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This paper aims to investigate the relationship between audit partner perfectionism traits and audit quality in Egypt, emphasizing the mediating role of professional skepticism.

A mixed-methods approach was used, combining a questionnaire and scenario-based questions for audit partners with secondary data from audited financial statements. The relationships between study variables were tested using structural equation modeling.

Results denote a significant indirect effect between partner perfectionism traits and audit quality through their professional skepticism. Perfectionism has a significant positive impact on partner professional skepticism, and skepticism influences audit quality.

This study offers opportunities to enhance financial reporting quality, allowing investors to confidently allocate financial market resources. Audit firms can consider the personality traits of auditors in the selection process, team formation and designing training programs. Regulators can use these findings to consider the role of personality traits and attitudes in audit quality when developing regulations and quality assurance systems in Egypt.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, no studies have examined the effect of partners’ perfectionism traits on professional skepticism and audit quality, especially in Egypt. By examining audit partners, who shape the tone at the top and are accountable for reputation, this study adds a novel dimension to understanding the impact of their qualities on audit outcomes. Moreover, combining survey and secondary data allows us to link these qualities with audit quality, objectively testing our hypotheses.

The purpose of this study is to investigate the extent to which TQM has influenced the legal system in Australia, an area seldom investigated in the quality or legal literature.

Documentary and policy analysis of legislation, rules and rulemaking documentation based on a partial application of historical-policy analysis (HPA). Textual analysis was based on Dean and Bowen's (1994) definition of TQM and Vinni's (2007) review of new public management and Swiss (1992) “reformed TQM” concepts.

Australia's Tertiary Education Quality and Standards Agency Act of 2011 and supporting legal documents such as Guidance Notes include language reflective of TQM principles, providing evidence that present-day administrative law schemes include TQM practices and tools to undergird procedures of regulatory expectations (sometimes in the form of standards), monitoring and general operations. Oftentimes, it is the supporting legal documentation where TQM practices are found and operationalized.

This is a proof-of-concept research study to determine the feasibility to identify TQM concepts within the existing language of legal statutes and supporting regulatory documentation. As such this study worked out the preliminary research challenges in performing this type of analysis.

Understanding TQM's impact on legal systems expands the system's perspective of organizations that do not always factor in the influence government policy has on organizational behaviours and outlooks. More specifically, understanding TQM's influence sheds insight on regulatory requirements imposed on a sector and the normative aspects of regulatory compliance that impact the operations and strategic planning of organizations.

The article provides an example of how legal administrative rulemaking influences organizational operational and strategic activities to remain viable in the organization's business or industrial sector.

There are few research papers or literature reviews pertaining to the subject of TQM concepts embedded in laws and regulations, most of which date from the 1980s through early 2000s.

This study examined how likeminded Facebook comments with incivility and without supporting evidence influence readers' evaluations of the commenter and online political participation intention. This study also investigated whether the indirect effect of exposure to uncivil comments and comments without evidence on online political participation through evaluations of the commenters is contingent on the strength of partisanship.

The study used a 2 (uncivil comments vs civil comments) × 2 (comments without supporting evidence vs comments with supporting evidence) factorial design with a scenario about reading similar viewpoints about the gun control issue in Facebook comments.

The results showed that compared to exposure to civil agreeing comments, exposure to uncivil likeminded comments resulted in higher levels of negative evaluations of the commenters, which in turn decreased willingness to participate in political activities online. Exposure to comments without evidence led to more negative evaluations of the commenters, but it did not significantly influence online political participation. In addition, the strength of partisanship did not significantly moderate the indirect effect of exposure to uncivil comments and comments without evidence on online political participation through evaluations of the commenters.

Although previous studies have demonstrated the significant effects of incivility and reasoned argument, little is known about whether and how people evaluate ingroup members' comments that are uncivil and lacking reasoned arguments. Most of these studies have examined incivility in political contexts, but few have extended the context to the effect of likeminded comments, especially when the comments are uncivil and lack supporting evidence. The current study aims to fill this gap in the literature.

The purpose of this study was to fill the gap in understanding the impact of Drug Recognition Expert (DRE) evidence and testimony in driving under the influence (DUI) trials. This was accomplished by documenting and analyzing the perceptions of DREs and the DRE program across different stakeholders to understand how and when this type of evidence is used in DUI trials.

The methodology is a qualitative case study of the DRE program in one police agency in Washington. Data were collected using semi-structured interviews with criminal justice actors and state-level experts on their perceptions of the DRE program for the agency. Themes were developed from these interviews to analyze their perceptions of the efficacy and utility of DREs in trials.

While the courts in Washington accept DRE evidence in criminal trials, DRE evidence is largely absent in the adjudication process. Participants noted multiple reasons for this, including the lack of trials, the primacy of blood evidence and the expansion of the Advanced Roadside Impaired Driving Enforcement (ARIDE) program.

Although the DRE program has been around for decades, there is a lack of peer-reviewed studies regarding DRE evidence, and no studies regarding how court actors perceive and use DRE evidence. Understanding when and how DRE evidence is utilized in DUI trials can increase its value and utility by prosecutors and the national DRE program.

Consequence prediction is an emerging topic in safety management concerning the severity outcome of accidents. In practical applications, it is usually implemented through supervised learning methods; however, the evaluation of classification results remains a challenge. The previous studies mostly adopted simplex evaluation based on empirical and quantitative assessment strategies. This paper aims to shed new light on the comprehensive evaluation and comparison of diverse classification methods through visualization, clustering and ranking techniques.

An empirical study is conducted using 9 state-of-the-art classification methods on a real-world data set of 653 construction accidents in China for predicting the consequence with respect to 39 carefully featured factors and accident type. The proposed comprehensive evaluation enriches the interpretation of classification results from different perspectives. Furthermore, the critical factors leading to severe construction accidents are identified by analyzing the coefficients of a logistic regression model.

This paper identifies the critical factors that significantly influence the consequence of construction accidents, which include accident type (particularly collapse), improper accident reporting and handling (E21), inadequate supervision engineers (O41), no special safety department (O11), delayed or low-quality drawings (T11), unqualified contractor (C21), schedule pressure (C11), multi-level subcontracting (C22), lacking safety examination (S22), improper operation of mechanical equipment (R11) and improper construction procedure arrangement (T21). The prediction models and findings of critical factors help make safety intervention measures in a targeted way and enhance the experience of safety professionals in the construction industry.

The empirical study using some well-known classification methods for forecasting the consequences of construction accidents provides some evidence for the comprehensive evaluation of multiple classifiers. These techniques can be used jointly with other evaluation approaches for a comprehensive understanding of the classification algorithms. Despite the limitation of specific methods used in the study, the presented methodology can be configured with other classification methods and performance metrics and even applied to other decision-making problems such as clustering.

This study sheds new light on the comprehensive comparison and evaluation of classification results through visualization, clustering and ranking techniques using an empirical study of consequence prediction of construction accidents. The relevance of construction accident type is discussed with the severity of accidents. The critical factors influencing the accident consequence are identified for the sake of taking prevention measures for risk reduction. The proposed method can be applied to other decision-making tasks where the evaluation is involved as an important component.

Relative performance evaluation (RPE) is a widely practiced employee appraisal process in the services industry. In a global delivery model, teams are spread across different geographical locations. The team members work on various tasks under the guidance of different managers and at times under more than one manager for performing the same task. Such complexities make RPE of the team members quite challenging. The paper proposes a methodical step-by-step approach to simplify the evaluation process without compromising on the rigour.

RPE has followed three different approaches. First is the traditional way, wherein evaluators had a common meeting to discuss and arrive at relative evaluation and ranking of members of the peer group employees. In the second, the number of evaluators and employees in a peer group were split in to 2 subgroups. The evaluators provided independent ratings and rankings. Simple mathematical tool then derived the combined ranking. In the third approach, each evaluator evaluated each employee in the peer group and provided the relative ranking for each employee. Again, mathematical tools provided the final ranking considering inputs from all evaluators. All the three evaluation approaches were analysed through an inter-rater agreement method.

All the three approaches for evaluation provided similar results giving confidence that less time-consuming methods could be adopted by evaluators without compromising on the rigour of the evaluation. The outcome of the exercise proved effective as the complaints reaching the ombudsmen reduced as compared to the earlier years. Considerable evaluation time was also saved. The study described in this paper is carried out in a non-unionized, Indian private sector services firm. Its effectiveness in other set ups is yet to be tested.

The research is carried out in the Indian Engineering services firm operating in the Knowledge based sector. Though study results are encouraging, the adaptability of methodology across different sectors and geographies is yet to be tested. More broad based studies are needed to evaluate suitability across firms and regions.

Relative evaluation exercise is challenging for evaluators. Although openness in evaluation is desired, it also makes evaluators uncomfortable in appearing to be taking sides or being opposing a candidate's ranking. The proposed approach brings in anonymity to each evaluator without scarifying individual evaluation.

The proposed methodology can be deployed across different services industries as the proposed methodology is business domain agnostic. It can be easily ported and tailored to align with an individual organization's evaluation philosophy. The suitability and effectiveness of the method can be studied under various types of firms like manufacturing, private, public, NGO, labour oriented, etc. As the proposed method reduces efforts, the stake holders can focus on understanding the relation between employee performance measurement, employee engagement, and long-term outcomes related to employee performance evaluation.

The proposed employee evaluation method leverages inter-rater reliability and agreement tool as a consensus approach to the relative performance ranking exercise. Such an approach to relative performance ranking is original as no prior studies with such an approach are found in the existing Literature.

The purpose of this paper is to explore and evaluate the current legal position on the admissibility and exclusion of illegally obtained evidence in money laundering cases.

A thorough exploratory analytical analysis signifies that such illegally obtained evidence from money laundering offences is admissible, provided it does not undermine the administration of justice or the right to a fair trial.

By virtue of the lack of written or codified rules governing the admissibility and exclusion of illegally obtained evidence in cases involving money laundering, the rule of admissibility remains the primary foundational principle for the governance of the admissibility and exclusion of illegally obtained evidence in money laundering cases.

The Malaysian Criminal Justice System has historically relied on the long-standing admissibility principles to admit and exclude illegally obtained evidence. For decades, courts have used their discretion to admit illegally obtained evidence based on the relevancy test, and they have further demonstrated to use the same discretion to exclude gravely prejudicial evidence. Evidence obtained illegally but if relevant to the matter in issue is deemed admissible. Evidence derived from an act associated with unlawful activities or a predicate offence in money laundering may be obtained illegally, which may influence the prosecution case and conversely, defend the accused’s rights to a fair trial.

The aim of this paper is to generate a streamlined, transparent and effective instrument to fairly measure the contribution made by each student to a group project within a higher education context. The primary aim is to moderate the grades of underperforming students at the end of the project. There is a secondary benefit in alerting underperforming students to raise their contribution mid-task or face a potentially reduced grade at the final stage.

The development of this multi-dimensional instrument is guided by findings from previous research. The quest is to minimise the instructor's administrative work load in applying a moderation-only instrument that is open-source and available at no cost. Based on the literature, the survey instrument seeks to apply a peer-based, equitable and transparent evaluation of each member's contribution to a group task. The survey is applied at mid-task and again at end-task in order to afford underperformers the opportunity to address contribution deficits during the final phase of the project.

The instrument, called TANDEM©, offers a transparent, streamlined, equitable, confidential and practical measure of each student's contribution to a graded group task. Students whose end-task contribution falls below the group average rating receive a proportional reduction in their personal grade. Additionally, the end-task moderation instrument captures a single-item holistic measure of relative contribution that may, in the future, serve as a surrogate for the multi-dimensional measures currently in place.

TANDEM© was developed with group sizes of four or five members in mind. There is no evidence to support its application to three-person groups. Moreover, the application was applied only amongst under-graduate students. It is yet to be applied across post-graduate groups and within online learning environments. Future research into diverse cultural settings would serve to advance understanding of how moderation is perceived across borders.

Several existing group grade moderation methods propose complex algorithms that are “black box” solutions from a student's perspective. In establishing a fair, streamlined, confidential and transparent process for peer-rated moderation, TANDEM© deploys a concise instrument with a relatively small administrative load. TANDEM © may be applied to all groups or can selectively be applied to groups that report moderate, strong or extreme levels of conflict.

Students will appreciate the opportunity to rate peer contributions to group projects. This will dissipate the negative social sentiment that may arise when fellow students benefit from the work of others. Those students seeking conflict resolution within the group will value the transparent and equitable moderation of grades as well as the positive social implications that follow.

This research forms part of an ongoing quest to present a moderation instrument that fairly identifies student contribution to a group project. Whilst the solution proposed is one of many existing alternatives, its focus is on a practical moderation-only instrument that can immediately be applied to a course or major. The benefits lie in the ease of application and minimal administrative workload. This constitutes an original contribution to the individual (course or major) coordinator who seeks to apply a moderation-only instrument without having to commit to an extensive, broad-based group optimisation programme.

This study aims to establish an evaluation method for cross-regional major infrastructure project (CRMIP) supportability. The focus is to identify evaluation indicators from a complexity perspective and develop an evaluation model using qualitative and quantitative methods. Case studies are carried out to verify the reliability of the evaluation model, thereby providing theoretical and practical guidance for CRMIP operations and maintenance (O&M).

Guided by the idea of complexity management, the evaluation indicators of CRMIP supportability are determined through literature analysis, actual O&M experience and expert interviews. A combination of qualitative and quantitative methods, consisting of sequential relationship analysis, entropy weighting, game theory and cloud model, is developed to determine the indicator weights. Finally, the evaluation model is used to evaluate the supportability of the Hong Kong–Zhuhai–Macao Bridge (HZMB), which tests the rationality of the model and reveals its supportability level.

The results demonstrate that CRMIPs' supportability is influenced by 6 guideline-level and 18 indicator-level indicators, and the priority of the influencing factors includes “organization,” “technology,” “system,” “human resources,” “material system,” and “funding.” As for specific indicators, “organizational objectives,” “organizational structure and synergy mechanism,” and “technical systems and procedures” are critical to CRMIPs' O&M supportability. The results also indicate that the supportability level of the HZMB falls between good and excellent.

Under the guidance of complexity management thinking, this study proposes a supportability evaluation framework based on the combined weights of game theory and the cloud model. This study provides a valuable reference and scientific judgment for the health and safety of CRMIPs' O&M.

This uses quantitative and qualitative methods in assessing performance and process outcomes in a team lecture hybrid (TLH) instructional design applied in a public affairs course.

Within a non-experimental prospective design, individual and team outcomes were assessed as follows: survey of student perceptions of learning outcomes; comparison of individual and group scores on in-class case analyses using paired t-tests; external reviewers' observations of traditional lecture versus TLH activities; and analysis of students' reflections on team dynamics using a team process reflection tool adapted from four team development stages.

The following student learning outcomes results were observed: increased use of critical thinking; higher student interaction with other students and the instructor; higher student engagement in initiating or contributing to content or other learning activities; higher student enthusiasm; increased use of problem-solving skills; improved performance evidenced by quality of individual versus group products; evidence suggesting improvements in student learning outcomes when active learners and an active instructor interact in a learning environment.

Instructor practice tips were provided in the following areas: use of assessment methods; student engagement as an active instructor; motivational tips for classes with students from a variety of disciplines; and individual team member accountability.

This paper contributes to the scholarship of teaching and learning (SOTL) by addressing limitations in both traditional and collaborative learning models and expanding holistic evaluations in SOTL.