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Recent research and policy reports indicate public sector organizations struggle to leverage information technology-based performance measurement systems and fail to effectively evaluate performance beyond financial metrics. This study aims to focus on organizational factors that influence the assimilation of business intelligence (BI) systems into integrated management control systems and the corollary impact on improving business process performance within public sector organizations.

The complete Australian client list was acquired from a leading BI vendor; and the authors surveyed all public sector organizations, receiving 226 individual responses representing 160 public sector organizations in Australia. Using latent construct measurement, structural equation modeling (SEM)-partial least squares is used to test the theoretical model.

When top management promotes knowledge creation among the organization’s operational level employees and support their activities with strong BI infrastructure, the same knowledge and infrastructure capabilities that are critical to assimilation in private sector hold in the public sector. However, public sector organizations generally have difficulty retaining staff with expertise in new technologies and attracting new innovative staff that can leverage smart systems to effect major change in performance measurement. When top management effectively manages knowledge importation from external entities to counteract deficiencies, public sector organizations effectively assimilate BI knowledge into performance measurement yielding strong process performance.

When top management promotes knowledge creation among the organization’s operational level employees and support their activities with strong BI infrastructure, the same knowledge and infrastructure capabilities critical to assimilation in the private sector hold in the public sector. However, public sector organizations generally have difficulty retaining staff with expertise in new technologies and attracting new innovative staff that can leverage smart systems to effect major change in performance measurement. The research extends the theory behind organizational absorptive capacity by highlighting how knowledge importation can be used as an external source facilitating internal knowledge creation. This collaborative knowledge creation leads to affective assimilation of BI technologies and associated performance gains.

The results provide guidance to public sector organizations that struggle to measure and validate service outcomes under New Public Management regulations and mandates.

The results reveal that consistent with the philosophies behind New Public Management strategies, private sector measures for increasing organizational absorptive capacity can be applied in the public sector. However, knowledge importation appears to be a major catalyst in the public sector where the resources to retain skilled professionals with an ability to leverage contemporary technologies into service performance are often very limited. Top management team knowledge and skills are critical to effectively leveraging these internal and external knowledge creation mechanisms.

There is an on-going debate as to whether health is negatively affected by economic inequality. Still, we have limited knowledge of the mechanisms relating inequality to individual health and very little evidence comes from less-developed economies. We use individual and multi-level data from Zambia on child nutritional health to test three hypotheses consistent with a negative correlation between income inequality and population health: the absolute income hypothesis (AIH), the relative income hypothesis (RIH) and the income inequality hypothesis (IIH). The results confirm that absolute income positively affects health. For the RIH we find sensitivity to the reference group used. Most interestingly, we find higher income inequality to robustly associate with better child health. The same pattern appears in a cross country regression. To explain the conflicting results in the literature we suggest examining potential mediators such as generosity, food sharing, trust and purchasing power.

This paper examines the role of professional associations, governmental agencies, and international accounting and auditing bodies in promulgating standards to deter and detect fraud, domestically and abroad. Specifically, it focuses on the role played by the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants (AICPA), the Institute of Internal Auditors (IIA), the Institute of Management Accountants (IMA), the Association of Certified Fraud Examiners (ACFE), the US Government Accounting Office (GAO), and other national and foreign professional associations, in promulgating auditing standards and procedures to prevent fraud in financial statements and other white‐collar crimes. It also examines several fraud cases and the impact of management and employee fraud on the various business sectors such as insurance, banking, health care, and manufacturing, as well as the role of management, the boards of directors, the audit committees, auditors, and fraud examiners and their liability in the fraud prevention and investigation.

DEAR SIR, I have read with interest the article “Fluid Flow through Restrictions” by L. S. Greenland, published in the June issue of your journal, but feel obliged to comment on two things.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the relationship between corporate governance and earnings opacity in China.

Two corporate governance mechanisms form the basis of the analysis: 1) the board of directors and 2) the external audit function. OLS regression analysis is employed on a large sample from 2000 to 2014 with 20,235 firm-year observations.

Corporate governance is found to be associated with reduced levels of earnings opacity for Chinese listed companies. Furthermore, the association between corporate governance and reduced levels of earnings opacity strengthened after the implementation of various key reforms.

Chinese regulators are advised to proceed with caution as not all Western approaches to corporate governance are transferrable to the Chinese setting.

This study contributes to the literature by analyzing broad latent constructs of corporate governance in addition to individual observable dimensions in order to reveal that various key reforms have been successful in strengthening the link between governance and reporting quality for Chinese listed companies.

Procrastination is regularly presented as a behavior to avoid, but this paper argues that individuals who strategically engage in procrastination may experience unique performance benefits that non-procrastinators do not. The purpose of this paper is to present a balanced framework from which procrastination, beginning with a review of the procrastination performance literature and historical stance on the behavior, can be understood.

This paper presents and reviews the use of procrastination in organizations.

Our findings indicate that while procrastination can be dysfunctional, it can prove to be strategically valuable. To summarize, this paper recommends a holistic conceptualization of procrastination that refrains from value judgment and calls for rethinking the stigma associated with the behavior.

This paper highlights both the theoretical and practical importance of exploring the benefits of procrastination in an organizational context.

WHEN the use of metals in the construction of the more important parts of aircraft of the heavier‐than‐air type superseded the use of timber, a large number of practical problems were encountered, as might reasonably be expected. The reasons for the popularity of metal structures are readily appreciated by those who have had experience of wooden structures. An important property in any material employed in aircraft construction is that of permanence. So far as materials employed in marine aircraft are concerned, the task of supplying alloys to give the desired degree of permanence, together with the necessary mechanical properties, is not by any means an easy one. The corrosion‐resistance, in particular, is a property vitally affecting the suitability of a particular metal or alloy for use in marine aircraft. Most industrial metals corrode—i.e., enter into chemical reactions, the result of which is in effect the conversion of some of their mass into non‐metallic matter—on exposure to a normal inland atmosphere, and as a rule the rate of corrosion is much greater in marine atmospheres or in contact with sea water.

Purpose – This chapter gives an overview of meta-analytic methods and illustrates the use of these methods for synthesising research findings. The advantages of performing a meta-analysis are described. Pitfalls in meta-analyses are also discussed. The chapter is intended to present the main elements of a meta-analysis and guide readers to literature presenting meta-analytic methods in greater detail.

Methodology – Key references in the meta-analysis literature are quoted and examples of meta-analyses are presented.

Findings – A meta-analysis is a useful tool for summarising knowledge in fields where a large number of studies have been reported. In addition to providing summary estimates of results, a meta-analysis can be applied to identify factors that produce systematic variation in study findings.

Research implications – Methods of meta-analyses keep developing to deal with complex data structures, thus extending the type of research findings that are amenable to meta-analyses.

Practical implications – Performing a meta-analysis saves labour by eliminating the need to read and digest a large number of studies in order to get an overview of the current state-of-knowledge in a field. Moreover, a meta-analysis establishes a system for easily and quickly updating knowledge as new studies become available.

Purpose: In this chapter, we examine the National Health Service (NHS) and Adult Social Care (ASC) in England, focussing on policies that have been introduced since 2000 and considering the challenges that providers face in their quest to provide a high standard and affordable health service in the near future.

Methodology/Approach: We discuss recent policy developments and published analysis covering innovations within major aspects of health care (primary, secondary and tertiary) and ASC, before considering future challenges faced by providers in England, highlighted by a 2017 UK Parliament Select Committee.

Findings: The NHS and ASC system have experienced tightening budgets and serious financial pressure, with historically low real-terms growth in health funding from central government and local authorities. Policymakers have tried to overcome these challenges with several policy innovations, but many still remain. With large-scale investment and reform, there is potential for the health and social care system to evolve into a modern service capable of dealing with the needs of an ageing population. However, if these challenges are not met, then it is set to continue struggling with a lack of appropriate facilities, an overstretched staff and a system not entirely appropriate for its patients.

ONLY a mild flutter in the dovecotes was felt by the discovery, made public in the Justce of the Peace, one, that fines for the detention of library books were unauthorised by Law and, two, that readers who declined to pay them could not be refused access to their own libraries. It is possible that this was known long ago to librarians and is not the reason why a very few libraries do not exact fines. Hewitt, however, tells us that although the practice of charging is universal no machinery exists for the recovery of fines. He does say that while recourse to the courts for their recovery is not to be recommended, exclusion from the use of the library would be admissible. Without arguing for or against fines, the fact that they persist and are in the view of many a commonsense and necessary way of ensuring the return of books, and that the Acts give authority for the making of byelaws for the good management of libraries, there appears to be a case for getting the matter settled one way or other. No librarian wants to act in disregard of law, but it is difficult to get a case heard as, for the sake of the small sum involved in a fine and remembering the relatively large sum involved in a court action, few borrowers will be found to challenge fines. It is our own business to see that our ways are legal.