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Purpose – The purpose of this chapter is to theorize the relationship between diagnosis and medicalization through an examination of the medicalization of childhood gender variance and the Gender Identity Disorder of Childhood diagnosis.

Methodology/approach – The chapter examines textual data (published clinical and research literatures, and critiques of the diagnosis appearing in a range of venues) to track how childhood gender variance is medicalized over time and the role of diagnosis in that medicalization.

Findings – While diagnosis certainly plays a role in shoring up medicalization, this case study reveals the many ways in which diagnoses may also become key tools in attempts to curtail medicalization.

Research limitations/implications – As a case study, the findings are not generalizable to all diagnoses. As a study of an instance of the medicalization of deviance, these findings may be particularly applicable to analogous cases.

Social implications – These findings show the sometimes tenuous nature of medicalization processes, and the social uses of diagnoses in those processes.

Originality/value of paper – This chapter sheds light on a relationship that is often assumed to be unidirectional (e.g., that the formation of diagnosis results in increased medicalization), and answers calls for a more nuanced sociology of diagnosis, including greater attention to the relationship between diagnosis and medicalization.

The adoption of electronic health records (EHRs) and digitization of health data over the past decade is ushering in the next generation of digital health tools that leverage artificial intelligence (AI) to improve varied aspects of health system performance. The decade ahead is therefore shaping up to be one in which digital health becomes even more at the forefront of health care delivery – demanding the time, attention, and resources of health care leaders and frontline staff, and becoming inextricably linked with all dimensions of health care delivery. In this chapter, we look back and look ahead. There are substantive lessons learned from the first era of large-scale adoption of enterprise EHRs and ongoing challenges that organizations are wrestling with – particularly related to the tension between standardization and flexibility/customization of EHR systems and the processes they support. Managing this tension during efforts to implement and optimize enterprise systems is perhaps the core challenge of the past decade, and one that has impeded consistent realization of value from initial EHR investments. We describe these challenges, how they manifest, and organizational strategies to address them, with a specific focus on alignment with broader value-based care transformation. We then look ahead to the AI wave – the massive number of applications of AI to health care delivery, the expected benefits, the risks and challenges, and approaches that health systems can consider to realize the benefits while avoiding the risks.

Internal capital markets of diversified firms have been associated with inefficient allocation of investment funds across divisions, leading to value losses. Utilizing a sample of diversified firms that adopted or eliminated Residual Income (RI) plans between 1990 and 2009, we show that adoptions of these plans mitigate investment distortions and lead to value gains. Following the adoption of RI plans, diversified firms start allocating investment funds based on growth opportunities of their divisions. RI plan adopters lower their divisional investment levels, especially in segments with below-average growth opportunities. The overall investment allocation efficiency improves, and the diversification discount diminishes after the adoption of RI plans. However, RI plans appear to be used only as temporary tools for assessing corporate performance. The plans are adopted primarily by firms expected to immediately generate plan bonuses for management, and they are frequently eliminated by firms with bad accounting performance and low managerial bonuses. The study contributes to the literature on organizational efficiency, internal capital markets, and on the importance of measures based on economic profits or RI.

We investigate the social and legal blame that investors assign to auditors following unfavorable outcomes using the precision of accounting guidance described as principles-based (i.e., less-precise) or rules-based (i.e., more precise), and why investors assign blame at differing levels. We also examine how the precision of accounting guidance is related to perceptions of auditors’ ethical characteristics. We posit that blame assigned to auditors differs based on auditors’ perceived decision-making control. Results indicate a significant association between the precision of accounting guidance and social blame, and a positive association between social blame and legal blame under standards described as less-precise. Investors are also more likely to make negative evaluations of the auditor’s ethical characteristics under less-precise accounting following an unfavorable outcome, which helps explain the association between social and legal blame. Our findings suggest that auditors could face additional blame as a result of a trend toward less-precise accounting guidance, with investors being more likely to question the auditors’ ethical characteristics following unfavorable outcomes.

This essay explores certain aspects of single product industry basic systems of the type Sraffa develops in Part I of Production of Commodities by Means of Commodities. It focusses on triangular trade as the simplest expression of the more general n-commodity case. Two elements of the framework are explored: (i) the relation of exchange between all commodities, conceived as the configuration of exchange which is applicable to the subsistence and surplus models, and (ii) the value/price expressions of labour time, applicable to the surplus model only, which posits the productivity of, remuneration to and extraction from living labour added to the system. This analysis complements and extends the Marxian reading of Sraffa’s notions of surplus and deficit industries first explored in Carter (2014b). The methodology of ‘given quantities’ in expositing the relations developed is adopted in this essay as it corresponds to the same method employed by Sraffa. This allows readers to easily move from the present essay to Sraffa’s book and importantly his archival notes which are now for all interested parties available as colour digital images on the Wren Library website.

Models of value creation that have been proposed for supporting value-based management are described and analyzed, including the Balanced Scorecard, the Baldrige Quality Award Criteria, the Deming Management Method, the Service-Profit Chain, and the Skandia Intellectual Capital Model. These models are compared, their potential for guiding the identification of value drivers and performance measures for value-based management is assessed, and management issues that must be addressed if such models are to contribute to long-run value creation are explored. These issues include causally linking value drivers to each other and to financial outcomes, the extent to which the models take a dynamic, or whole-system, view of value creation, and whether multiple value drivers should be explicitly weighted and combined to form a “value index.” Finally, the substantial body of research evidence linking intangible value drivers to financial outcomes is reviewed, and some directions for further research are offered.

The University of Utah is located in Salt Lake City, the home of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (LDS or Mormon). This conjunction has led some to believe the University is Church-run, or at least Church dominated. In fact, the University, state-financed from the beginning, has been wholly autonomous since an incident in the early 20th Century. In that incident several faculty members were discharged for their unorthodox religious and political views. This led to an uproar and subsequent protracted controversy, the resolution of which did not reinstate the discharged faculty members but did establish the complete autonomy of the University from the Church.