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The COVID-19 pandemic caused major disruption in community support for vulnerable older people and is thought to have exacerbated existing issues within UK adult social care. This study aims to examine the legacy of that disruption on how meeting centres for people affected by dementia have been impacted in continually evolving circumstances.

Semi-structured interviews and focus group discussions were conducted at three meeting centre case study sites. Ninety-eight participants, including people living with dementia, family carers, staff, volunteers, trustees and external partners, were asked about the impact and legacy of the pandemic upon meeting centres. A thematic analysis was carried out on the data.

Ten themes were identified: ability to re-open venues; increased health decline and loss of members due to isolation; closure or halting of linking services and dementia community support; disruption to diagnosis and referrals; increase in outreach, building communities and overall reach; digital access and use of technology (boom and decline); changes to carer involvement and engagement; continued uncertainty and changes to funding, resources and governance; staff and volunteer recruitment issues; and relief at/wish for return to pre-pandemic norms.

This paper offers new insight into a still-developing situation, namely, the legacy effects of the pandemic upon third-sector community support for people affected by dementia and the health and social care services that support it. The reduction in maintenance of pandemic-era technological innovations is a key finding.

The study aims to investigate how enterprise information systems strategies-enabled strategy-making (ISS-SM) influences organizational agility (OA) via the mediated role of IT-enabled dynamic capabilities (ITDC) under environmental dynamism (ED). The study also investigates natural country moderation associated with the business context of the countries where the respondents are located might influence these relationships.

The study aims to investigate how enterprise ISS-SM influences OA via the mediated role of ITDC under ED. The study also investigates natural country moderation associated with the business context of the countries where the respondents are located that might influence these relationships.

The results demonstrate that ISS-SM influences ITDC to gain OA independent of the ED level. Indian and Brazilian firms show no different effects in the relationship of the research model. However, post hoc analysis revealed that strong ISS-SM on OA is fully mediated by ITDC under higher ED with a substantial coefficient of determination, more prominent for Indian firms characterized by young-age and middle-size firms, agribusiness and government sectors.

The fundamental to enabling practice and praxis of the strategy-as-practice approach to OA gains mediated through ITDC in different business context conditions.

The research contributes to extending the literature on the enterprise information systems strategy and information technologies capabilities.

Whenever social injustice tackled by social movements receives heightened media attention, charitable crowdfunding platforms offer an opportunity to proactively advocate for equality by donating money to affected people. This research examines how the Black Lives Matter movement and the associated social protest cycle after the death of George Floyd have influenced donation behavior for campaigns with a personal goal and those with a societal goal supporting the black community.

This paper follows a quantitative research approach by applying a quasi-experimental research design on a GoFundMe dataset. In total, 67,905 campaigns and 1,362,499 individual donations were analyzed.

We uncover a rise in donations for campaigns supporting the black community, which lasts substantially longer for campaigns with a societal than with a personal funding goal. Informed by construal level theory, we attribute this heterogeneity to changes in the level of abstractness of the problems that social movements aim to tackle.

This research advances the knowledge of individual donation behavior in charitable crowdfunding. Our results highlight the important role that charitable crowdfunding campaigns play in promoting social justice and anti-discrimination as part of social protest cycles.

This study aims to identify the political alignment and political activity of the 11 Presidents of Britain’s most important scientific organisation, the Royal Society of London, in its early years 1662–1703, to determine whether or not the institution was politically aligned.

There is almost no information addressing the political alignment of the Royal Society or its Presidents available in the institution’s archives, or in the writings of historians specialising in its administration. Even reliable biographical sources, such as the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography provide very limited information. However, as 10 Presidents were elected Member of Parliament (MP), The History of Parliament: British Political, Social and Local History provides a wealth of accurate, in-depth data, revealing the alignment of both.

All Presidents held senior government offices, the first was a Royalist aristocrat; of the remaining 10, 8 were Royalist or Tory MPs, 2 of whom were falsely imprisoned by the House of Commons, 2 were Whig MPs, while 4 were elevated to the Lords. The institution was Royalist aligned 1662–1680, Tory aligned 1680–1695 and Whig aligned 1695–1703, which reflects changes in Parliament and State.

This study establishes that the early Royal Society was not an apolitical institution and that the political alignment of Presidents and institution continued in later eras. Furthermore, it demonstrates how the election or appointment of an organisation’s most senior officer can be used to signal its political alignment with government and other organisations to serve various ends.

As net-zero pledges gain momentum globally, more and more accommodation businesses seek to quantify their carbon emissions. Building on Chan (2021), this study aims to explore what drives Australian accommodation providers to measure the carbon footprint of their businesses and what barriers hinder them from doing so.

Empirical data were collected by conducting ten semi-structured interviews with owners, senior executives, consultants, certification bodies and hotel management companies. The set of interviews represented different segments of the hotel industry and various accommodation types. Data were analysed with thematic analysis.

The major drivers for adopting carbon footprint analysis are as follows: the analysis being perceived as an important contribution to a company's corporate responsibility, the owner or manager's environmental concern, the assessment being a requirement for obtaining an eco-certification and the business benefits associated with implementing the initiative. The major barriers hindering adoption include the following: difficulties with data gathering, the lack of a standard methodology, a lengthy decision-making process and a lack of resources.

Based on the empirical findings and three theories on ecological responsiveness, this study develops a conceptual framework for implementing carbon footprint analysis in the accommodation context and recommends strategies to increase the adoption of carbon footprint analysis.

This study responds to Chan and Hsu's (2016) call for further research on carbon footprint in the hotel context and represents the first attempt to explore the drivers and barriers specifically associated with implementing carbon footprint analysis in the accommodation sector.

From May 2024, Victoria (Australia) will mandatorily raise the minimum house energy rating standards from 6 to 7 stars. However, the latest data shows that only 5.73% of new Victorian houses were designed beyond 7-star. While previous literature indicates the issue’s link to the compliance behaviour of building practitioners in the design phase, the underlying behavioural determinants are rarely explored. This study thus preliminarily examines building practitioners’ compliance behaviour with 7-star Australian house energy ratings and beyond.

Using a widely-applied method to initially examine an under-explored phenomenon, eight expert interviews were conducted with building practitioners, a state-level industry regulator and a leading national building energy policy researcher. The study triangulated the data with government-led research reports.

The experts indicate that most building practitioners involved in mainstream volume projects do not go for 7 stars, mainly due to perceived compliance costs and reliance on standardized designs. In contrast, those who work on custom projects are more willing to go beyond 7-star mostly due to the moral norms for a low-carbon environment. The experts further agree that four behavioural determinants (attitudes towards compliance, subjective norms, perceived behavioural control and personal norms) co-shape building practitioners’ compliance behaviour. Interventions targeting these behavioural determinants are recommended for achieving 7 stars and beyond.

This study demonstrates the behavioural determinants that influence building practitioners’ compliance decisions, and offers insight regarding how far they will go to meet 7 stars. It can facilitate the transition to 7 stars by informing policymakers of customized interventions to trigger behaviour change.

The various quality improvement (QI) frameworks and maturity models described in the health services literature consider some aspects of QI while excluding others. This paper aims to present a concerted attempt to create a quality improvement maturity model (QIMM) derived from holistic principles underlying the successful implementation of system-wide QI programmes.

A hybrid methodology involving a systematic review (Phase 1) of over 270 empirical research articles and books developed the basis for the proposed QIMM. It was followed by expert interviews to refine the core constructs and ground the proposed QIMM in contemporary QI practice (Phase 2). The experts included academics in two academic conferences and 59 QI managers from the New Zealand health-care system. In-depth interviews were conducted with QI managers to ascertain their views on the QIMM and its applicability in their respective health organisations (HOs).

The QIMM consists of four dimensions of organisational maturity, namely, strategic, process, supply chain and philosophical maturity. These dimensions progress through six stages, namely, identification, ad-hoc, formal, process-driven, optimised enterprise and finally a way of life. The application of the QIMM by the QI managers revealed that the scope of QI and the breadth of the principles adopted by the QI managers and their HOs in New Zealand is limited.

The importance of QI in health systems cannot be overstated. The proposed QIMM can help HOs diagnose their current state and provide a guide to action achieving a desirable state of quality improvement maturity. This QIMM avoids reliance on any single QI methodology. HOs – using the QIMM – should retain full control over the process of selecting any QI methodology or may even cherry-pick principles to suit their needs as long as they understand and appreciate the true nature and scope of quality overstated. The proposed QIMM can help HOs diagnose their current state and provide a guide to action achieving a desirable state of quality improvement maturity. This QIMM avoids reliance on any single QI methodology. HOs – using the QIMM – should retain full control over the process of selecting any QI methodology or may even cherry-pick principles to suit their needs as long as they understand and appreciate the true nature and scope of quality.

This paper contributes new knowledge by presenting a maturity model with an integrated set of quality principles for HOs and their extended supply networks.

Discovering opportunities is a key entrepreneurship competence for those who want to start their own business and who choose to enter the workforce. In this study, the authors focus on the antecedents of the ability to discover entrepreneurial opportunities by uncovering how and when students' personal initiative (Frese and Fay, 2001) leads to an increase in this key competency. The purpose of this study was to examine the role of risk-taking and creativity in the interplay between personal initiative and opportunity discovery competencies among university students.

Data were collected with a self-assessment tool in two moments in time, using a sample of 103 university students from Portugal enrolled in an entrepreneurship course. The authors measured personal initiative and entrepreneurial risk-taking at the beginning of the entrepreneurship course (Time 1). Two months later (Time 2), by the end of an entrepreneurship course, the authors measured creativity and opportunity discovery abilities.

The results of this study showed that risk-taking mediates the effect of personal initiative on opportunity discovery and that creativity interacts with risk-taking and opportunity discovery. Specifically, the authors found that the relationship between entrepreneurial risk-taking and opportunity discovery is positive and statistically significant when students display average or above-average creativity. The indirect effect of the personal initiative on opportunity discovery through entrepreneurial risk-taking seems to increase when the student's creativity increases, as the index of moderated mediation is positive.

As with all studies, there are limitations to work of this study. First, data of this study is restricted to a sample of students from Portugal. As such, the authors should be careful about generalizations concerning students from other cultural settings; entrepreneurship competencies can differ across countries. Second, the findings of the present study are based on students’ self-reports regarding their own entrepreneurship competencies.

This work can inspire entrepreneurship educators to look at the entrepreneurship competencies models holistically and inspire future work to explore the relationship patterns between entrepreneurial competencies.

This chapter traces the origin of racism and reviews the historical and contemporary debates around race and racialisation in western thought. There are persistent disagreements surrounding the origin and nature of racism. Because of the evolution of racist ideas, behaviours and institutional practices and policies, there are various views about the meaning and analytical application of racism. This chapter explores how ideas of race – understood as innate and immutable human differences that can be classified and ranked hierarchically based on race – has emerged in western history and evolved over time. It examines how this has influenced social and political practices and associated policies across the evolution of modernity. The chapter specifically discusses the Atlantic slave trade and how it shaped the historical development of race and racism within the context of colonialism. It concludes with a discussion and critical review of some of the racist systems and policies which have been enforced across different multiracial countries.

The optimal payment in the whole operation and maintenance period of water environment treatment PPP projects has become the main approach to realize sustainable development of projects. This study is aimed at constructing an effective payment model for the whole life period of projects to achieve win-win among all stakeholders, so as to provide a theoretical reference and managerial implications for the public sector in the whole operation and maintenance period.

In the whole operation and maintenance period of water environment treatment PPP projects, this article investigates how the public sector optimizes the payment in the whole operation and maintenance period of projects. Firstly, the projects' whole operation and maintenance period is divided into several stages according to the performance appraisal period. And then, the multi-stage dynamic programming model is constructed to design the payment construct model for the public sector in each performance appraisal stage. The payment from the public sector is the decision variable, and the deduction from the private sector is a random variable.

The optimal payment model showed that the relatively less objective weight of public sector leaded to its relatively more total payment and vice versa. Therefore, the sustainable development of the projects can only be ensured when the objective weights both of them should be balanced. Additionally, the deduction from the performance appraisal of private sector plays an important role in the model construction. The larger deduction the private sector undertakes, the smaller profits private sector has. Since the deduction at each stage is a random variable, the deduction varies with the different probability distributions obeyed by the practical deduction in each stage.

The findings from this study have provided theoretical and application references, and some managerial implications are also given. First, the improvement of the pricing system of public sector should be accelerated. Second, the reasonable profit of the private sector must be guaranteed. While pursuing the maximization of social benefits, the public sector should make full use of the price sharing mechanism in the market and supervise the real income situation of the private sector. Third is increasing the public to participate in pricing. Additionally, it is a limitation that the deduction is assumed to conform to a uniform distribution in this study. Other probability distributions on deduction can be essentially further sought, so as to be more line with the actual situation of the projects.

The optimal payment in whole operation and maintenance period of the projects has become an important issue, which is a key to project success. This study constructs a multi-stage dynamic programming model to optimize payment in the whole period of projects. Additionally, this study adds its value through deeply developing the new theories of optimal payment to more suitable for the practical problems, so that to optimize the design of payment mechanism. Meanwhile, a valuable reference for public and private sectors is provided to ensure the sustainable development of the projects.