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The purpose of this paper is to investigate the intended and unintended consequences of compliance and auditing pressures in the Bangladeshi garment industry. To explore this issue the authors draw on three medium-sized suppliers. The institutional changes that followed the Rana Plaza accident in April 2013 make Bangladesh in general and the garment industry in particular an interesting and suitable research setting for standards compliance.

The study adopts a multiple case study approach. Face-to-face interviews have been conducted with the owners of three Bangladeshi garment manufacturing firms and several workers. Additionally, organisational documents and local newspaper articles had been collected wherever possible.

The results indicate that the pressure for compliance has led the case companies to prioritise the implementation of measurable standards over the socially grounded needs and priorities of workers. As a consequence certain initiatives instead of adding new social value in fact destroyed previously existing social value. Furthermore, the pressure for compliance created the necessity to find ways to cover the sizable cost of compliance. This prompted firms to pursue process upgrading through technological advancements and increased work pressures on the labour force. These initiatives led to an increased power imbalance and the exclusion of unskilled workers from the job market.

The paper contributes to the understanding of the human rights implications of compliance and auditing pressures and initiatives. Furthermore, in order to further enrich existing knowledge in the critical accounting literature, the study draws on insights from the global value chains (GVC) and international business (IB) literatures.

The paper contributes to the understanding of the human rights implications of compliance and auditing pressures and initiatives. Furthermore, in order to further enrich existing knowledge in the critical accounting literature, the study draws on insights from the GVC and IB literatures.

The place of festivals in national economic development has received increased attention from researchers globally. However, there appears to be a relatively small and disparate literature on the subject especially within the Ghanaian context. The study seeks to contribute to the global recognition of festivals as developmental tools and thus presents the effects of festival tourism on socio-economic capital of the people of Kwahu traditional area (Ghana) and how festival tourism in the region engenders economic benefits to businesses and the community.

This study is guided by the social development theory. A quantitative cross-sectional survey utilizing convenience technique was used to gather data from a sample of 398 residents of the selected towns and the regression model was used to analyse the data.

The findings revealed festival tourism to have a positive effect on community cohesiveness but not statistically significant. Further, the festival brought economic gains but had negative social effects on development of the selected towns.

This research is destination-specific. The application of the findings to other festivals would demand a bigger sample size for generalisation to be made.

The findings suggest that for growth of festival tourism in Ghana to be actualised, the Ghana Tourism Authority needs to ensure festivals do not erode entrenched traditional values and negate efforts at developing social structures and systems by putting measures to reduce the negative effect of commoditisation of festivals on the communities' cultural authenticity. Law enforcement agents should also be massively beefed up to curtail crime and social vices.

The study's findings extend earlier studies to extend the scope in festival tourism literature. This study found that festival tourism has effect on both community cohesion and economic development of the people of Kwahu traditional area.

Maintaining food safety techniques in the supply chain management require special food safety labelling techniques during distribution in the retail food industry. The food products have to be of good quality and labelling inbound, manufacturing, and outbound in the supply chain contributes to this aim. The purpose of this study is to evaluate how food safety labelling is managed in Vietnam’s retail food industry with a special focus on food in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam. Photography was used in an observational study conducted among five separate retail market chains all located in this city. In which ways are the applications of the developed food safety labelling techniques among three separate retail food markets similar and dissimilar being accounted for? The results show that the packaging and labelling in Big C, Aeon Citimart, and Giant using the symbols of food safety build trust for their customers. The Big C indicates guidelines for VietGAP and green labelling. Aeon Citimart indicates the name of the good, expiration date and instructions for use as well as guidelines for the government factor (VietGAP) to the food safety practices in the Vietnamese food retail sector.

Misinformation is a significant phenomenon in today's world: the purpose of this paper is to explore the motivations behind the creation and use of misinformation.

A literature review was undertaken, covering the English and Russian language sources. Content analysis was used to identify the different kinds of motivation relating to the stages of creating and communicating misinformation. The authors applied Schutz's analysis of motivational types.

The main types of motivation for creating and facilitating misinformation were identified as “in-order-to motivations”, i.e. seeking to bring about some desired state, whereas the motivations for using and, to a significant extent, sharing misinformation were “because” motivations, i.e. rooted in the individual's personal history.

The general model of the motivations underlying misinformation is original as is the application of Schutz's typification of motivations to the different stages in the creation, dissemination and use of misinformation.

“The unexamined life is not worth living” (Socrates). That is, without critically inquiring into the knowledge of life which is well-being and valuable, life is not worth living. Critical thinking questions existing theories and their unexamined and obsessive assumptions and generalizations, constraints, and “best” practices of the prevailing system of management and tries to replace them with more valid assumptions and generalizations that uphold the dignity, uniqueness, and inalienable rights of the individual person and the community. Better outcomes result from asking the right questions than from having the right answers. In the diverse, pluralist cultural environment of today, the promise of a truly generative dialog among Occidental (Western) and Oriental (Eastern) cultures and civilizations holds great hope for the future. Critical thinking (CT) is an “inclusive” thinking system that can facilitate this dialog such that all of us have a meaningful space and place in this universe. After defining CT and arguing its importance for executives, this chapter introduces CT in two parts: Part 1: Various Approaches to Critical Thinking; Part 2: Major Theories of Critical Thinking. Several contemporary business cases will be invoked to illustrate the need, nature, and scope of corporate CT.

This study aims to determine the prevalence of obesity and its relationship with mental health issues among healthcare workers in Kota Kinabalu District Health Office, Sabah Borneo and its associating factors.

This cross-sectional study was conducted among 387 healthcare workers working in the Kota Kinabalu District Health Office, Sabah. Sociodemographic data and anthropometric measurements were collected and DASS 21 questionnaire was used to assess mental health status.

The prevalence of obesity among healthcare workers was 29%, which is significantly associated with years of service (p = 0.016) and abnormal depression subscale scores (p = 0.012) at univariate analysis. The percentage of abnormal subscale score for depression, anxiety and stress was 16, 26 and 12%, respectively. Multivariable logistic regression revealed that more than five years of service years (OR 2.23, 95%CI 1.16–4.28) and high depressive subscale score (OR 2.09, 95%CI 1.18–3.71) were both significantly associated with obesity.

This study has affirmed the link between physical and mental health. Policies that tackle both issues should be put in place to promote wellness among healthcare workers.

Much of the current literature on integrating sustainability into HEIs is focussed on why HEIs should embrace sustainable development (SD) and what is still missing or hindering work and the integration of efforts. There is much less exploration of how SD has been interpreted at the individual HEI level and action taken as a result. This case study reflects on important elements of the journey Nottingham Trent University (NTU) in the UK has taken to integrate sustainability, focussing on key decisions and activity in 2009/10. In highlighting this, the authors seek to empower those looking to support and/or lead the embedding of Education for Sustainable Development (ESD), separately or as part of an integrated effort, in their own institution. Today in 2019, NTU is a global leader in integrating ESD as part of a wider SD agenda. The work which this paper presents, to understand and establish a baseline of key elements of NTU's existing ESD activity and systems, was an important turning point. Activities undertaken to review and assess “where are we now?”, primarily through an institution-wide survey in 2009/10, led to important insights and supported dialogue, as well as the connection and underpinning of core administrative elements of the NTU SD framework and systems. Further recommendations are given in the final section of this paper on other drivers that can help to embed ESD within an HEI.

This paper aims to develop a conceptual framework on how the representativeness heuristic operates in the decision-making process. Specifically, the authors unbundle representativeness into its building blocks: search rule, stopping rule and decision rule. Furthermore, the focus is placed on how individual-level cognitive and behavioral factors, namely experience, intuition and overconfidence, affect the functioning of this heuristic.

From a theoretical standpoint, the authors build on dual-process theories and on the adaptive toolbox view from the “fast and frugal heuristics” perspective to develop an integrative conceptual framework that uncovers the mechanisms underlying the representativeness heuristic.

The authors’ conceptualization suggests that the search rule used in representativeness is based on analogical mapping from previous experience, the stopping rule is the representational stability of the analogs and the decision rule is the choice of the alternative upon which there is a convergence of representations and that exceeds the decision maker's aspiration level. In this framework, intuition may help the decision maker to cross-map potentially competing analogies, while overconfidence affects the search time and costs and alters both the stopping and the decision rule.

The authors develop a conceptual framework on representativeness, as one of the most common, though still poorly investigated, heuristics. The model offers a nuanced perspective that explores the cognitive and behavioral mechanisms that shape the use of representativeness in decision-making. The authors also discuss the theoretical implications of their model and outline future research avenues that may further contribute to enriching their understanding of decision-making processes.

The usage of sport stadia for public service is increasingly common and may come in different forms. In the COVID-19 pandemic, this included sport entities hosting mass COVID-19 vaccinations at their stadiums. The purpose of this study was to examine the branding effects of a COVID-19 mass vaccination center as communicated by (1) a sport entity (i.e. stadium and its two teams) and (2) the public.

The authors analyzed the entity's social media messages related to the mass vaccination center for the three groups, the stadium and its two sports team tenants (N = 48) while comparing the public's social media content about the vaccination center (N = 187). An empirical material coding analysis was conducted.

The sport entity's posts revealed 12 codes, five categories and two themes communicated about their brand: In this together–community impact and showcasing brand attributes. The public posts analysis revealed 21 codes, eight categories and four themes, creating brand awareness, establishing/reaffirming brand attributes, affective response and in this together–community response.

The identification of the two organization themes and four public themes provided an initial examination of the mass vaccination efforts' impact on the sport entity's brand. With the rise of stadia being utilized as public service venues (e.g. voting centers and disaster shelters), the results of the study can provide guidance to communicating the host team's brand during these times. Results also suggest the public perception of such service reflected positive opportunities for brand exposure and subsequent effects for the teams.

The purpose of this paper is to describe a range of innovative (for public library performance measurement and impact assessment) methods and tools developed by country teams as part of the Global Libraries (GL) initiative. Short reports are provided on: a return on investment study, a simplified data processing system for library managers and an online reporting system for public libraries in Ukraine; a study of the public image of Polish libraries in print mass media, two approaches to sustainability of performance measurement and impact assessment in Romania, through tools to conduct pop-up surveys and use of agricultural subsidies support data, assessments of changes in public library managers’ planning efforts in Poland and of their perceptions of libraries and their own role, using Modified Delphi forecasting, in Lithuania, two ways of focussing on the world of public library users by engaging non-profit organizations in library research in Poland and conducting impact studies in virtual environments in Chile.

A range of methods and tools and their uses are described.

No specific research findings are reported.

All of these tools and methods have been (or are being) trialed in national public library contexts; some have been developed over several years.

Useful for people in other (non-GL) countries who may be contemplating public library evaluation at regional, national or local level or who are interested in performance measurement and impact evaluation.

This paper is part of a GL effort to share what participants have learnt about impact planning and assessment in public libraries with the wider international libraries community.

The impact planning and assessment program of GL has been the largest sustained international public library evaluation program so far attempted. This paper reports on the more innovative evaluation activities undertaken at country level through this program.