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The sustainability of higher education institutions is affected various things, particularly by student satisfaction and the financial stability of the institution. An analysis of student attrition and retention plays a vital role in assessing the sustainability of a higher education institution. Using suitable analysis techniques to do success profiling of prospective and current students is crucial for students and institutions alike. Success/risk estimation is essential for any higher education institution (HEI), because determining such factors can assist higher education institutions in fulfilling their obligation to provide support, guidance and interventions for their prospective and existing students. Strategic decisions in this regard, by both students and institutions, should be based on valid and reliable profiles. The validation of established profiles increases the accuracy of existing profiles and increases the efficiency of institutional strategic planning. This article reports on the validation of a success profile for first year Accounting students established by the authors of this article in an earlier study in an open and distance learning (ODL) environment at the University of South Africa.

There is increasing international concern about the escalation of fraud and, in particular, financial statement fraud. Detecting financial statement fraud and proving such fraud remains an elusive goal. Red flagging is an early warning system that has been used by auditors to determine the probability of financial statement fraud. The purpose of this research project was to survey investors and lenders in South Africa on their use of red flags and to obtain their opinions on the relative importance of individual red flags. A questionnaire was sent to banks that are registered with the Registrar of Banks (representative of lenders) and to portfolio managers registered with the Financial Services Board (representative of investors). The research findings indicate that lenders and investors in South Africa appear to be aware of the benefits of red flagging as an early warning system. A structured approach (questionnaires/checklists) in using them is to be lacking at present. Respondents rated all red flags in the questionnaire as being important. No distinction was discernable among the different categories that were based on the nature of red flags.

This paper aims to analyse both traditional and regenerative fields across four layers, litany, systems, worldviews and myth/metaphor. It aims to provide in-depth insight into the beliefs, values epistemologies and assumptions that scaffold thinking and practice. As a result of this analysis, future implications for regenerative urban practice are also considered.

Prevailing sustainability approaches seek to mitigate further harm in urban centres by increasing efficiency and minimising resource consumption and impact. They are primarily underpinned by a reductionist worldview that separates human objectives from those of the natural world. In contrast, regenerative approaches to urban sustainability have emerged out of an ecological worldview and aim to achieve net positive outcomes as a result of co-evolutionary relationships between social and ecological systems. This paper explores both approaches in urban communities through futures thinking tool, causal layered analysis.

As a result of the causal layered analysis undertaken, this paper provides insights into regenerative thinking and practice in urban settings. These insights cover four main thematic categories: purpose, place, practice and progress. Moving to the deeper layers of worldview and myth metaphor analysis, in particular, has significant implications for ongoing practice, including facilitating processes by which communities can reflect upon, unpack and reconstruct their concepts of future “success”.

Anthropogenic climate change continues to deliver worsening ecological, social and economic impacts globally. Urban centres are particularly central to this crisis given their massive resource consumption and rapid population growth. This paper provides an alternative, deep analysis to consider thinking and practice required for urban regeneration. It reveals the need for a shift in purpose and a deeper understanding of place, illustrating the roles that futures tools may place in this transition.

The Prevention and Combating of Corrupt Activities Act, Act 12 of 2004, was instituted to curb corrupt activities. It imposes a duty on people in positions of authority to report corrupt or suspected corrupt activities and related activities. However, auditors are not listed in this Act as persons in a position of authority. This article discusses whether, despite the fact that the Prevention and Combating of Corrupt Activities Act does not place such a reporting duty on an auditor, auditors nevertheless have a duty in terms of other legislation to report any unlawful activities that they uncover in the course of their work, or which they suspect to have been committed. The article also examines whether auditors are required to consider the risk of corruption.

The purpose of this paper is to determine the extent of online communication by festivals regarding their sustainability practices using Cultivation Theory as the framework to determine perceived value creation.

A mixed method approach was utilized to achieve data triangulation through a content analysis of websites, content analysis of social media sites as well as interviews.

Findings indicated that 64% of festivals did not communicate any sustainable practices through their websites and only 6% communicated via social media. The most common sustainability practices communicated were waste management and sustainable transportation, yet few festivals engaged in effective, consistent and sufficient marketing of initiatives to festivalgoers. Best practice festivals (having communicated 5.47 initiatives or more) were found to have been significantly more likely than non-best practice festivals to be music festivals and have been in operation longer. Best practice festivals were also more likely than non-best practice festivals to have sustainability engrained into their corporate philosophy via a communicated sustainable vision and mission. Interviews revealed that most festivals did not have a designated role responsible for all sustainable initiatives and the responsibility was often taken on by volunteers or festival organizers. Festival organizers that communicated sustainability initiatives efficiently, consistently, and sufficiently perceived these efforts to benefit the festivals value amongst festivalgoers and host communities. Propensity to communicate sustainability initiatives was found to have been impacted by awareness, categorization, timing, policy and funding.

While the findings are limited to the country of Canada and the extent of communication on websites and social media platforms as well as those festivals who participated, interviews helped to overcome these limitations as they gained an understanding of what was undertaken but not necessarily communicated.

The findings generated from this study could be used as a guide for establishing a benchmark for festivals regarding sustainable communication as well as strategies for overall corporate responsibility. Content regarding sustainability at festivals is scarce, as is information on festival communication. As a result, this paper seeks to understand the sustainable initiatives that are being communicated by festivals.

This is the first time Cultivation Theory was used within a tourism context and may be a useful tool to determine value creation. Through Cultivation Theory, festival organizers believed to have the ability to impact perceived value of the festival by implementing efficient, consistent and sufficient communication of sustainability initiatives.

Despite the keen interest in radical and incremental innovation, few studies have tested the varying impact of firm-level factors in service sectors. This paper analyses how collaboration with existing and prospective users and investments in knowledge management (KM) practices can be adapted to maximise the outputs of radical and incremental process innovation in a knowledge-intensive business service industry.

Original survey data from 166 information technology service firms and interviews with 13 executives provide the empirical evidence. Partial least squares-structural equation modelling is used to analyse the data.

Collaboration with different types of users, and investments in KM practices affect radical versus incremental process innovation differently. Collaboration with existing users influences incremental process innovation directly, but not radical innovation; and prospective user collaboration matters for radical, but not incremental innovation. Furthermore, for radical innovation, investments in KM practices mediate the impact of prospective user collaboration on innovation.

While collaboration with existing users for incremental process innovations does not appear to generate significant managerial challenges, to pursue radical innovations firms must engage in intensive collaboration with prospective users. Higher involvement with prospective users requires higher investment in KM practices to promote efficient intra- and inter-firm knowledge flows.

This study is based on a large-scale survey, together with management interviews. Radical and incremental innovations in the service industry require engagements with different kinds of users, and the use of KM tools.

The smart destination can be defined as a destination that deploys information communications technologies (ICTs) and other technological tools for interactive/participative engagement with prospective visitors. The rationale is to enhance the residents' quality of life as well as the tourists' experiences of the destinations they visit. This chapter discusses about digitization strategies and on marketing superstructures affecting destinations. It advances a conceptual framework through the development of an Attracting, Stay, and Return (ASR) Model that is suitable for smart destinations. It relies on descriptive case studies to conceptualize smart tourism destinations. This contribution reiterates the importance of having a well-designed website that presents appropriate content to entice the prospective travelers' curiosity about destinations. It offers valuable insights and advances new knowledge on smart marketing approaches that are intended to increase the destination management organizations' outreach with tourists at each stage of the ASR Model.

To propose a new investment-income valuation model by real options approach (ROA) for old community renewal (OCR) projects, which could help the government attract private capital's participation.

The new model is proposed by identifying the types of options private capital has in the OCR project, selecting the option model most suitable for private capital investment decisions, improving the valuation model through the triangular fuzzy numbers to take into account the uncertainty and flexibility, and demonstrating the feasibility of the calculation model through an actual OCR project case.

The new model can valuate OCR projects more accurately based on considering uncertainty and flexibility, compared with conventional methods that often underestimate the value of OCR projects.

The investment-income of OCR projects shall be re-valuated from the lens of real options, which could help reveal more real benefits beyond the capital growth of OCR projects, enable the government to attract private capital's investment in OCR, and alleviate government fiscal pressure.

The proposed OCR-oriented investment-income valuation model systematically analyzes the applicability of real option value (ROV) to OCR projects, innovatively integrates the ROV and the net present value (NPV) as expanded net present value (ENPV), and accurately evaluate real benefits in comparison with existing models. Furthermore, the newly proposed model holds the potential to be transferred to various social welfare projects as a tool to attract private capital's participation.

This paper aims to better understand how codified knowledge that originates in organizations contributes to the generation of idiosyncratic knowledge embedded at a more expansive level, such as that of an ecosystem. In doing so, the authors introduce the concept of patent ecosystems – conceived as configurations of codified knowledge advancements protected via patents.

Using a patent co-classification method and introducing a novel validated software, the authors map and visualize the patent ecosystem of Singapore and examine 173,597 patents published from 1995 to 2020.

Results reveal the prominent growth of Singapore’s patenting activities, capturing a patent ecosystem shift, from a more diverse knowledge configuration to a more specialized one. The codified knowledge mainly generated deals with pharmaceuticals and high-tech knowledge domains; further, newly emerging technologies such as blockchain are also noted.

The research investigates Singapore’s context, a country in which research directions and focus areas are influenced by government interventions and leadership. Thus, future studies might examine other patent ecosystems to draw comparisons with more laissez-faire policies or ecosystems with more pronounced organic development.

The novelty of this research is the introduction of the concept of a patent ecosystem for advancing a more fine-grained understanding of the aggregated knowledge generated at the ecosystem level and its specific features, composition and development. The authors consider patents as “carriers” of different codified pieces of knowledge and patent ecosystems represent the configuration that emerges from connections of these elements. The novel approach can aid both researchers, practitioners and policymakers with future examinations in the field.

This chapter pinpoints a chronological and thematic literature review on the concept of Creative Tourism. Even if the concept emerged 21 years ago, its definition keeps being discussed, and different approaches are available. Born in the late 1990s, it developed rapidly due to a very open, flexible and local context design, enabling the development of personal capacity, authentic experiences and involving local culture and communities. This new approach to tourism envisages bringing together local people, their habits and practices in real and everyday contexts to the heart of the tourism experience provided to visitors. Therefore, it looks to be a promising path towards sustainability. Keeping this in mind, one can wonder if Creative Tourism can be a lever for territories' economic, social, cultural and environmental sustainability. In particular, can Creative Tourism's growing importance in Southern Europe be considered a major contribution to the sustainability of those territories? The literature review concludes that most of the studies on Creative Tourism take positive impacts on territories as a kind of ‘belief’. Such an effect is not granted as a beneficial impact on a communities' well-being; it does not result just from the type of resources explored or from the participation of members of the community on the products/services supplied.