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Outlines the guiding principles of the West Midlands regional strategy for quality, with its goals and targets. Discusses the aims of assisting the development of clear and common understanding of quality in the region. Acknowledges the significant problems surrounding a regional strategy.

The chapter examines the ways in which qualitative and quantitative methods support each other in research on occupational stress. Qualitative methods include eliciting from workers unconstrained descriptions of work experiences, careful first-hand observations of the workplace, and participant-observers describing “from the inside” a particular work experience. The chapter shows how qualitative research plays a role in (a) stimulating theory development, (b) generating hypotheses, (c) identifying heretofore researcher-neglected job stressors and coping responses, (d) explaining difficult-to-interpret quantitative findings, and (e) providing rich descriptions of stressful transactions. Extensive examples from research on job stress in teachers are used. The limitations of qualitative research, particularly in the area of verification, are also described.

The growing demands of work and life have shifted the concept of work-life balance to work-life integration (WLI). The success of integration depends upon the flexibility to perform the duties. This paper aims to explore the factors that affect WLI and the role of flexible work arrangements (FWAs) in the process of WLI.

Systematic literature review was used to explore the concept of WLI and FWAs. A bibliometric analysis was carried out with Bibexcel and VoSviewer.

This paper explained the organizational and personal factors that create the demand for WLI. The FWAs, perceived flexibility, technology and self-efficacy have important roles in WLI. The result of WLI can be enrichment or strain, depends upon how effectively the work-life domains are integrated.

This paper explores the work-life from both personal and organizational views. The findings of this paper will be useful to design the organizational policies and work arrangements that match the requirements of employees and organizations. This paper helps to develop the future research agenda of investigating the relations of WLI to performance, organizational policies and personal factors.

The Instagram site, teacherwhispers, was created as part of a qualitative research project that chronicled the stories and lived experience of preservice and graduate teachers. Since 2020, the purpose of the study was to identify themes connected to the participants' experiences of current trends in education. The intent was to situate the research as a critical interruption into the bigger political discourses surrounding education. The study sought to question why pedagogical practices are increasingly being positioned and located for political and economic reasons and to frame the questions of how we emerge as teachers in specific moments in time.

The methodology employed in the project was ethnographic and narrative-based, representing stories of teachers and teaching. Ethnography as embodiment contributes to an evocative portrayal of the participants' experiences. Teacher stories can be used to progress understandings of schools and schooling and play an important role in reflecting upon and learning from experience.

The selection of posts from teacherwhispers have brought into sharp focus the broad range of difficulties and rewards that are inherent in teaching. The site has been a microcosm of current issues in education. As a problematic and uncomfortable site of public pedagogy, it has been a site for sharing the realities, specificities and challenges of situatedness. The places where teachers work within their respective communities are highly diverse and can be a source of pressure both professionally and personally. Consequently, in the analysis of teacherwhispers, generalisations have been avoided.

As a repository of data for research, a public online site has its challenges; research is meant to be generalisable but in teaching each setting is unique and generalisations can be problematic. Sites of public pedagogy for teachers tend to be kaleidoscopic representations: diverse locations, groups, interests and disciplines. They are a stark reminder to be sceptical of accepting the statement, “research tells us” without questioning the positioning and biases that are inherently at play.

Practical elements of the project have included navigating a public online space for the dissemination of data.

Created in the spirit of problematising the methodology of public pedagogy, the online space at the centre of this project eventuated into something of a definition of what can be problematic in defining teachers' spaces of connection. The site was a place where opinions were expressed in confidentiality and that problematised methodology by putting into question what that methodology may be in a public sphere. What came forth as a result of putting methodology at the centre, rather than a definite answer, was unpredictability.

The online space has been an original place to display unanalysed data. The willingness to tell stories through an intermediary was juxtaposed by the public readership's unwillingness to engage with the stories, which would have meant exposing their identity. The online space is one that is increasingly relevant in public sharing and communications relating to communities of practice. This research is a critical interruption to the bigger political discourses in education. It questions why pedagogical practices are increasingly politicised. The project has been significant in mapping the stories of emerging educators at a time of unprecedented pedagogical change.

This study aims to investigate whether board gender diversity and sustainability performance influence tax avoidance.

The study is based on a sample consisting of 300 UK firms over the 2005-2017 period. This study is motivated by structural equations and system models that specify both a direct and an indirect link between board gender diversity and tax avoidance.

The results show that the level of tax avoidance decrease when the level of women on the board increase. Therefore, we find that sustainability performance is generally associated with greater tax avoidance. In combination, the results suggest that board gender diversity and sustainability performance play a significant role in corporate tax avoidance.

The findings may be of interest to the academic researchers, investors and regulators. For academic researchers, it is interested in discovering board gender diversity, sustainability performance and tax avoidance. For investors, the results show that the existence of female directors on the board reduces the tax avoidance. For regulators, the results advise the worldwide policy makers to give the importance of female roles to improve the engagement firms in sustainability reporting.

This study extends the existing literature by examining the mediating effect of sustainability performance on the relationship between board gender and tax avoidance in the UK context.

This study examines the impact of profitability, firm size and leverage on corporate tax avoidance in Bangladesh, an emerging South Asian economy.

A balanced panel data of 62 firms from Dhaka and Chittagong stock exchanges in Bangladesh from 2009 to 2020 were used to run the regression. This study employed the fully modified ordinary least squares (FMOLS) and dynamic ordinary least squares (DOLS) to examine the hypotheses.

The findings show that large firms positively impact corporate tax avoidance. Similarly, profitability and leverage are positively associated with tax avoidance, and the results are significant. Furthermore, the study conducts robustness tests that confirm the findings.

The use of cash effective tax rate (ETR) to investigate firms’ tax avoidance practices poses some limitations, and the results should be interpreted cautiously.

The current study may help policymakers better enhance tax collection from business firms. The findings could serve as a valuable input for effectively monitoring tax collection from large profit-earning firms.

To the authors' best knowledge, this is the first historical attempt in Bangladesh to use panel data to examine the relationship between the firm’s level characteristics and corporate tax avoidance. Panel data often provides greater flexibility with large data, simplifying calculation and statistical analysis.

The purpose of this study is to investigate the effect of audit fees, auditors' quality and board ownership on tax aggressiveness in Thailand.

The sample of this study is based on 215 firm-year observations of SET-100 listed companies in Thailand during the 2010–2018 periods. This study employs a panel least square regression with period fixed effects. The study retrieved the corporate governance variables from the downloaded annual reports, whilst the remaining data were collected from the EMIS database.

This study provides evidence that audit fees reduce tax aggressiveness and board ownership enhance tax aggressiveness among the firms. Nonaudit services provided by auditors impair auditors' independence and lead to higher tax aggressiveness. The result supports the agency theory, which explains that managers and blockholders may enjoy private benefits of control at the expense of other shareholders in the absence of market control. Thus, firms need good governance practices such as incentives paid for the effort of auditors and nonaudit services monitoring to curb such exploitation.

The results provide implications to the firms and regulators that incentives to the monitoring parties such as auditors can reduce tax aggressiveness among the firms. Nevertheless, higher ownership given to boards as incentives may lead to concentrated ownership and thus lead to the type 2 agency problem, which is between majority and minority shareholders. The result also provides caution to the regulators to monitor the nonaudit services provided by the auditors as it might impair their independence and compromise the tax paid to IRB.

This study is pioneer research discussing tax avoidance in Thailand. The Thai Government has been noticing that tax avoidance is being performed in the country, but academic discussion on this topic had never been elaborated.

The key purpose of conducting this review is to identify the issues that affect the structural integrity of pipeline structures. Heat affected zone (HAZ) has been identified as the weak zone in pipeline welds which is prone to have immature failures

In the present work, literature review is conducted on key issues related to the structural integrity of pipeline steel welds. Mechanical and microstructural transformations that take place during welding have been systematically reviewed in the present review paper.

Key findings of the present review underline the role of brittle microstructure phases, and hard secondary particles present in the matrix are responsible for intergranular and intragranular cracks.

The research limitations of the present review are new material characterization techniques that are not available in developing countries.

The practical limitations are new test methodologies and associated cost.

The fracture of pipelines significantly affects the surrounding ecology. The continuous spillage of oil pollutes the land and water of the surroundings.

The present review contains recent and past studies conducted on welded pipeline steel structures. The systematic analysis of studies conducted so far highlights various bottlenecks of the welding methods.

The refugee journey is fraught with challenges before, during and after resettlement. There is a critical need for mental health support upon arrival, and refugees face language, cultural and logistical barriers. Arts-based therapies are a promising approach to mitigating such barriers. The purpose of this study was to elicit professional stakeholder perspectives on mental health challenges among refugees, the value of arts-based programs and future directions.

The authors conducted three 90-min focus groups with 19 professional stakeholders in North Carolina, USA. This included mental health professionals, professors and community services/resettlement workers. Participants were identified from professional networks and snowball sampling. Each group was held by videoconference, audio recorded and transcribed. Data were analyzed through a team-based approach using applied thematic qualitative analysis.

Interviewees described a need for targeted, culturally compatible mental health services for refugee families, including trauma-informed, family-focused services with language interpretation. Arts-based therapies were viewed as highly acceptable and culturally responsive approaches for understanding distress and building resilience and less stigmatizing than traditional mental health services. Services in schools and community settings would further reduce stigma and minimize logistical barriers. Participants identified needing strong, culturally sensitive assessment tools to measure treatment progress as a key future direction.

The study offers novel insights into the value of arts-based approaches and considerations for program development. The next phase of the project will obtain the perspectives of refugee parents and children to understand client preferences for arts-based therapies.