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The purpose of this paper is to focus on the climatic trends of mean annual temperature and annual precipitation from 1931 to 2000, in four regions of the USA: Northeast, South Atlantic, North Central, and Pacific West.

Five-year moving averages are calculated for each climatic variable of all regions and used for the trend analysis. Regression analysis was performed to evaluate the level of significance for each trend line. A trend with p < 0.0001 is considered statistically significant throughout the study.

The data show a 0.62°C increase in temperature in the Pacific West from 1931 to 2000. Over the same time period, precipitation has increased by 10.4 centimeters in the North Central Region, which is 10 percent higher than the long-term average for the region.

The 0.62°C increase suggests that the Pacific West may be experiencing the effect of global warming because this finding is consistent with the result of the Canadian climatic trend study by Zhang et al. who also found that annual precipitation has increased by 35 percent in southern Canada over the same period, which coincides with the increasing trend of precipitation found in the North Central Region. With the best available data and the findings from other studies, the authors are confident that the warming trend in the western USA is likely linked to the increasing sea surface temperature of the Pacific Ocean.

This study presents an original empirically based conceptual framework representing mobile microbusiness founders' experiences when converting to a franchise business model that links individual-level variables to a sociomaterial process.

An exploratory interpretive research design produced this framework using data from the enterprise development narratives of mobile franchisors who had recently converted their mobile microbusinesses to a franchise business model.

The emergent framework proposes that franchisor’s conversion experience involves substantial identity work prompted by an identity dilemma originating in a conflict between role expectations and franchising operational demands. This dilemma materializes during franchise document creation and requires some degree of “identity undoing” to ensure business continuity. By acting as boundary-objects-in-use in the conversion process, the franchise documents provide a sociomaterial foundation for the business transition and the development of a viable franchisor identity.

There is scant literature addressing the startup experiences of mobile microbusiness franchisors. The study was therefore exploratory, producing a substantive conceptual framework that will require further confirmatory studies.

By proposing that conversion to a franchise business model is experienced as an identity transformation coupled to a sociomaterial process centred on system documentation, this original empirically based conceptual framework not only addresses a gap in the individual-level literature on franchise development but also provides a framework to direct new research and discussions between intending franchisors and their professional advisors about person–enterprise fit.

The conceptual framework is the first to address franchisors' experience of transitioning any type of microbusiness to a franchise business model.

The purpose of this paper is to explore how judges perceive High Functioning Autistic Spectrum Disorders (hfASDs) and the disorders’ effects on an offender's ability to formulate criminal intent and control behaviour.

Semi-structured interviews on topics related to offenders with hfASDs were conducted with 21 California Superior Court Judges. A coding scheme was developed and an iterative qualitative coding process was used for analysis.

Analysis yielded three major themes on how an hfASD diagnosis affects an offender's ability to regulate actions and criminal behaviour. Interviewed judges reported beliefs that hfASD offenders view the world in a different way and that much of their behaviour is not under their direct control. Judges reported these perceptions likely affect how they criminally process and make legal decisions regarding offenders with hfASDs.

The sample size was small and therefore no statistical significance can be drawn from results; findings cannot be applied to perceptions or experiences of the entire California Superior Court Judge population.

Past academic research reports that individuals with hfASDs that offend often do so because of specific symptoms associated with the disorder. This presents a complex dilemma for the criminal justice system regarding how best to understand the disorder and process these offenders. This study and its findings aim to shed light on issues judges encounter in determining these offenders’ responsibility and sentencing, in what ways this information might be integrated into judicial decision making, and areas where future research is needed.

As researchers are being called to examine the evolving technology research issues for COVID-19 and other pandemics, remote work has been accelerated and represents the future of work. Although it is known that one of the top forces shaping the future of work is changing employee expectations, the knowledge of remote work during a pandemic remains scant. Thus, this paper aims to determine the impact of remote worker’s expectations on their level of satisfaction and intention to continue to work remotely.

Using one of the prominent theories on expectations, Expectation Disconfirmation Theory (EDT), the authors conduct an online survey of 146 individuals who are currently working remotely.

By applying EDT, the findings demonstrate that an individual’s expectations regarding remote work impact their level of satisfaction with remote work and intention to continue to work remotely. Incorporating extant research, the findings extend the research stream to indicate that employees’ expectations about remote work significantly impact both their level of satisfaction and level of productivity.

The discussion elucidates the significance of understanding employee expectations regarding remote work in the evolving new normal. The findings from the study demonstrate the importance of an individual’s expectations regarding remote work on their level of satisfaction with remote work and intention to continue to work remotely. Thus, this study fills a gap in the literature by applying EDT to the remote work context.

A school of education participated in crowdfunding events to empower the next generation of teachers and promote neighborhood partnerships.

School of education faculty, staff and pre-service teachers alongside neighborhood public elementary schools and local community agencies created and presented unique partnership models designed to increase community awareness and engagement in education. Crowdfunding projects were presented in two consecutive years at an annual city-wide innovative crowdfunding event. Discussion of projects development, specific activities and outcomes from this entrepreneurial event are shared.

We investigate how firms’ responses to misconduct change when the institutional environment becomes more stringent. Organizational theory offers conflicting perspectives on whether new legislation will increase or decrease pressure on firms to take remedial action following misconduct. The dominant perspective posits that new legislation increases expectations of firm behavior, amplifying pressure on them to take remedial action after misconduct. A more recent perspective, however, suggests that the mere necessity to meet more stringent regulatory requirements certifies firms as legitimate to relevant audiences. This certification effect buffers firms, reducing the pressure for them to take remedial action after misconduct. Using a temporary, largely arbitrary exemption from a key provision of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, we show that firms that were not required to meet all the regulatory standards of good governance it required became 45% more likely to replace their CEOs following the announcement of an earnings restatement after Sarbanes-Oxley. On the other hand, those that were required to meet all of Sarbanes-Oxley’s provisions became 26% less likely to replace their CEOs following a restatement announcement. Ironically, CEOs at firms with a legislative mandate intended to increase accountability for corporate misconduct shoulder less blame than do CEOs at firms without such legislative demands.

The purpose of this study is to assess the pricing effects of financial reporting decision usefulness in terms of its constituent elements of relevance and reliability. Although it has long been intuitively appealing to believe in the decision usefulness of more relevant and reliable disclosures, they have been troublesome to demonstrate empirically. The mixed results have often been attributed to the richness of operating company settings.

This study addresses that problem by using 363 firm years of data from US market‐priced mutual funds (termed closed end funds in some countries and investment trusts in others), whose assets are comprised almost entirely of investment securities.

The results are consistent with the principal hypotheses – both relevance and reliability are valued by the market.

Overall, these findings provide a basis not only for reconciling prior, conflicting results, but in adding to our understanding of how disclosure characteristics are valued by investors, a particularly pertinent topic given the IASB's and the FASB's projects in this area.

The simplicity and elegance of the market‐priced mutual fund setting facilitates development of a model that simultaneously distinguishes between the relevance and reliability. Cost (less relevant) and fair‐value (more relevant) disclosures are gathered for both restricted (less reliable) and unrestricted (more reliable) securities for each firm year. Both levels and returns type methods are used to assess the effects of these separate elements of decision usefulness on securities valuation.

Healthcare policymakers and managers struggle to engage private physicians, who tend to view themselves as independent of the system, in new models of primary care. The purpose of this paper is to examine this issue through a social identity lens.

Through in-depth interviews with 33 decision-makers and 31 fee-for-service family physicians, supplemented by document review and participant observation, the authors studied a Canadian province’s early efforts to engage physicians in primary care renewal initiatives.

Recognizing that the existing physician–system relationship was generally distant, decision-makers invested effort in relationship-building. However, decision-makers’ rhetoric, as well as the design of their flagship initiative, evinced an attempt to proceed directly from interpersonal relationship-building to the establishment of formal intergroup partnership, with no intervening phase of supporting physicians’ group identity and empowering them to assume equal partnership. The invitation to partnership did not resonate with most physicians: many viewed it as an inauthentic offer from an out-group (“bureaucrats”) with discordant values; others interpreted partnership as a mere transactional exchange. Such perceptions posed barriers to physician participation in renewal activities.

The pursuit of a premature degree of intergroup closeness can be counterproductive, heightening physician resistance.

This study revealed that even a relatively subtle misalignment between a particular social identity management strategy and its intergroup context can have highly problematic ramifications. Findings advance the literature on social identity management and may facilitate the development of more effective engagement strategies.

Traumatic brain injuries (TBIs) are a significant public health problem that affect an estimated 1.7 million US residents yearly. TBI patients experience a variety of symptoms related to physical functioning, sensory processing, cognition, communication, behavior, and mental health, all of which differ in severity by individual. Recent evidence suggests that hypothalamic pituitary dysfunction may be impacting recovery. The purpose of this paper is to increase awareness about the frequency of hypothalamic pituitary dysfunction following a TBI and its effect on functional recovery.

The paper reviews the literature regarding hypothalamic pituitary dysfunction following TBI and discusses the potential benefits of hormone replacement therapy for individuals with hormone deficiencies.

The rate of hypothalamic pituitary dysfunction following TBI has been reported as anywhere between 25 and 80 percent. Specifically, abnormal hormone levels, both chronic and acute, are generally estimated to be approximately 5-22 percent for thyroid hormones, 15-33 percent for growth hormone (GH), and 25-80 percent for testosterone. The effect of hypopituitarism has been reported on several aspects cognitive and physical function as well as overall quality of life. In these studies, GH and testosterone deficiencies appear to underlie the observed impairments.

The paper suggests the importance of understanding and screening for hypothalamic pituitary dysfunction as hormone replacement therapy may be a beneficial intervention to promote physical and cognitive rehabilitation.