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This chapter discusses the application of fuzzy cognitive map (FCM) modelling to construction management (CM) challenges and problems. It focuses on the critical issue of managing the complexity and uncertainty inherent in CM by providing a new intelligent layer that enhances classical approaches to construction modelling and management. It investigates how the myriad types of internal and external factors affecting the feasibility and performance of construction projects can be modelled using a fuzzy hybrid method that explores the complex relationships among many contributing factors and assesses and evaluates their impacts on past and future projects. This chapter proposes a hybrid modelling approach in the traditional context of cost, schedule and risk management and describes how augmenting and enhancing existing state-of-the-art tools and processes in CM can assist construction managers. This chapter provides a background on the theory of FCMs, presents foundational and current research, and explains how to apply this approach in the CM domain. This chapter also provides a detailed description of how to develop, modify and employ interactive models to specific CM challenges and problems. It includes a customisable, interactive base model and demonstrates how the model has been applied to specific CM events and issues. Examples are presented that highlight the interplay between project-specific goals and characteristics and the way these impact the interrelated and often opposing triad of cost, schedule and risk. The presented examples and practical applications make this state-of-the-art approach useful to both academic and industry practitioners.

Purpose – Audit quality is traditionally defined as the joint probability that an existing problem is discovered and reported by the auditor. This study examines whether and how audit quality is associated with related-party transactions and CEO duality. The first part (i.e., the ability to discover) is related to professional judgment, and the second part (i.e., report truthfully) is related to independence.

Methodology/Approach – Regression methods was used on archival data.

Findings – Our results reveal that for publicly held companies in environments with stronger capital market discipline, which causes greater reputation concerns and litigation risks, a CEO who is also the board chair does not hinder auditor independence. For privately held companies, however, such a CEO hinders auditor independence due to a lack of capital market discipline. The findings on related-party financing, on the other hand, are reversed. That is, in terms of information for an auditor, since the conflicts of interests are more severe in publicly held companies than in privately held companies, the relevance of related-party financing to a decision whether to issue a going-concern opinion is greater in publicly held companies.

Social implications – The empirical results of publicly held companies are useful for countries with better corporate governance, while those of privately held companies are helpful for countries with relatively weak corporate governance.

Originality/Value of paper – Because auditors performing audit services face different litigation risks and reputation concerns, the differences in our results between the two types of clients can have implications about the suitability of these types of companies in emerging markets.

One of the very first information entrepreneur businesses was Information Unlimited, founded by Sue Rugge and Georgia Finnigan back in 1971. Charging $10/hour for their research, Sue and Georgia essentially created a new industry, offering on-demand research provided by skilled librarians and researchers, to anyone who was willing to pay. Sue went on to found two more independent research companies, Information on Demand and The Rugge Group. Sue was also co-founder of The Information Professionals Institute, a company that focused on seminars for the information industry (including an all-day workshop on how to become an information entrepreneur).

The following ethnographic study was conducted to better understand the site-specific, qualitative impact of organizational, taken-for-granted assumptions and practices regarding gender and family life in the reproduction of on-the-ground gender inequality. More specifically, this case study considers the consequences of organizational assumptions consistent with Bem’s (1993) three “lenses of gender” – androcentrism, essentialism, and polarization – on direct service provision for homeless clients in a small, faith-based, social service provider.

Interview and participant-observation data were gathered during time spent volunteering with Integrity Intervention (pseudonym): a small liberal Methodist outreach ministry for the homeless. Data collection was guided by the following question: How do Integrity Intervention’s cultural models (or “schemas”) for gender and family life shape the ways the organization becomes a gendered social space?

I find that expectations for client behavior were deeply gendered, in a manner consistent with the “lenses of gender.” Additionally, normative expectations for subordinate masculinities were also informed and crosscut by race and class marginalization. Ultimately, my findings suggest that the “lenses of gender” may be imbued with class and race-specific interpretive meaning. I delineate forms of site-specific gendered, racialized, and classed cultural schemata for understanding poverty and homelessness, and explain how they ultimately work together to preclude inclusive and gender-equitable service provision.

This study is limited to providers and participants in one particular nonprofit organization.

The conclusions of the study bear implications for understanding the various forms through which gender inequality is reproduced – particularly in settings of faith-based social service provision.

The initial purpose of this study was to examine the educational needs and perceptions of students and clinicians in Canadian legal clinics.

The author conducted a literature review of leading educational materials in Canada and the United States focusing on required or preferred competencies for law students. The author then interviewed law students, clinicians, social workers, and community legal workers from across Ontario, Canada, all of whom were working or studying at law school-affiliated legal clinics. Interview subjects were asked a series of questions about their learning experiences in hopes of informing the creation of clinical teaching and learning materials.

The data revealed an under-reliance of the affective elements of teaching, learning, and practice in both existing literature and current teaching practices. The data also revealed deep structural divides between doctrinal and clinical teaching and learning approaches.

Without further integration between these two approaches, students and, ultimately, communities and clients will not reap the benefits possible from an integrated curriculum.

This study addresses foreign markets selection decisions by Russian mobile telecommunications operators and the impact of top management team composition on the degree of firms’ internationalization.

The qualitative exploratory study analyzed 24 foreign market entry decisions and the composition of the top management team of the two leading Russian mobile telecommunications operators, VimpelCom and Mobile Telesystems (MTS/AFK Sistema).

Russian mobile telecommunications operators adopted a gradual approach to foreign market selection, as the study revealed the positive impact of the target market’s geographic proximity to Russia on the investment decision. The international background of the top management team was positively related to the increasing distance of the selected foreign markets.

Further studies may include quantitative evaluation of investment decisions by mobile telecommunications operators from other emerging-market firms, as well as a longer observation period and investment decisions by firms operating in other industries.

Russian and other emerging-market firms should evaluate the importance of the top management team composition and international experience prior to initiation of the internationalization process.

Russian multinationals represent a relatively understudied phenomenon, despite the importance of outward foreign direct investments from Russia among other emerging-market firms.

The landscape of the Probation Service in England and Wales continues to be challenged by issues of priorities, workload, and lack of meaningful relationships between offenders and practitioners. In this climate of uncertainty and ‘transformation’, vulnerable offenders on probation become the ones mostly affected due to management plans and license conditions that do not respond to the variability of their needs. This chapter explores the older individuals on probation and uses the framework of Multi-Agency Public Protection Arrangements (MAPPA) to examine the extent to which it may accommodate the needs of this group of offenders in an otherwise risk-based context. This study draws ideas from previous research of the author and aims to develop the existing limited academic attention that older offenders supervised under specialised probation contexts have received. The structure of the chapter remains doctrinal in nature as a response to the need for a more comprehensive and inclusive perception of the risk of reoffending later in life and its implications for bespoke community reintegration strategies. This approach also allows for theorisation of MAPPA’s multi-agency structure and its prospects for the rehabilitation of older offenders. This study finds that as MAPPA only manages violent and sexual offenders, the ‘older MAPPA offender’ becomes a special category for probation that may exhibit a variety of needs and life circumstances. It thereby becomes even more important for these offenders that a constructive working relationship between them and the probation officer is in place. This supports the latter in appreciating what factors lead the individual to offending later in life, and what interventions may be most effective to address their risk of reoffending as well as their needs in the community.