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With proper design and work planning, falls through fragile skylights are preventable. Skylights pose a hazard to workers when their work tasks for operations, maintenance and repair require them to be on roofs. The National Institute of Occupational Health and Safety produced guidelines and special alerts to address the dangers that are present around skylights, and the Occupational Safety and Health Administration regulations have prescriptive requirements for work performed around skylights, and yet incidents still occur. The purpose of this study is to investigate and raise awareness for the causality of the incidents involving skylights in the USA.

The authors investigated and analyzed 204 incidents involving skylights recorded by the Bureau of Labor Statistics to characterize their nature and to determine any correlation with the roof environment or the nature of the work performed. Using Google Earth and Google Maps roof geometry, proximity of skylights to roof edge and rooftop mechanical equipment was determined.

The majority of falls through skylights occur during roof maintenance and repair activities. Falls through skylights are underreported. Because of a general lack of good design to reduce or eliminate the risk of falling through skylights, facility managers carry the burden to properly assess work and access on roofs where fragile skylights are present.

The phenomenon of falling through skylights was made aware on a national level in the USA in 1989; however, little has been done from a design and planning perspective to reduce these incidents. This paper presents a unique perspective on the role of facility managers in understanding the hazards associated with roof maintenance near skylights.

This paper aims to investigate the perceptions of financial accountants and both internal and external auditors regarding the impact of corporate governance (CG) and information technology (IT) on the detection and prevention of fraud within organizations.

Primary data were collected from 250 financial accountants, internal auditors and external auditors through questionnaires. The non-probability snowball sampling technique was used for data collection, with the sample t-test, one-way ANOVA and paired sample t-test applied for analysis.

The results indicate that robust CG practices and IT techniques significantly aid in detecting and reducing fraudulent activities by minimizing opportunities, rationalizations, pressures and capabilities of potential employees to commit fraud. Internal controls also play a significant role in reducing instances of fraud. Notably, ethical officers and ethical training were not perceived as significantly effective in preventing and detecting fraud, leading to a perception that fraudulent practices are prevalent and increasing the risk of future fraudulent activities.

This study recommends the adoption of strong CG practices to identify potential fraud within an organization. Moreover, IT techniques should be tailored to specific needs for effective utilization. Furthermore, the government should increase awareness regarding data provision by departments, organizations and other related personnel. Future research could use secondary data from various regions to expand the literature in this field.

This research uniquely combines three significant factors: CG, IT and forensic accounting in fraud detection and prevention. It contributes to the enhancement of literature about fraud and its preventive and detective measures. The results of this study set the seed for future research, government policymaking and enhanced organizational practices.

The COVID-19 pandemic has affected around 216 countries and territories worldwide and more than 2000 cities in India, alone. The smart cities mission (SCM) in India started in 2015 and 100 smart cities were selected to be initiated with a total project cost of INR 2031.72 billion. Smart city strategies play an important role in implementing the measures adopted by the government such as the issuance of social distancing regulations and other COVID-19 mitigation strategies. However, there is no research reported on the role of smart cities strategies in managing the COVID-19 outbreak in developing countries.

This paper aims to address the research gap in smart cities, technology and healthcare management through a review of the literature and primary data collected using semi-structured interviews.

Each city is unique and has different challenges, the study revealed six key findings on how smart cities in India managed the COVID-19 outbreak. They used: Integrated Command and Control Centres, Artificial Intelligence and Innovative Application-based Solutions, Smart Waste Management Solutions, Smart Healthcare Management, Smart Data Management and Smart Surveillance.

This paper contributes to informing policymakers of key lessons learnt from the management of COVID-19 in developing countries like India from a smart cities’ perspective. This paper draws on the six Cs for the implications directed to leaders and decision-makers to rethink and act on COVID-19. The six Cs are: Crisis management leadership, Credible communication, Collaboration, Creative governance, Capturing knowledge and Capacity building.

Working conditions, pay rates and the rights of workers to collectively negotiate have become important points of discussions in recent years, with support for unions and union applications rising to levels long unseen in America. In many instances, though, companies have responded aggressively. This is not the first time such a dynamic has played out in American business. This study aims to take a fresh look at one of America’s most prominent historical disputes between labor and ownership – the Homestead Massacre of 1892 – to glean lessons from that conflict that remain relevant to today’s business environment.

This study adopts game theory and the principles of repeated interaction to assess how differing discount factors led to differences in time orientations between the workers and the Carnegie company. These differing time orientations affected both the strategy each side deployed in the negotiations and the payoffs received by the parties. Letters, contemporary news reports and histories of the events leading up to and immediately following the 1892 Homestead Massacre are qualitatively analyzed with a genealogical pragmatic approach.

Differences in temporal orientation between management and workers exacerbated the conflict, with the workers adopting a more cooperative stance and distal time orientation, while the Carnegie company negotiated with a proximal time orientation and played to “win” a game that, in fact, could not be fully won or lost given its infinitely repeating nature. The result was a short-term victory for the Carnegie company but with long-term negative consequences that highlight the suboptimal outcome the company achieved by playing a proximal strategy in an infinite game.

Although the incident at Homestead is a well-studied labor dispute, many of the themes that preceded the incident have resurfaced in the modern work context. This work, by adopting game theory as an analytical framework, provides new insights into management mistakes that led to the labor conflict and lessons for what present-day managers can do to avoid exacerbating labor strife.

This study explores how police culture is experienced by women officers serving in positions where they are significantly underrepresented (i.e. leadership and elite specialty units) and the environmental factors that shape these experiences.

A qualitative analysis of transcripts from interviews with 71 women serving in male-dominated roles was conducted (N = 39 ranking women; N = 32 women on elite units).

Participants described five occupational, organizational and assignment-level factors that shaped their workplace experiences. While some contextual forces at play are similar for women working patrol (e.g. traditional police culture, the underrepresentation of women in law enforcement) unique position-level factors were also identified (e.g. the high-risk and consequential nature of the work).

While the cultural environment for women patrol officers has improved in the past few decades, the same cannot be said for women working in positions that are still dominated by men. More attention to this area of policing is needed to ensure gender diversity is achieved throughout organizations and not only in positions deemed suitable for women.

The study extends research on women in policing beyond the focus on patrol. Further, it explores the assignment- and rank-based perspectives of police culture, which are largely absent from the literature.

The purpose of this study is to explore the experiences of those volunteering within a restorative justice service thus enabling an insight into their perceptions of the different methods used, their beliefs about restorative justice effectiveness, and its place within the criminal justice system. The study also sought to identify any challenges and positive experiences the participants encountered during their role as volunteers, with volunteering during the COVID-19 pandemic explored specifically.

Data was collected from the participants (n = 5) via semi-structured interviews and analysed using thematic analysis, thus enabling patterns within the experience of the volunteers to be identified.

A prior understanding and interest in restorative justice was evident within the data, with participants demonstrating a preference for direct, face-to-face mediation. The perceived lack of support from external agencies was discussed along with the role of education in their volunteering experience. Finally, it was acknowledged that although face-to-face practice was deemed the most effective overall, certain practices adopted during COVID-19 enabled aspects of the role to be carried out more efficiently and equally as effectively.

The findings from this study draw out real-world implications, producing tangible action points for restorative justice services. Some tentative suggestions for future practice are outlined.

The volunteers’ role within restorative justice is often overlooked within the literature (Paul and Borton, 2013) and time constraints can add additional barriers to a hard-to-reach population. However, volunteers play a vital role in restorative justice. By exploring and listening to the volunteers’ experience, this study expands an additional strand within the literature in terms of what makes restorative justice effective and the challenges that are faced from a volunteer perspective.

This article examines challenges and strategies related to police relationships and engagement with rural communities in England and Wales, Australia and France. It aims to bridge a gap in knowledge around how police balance public demands with organisational and contextual constraints, exploring the role of communication technology in overcoming geographical and cultural barriers in rural policing.

The research draws upon 121 semi-structured interviews conducted across three distinct jurisdictions. In the United Kingdom and Australia, interviews were conducted via Microsoft Teams, while face-to-face interviews were conducted in France. Participants were recruited through the purposive sampling of police working in rural areas. The data were thematically analysed using NVivo Software.

Rural communities have low expectations of policing services, a consequence of geography, organisational structures and limited resource allocation. Building relationships can be challenging owing to isolation and terrain, the need for officers to have local and cultural knowledge, and difficulties in recruiting officers in rural posts. Technology-mediated communication has played a part in the solutions (e.g. social media). However, this may not always be suitable owing to limited connectivity, citizen and police preferences for communication and engagement, and the institutional and cultural nuances surrounding the application of technology.

This article provides empirical insights into the attitudes and experiences of rural police officers, highlighting the distinctive policing context and engagement needs of rural communities. The research underscores the necessity for contextually aware engagement. It suggests that while technology-mediated communication offers some solutions to spatial challenges, its effectiveness may be limited by access, generational preferences and the adaptability of police institutions and cultures.

The purpose of this research was to explore the stickiness of players' motivation in a virtual community and to explore the important factors for gamers.

In this research, motivation was the independent variable; the virtual community was the mediator; and stickiness was the dependent variable. An online questionnaire survey was conducted, with users of augmented reality (AR) as the research objects. Statistical analysis was carried out using SPSS and AMOS software to verify the research model and research hypotheses, to understand the relation between player motivation and stickiness and to determine whether there were any changes in the virtual community.

The authors found that the relation between players' motivation in AR-based games and the virtual community had a significant positive impact. Ingress had a significant positive impact on the virtual community and stickiness, and Pokémon had a significant positive impact too. The virtual community of the Ingress game played a completely mediating role in motivation and stickiness, but the virtual community in Pokémon did not have a mediating effect.

The novel approach adopted in this study enabled us to determine the causal relation between player motivation, the virtual community and stickiness, on the basis of the theoretical framework formulated, and the latter was used to construct a path analysis model diagram. The correlation between motivation and the virtual community, between the virtual community and stickiness, and the causal relation between all three was verified. The study results and conclusions may help companies understand how to use virtual communities in AR games to improve stickiness and motivate gamers to continue playing.

The World Bank-sponsored public financial management reforms attempt to instil fiscal discipline through techno-managerial packages. Taking Ghana's integrated financial management information system (IFMIS) as a case, this paper explores how and why local actors engaged in counter-conduct against these reforms.

Interviews, observations and documentary analyses on the operationalisation of IFMIS constitute this paper's empirical basis. Theoretically, the paper draws on Foucauldian notions of governmentality and counter-conduct.

Empirics demonstrate how and why politicians and bureaucrats enacted ways of escaping, evading and subverting IFMIS's disciplinary regime. Politicians found the new accounting regime too constraining to their electoral and patronage politics and, therefore, enacted counter-conduct around the notion of political exigencies, creating expansionary fiscal conditions which the World Bank tried to mitigate through IFMIS. Perceiving the new regime as subverting their bureaucratic identity and influence, bureaucrats counter-conducted reforms through questioning, critiquing and rhetorical venting. Notably, the patronage politics of appropriating wealth and power underpins both these political and bureaucratic counter-conducts.

This study contributes to the critical accounting understanding of global public financial management reform failures by offering new empirical and theoretical insights as to how and why politicians and bureaucrats who are supposed to own and implement them nullify the global governmentality intentions of fiscal disciplining through subdued forms of resistance.

The consulting team intervenes in the integrated construction consulting (ICC) network structure centered on “client-contractor-consultant.” Team boundary-spanning behavior (TBB) driven by the network structure is crucial to project performance. This article investigated how to stimulate the consulting project performance (CPP) improvement by considering the interactive effect of network structure and TBB. To be specific, this paper explored the configuration between structural characteristics of project networks, the dimension of TBB, and project performance in ICC projects.

Network density and centrality were used to reflect network structure. This study collected 216 valid responses from construction professionals (including project managers, department managers, and project engineers) via a questionnaire survey and analyzed the data using fsQCA.

Combining with the corresponding typical project case and analysis, the results concluded four types of configurations for achieving high performance in the ICC projects. Meanwhile, network centrality, density, ambassadorial behavior, coordination behavior, and detection behavior significantly impact high consulting project performance. Matching ICC network characteristics with the TBB is important. There are also three low performance configurations for the ICC projects. Low performance state also occurs when network centrality or density and coordination behavior is simultaneously low. Only the right match between the network characteristics and TBB can produce high consulting project performance.

The network centrality and density, the implementation of TBB vary, and the paths to achieve high consulting project performance are different. Clients, ICC projects, and consulting teams should choose the appropriate development paths according to the actual situation. (1) Clients should commit to applying the ICC project model with high network centrality, density, and coordination behavior of ICC enterprises to promote project performance. (2) Consulting enterprises should carry out ICC business based on detecting behavior and coordinating behavior. (3) The market should cultivate head consulting enterprises with independence and integration, and bring into play the effectiveness of consulting team ambassadorial behavior.

Comparing the results of the four high CPP configurations, the network structure characteristics are essential, which means that in the Chinese consulting practice between the owner and the consulting firm pay attention to the use of appropriate ICC organizational structure model and arrange the degree of centralization of authorized responsibilities. Coordination behavior is necessary to achieve high CPP. Therefore, Chinese consulting firms should pay attention to effective communication and exchange with project contractors in order to get high CPP in conducting business; meanwhile, enabling behavior can achieve high CPP both in the presence and absence of configuration H1 and H4, which indicates that enabling behavior has substitution effect. Comparing the three low CPP configurations also contrarily confirms the indispensability of coordinating behavior. Comparing the results of high and low CPP configurations, the TBB is seriously missing and not properly applied in CPP enhancement. In detail, Chinese consulting firms have been regarded as independent third parties providing services, and less attention has been paid to the TBB of Chinese consulting firms in past practice, thus leading to the dilemma of inadequate empowerment of consulting firms due to their unclear status. To solve this dilemma, the findings of this paper offer a solution at the micro level to change the previous perception of consulting and demonstrate that Chinese consulting practice needs to pay attention to TBB with owners and contractors, and apply it well to enhance the reputation, management consulting level and capability, and experience and expertise of consulting firms to achieve high CPP.

The research results changed from the previous bilateral project governance to a new perspective of network embedding. It provided a theoretical basis for the improvement path of high consulting project performance, as well as providing ideas for clients on the organizational design of ICC projects. On the other hand, it provided a practical reference for TBB positioning of ICC enterprises for transformation and upgrading development.