the Law of the Sea?

Of the many things in our world that require protection, we sometimes forget the vast expanses of the oceans. However, they are also vulnerable and deserve our protection, including under the law. In recognition of World Oceans Day, we pulled together a collection of international law questions on the Law of the Sea from our books, journals, and online products. Test your knowledge of the law of the sea!

What is a book? (humour edition)

As the Amazon-Hachette debate has escalated this week, taking a notably funny turn on the Colbert Report, we’d like to share some funnier reflections on books and the purposes they serve. Here are some selections from the Oxford Dictionary of Humorous Quotations, Fifth Edition.

What kind of Lena Younger would Diahann Carroll have been?

By Ruth Feldstein
In February, fans learned that Diahann Carroll had withdrawn from “A Raisin in the Sun.” The most recent revival of Lorraine Hansberry’s award-winning 1959 drama opened in April, and is now nominated for five Tony awards.

1914-1918: the paradox of semi-modern war

By Dennis Showalter
The looming centennial of the Great War has inspired a predicable abundance of conferences, books, articles, and blog posts. Most are built on a familiar meme: the war as a symbol of futility. Soldiers and societies alike are presented as victims of flawed intentions and defective methods, which in turn reflected inability or unwillingness to adapt to the spectrum of innovations (material, intellectual, and emotional), that made the Great War the first modern conflict.

Which book changed your life?

We’re continuing our examination of what a book is this week, following the cultural debate that the Amazon-Hachette dispute has set off, with something a little closer to our hearts. We’ve compiled a brief list of books that changed the lives of Oxford University Press staff. Please share your books in the comments below.