Search results

This paper investigates how academic teachers engage in identity work and make sense of entrepreneurship and academia in an entrepreneurship training programme.

By employing a sensemaking approach, the paper inductively analyses materials from a business idea development camp organised for academic teachers.

In collective sensemaking during the camp, non-academic facilitators strongly influenced the reflection-in-experience via normative ideas of entrepreneurship and their othering of entrepreneurship from academic work. In their post-camp individual essays, the academic teachers reflect-on-experience and draw parallels between entrepreneurship and academic work constructing sameness.

Longitudinal research is needed in identity work and sensemaking among academic teachers in relation to entrepreneurship.

Universities need to offer arenas for teachers and other faculty to support identity work and sensemaking.

This study generates new understanding of how academic teachers engage in identity work and make sense of entrepreneurship in training when interacting with others. It underscores the importance of time needed for reflection-on-action.

Many studies have traced the collapse of most banks in the past to weak corporate governance. In response to this, the Central Bank of Nigeria established a Code of Corporate Governance which was made mandatory for all banks in Nigeria since 2003. Fifteen years after this provision the amount of actual loss attributed to financial malpractices in banks is still substantial. Available statistics show that the number of fraud cases has been on the increase in recent times.

This study examined the extent to which corporate governance has mitigated or moderated the effect of two macroeconomic factors – unemployment and inflation – on fraud in Nigerian banks. An interactive model was specified and estimated with PROCESS – a computational tool developed by Andrew Hayes.

The result revealed that while the structure of corporate governance by banks in Nigeria moderates the effect of unemployment, the reverse is the case for inflation.

This goes to show that the motivation factor stipulated by the fraud triangle theory holds sway in Nigeria.

It is recommended that efforts to bring a lasting solution to the challenge of financial malpractices in Nigerian banks must adopt a holistic approach.

Until very recently an immense USSR comprised fifteen republics. Now the three Baltic states are free of Moscow's direction, and an independent Ukraine has joined Belarus and the former Russian Soviet Federated Republic (RSFSR) as the hub in a commonwealth of former republics that have declared themselves independent or “sovereign,” but federated through agreements based on economics or defense considerations. Whether one concentrates on the story of Baltic freedom following the abortive 1991 coup, the subsequent dissolution of central governmental power, or the lasting enmities among some of the peoples in Central Asia and the Caucasus, the pivot around which this new interest or heightened curiosity turns is the recent great change within the late Union of Soviet Socialist Republics.

Terrorism is not a new phenomenon in human life. It existed during Biblical times when Joseph, the seventeen‐year‐old son of Jacob, was kidnapped and sold into slavery by his jealous brothers. Although terrorists have been active throughout history, it is only recently that we have seen an increase in scholarly interest in the phenomenon of terrorism. One reason for this is the fact that terrorist activities have increased dramatically since the 1960s. Everyday we read in the newspapers and hear on radio and television details of the latest terrorist outrage. Many American colleges and universities now offer a course or two on terrorism as a part of their curriculum.

The purpose of this paper is to propose a theoretical model for how consumers aggregate satisfaction with individual service encounters to form a summary evaluation of satisfaction, and further examines its effect on customers’ share of category spending (share of wallet (SOW)).

The data used consist of 10,983 completed surveys from 1,448 customers whose transaction-specific satisfaction with a retailer and their subsequent purchase behaviors in the category were tracked for more than four transactions. Mixed effects models were employed to test the relationship between the cumulative effect of satisfaction with multiple service encounters on SOW.

Cumulative satisfaction is a weighted average of satisfaction with specific encounters, with weights decaying geometrically so that more recent encounters receive more weight. More recent transaction-specific satisfaction levels tend to have greater influence on customers’ next purchase SOW allocations; this, however, is only the case for customers who are less than highly satisfied, with a rating of 8 or lower on a ten-point scale. Additionally, the impact of transaction-specific satisfaction on SOW is not linear. Highly positive transaction-specific satisfaction levels have a greater impact on SOW than negative levels.

Many companies monitor satisfaction across multiple service encounters. This study shows how one can aggregate these measures to arrive at a cumulative effect, and highlights the importance to discriminate between first, more and less recent encounters and second, low vs high levels of satisfaction to better understand customers’ spending among different providers.

Using a longitudinal data set with real customers, this paper identifies a new measure for taking into account the cumulative satisfaction, identifies the positivity bias, and shows how recency affects the relationship between satisfaction and SOW.

Research demonstrates that non-attendance at healthcare appointments is a waste of scarce resources; leading to reduced productivity, increased costs, disadvantaged patients through increased waiting times and demoralised staff. The purpose of this paper is to investigate non-attendance and implemented interventions to improve practice.

A mixed methods service audit took place in a primary care psychological therapies service. Existing service guidelines and reporting systems were reviewed. A cross-sectional design was used to compare a year’s cohort of completers of cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT) (n=140) and drop-outs (n=61).

Findings suggested contrasting guidelines and clinically inaccurate reporting systems. The overall service did not attend (DNA) rate was 8.9 per cent; well below rates suggested in the literature. The drop-out rate from CBT was 17 per cent. The most influential factor associated with CBT drop-out was the level of depression. The level of anxiety, risk ratings and deprivation scores were also different between completers and drop-outs. The main reasons given for non-attendance were forgetting, being too unwell to attend, having other priorities, or dissatisfaction with the service; again these findings were consistent with prior research.

A range of recommendations for practice are made, many of which were implemented with an associated reduction in the DNA rate.

Hospital costs in the USA are a large part of the national GDP. Medical billing and supplies processes are significant and growing contributors to hospital operations costs in the USA. This article aims to identify cost drivers associated with these processes and to suggest improvements to reduce hospital costs.

A Monte Carlo simulation model that uses @Risk software facilitates cost analysis and captures variability associated with the medical billing process (administrative) and medical supplies process (variable). The model produces estimated savings for implementing new processes.

Significant waste exists across the entire medical supply process that needs to be eliminated. Annual savings, by implementing the improved process, have the potential to save several billion dollars annually in US hospitals. The other analysis in this study is related to hospital billing processes. Increased spending on hospital billing processes is not entirely due to hospital inefficiency.

The study lacks concrete data for accurately measuring cost savings, but there is obviously room for improvement in the two US healthcare processes. This article only looks at two specific costs associated with medical supply and medical billing processes, respectively.

This study facilitates awareness of escalating US hospital expenditures. Cost categories, namely, fixed, variable and administrative, are presented to identify the greatest areas for improvement.

The study will be valuable to US Congress policy makers and US healthcare industry decision makers. Medical billing process, part of a hospital's administrative costs, and hospital supplies management processes are part of variable costs. These are the two major cost drivers of US hospitals' expenditures that were examined and analyzed.

This article aims to examine the effects of the best value policy initiative on the human resource function in Scottish local government. The article examines whether best value provides the human resource function with the opportunity and ability to perform strategically, rather than in a reactive and opportune manner. In addition, it will examine whether the policy will enable the human resource (HR) function to move from the mechanistic, repetitive activities HR specialists report consume their time, towards the “softer”, more consultative tasks associated with the HR function.

The purpose of this paper is to critically understand a programme theory of the “transfer” of work in one social organisation and sector (an innovative and successful social enterprise community café, The Usual Place that seeks to enhance the employability of young people with additional support needs in “hospitality”) to another (Dumfries Theatre Royal, a regional theatre and registered charity, specifically the “Dumfries Arts Award Project” and more generally, “the arts”).

By means of gaining insight into the complexity of the transfer of innovative practices between two socially oriented organisations and theoretical insights into associated conducive contexts and optimal processes, the work used realist evaluation resources within a longitudinal ethnographic approach. Within this, a series of specific methods were deployed, including semi structured key stakeholder interviews, non-participant observation and “walking” and “paired” interviews with service users in each organisation.

The principle finding is that with attention being paid to the context and intervention processes associated with transfer processes and having sufficient capacity and strong partnership working, it is possible to take an innovative idea from one context, transfer it to another setting and have relatively immediate “success” in terms of achieving a degree of sustainability. The authors propose a provisional programme theory that illuminates this transfer. They were also able to show that, whilst working with the potentially conservative concept of “employability”; both organisations were able to maintain a progressive ethos associated with social innovation.

The work offers theoretical and methodological originality. The significance of “scaling up” social innovation is recognised as under-researched and under-theorised and the use of a realistic evaluation approach and the associated development of provisional programme theory address this.