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Higher education, including research, depends crucially on the people involved, their talents and human capital. Therefore, a university can improve or at least maintain its standing by hiring only the best available academics. Hiring the absolute best may be too expensive for most and is impossible for all. However, it is not too difficult to recognise the relatively best scholars. The real problem is to act on this knowledge instead of following other objectives. That is why detached decision makers like managers, politicians or academics from other institutions may be in a better position than faculty members with respect to senior hirings. This paper aims to address these issues

The argument is explained in detail and historical examples are given.

It is shown why and how to hire the best available academics. The existence of many deviations from this rule offers opportunities for those who follow it.

Besides some practical problems, the key intellectual problem is to measure or even define quality in academia. The principle holds nevertheless for any kind of academic quality.

Universities can improve their status by hiring the best available academics.

One simple (formal) principle can structure the recruiting process and thereby change universities for the better.

Complexity is endogenous for humans and increasing at an accelerating rate. At the same time individual lives become better and even simpler. This seems to be a paradox for which this paper aims to offer a solution.

The paradox and its solution are explained in some detail.

Specialisation is the missing link which fuels overall complexity and shelters individuals from it. Specialisation is a good solution for most problems arising from increasing complexity, although it results in some problems of its own and general knowledge is still needed as well as general education to obtain this knowledge.

The presented argument is quite general in itself and needs further elaboration and empirical testing.

Aims and limits of specialised as well as general education are discussed.

The right kind and amount of general education increases welfare and efficiency.

This connection between complexity, specialisation and education has not been shown before (at least to the best of knowledge of the author, who has the same problems to deal with the complexity of all human knowledge as everybody else).

During the 1990s many states used budget surpluses to refinance public education and provide property tax relief. This paper uses a case study of Kansas to assess the sustainability of state-initiated property tax cuts. It finds that the cuts are not fully sustainable over time because of court and federal mandates that require additional spending on education, economic fluctuations that reduce the ability of state budgets to maintain a given share of education spending, and demands for local control to allow school districts to spend more or less than state-mandated levels. The paper also argues that the property tax is essential to economic efficiency and local control.

This paper aims to investigate the intersection between crowdfunding (CF), open innovation (OI) and responsible innovation (RI) and identify the emerging trends and gaps in research and new paths for CF research in the future. In addition, this paper proposes a conceptual framework and propositions.

This paper is structured in line with the systematic literature review protocol. After reading all the titles, keywords and abstracts, 172 papers focused on OI and RI were selected for this research. Finally, 27 papers that are based on dimensions related to responsible OI were selected for the study.

Due to CF's multidisciplinary nature, the scientific literature on the role of CF in endorsing responsible OI for shared value co-creation appears fragmented and redundant. Several emerging trends and gaps of research and new paths for CF research in the future arise regarding research methodology and theoretical perspective.

To the best of the authors' knowledge, this is the first study investigating the intersection between CF OI and RI.

Organizations, both large and small, are increasingly outsourcing their applications to application service providers (ASPs) for a variety of reasons such as cost reduction, shortened time‐to‐market, lack of internal expertise, and risk reduction. However, the adoption of the ASP model has not been smooth sailing for many organizations, and only a few organizations have a formal approach to making ASP outsourcing decisions. Partially to fill this void, develops a value‐driven approach to outsourcing using ASP based on outsourcing theories and the industry’s best practices. The value‐driven approach is an adaptation and extension of Simon’s decision‐making process. It is designed to guide IS managers systematically through the complex process of identifying outsourcing opportunities, evaluating the viability of using the ASP model, making outsourcing decisions, managing contractual and implementation issues, and assessing the service quality of ASP vendors. Provides important implications for research and practice. For researchers, identifies ample research opportunities in this new field. For practitioners, the value‐driven approach gives them an invaluable tool to manage today’s complex information technology outsourcing.

There are a number of benefits associated with two-way concrete flat slab construction for office buildings, parking garages and apartments - for example, reduced formwork, prompt erection, flexibility of partitions, and minimal increase in story heights. However, concrete flat slabs could be quite vulnerable to punching shear failure in the event of a fire. The objective of the present article is to provide a state of the art review of the existing research and the issues associated with concrete flat slabs in fire and elevated temperature. There are a number of experimental and analytical studies on the punching shear behavior of concrete flat slabs in ambient conditions, available in the literature. Based on these studies, it is found that punching shear capacity in ambient condition is affected by many factors, which may not remain constant during a fire exposure. Only a limited number of studies on concrete flat slabs for punching shear failure in fire are available. This paper reviews the available experimental and analytical studies, standards and codes to address the research gap in estimating of punching shear strength of concrete flat slab-column connections without shear reinforcement.

The purpose of this paper is to assess food safety knowledge, choice behavior and health hazard concerns of ethnic Goan pork sausage consumers through various consumer food safety indices and also to evaluate socio-demographic influences on various consumer food safety indices.

Primary data in the form of 210 questionnaire responses were collected from Goan pork sausage consumers. Based on the responses, seven various consumer food safety indices were derived. The cumulative score of all the indices were normalized (0–1). The association between socio-demographic variables and consumer indices were evaluated using linear regression analysis, Pearson's correlation matrix, principal component analysis (PCA) and correspondence analysis (CA).

The results of the analysis indicate that the consumption of Goan pork sausages is most prevalent amongst younger people with high education having higher income. A majority of consumers have high score for the four consumer indices. The results of correlation analysis, regression analysis, PCA and CA revealed a significant association of consumer indices with socio-demographic variables.

The results of this study will provide a way forward for the evaluation of existing overall food safety concerns in the target population and in the future would be used for the promotion of good handling practices and health of Goan pork sausage consumers.