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This paper aims to propose an integrative and result-driven health-care knowledge management (HKM) model and discuss the findings of a research that examines how the KM initiatives of a major private Brazilian hospital system are linked to its health-care performance outcomes.

Data were collected from a top-level Brazilian private hospital system (Mater Dei Healthcare System – MDHS), which is composed of three large hospitals internationally accredited by ISO 9001/2000, NIAHO and JCI. Multiple qualitative approaches were used to collect data such as 16 in-depth interviews with health professionals and managers, document analysis, participatory observation and benchmarking interviews with two reference hospital networks in Brazil.

The proposed health-oriented KM model is an expansion of the organizational knowing cycle model (Choo, 1996), adding absorptive capacity (ACAP) as a new construct. The paper discusses how ACAP integrates with sense-making, knowledge creation and decision-making processes within the health-care context. Information technology and clinical governance were identified as support factors to the HKM processes.

The paper presents a pragmatic and result-driven knowledge management (KM) model using health-care-welfare key performance indicators, as well as the emergence of KM as an integrative and strategic approach to hospital management.

The present study presents a knowledge-based perspective to clinical staff management, demonstrating the tangible results of KM initiatives that contribute to health and management performance outcomes.

This editorial aims to outline the context of healthcare priority‐setting, and summarise each of the other ten papers in this special edition. It introduces a new multidisciplinary research programme drawing on ethics, philosophy, health economics, political science and health technology assessment, out of which the papers in this edition have arisen.

Key normative concepts are introduced and policy and research context provided to frame subsequent papers in the edition.

Common challenges of health priority‐setting are faced by many countries across the world, and a range of social value judgments is in play as resource allocation decisions are made. Although the challenges faced by different countries are in many ways similar, the way in which social values affect the processes and content of priority‐setting decisions means that those challenges are resolved very differently in a variety of social, political, cultural and institutional settings, as subsequent papers in this edition demonstrate. How social values affect decision making in this way is the subject of a new multi‐disciplinary research programme.

Technical analyses of health priority setting are commonplace, but approaching the issues from the perspective of social values and conducting comparative analyses across countries with very different cultural, social and institutional contexts provides the content for a new research agenda.

The purpose of this article is to describe the adaptation of an assessment model, the Triage Assessment System (TAS), which is widely used in crisis intervention to understand the human impact of a crisis within an organization.

After a literature review, the Triage Assessment System is adapted to be applicable to organizations in crisis. Nine characteristics associated with the impact of crises on employees of an organization are discussed.

Suggestions are made for ways in which organizations can use the TAS to improve their preparation for recovery efforts after a crisis. These suggestions outline ways to use the TAS as well as approaches that consultants may employ when working with organizations. Suggestions are also made for future research using the TAS with organizations. Although developed for individuals, the concepts used in the TAS can also be applied to organizations in crisis.

The article offers practical suggestions to help organizations manage the impact of organizational crises on their employees. Research in this area should help to refine the TAS for organizations, particularly assessment of the severity of organizational reactions.

Research has reliably demonstrated that decision-makers, especially expert ones, use heuristics to make decisions under uncertainty. However, whether decision-makers with little or no experience also do, and if so, how? is unknown. This research addresses this issue in the marketing context by studying how a group of young and generally inexperienced entrepreneurs decide when asked to set a price and choose a distribution channel in a scenario involving a hypothetical firm.

The authors used think-aloud protocols to elicit data and then used inductive procedures to code the data for analysis.

The inexperienced entrepreneurs in the sample used three types of heuristics in their decision-making, forming a structured process that narrows in scope. First, metacognitive heuristics, which specify a decision-making approach, were used, followed by heuristics representing the criteria they considered, and finally, heuristics detailing the execution of a selected option. The authors also found that heuristics relating to a market orientation, especially customer-centric criteria, were the most common, but these were balanced with ones representing an internal orientation or growth.

The generally inexperienced decision-makers the authors’ studied used heuristics in a structured way that helped them to select and balance several potentially conflicting decision-making criteria. As with most research using qualitative research designs, the generalizability of these findings is unclear. Further research on the mechanisms by which relatively inexperienced decision-makers learn the heuristics they use is recommended.

This research's novelty lies in its focus on heuristic use by nonexpert decision-makers under conditions of uncertainty and the findings about their scope and the order they are used. As the authors collected data from think-aloud protocols with relatively young entrepreneurs with limited experience, they also offer a description of the heuristics used by nascent entrepreneurs when making marketing decisions about pricing and channels. The most surprising conclusion is that even without relevant domain-specific knowledge, decision-makers can use heuristics in an ecologically rational way (i.e. structured to match the environment).

The aim of this paper is to identify the core issues that organisational leaders are facing internationally, as a result of a globalised and rapidly changing international economic environment. Appropriate leadership competencies and skills that enable organisational leaders to effectively deal with these core globalisation issues are examined in detail and are further explained through a conceptual model developed for the purpose of this study.

Conventional content analysis of extant literature in the leadership, management, organisational development and human resource management fields delimited this study to the identification of three core issues, their sub‐dimensions and associated organisational leadership effectiveness strategies.

This study presents a conceptual model consolidating current scholarly understanding of the international imperatives affecting twenty‐first century organisational leaders and describes “best practice” leadership skills, competencies and models that will enable managers to lead effectively in a rapidly changing, globalised market‐place.

The simplicity and explicitness of the descriptive‐based conceptual model represented in this review offers an original approach to the link between theory and practice in international organisational leadership, while acting to simplify the perplexing array of viewpoints on leadership approaches. A number of research alternatives are suggested that may lead to the formation of a more predictive “international imperative” model.

As the predicted escalation in the litigation becomes a reality for universities in the UK, increasing importance is placed on the consideration given to the integrity of institutional protocols regulating decision making at all stages of student progression. The purpose of this paper is to outline the structures that are in place to provide an analysis of the issues that arise when these protocols are activated.

This paper first, provides a brief yet accessible overview of the literature concerning the institutions involved in student appeal, second, explains the principles that should be applied when using and analysing university protocols, third, analyses the role that mediation can play within the sector, and finally, discusses the disability dimension within a complaints context.

It can be seen that disputes between student and institution are on the rise for a number of reasons, be it finance, complexity of legislation or otherwise. The robust nature of what the office of the independent adjudicator (OIA) does seems evident from the lack of successful challenge by way of judicial review, even though the process has been held to be reviewable in a limited way at least. Perhaps this will give some reassurance to the aggrieved student that their version of events will be heard and judged fairly, but the overwhelming message to institutions must be to address potential issues early by means of well drafted protocols, management of student expectation and possibly the establishment of some sort of campus ombudsman which may help deter, deflect or even solve disputes. The role of the OIA seems here to stay and the amount of business it does is likely to increase.

Increasing importance is placed on the consideration given to the integrity of institutional protocols regulating decision making at all stages of student progression. A wide variety of elements can impact on the quality of service expected compared with that provided to a student cohort, and this results in a diversity of potential complaints which have to be covered by university protocols. The value of this paper lies in the applicability of the themes that are discussed.

The paper introduces a new model, the evolutionary-existential model of organizational decision-making. The purpose of the model is to provide an empirical framework for understanding the context for decision-making under conditions of existential threat to organizations, such as the global COVID-19 pandemic during the year 2020.

The model is built on an extensive interdisciplinary literature review, drawing from research in social psychology, management, behavioral economics, evolutionary psychology and consumer behavior. In general, the authors follow Bargal's (2006) call for action research in the spirit of Lewin (1951).

According to the model, organizational decision-making during the pandemic threat is influenced by (1) existential threat and (2) an unprecedented macroenvironmental context for decision-making. The authors argue that these psychological and macroenvironmental forces may lead to suboptimal decision-making, based on (1) their basic cognitive architecture and (2) specific evolutionary triggers activated by the pandemic. The authors highlight how the interaction between these inputs and the decision context manifest in various social psychological phenomena that are known to impact judgments and decisions.

Simply put, the magnitude and the urgency of the global pandemic call for new and integrative ways of understanding organizational decision-making.

The model is new. Although the authors draw on prior research and theory, the model is uniquely interdisciplinary; further, the authors are able to make specific and unique predictions about the inputs, decision context and their social–psychological consequences for decision-making.

Attachment has long been considered relevant to child care proceedings. However, compared to other forms of evidence, it has been limited by the lack of consistent methods of assessment, training of experts, and empirical evidence. To reduce these limitations, The International Association for the Study of Attachment (IASA) has developed a Family Attachment Court Protocol for assessment and formulation of attachment issues. The purpose of the Protocol is to act as a guide to good practice and to begin a process of improving the application of attachment to family court proceedings.

The Dynamic-Maturational Model of Attachment and Adaptation (DMM) and its associated assessments were adapted for forensic use. The resulting Family Attachment Court Protocol was trialed in cases before 15 judges in five countries and modified based on feedback.

The judges and most of the professionals working for the court expressed approval of the new Protocol.

Implementation of the Protocol will require additional authorised experts.

The primary practical implication is that the courts will receive verifiable evidence on attachment can be tested and, thus, validated or disproven.

If accepted, the IASA Protocol will reduce the idiosyncratic nature of child care proceedings and increase the rigour of professional qualification to address attachment.

The IASA Protocol is new and valuable because its theoretical underpinnings in the DMM are based on both clinical and also neurological evidence about protection from danger, and it can replace untestable expert opinion about attachment with evidence-based assessment and transparent formulation of recommendations.

The purpose of this paper is to demonstrate the impact of organizational culture on the conflict handling style in non-profit organizations. Conflicts in non-profit organizations and especially in associations are more numerous, mainly because of the search for compromise in the decision-making phases and the high level of loyalty in mission that strongly stimulates the voice of one’s opinion. The authors observe that a modification of the organizational culture, through symbolic changes, can resolve the conflicts sequence.

Culture is measured through the organizational culture profile tool and the culture deciphering technique. The authors detail two cases of non-profit organizations, in which conflicts sequence resolution was handled through organizational culture change while conflicts resolution at the individual level could not bring an end to the conflicts sequence.

These cases highlight how organizational culture shapes behaviors and conflicts handling styles. These cases also give insights on how an organizational culture can be changed to setup new default conflict handling styles in an organization. The cultural change management only worked when it was planned on critical cultural change readiness factors with a strong enforcement of the change by the governing bodies.

This study complements research studies on how organizational culture shapes attitudes and behaviors and shows how and under which conditions a cultural change could resolve a conflict sequence. This study also presents a conflict resolution method when the roots of conflicts are embedded in the existing organizational culture. In such conflicts situation, interpersonal conflict resolution technique did not solve the conflicts sequence and only cultural change finally brought an end to the sequence.

A combined search on two levels, the individual level and the organizational culture level, will thus show convergent conflict sources and get a great deal of knowledge before solving individual-level conflicts.

The non-profit sector is sometimes subject to high-conflict situation and this research contributes to more efficient conflict resolution protocols with an applicable method of conflict analysis, change management and conflict resolution.

The work showed how the organizational culture is a key element in the explanation of conflict sources and conflict handling in case of high and repeated conflict situation. It is thus possible to resolve conflict sequence by changing a carefully chosen cultural trait. Nevertheless, the culture change management program is complex and risky. In a high-conflict situation, the authors identified several key conflict resolution factors: the careful identification of the organizational culture traits explaining conflict handling style; the alignment of the management team on the cultural change plan to raise up the intensity of the new set of behaviors; and the selection of the most efficient symbolic change decision.

The purpose of this paper is to develop a knowledge elicitation strategy to elicit and compile home energy retrofit knowledge that can be incorporated into the development of an intelligent decision support system to help increase the uptake of home energy retrofits. Major problems accounting for low adoption rates despite well-established benefits are: lack of information or information in unsuitable and usable format for decision making by homeowners. Despite the important role of expert knowledge in developing such systems, its elicitation has been fraught with challenges.

Using extensive literature review and a Delphi-dominated data collection technique, the relevant knowledge of 19 industry experts, selected based on previously developed determinants of expert knowledge and suitable for decision making was elicited and compiled. Boolean logic was used to model and represent such knowledge for use as an intelligent decision support system.

A combination of comprehensive knowledge elicitor training, Delphi technique, semi-structured interview, and job shadowing is a good elicitation strategy. It encourages experts to describe their knowledge in a natural way, relate to specific problems, and reduces bias. Relevant and consensus-based expert knowledge can be incorporated into the development of an intelligent decision support system.

The consensus-based and relevant expert knowledge can assist homeowners with decision making and industry practitioners and academia with corroboration and enhancement of existing knowledge. The strategy contributes to solving the knowledge elicitation challenge.

No previous study regarding a knowledge elicitation strategy for developing an intelligent decision support system for the energy retrofit industry exists.