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Predicting the imminence of high risk behaviours in in‐patients with schizophrenia is an ongoing concern. The purpose of this paper is to explore the utility, validity and reliability of an adapted early warning signs methodology for dynamic risk assessment.

Nursing staff were interviewed to identify operationally defined early warning signs of high risk behaviours. Frequency of occurrence of the early warning signs and the high risk behaviour were rated over a one week period to establish the predictive validity of the methodology.

Support was found for the reliability of staff ratings of the relevance of identified early warning signs and their occurrence within a specified time period. ROC analysis indicates some modest predictive validity in predicting aggressive risk behaviours but effect sizes were small, and there were high rates of false positive predictions.

The small sample size limits generalisability. A longitudinal prospective study to better establish the added predictive power of the method over the use of largely actuarial methods is needed.

A dynamic risk assessment methodology to assess changes in risk for inpatients would benefit both staff and inpatients. No such methodology has been assessed to date.

The purpose of this paper is to present an overview of the concept of early warning signs in projects and explain how a performance measurement system can be utilized as a source of data for an early warning approach signaling that a project is about to experience problems at some stage in the future.

Combination of action research and semi‐structured interviews and document analysis supplemented by a post‐mortem analysis after project close‐out.

Detection of early warning signals in projects can be better enabled through the application of a performance measurement system with properly defined key performance indicators. Utilization of this tool can positively affect the overall success of the project.

The case study involved only one project from the oil and gas industry.

The empirical case study was developed to illustrate the usefulness of exploiting a performance measurement system in a project. A procedure was demonstrated for developing and implementing an early warning system based on performance measurement, and specific performance indicators have been described for other projects to copy.

This paper highlights the gap in the literature concerning the link between early warning and project management and the link between early warning and performance measurement. It offers a new idea on how performance measurement can be used as an effective early warning system and is intended to be primarily of use to project management practitioners and practically‐oriented academics who are interested in developing fresh insights into new approaches for better management of projects.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the aspects of the corporate governance system and suggest ways to foresee a corporate fraud in the offing. It aims to explore ways by which key stakeholders may view “early warning signs” in their assessments of an inefficient corporate governance system.

Secondary method was used to collect data from several corporations that failed or faltered over the past decade due to poor corporate governance.

Findings suggest that corporate governance system failures of most corporations could have been foreseen before they became public if the five key early warning signs described in the paper were closely monitored.

Paying closer attention to the early warning signs mentioned here may help identify lacunas in the corporate governance system and may avert corporate debacles.

The key early warning signs identified here appear to address most aspects of failure in corporate governance system.

This paper aims to explore the concept of early warning signs (EWSs) in offshore-outsourced software development (OOSD) projects at the team level. It also aims to identify the EWSs of failure in the onshore-offshore project context and understand how they are perceived by responsible managers.

A grounded theory approach is followed by gathering data from 19 failed OOSD projects using project managers from client and vendor sides as the key informants.

This study identified 13 EWSs of failure in five categories of trust and team cohesion, common project execution structures, awareness of shared work context, collaboration between teams and onshore-offshore team coordination capabilities. EWSs were found to comprise two components: early warning issues and early signals of failures.

India-based vendors’ data in the study formed the primary weakness of the work regarding generalizability, even though it brought homogeneity to data. Lack of triangulation of failure data through client or vendor peers proved impossible in this research as failure remains a very sensitive topic. Dual composition of EWSs could be applied to institutionalize an early warning tool in projects.

The paper develops an exploratory model of EWSs of failure and project failure in the OOSD project context. The two-component framework of EWSs allows project managers to eliminate false positives while identifying EWSs. It contributes to the information system failure, risk management and information technology offshoring research streams.

The continuous failure of construction projects notwithstanding appreciable increase in project management knowledge has necessitated a proactive approach of assessing early warning signs (EWS) of building projects failure. Building projects are expected to show warning signs before experiencing crises, comparable to a patient displaying symptoms of a disease. Thus, this study aims to examine the EWS that predisposed building projects to failure in Nigeria to provide empirical data for enhancing projects delivery.

Primary data were used for the study. Structured questionnaire was administered to consultants and contractors’ personnel within Lagos State, Nigeria. A total of 180 copies of questionnaire were administered and 134 copies (combined response rate of 74.44 per cent) were retrieved. Frequency distribution, percentages, mean item score and Mann–Whitney test were used to analyse the data.

Most construction professionals applied the EWS approach from project planning and early construction phase. The most significant EWS predisposing building projects to failure were “Management inability and incompetence to proactively detect and manage problems at early project stages”, “Actual expenditure is constantly shooting beyond cost estimates” and “Incurred costs already getting higher than the anticipated benefits”. Project/construction management-related symptoms are most significant to predisposing building projects to failure.

The study provided implications for effective project management of building projects through proactive approach which is very paramount to improving the delivery of building projects in Nigeria.

The study provides implications for proactive management of building projects, thereby enhancing the delivery of building projects.

The purpose of this paper is to research the impact of foreign direct investment (FDI) on China's economic growth, so as to measure reasonable scales of FDI and the safe coefficient of China's FDI utilization, make timely predictions, and suggest specific foreign capital management and controlling strategies for the policy makers to adopt under various conditions.

This paper builds early warning systems (EWSs)for China's FDI utilization, applies grey correlation model GM (1,1) to predict early warning indexes, and uses both of the grey correlation and analytic hierarchy process (AHP) to evaluate the weights of the indexes.

The paper finds that FDI can promote China's economic growth, make great contribution to the technology spillover and improve China's employment environment as well as the quality of employment. But its contribution is less than the domestic capital in the aspects of China's industrial structure, area structure and trade structure adjustment, and more seriously, FDI exacerbates the imbalance of the area distribution in China. Moreover, foreign capital focuses on the occupation and monopoly of the domestic market, which will reduce import and export trade and harm the development of China's economy.

Owing to data constraints, this paper is not detailed and comprehensive enough, and needs further exploration in the empirical work.

Given the strong evidence of the EWS for FDI utilization, this paper finds a precise way to evaluate the influence of FDI on China's economic growth, by which the government can implement different capital management and controlling strategies to smooth the openness process of FDI in China.

This paper applies EWS into the FDI utilization to evaluate the safe coefficient and achieve the warning indexes, which are evaluated by the combination of the grey correlation and AHP.

The front-end phase plays an important role in achieving project success, and establishment of performance measurement systems considering project challenges or pitfalls is a way of keeping track of this phase. Early warning signs, a type of proactive performance indicators, may serve as means for improving decision-making and project processes aiming for short- and long-term project success. In this paper, the authors present findings from a study on early warning signs (EWS) in hospital projects' front-end. A preliminary systematisation of identified signs as a contribution to front-end improvement is provided.

The paper is based on a mixed methods approach, using a sequential, exploratory research design comprising document studies, interviews and a survey.

The authors identified 62 challenges for hospital projects' front-end performance and further established four categories of EWS as follows: (1) structure and tools, (2) context and frame factors, (3) management and (4) relational factors and properties. This mirrors the presence of hard and soft issues from previous studies. There is need for clarifying terminology and raising consciousness on EWS. Processual approaches to identify EWS are considered more useful than subsequent established indicators.

The findings from this paper provide insight into EWS in hospital projects' front-end phase. This adds to the general understanding of EWS and contributes to more knowledge on the front-end phase in general.

Management blindspots kill companies, even if management is smart and lucky. This paper is a case study of a market leader whose management failed to heed a strategic threat and choose a new strategic direction until it was too late. This piece suggests a conceptual approach to creating a strategic early warning process that may be capable of overcoming top executives' blinders.

The method of research is a detailed case study, combined with a conceptual framework addressing issues of board involvement, managerial span of control and confronting change.

Traditional mechanisms aimed at early warning fail to address blindspots regarding deep strategic threats to the organization's survival. Strategic fissures in the basic business model can be ignored for a while, and delaying tactics such as diversification can hold off the collapse of the model for years, but eventually, it will kill the organization. Companies need to re‐think their approach to early warning.

Replace traditional early warning processes with a more powerful early warning tool involving selected board members, an early warning team, and a process initiated at a threshold. That may be the only way to overcome top executives' denial mechanisms.

Boards should be careful not to interfere with management, but also not to allow “blinders” to kill the organization. Boards can take a more positive and forceful role in debating early warning signs.

Management blindspots in addressing serious strategic threats to a company's business model are a major cause of failure. This paper suggests a mechanism to fighting management blindspots, calling for the first time on Boards to get “down and dirty” with middle management and top executives in a unique way aimed at creating a powerful strategic early warning process.

The purpose of this paper is to present an overview on the concept of early warning (EW) signs in projects, briefly introduce the project health check (PHC) tool, and evaluate the level of efficiency of this tool as a source of data for an EW approach signaling that a project is about to experience problems in the future.

Two case projects from the telecommunication industry which have implemented the PHC system were investigated in order to observe how the use of this approach can help indicate EW signs which arise in projects and specify the area in which the problem is about to occur. A combination of qualitative and quantitative research methods has been implemented.

The results show that although the application of PHC tool can to a certain extent contribute to identification of EW signs in projects but level of effectiveness of the PHC this tool as an EW system is dependent on several factors such as level of complexity of the project, average experience of project managers, etc. Also the empirical studies reveal that there is definitely potential for enhancement of the tool in order to improve its utilization as an EW system.

The research is limited to a single organization in the telecommunication industry. The projects are within the execution phase and the final outcomes of the projects are yet not acquired.

The empirical case studies were developed to illustrate the level of efficiency of the use of PHC tool in projects and show how this tool can be used in order to better realize the potential problems timely enough to take preventive actions.

This paper highlights the gap in the literature concerning the practical use of PHC/project health indicator tool as an EW system. It offers a new idea on how PHC tool can be used as an effective EW system and shed light on the factors which influence the reliability and validity of the data obtained via this tool in project. This paper is intended to be primarily of use to project management practitioners and practically oriented academics who are interested in developing fresh insights into new approaches for better management of projects.

This paper aims to describe the approach taken in National Health Service Scotland to sharing information between health and care oversight bodies and the development of an analytical framework to monitor and identify early signals of serious problems in the quality and safety of health and care services.

A review of the reports from UK public inquiries into serious failures in health and social care services identified the prominent themes that appear repeatedly as the causes of failure. These themes were used to develop an analytical framework setting out the seven primary causes of failures in the quality and safety of health and care services and the triggers or signals for each of these primary causes.

In Scotland, the Sharing Intelligence for Health and Care Group uses the analytical framework to collate their combined intelligence and shapes their discussions around the known signs of systemic failure and their early warning signs.

Research into the nature of organisational failure in the health and care sector is limited. This paper provides a practical framework for regulators and providers to target their attention to the known signs of systemic failure and ensure that the early warning signs are routinely surfaced, understood and addressed.