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The purpose of this paper is to resolve and remove from the governance arena in general and the project arena in particular, conflict which occurs when parties do not realise they have different meanings for common governance terms.

Review literature on definitional confusion in general and on governance in particular and develop a method for defining an internally consistent group of terms, then apply this to a group of terms in the governance arena.

Several important subjects commonly arranged under the governance banner do not actually constitute governance (strategy, behaviour, decision making).

Further work is necessary to remove similar confusion in other closely related areas, including power itself and authority as well as project and general management terms such as responsibility and accountability.

Projects and business alike can potentially achieve significant improvements in efficiency and effectiveness through gaining consistency across current models, frameworks, policies and procedures thus reducing cross-boundary conflict.

Creation of a unifying feature within the project and management literature, shifting the understanding of the boundaries and limitations of governance. These definitions will help progress governance from complexity to simplicity, from an art to an understandable practice, from a concept that has been hijacked for partisan and political gain to a lean social tool which can be put to use for the benefit of organisations, whether public, charitable or private.

The value is clarity – resulting in the avoidance of confusion and misunderstanding together with their consequent waste of time, resources and money.

The purpose of this paper is to create a “refined” (with unnecessary elements removed) definition of the term stakeholder, thereby removing confusion surrounding the use of this term from the general and project management arenas.

A method of deriving refined definitions for a group of terms by ensuring there are no unnecessary elements causing internal conflict or overlap is adopted and applied to resolve the confusion.

The refined definitions of stake and stakeholder are in terms of an interest and activity. This avoids all extensions of meaning introduced by defining particular types of stakeholders and/ or their degrees of impact. It also resolves the multiplicity of conflicting meanings possible when silent or assumed qualifiers of a word are ignored, restricting definition to, for example, project stakeholders or stakeholders of a firm. These definitions are carried forward into a mapping of the stakeholder locus of interest on an activity rather than a company base, enabling generic categorisation of stakeholders to be proposed for use in both private and public sectors. A governance difficulty with the term customer also emerged and a resolution to this is proposed.

Resolution of the academic contention around the definition of stakeholders will facilitate future research endeavours by removing confusion surrounding the term. It can also provide clarity in governance arrangements in public and private sectors. Verification of the method used through its success in deriving this “refined” definition suggests its suitability for application to other contested terms.

Projects and businesses alike can benefit from removal of confusion around the definition of stakeholder in the academic research they fund and attempt to apply.

A refined definition of the stakeholder concept will facilitate building social and physical systems and infrastructure, benefitting organisations, whether public, charitable or private.

Clarity results in the avoidance of confusion and misunderstanding together with their consequent waste of time, resources and money.

The purpose of this paper is to remove confusion surrounding the terms responsibility and accountability from the general and project management arenas by creating “refined” (with unnecessary elements removed) definitions of these terms.

A method of deriving refined definitions for a group of terms by ensuring that there is no internal conflict or overlap is adopted and applied to resolve the confusion.

The confusion between responsibility and accountability can be characterised as a failure to separate the obligation to satisfactorily perform a task (responsibility) from the liability to ensure that it is satisfactorily done (accountability). Furthermore, clarity of application can be achieved if legislative and organisational accountabilities are differentiated and it is recognised that accountability and responsibility transition across organisational levels. A difficulty in applying accountability in RACI tables is also resolved.

Clear definition of responsibility and accountability will facilitate future research endeavours by removing confusion surrounding the terms. Verification of the method used through its success in deriving these “refined” definitions suggests its suitability for application to other contested terms.

Projects and businesses alike can benefit from removal of confusion around the definitions of responsibility and accountability in the academic research they fund and attempt to apply. They can also achieve improvements in both efficiency and effectiveness in undertaking organisation-wide exercises to determine organisational responsibilities and accountabilities as well as in the application of governance models.

Refined definitions of responsibility and accountability will facilitate building social and physical systems and infrastructure, benefitting organisations, whether public, charitable or private.

Clarity resulting in the avoidance of confusion and misunderstanding together with their consequent waste of time, resources and money.

The purpose of this paper is to examine how the term “overkill” is used in the homicide literature to identify definitional issues that may interfere with reliable data coding across studies. This preliminary examination of the concept can guide future studies seeking to develop a standard definition.

To identify issues inherent in the term “overkill,” three definitions – ranging from broad and unclear to more specific and objective – were extracted or adapted from the existing literature. Using closed, homicide case files, nine coders were tasked with coding for the presence of overkill according to one of the definitions across two rounds of coding. Definitional components that made the coding of overkill difficult were identified using a qualitative sorting task to separate items into themes that represented similar issues; basic inter-rater agreement patterns were examined using pairwise percent agreement.

Based on coder feedback, two problems were identified: conceptual issues with the definitions and logistical issues with coding. However, feedback also suggested that increasing the objectivity of the overkill definition led coders to feel the intended meaning of the term was lost. Two out of three groups showed an increase in coder agreement between the two phases of data collection, illustrating how increased training is useful in certain situations.

This study is the first in-depth methodological and empirical examination of how the term “overkill” has been operationalized in the literature, raises key questions that may help with more clearly coding this variable, and outlines issues that may add difficulty to the development of a standard definition.

This chapter provides a definition of group as used by group communication scholars or inferred by articles published by group communication scholars. The chapter considers group size, group identity, group member interdependence, group goal, and group structure as fundamental to groups. Additionally, the chapter examines the distinction between the use of the group and team labels, and the role of context in defining groups.

The use of routines in the decision-making process of individuals, groups and organizations is a well accepted yet taken for granted phenomenon. One goal of organizations is to develop group routines that are efficient, but at the same time flexible. However, this presents a paradox because routines that are efficient at one point in time, or for a particular task, may persist, be unquestioned, and become increasingly inefficient for the group and the organization. This chapter develops a formal theory that describes the processes by which the legitimation of particular group structures impacts the development and use of group routines. The theory presented draws from theories of legitimation, expectation states theory, and institutional theory. The theory formally depicts three sources of legitimation: a referential belief structure (set of cultural beliefs) about expertise and leadership, authorization or superordinate support of a leader, and endorsement (support by group) of a leader. Specifically, the theory addresses: (1) how different sources of legitimation make groups more or less hierarchical; and (2) how the different sources of legitimation make group routines more or less flexible.

This paper presents a systematic XML Schema design approach which conceptually captures semantics of the problem domain at conceptual level and represents such semantics in XML Schema at schema level. At the conceptual level, objects, their inter‐relationships and constraints are semantically powered by object‐oriented models. At the schema level, these conceptual semantics are comprehensively represented in textbased representation of XML Schema using various schema components and design styles, each of which offers different quality characteristics. Two primary design styles in use are nesting and linking. The nesting design styles are developed based on the choice of schema components and their definition/declaration scopes (global vs. local), whereas the linking design styles use referencing facilities provided by XML Schema and other XML technologies such as XLink and XPointer. With an in‐depth analysis of outstanding problems of existing approaches, the proposed design approach is motivated to help improve the quality and robustness of the XML documents in large‐scale XML‐based applications.

Investigates the influence of market concentration, market diversification and internationalization strategies on the performance of multinational enterprises (MNEs). Using a sample of 450 large, medium and small MNEs, and three alternative definitions of market concentration and market diversification, results indicate that market diversification strategy produces better performance results for MNEs than market concentration strategy. In addition, MNEs using market concentration‐low internationalization strategy performed better than those using market concentration‐high internationalization strategy, and MNEs using market diversification‐low internationalization strategy performed better than those using market diversification‐high internationalization strategy. Discusses implications of the study′s findings for improved MNE performance.

This paper aims to review and re‐conceptualize group emotional intelligence (GEI). It seeks to analyze past understandings of GEI to arrive at the conclusion that the concept may be multifaceted. GEI has been a challenge to distinguish theoretically due to inadequate theoretical understanding and improper empirical analysis.

This paper provides a model of GEI and proposes a means of empirical evaluation of the concept. The objectives are achieved by a critical appraisal of the literature to demonstrate theoretical issues that demonstrate the multifaceted nature of the concept. Additionally, past methods of empirical evaluation of group emotional intelligence (GEI) are critically appraised and alternate means are proposed.

The complexity of the construct requires a more sophisticated evaluation of group emotional intelligence. The paper provides a theoretical model that may demonstrate how GEI is developed in the group. Proposed methodological means of analysis may provide researchers with tools to empirically evaluate the concept.

The paper represents an initial query into the multi‐faceted nature of the construct of group emotional intelligence. It proposes a means of analysis of the construct but further research is needed to develop the model from an empirical standpoint and conduct research on the validity of the model.

The practical implications of the model suggest that organizations that wish to develop emotional intelligence in their groups utilize both aspects of the model, norms building and an outward contextual approach. The development of both aspects of the model strengthens group behavior but also avoids group think.

The value of this paper lies in its ability to provide a multi‐faceted model and definition of group emotional intelligence. Earlier perspectives of the concept either focused on an internal approach, or a contextual approach. By bringing both aspects together in a model and theorizing the benefits of utilizing both aspects of group emotional intelligence in organizational groups, the paper provides managers and group leaders with a new approach on developing the emotional intelligence in their groups.

Groups often perpetuate conflict by developing and enforcing hostile, dehumanized, and objectified images of the “other” with whom they intentionally engage in conflict. The thesis of this article is that if the double hermeneutics of identity “framing processes” (Lewicki, Gray, & Elliot, 2003) drive the dehumanization of the excluded or enemy other, then these same processes can be a factor in the social reconstruction of another's humanity. Specifically, a model of identity affirmation is posited that can ideally challenge and change the dominant discourses and narratives that go into the in-group's social construction of a dehumanized out-group. As such, the process of identity affirmation is designed to be used to rehumanize a once ethnic, excluded, or even enemy “other.” This model was inspired by, and is applied to, a brief case study outlined in the essay involving the Onondaga Sheriff's Department headquartered in Syracuse, New York, and the Onondaga Indians who are part of the Iroquois Confederacy.