RESUMOste trabalho tem como objetivo refletir sobre o paradoxo da estabilidade dos sistemas de contabilidade gerencial, ou seja, sobre as razões pelas quais as organizações, na prática, utilizam muito pouco a base conceitual disponível na teoria. A base conceitual da teoria da contabilidade gerencial é fundamentada na teoria neoclássica da firma, cujos pressupostos básicos são: (i) a maximização racional dos agentes econô-micos e (ii) o equilíbrio geral proporcionado pelas forças de mercado. O estudo de caráter teórico apresenta críticas à teoria neoclássica e demonstra que, segundo a abordagem da denominada velha economia institucional (OIE -old institutional economics), a contabilidade gerencial praticada pelas empresas é uma instituição formada a partir de hábitos e rotinas que dão sentido aos relacionamentos dos grupos da organização. O estudo indica que as organizações não utilizam em larga escala as novas abordagens de contabilidade gerencial porque os processos de institucionalização dos novos conceitos efetivamente não ocorreram. ABSTRACThis study aims to carry out reflections towards explaining the paradox of management accounting stability, or, why the implementation level of new accounting techniques and concepts in companies is below the expected. Management accounting theory is strongly oriented by the neoclassical theory of the firm, but neoclassical economics was developed by economists to predict behavior at the industry and market levels. It was not intended as an explanation of the behavior of managers within firms. This paper criticizes neoclassical theory and argues that according the OIE -old institutional economics, management accounting can be seen as institution formed through habits and routines of a social group. The institutional approach enables organizations to reproduce and legitimate behaviors and to achieve organizational cohesion. This work indicates that firms do not implement new concepts from management accounting because these were not institutionalized.

BackgroundHead and neck squamous cell carcinoma (HNSCC) is one of the most common malignancies in humans. The average 5-year survival rate is one of the lowest among aggressive cancers, showing no significant improvement in recent years. When detected early, HNSCC has a good prognosis, but most patients present metastatic disease at the time of diagnosis, which significantly reduces survival rate. Despite extensive research, no molecular markers are currently available for diagnostic or prognostic purposes.MethodsAiming to identify differentially-expressed genes involved in laryngeal squamous cell carcinoma (LSCC) development and progression, we generated individual Serial Analysis of Gene Expression (SAGE) libraries from a metastatic and non-metastatic larynx carcinoma, as well as from a normal larynx mucosa sample. Approximately 54,000 unique tags were sequenced in three libraries.ResultsStatistical data analysis identified a subset of 1,216 differentially expressed tags between tumor and normal libraries, and 894 differentially expressed tags between metastatic and non-metastatic carcinomas. Three genes displaying differential regulation, one down-regulated (KRT31) and two up-regulated (BST2, MFAP2), as well as one with a non-significant differential expression pattern (GNA15) in our SAGE data were selected for real-time polymerase chain reaction (PCR) in a set of HNSCC samples. Consistent with our statistical analysis, quantitative PCR confirmed the upregulation of BST2 and MFAP2 and the downregulation of KRT31 when samples of HNSCC were compared to tumor-free surgical margins. As expected, GNA15 presented a non-significant differential expression pattern when tumor samples were compared to normal tissues.ConclusionTo the best of our knowledge, this is the first study reporting SAGE data in head and neck squamous cell tumors. Statistical analysis was effective in identifying differentially expressed genes reportedly involved in cancer development. The differential expression of a subset of genes was confirmed in additional larynx carcinoma samples and in carcinomas from a distinct head and neck subsite. This result suggests the existence of potential common biomarkers for prognosis and targeted-therapy development in this heterogeneous type of tumor.

Purpose -The objective of this case study is to evaluate the change process, under the old institutional economics (OIE) approach, that had occurred within the management-accounting system of Brazilian bank. The present study examines the efficacy of the change process in management accounting, from the perspective of system users, seven years after its beginning. Design/methodology/approach -The research is based on a case study. The study presents a literature review of institutional theory and a case study of Banco do Brasil -a large Brazilian bank that has implemented profound changes in its management-accounting system. Findings -The results indicate that new concepts have been effectively institutionalised and converted into new values, habits, and routines inside the organisation. The study provides new insights into management-accounting change.Research limitations/implications -A single case study does not allow the results to be generalised to other organisations. Originality/value -The study offers a conceptual structure and operational guidelines to evaluate institutionalisation of management-accounting change processes. The main contribution of this study is to offer new operational insights on management-accounting institutionalisation using the conceptual framework proposed by Burns and Scapens.

Background: The search for enriched (aka over-represented or enhanced) ontology terms in a list of genes obtained from microarray experiments is becoming a standard procedure for a systemlevel analysis. This procedure tries to summarize the information focussing on classification designs such as Gene Ontology, KEGG pathways, and so on, instead of focussing on individual genes. Although it is well known in statistics that association and significance are distinct concepts, only the former approach has been used to deal with the ontology term enrichment problem.

OBJECTIVE:This paper aims to describe and discuss a minimization procedure specifically designed for a clinical trial that evaluates treatment efficacy for OCD patients.METHOD:Aitchison’s compositional distance was used to calculate vectors for each possibility of allocation in a covariate adaptive method. Two different procedures were designed to allocate patients in small blocks or sequentially one-by-one.RESULTS:We present partial results of this allocation procedure as well as simulated data. In the clinical trial for which this procedure was developed, successful balancing between treatment arms was achieved. Separately, in an exploratory analysis, we found that if the arrival order of patients was altered, most patients were allocated to a different treatment arm than their original assignment.CONCLUSION:Our results show that the random arrival order of patients determine different assignments and therefore maintains the unpredictability of the allocation method. We conclude that our proposed procedure allows for the use of a large number of prognostic factors in a given allocation decision. Our method seems adequate for the design of the psychiatric trials used as models. Trial registrations are available at clinicaltrials.gov NCT00466609 and NCT00680602.