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Hospital manager decisions can have a significant impact on service effectiveness and hospital success, so using an evidence-based approach can improve hospital management. The purpose of this paper is to identify evidence-based management (EBMgt) components and challenges. Consequently, the authors provide an improving evidence-based decision-making framework.

A total of 45 semi-structured interviews were conducted in 2016. The authors also established three focus group discussions with health service managers. Data analysis followed deductive qualitative analysis guidelines.

Four basic themes emerged from the interviews, including EBMgt evidence sources (including sub-themes: scientific and research evidence, facts and information, political-social development plans, managers’ professional expertise and ethical-moral evidence); predictors (sub-themes: stakeholder values and expectations, functional behavior, knowledge, key competencies and skill, evidence sources, evidence levels, uses and benefits and government programs); EBMgt barriers (sub-themes: managers’ personal characteristics, decision-making environment, training and research system and organizational issues); and evidence-based hospital management processes (sub-themes: asking, acquiring, appraising, aggregating, applying and assessing).

Findings suggest that most participants have positive EBMgt attitudes. A full evidence-based hospital manager is a person who uses all evidence sources in a six-step decision-making process. EBMgt frameworks are a good tool to manage healthcare organizations. The authors found factors affecting hospital EBMgt and identified six evidence sources that healthcare managers can use in evidence-based decision-making processes.

The Iranian patients’ rights charter defines patient rights as a reflection of fundamental human rights in the field of medicine and incorporates all elements of patient rights accepted in international texts. The purpose of this paper is to study the way in which diabetes patients’ rights are being exercised in everyday hospital practice in Birjand, Iran.

A cross-sectional study design was used in 2014. The sample size was estimated 150 patients, out of which 108 diabetes patients completed questionnaire. The questionnaire of diabetes patients’ perspectives on the patients’ rights was used to collect data. The questionnaire consists of 22 questions. Data entry and analysis were carried out using SPSS software (version 22). Descriptive and inferential statistics were calculated with all survey items and total scores, as well as demographic data.

The response rate was 72 percent. Overall, the mean score percentage of diabetes patients’ perspectives on the patients’ rights was 74.04± 8.4. Furthermore, statistical significant differences were found among diabetes patients in relation to patients’ perspectives on the patients’ rights according to highest level of education (F=16.52, p=0.002), their habitat(t=3.49, p=0.001), age groups (F=18.70, p=0.0001) and the duration of the disease (F=5.16, p=0.007). The results showed that no statistically significant differences were observed among diabetes patients in relation to diabetes patients’ perspectives on the patients’ rights according to their gender (F=1.57, p=0.12) and marital status (F=1.56, p=0.09).

Clinicians can provide care based on patients’ rights, and their knowledge of patients’ rights needs to be evaluated. Educational courses, leaflets, booklets and posters can be helpful in this regard. In addition, professional organizations and the Ministry of Health need to be more sensitive to this issue.

The medical consultation is one of the requirements in diseases diagnosis and patient treatment. In addition, a high-quality consultation is a fundamental demand of patients, and it is one of the rights of every patient. The purpose of this paper is to identify factors affecting the high-quality consultation in medical communications.

The following electronic databases were searched: MEDLINE (via PubMed), Web of Science, Cochrane, EMBASE, Scopus and ProQuest until December 2018. In addition, the authors searched Google Scholar. Qualitative and quantitative studies were assessed using the Critical Appraisal Skills Programme, Qualitative Checklist and the Center for Evidence-Based Management appraisal checklist, respectively. A stepwise approach was conducted for data synthesis.

Of 3,826 identified studies, 29 met the full inclusion criteria. Overall, after quality assessment of studies, 25 studies were included. The studies were conducted in the USA (n=6), the UK (n=6), the Netherlands (n=4), Canada (n=2), Belgium (n=2), Poland (n=2), Germany (n=1), Iran (n=1), Finland (n=1), Austria (n=1), Qatar (n=1), Denmark (n=1) and China (n=1), and five studies were excluded. Data synthesis showed that high-quality consultation consisted of three main categories: structural (4 main themes with 26 sub-themes), process (2 main themes with 33 sub-themes) and outcome (3 main themes with 12 sub-themes) quality.

Using the indicators of consultation quality improvement can develop physicians’ clinical competence and skills. Decision makers can use them to monitor and evaluate physicians’ performance. A high-quality consultation can be useful in social prescribing that helps patients to manage their disease.

There is a rising interest in ethical, moral, and spiritual challenges and imperatives, accountabilities, and responsibilities in the corporation. Governance issues arise whenever a corporate entity assumes a life of its own, and the ownership of an enterprise is separated from its management. How could owners ensure that “professional managers” hired and delegated to run their companies would run the venture to protect owners’ interests? What is and should be the moral quality of the corporation that CEOs govern? What types of corporate governance, ownership, and control modes and models should CEOs adopt such that they ensure long-term objectives of all stakeholders of the corporation? These ethical questions are central issues in the world of corporations today battled as they are with various pressures from governments, Wall Street analysts, credit ratings agencies, banks and promoters, private equity and hedge funds, and hostile takeovers. Such questions will always be crucial when fiduciary rights and duties attached to investment and ownership cannot be applied directly. This is the context of today’s corporate governance that this Epilogue to Volume I explores.

Reflecting the Mauritian government's “quality” agenda and its focus on school leadership, this paper reports the findings of research exploring Mauritian principals’ views about the use of total quality management (TQM) for school improvement. While aspects of this research have been reported elsewhere, the purpose of this paper is to focus on school leaders’ use of data and evidence in making decisions for school improvement.

The paper reports on qualitative aspects within a mixed methods research with data collected by means of semi-structured interviews conducted with a purposive sample of six principals. The analysis of the data were an exercise in grounded theory building.

The paper expands the knowledge of principals as quantitative data users arguing that qualitative information based on professional discourses, human judgements and lived experiences should be equally valorised if TQM is used for making informed educational decisions.

The research relied on principals’ views as the unique source of data. The perspectives of the other stakeholders would offer a richer description of leadership reality in Mauritian schools.

The paper suggests a more participatory decision-making model for effective change that could rightfully engage all stakeholders through various complementary quantitative and qualitative processes. It further recommends that alongside the core systemic qualities of TQM, there are ethical, moral and cultural dimensions of leadership that could enhance the teaching and learning environment.

While confirming some extant research, the paper brings new thinking to understanding the critical role of principals within the TQM scenario of data-driven decision making.

Much has been written about the need and importance of Non‐financial Performance/s (NFP) measures in modern technologically advanced competitive business organizations. But there is not an acceptable definition available on NFP, though recent corporate accounting scandals have been created greater need of ethical, moral viz a viz NFP measurement. However, all non‐monetary qualitative pieces of information are not same in considering an organization's strategy, objective, and even for the differences of organizational characteristics/particularities. Thus, this study attempts to identify the nature of NFP with references to financial institutions in Finland and Japan. According to the empirical evidence, this study classifies three different natures of NFP. The first type of NFP is the profit driven one, and the second one is for long‐term competitive advantage of business. The third type of NFP is independent in nature, i.e. they are not linked with the profitability of organization. This study also demonstrates the relative link of NFP with financial performances, and the weight and importance that management is giving to improve and measure NFP in the studied organizations. At the end some directions for further research are given in light of the recent corporate accounting scandals in the USA.

Ethics is fundamentally a science of social and collective responsibility. Ethics concerns human behavior as responsible or accountable. Because of the nature of social interaction, certain members of the society will bear greater authority, and hence, greater individual and social responsibility than others. In our world, personal responsibility and social responsibility are hardly separable. Personal responsibility becomes responsibility for the world because the person and the world are inseparable. In this chapter, we use the term responsibility from a legal, ethical, moral, and spiritual (LEMS) standpoint as some promise, commitment, obligation, sanctioned by self, morals, law, or society, to do good, and if harm results, to repair harm done on another. Hence, responsibility from a moral perspective is trustworthiness and dependability of the agent in some enterprise. Its inverse is exoneration – the extent to which one is excused from commitment and repairing the harm done to others by one’s actions. We apply the theories and constructs of executive responsibility to two contemporary cases: (1) India’s Super Rich in 2014 and (2) the Fall and Rise of Starbucks. After exploring the basic notion of responsibility, we present a discussion on the nature and obligation of corporate responsibility into three parts: Part I: Classical Understanding and Discussion on Corporate Responsibility; Part II: Contemporary Understanding and Discussion on Corporate Responsibility, and Part III: A synthesis of classical and contemporary views of responsibility and their applications to corporate executive responsibility.

The purpose of this paper is to develop measures of Asian corporate social responsibility (CSR) based on David's dual process model for Malaysian government linked corporations (GLC) and publicly listed companies (PLC).

A survey consisting was conducted and a structural equation model was used to test the relationships among constructs. An instrument to measure CSR practices focusing on CSR relational, CSR ethical/moral, and CSR discretionary is developed to evaluate impacts on corporate reputation, culture, and legitimacy.

Findings suggest CSR antecedents emerge through formalization of corporate communication management in Malaysian organizations. The structural model provides evidence that CSR initiatives impact corporate reputation directly. The study acknowledges the increase in CSR initiatives in corporate communication practices in GLCs and PLCs in the quest to gain public legitimacy and corporate governance.

The study contributes to the corporate communication literature by linking CSR to corporate reputation and culture, and developing a CSR model that explores a critical dimension in management of corporate identity in an Asian country.