Search results

This chapter explores the development and the role of accounting for research quality in Australia’s Excellence in Research for Australia (ERA) assessment exercise. It tracks the progress of performance measurement systems from quantitative to qualitative measurement within the Australian higher education sector since 1970, leading up to the implementation of a formal ERA in 2010, and its subsequent iterations in 2012, 2015, and 2018. Although only a part of the ERA submissions, now certain published research outputs provide the primary evidence for research quality to most ERA panels and are a significant driver of the final rating awarded. Before the authors assess the 2018 exercise, they will examine the ever-changing role of journal publications as a vehicle for academic research output.

This mixed methods multiple case study examines the knowledge, understanding, and awareness of 25 health board/facility oversight managers and 20 health professional association directors about privacy and security issues important to achieving health information exchange (HIE) in the state of Nebraska. Within case analyses revealed that health board/facility oversight managers were unaware of key elements of the federal agenda; their concerns about privacy encompassed broad definitions both of what constituted a “health record” and “regulations centeredness.” Alternatively, health professional association leaders were keenly aware of national initiatives. Despite concerns about HIE, they supported information exchange believing that patient care quality and safety would improve. Cross-case analyses revealed a perceptual disconnect between board/facility oversight managers and professional association leaders; however, both favored HIE. Understanding state-level stakeholder perceptions helps us further understand our progress toward achieving the national health information interoperability goal. There is an ongoing need to assure adequate patient privacy protection. Licensure and facility boards at the state level are likely to have a major role in the assurance of patient protections through facility oversight and provider behavior. The need for these boards to take an active role in oversight of patient rights and protections is imminent. Similarly, professional associations are the major vehicles for post-graduate education of practicing health professionals. Their engagement is essential to maintaining health professions knowledge. States will need to understand and engage both of these key stakeholders to make substantial progress in moving the HIE agenda forward.

The increased and varying presence of spirituality within mental health services has assisted practitioners to consider how individual beliefs might shape behaviors, relationships, and communication patterns. Constraints arise when assumptions about the meaning and nature of the spiritual beliefs is associated with an organized religion such as Christianity, which can hinder open inclusion within clinical and supervisory practice. When there is a dominant discourse about how Christianity (and other religions) has inherent and current instances of historical abuse at the foreground, policy-makers have used this as reason to be cautious about open inclusion in practice. This chapter seeks to open a more integrated conversational space between spirituality, reflexivity, and black mental health.

Given there is a great deal of scope for transforming mental health services for Black service users there remains a plethora of possibility for joining systemic reflexivity with spirituality (Cook, Powell, & Sims, 2010). There is less discourse around the applicability of spirituality expressed within leadership and supervisory practice; however, it can play a significant role for leaders, managers, and supervisors who practice from positions of spiritual awareness, orientation, and competence. There is particular relevance for Black African-Caribbean practitioners that consider they have a history of strength-based spiritual approaches and support systems inherent within their cultural identity (Boyd-Franklin, 1989). Consideration needs to be given as to how the associated concepts of collaboration, community cohesion, and support systems might assist professionals within leadership and organizational development roles as part of addressing Black mental health service provision.

Artificial neural networks (ANNs), which represent computational models simulating the biological neural systems, have become a dominant paradigm for solving complex analytical problems. ANN applications have been employed in various disciplines such as psychology, computer science, mathematics, engineering, medicine, manufacturing, and business studies. Academic research on ANNs is witnessing considerable publication activity, and there exists a need to track the intellectual structure of the existing research for a better comprehension of the domain. The current study uses a bibliometric approach to ANN business literature extracted from the Web of Science database. The study also performs a chronological review using science mapping and examines the evolution trajectory to determine research areas relevant to future research. The authors suggest that researchers focus on ANN deep learning models as the bibliometric results predict an expeditious growth of the research topic in the upcoming years. The findings reveal that business research on ANNs is flourishing and suggest further work on domains, such as back-propagation neural networks, support vector machines, and predictive modeling. By providing a systematic and dynamic understanding of ANN business research, the current study enhances the readers' understanding of existing reviews and complements the domain knowledge.

This chapter presents a brief history of the James Partridge Award from its founding in 1997 to the present day.

The history of the James Partridge Award is told as a narrative account. Both authors were personally involved in the founding and early development of the award.

The James Partridge Award has celebrated the accomplishments of African American information professionals since the first award was presented in 1998. The award is an important part of the Conference on Inclusion and Diversity in Library and Information Science.

The author feels haunted; troubled by the ethnography that the author conducted some years ago of a new partnership group that was attempting to set up a community learning centre. The author is aware that it doesn’t sound like a particularly alarming research topic, and perhaps that is where some of the issues began. The author did not expect an ethnographic haunting to occur. The partnership recruited the author less than a year into the creation of the project and spent two years as a sort of ‘researcher in residence’. The original idea was that the author would observe the initial development of the project and then, when the community learning centre was established, the author would research the centre’s activities and how they were experienced by village residents. However, fairly soon into the project, problematic dynamics developed within the group, leading to irreconcilable conflict between members. The community learning centre was never established and the author was left to piece together an ethnography of a failed partnership. Researching an increasingly dysfunctional partnership was an emotionally exhausting activity, especially when relationships between members became progressively hostile. Managing data collection and analysis at this time was difficult, but the author was shocked that, a number of months (and now years) later, revisiting the data for publication purposes remained uncomfortable. The author managed to produce the PhD thesis on the back of this study, but the author has not felt able to go back to the data, despite there being findings worthy of publication. This ethnography is in a state of limbo and is at risk of becoming lost forever. In this chapter, the author explores the reasons for this and discusses lessons learned for future projects.

Most years, several AIB members are elected as AIB Fellows on account of their excellent international business scholarship, and/or past service as AIB President or Executive Secretary. The Fellows are in charge of electing Eminent Scholars as well as the International Executive and International Educator (formerly, Dean) of the Year, who often provide the focus for Plenary Sessions at AIB Conferences. Their history since 1975 covers over half of the span of the AIB and reflects many issues that dominated that period in terms of research themes, progresses and problems, the internationalization of business education and the role of international business in society and around the globe. Like other organizations, the Fellows Group had their ups and downs, successes and failures – and some fun too!