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When a subordinate's performance is assessed by a superior in a work situation, whether or not he or she performed well is not the only issue. There is also concern as to whether he or she should be held responsible for accomplishments or failures. The assessment of responsibility has been termed ‘an attribution’ (Green and Mitchell, 1979).

The purpose of this paper is to investigate how middle managers utilize performance measurement information in their work. More specifically, the study gives understanding on the impact of performance measurement, policies and procedures (formal controls), and individual intuition and experiential knowledge (informal controls) on strategy implementation and decision making. The study also identifies hindrances to the use of measurement information.

The study is carried out as a semi-structured interview study in Finnish companies representing five industries and 29 interviewees. Empirical data were analyzed deductively according to the research framework combining informal and formal management controls with two managerial processes.

The work of middle managers is clearly affected by informal controls. Much of the managerial work relies on individual intuition and judgment based on experience instead of performance information or formal instructions. The study also unveiled that top management sees the status of utilizing performance measurement information in a more positive light than do middle managers. This is the case especially in strategy implementation. Deficiency of measurement information was found to be a key factor hindering the use of measurement information but improper analysis of results is also a challenge.

This study examined the work of middle managers widely in different positions and industries which means that the findings are rather explorative. Simplification was required in order to operationalize the complex tasks of strategy implementation and decision making. Further, more contextually focused research is required in order to understand better the contextual causes of the findings and to provide more understanding on the appropriate ways of improving the utilization of performance measurement information.

The practical contribution of this study lies in the detailed description of strategy implementation and decision-making processes based on observations in several large companies representing different industries. The study also suggests areas to which development efforts should be concentrated on in order to improve the use of performance information among middle managers.

This study contributes to the earlier literature by highlighting the usage of performance measurement information as opposed to developing new measures. In addition, the novelty value of the paper relates to the focus in the work of middle managers which has gained less attention in the previous research.

As crises are largely perceptual, the deeper the understanding is of how stakeholders perceive crisis situations, the more effectively corporations can target their crisis communication messages. The purpose of this paper is to investigate how different stakeholder groups process information during transgression-based corporate crises.

This study is based on 17 qualitative interviews with the internal, external and media stakeholders of an organisation that experienced a major transgression-based crisis. A case study approach is adopted to analyse and understand how these stakeholders process and respond to the same crisis event.

Findings suggest that there are considerable differences in the crisis evaluations of different stakeholder groups. This study identifies several elements specific to internal, external and media stakeholders’ crisis information processing.

Although the findings are tied to the specific case, the authors extend the existing theory by shedding light on the specific factors that shape the evaluations of different stakeholder groups during a transgression.

The findings may help managers in building more accurate assumptions and knowledge with respect to crisis effects on an organisation’s stakeholders and thus provide the basis for more effective crisis communication.

Prior crisis information-processing models provide fragmented and generic insights into the specifics of different stakeholder groups and thus lead crisis communication to miss opportunities to attenuate the loss of a corporation’s social approval. This study moves towards an integrated framework of how different stakeholders evaluate a transgression-based corporate crisis.

This study aims to examine the role of audit committee attributes in non-financial information releases, with a focus on intellectual capital (IC) disclosures, following significant policy changes, mandating the audit committee function in Malaysia. The study argues that, given the changing informational needs of stakeholders and the ongoing discussion on integrated reporting, the role of the audit committee should extend to ensuring the overall quality of corporate reporting.

The study draws evidence from a sample of leading Malaysian companies based on their market capitalisation over a three-year period (2008-2010), a period subsequent to the recent policy changes. The extent and quality of IC information, as a surrogate of non-financial information, was measured and regressed against several audit committee attributes, such as audit committee size, independence, financial expertise and meetings, controlling the overall governance and firm-specific variables.

The findings show a strong positive role of the audit committee function in the overall amount of IC information as well as all three subcomponents of IC information (internal, external and human capital). The results are robust to controls for the overall governance and firm-specific attributes as well as different measures of IC information.

The results suggest that the role of the audit committee function extends to non-financial information communication such as IC. Policymakers in Malaysia should, therefore, build on the recent regulatory changes and encourage audit committees to ensure that the overall quality of corporate reporting processes include social, environmental, intellectual as well as financial capital of a firm.

This study considers the role of the audit committee in the wider corporate reporting process – drawing attention to its potential role in the espoused integrated business reporting. It also challenges the taken-for-granted assumption that restricts the role of the audit committee function to the traditional financial reporting process.

To examine the impact of culture on customer service expectations, specifically, how individualists and collectivists use internal and external sources of information to formulate their service expectations.

The context was the airline industry and the subject pool consisted of experienced consumers. A survey was employed to measure individualism/collectivism, various internal/external information sources, and the functional and technical dimensions of “should” and “will” service expectations. Hypothesized relationships were tested using a structural equations modeling approach.

Both individualists and collectivists relied more on external information sources in formulating their service expectations, gave variable weight to the functional and technical components, and used more realistic “will” expectations to judge service offerings. Internal (external) information sources were relatively more important in forming expectations for collectivists (individualists) than for individualists (collectivists), and “will” (“should”) expectations were more diagnostic for collectivists (individualists) than for individualists (collectivists).

Generalizability of the findings is limited due to the specific industry under study (airlines), the sample (two geographically‐proximate sub‐cultures), and the scope of the cultural variables considered (individualism/collectivism).

Whether managers should leverage the functional and/or technical components of services depends in part on the cultural orientation of their customers. Managers should also recognize that customers’ usage of various information sources in forming service expectations is also, in part, culturally determined.

In this era of globalization, researchers and managers alike need to consider the subtle influences of culture on marketing theories and the formulation of service expectations respectively.

This chapter explores “politic talks” (also known as political information) on the websites of academic libraries in land-grant state universities of the South in the context of a global retreat of democracy that emerged during former President Trump’s regime as the 45th President of the United States. The exploratory qualitative evaluation applies website content analysis of seven information offerings in three categories that include: (1) information sources (collections, resources), information policy and planning (assigned role, strategic representation), and connections (internal, external, news and events). Promising practices and illustrative examples of “politic talks” representation on academic library websites show how they are serving as significant providers of political information during current politically turbulent times. The discussion of these findings in relation to each state’s voting likelihood based on trends since 2000 has significant political implications in enhancing the role of academic libraries moving forward.

This paper aims to present the lessons learned during the design and implementation of a quality assurance system (QAS) in an academic unit and considers the regulatory changes to institutional accreditation in Chilean higher education, the international standard ISO 21001:2018, and the stakeholders’ requirements.

This study uses an abductive approach to identify and evaluate the key factors to implementing a QAS in higher education institutions (HEI). Qualitative and quantitative data were collected through questionnaires, semistructured interviews, focus groups with stakeholders, a literature review and official institutional documents. Documents and interviews were subjected to content analysis using a process of inductive coding to identify and define topics or categories. A descriptive statistical analysis of categorical variables calculated the marginal frequency of each response. All information aided in designing the QAS for the school and its implementation plan.

This study highlights major challenges universities could face while implementing QAS, illuminating key principles and reflecting relevant practices. The lessons learned in this process show the importance of balancing accountability and continuous improvement while promoting a more receptive organizational culture, aligning the national and international standards in the early design stage, understanding the roles and responsibilities of the staff, having the support of a quality office and performing a gap analysis.

This work provides other HEI in need of designing and implementing a QAS with a conceptual and solid framework to integrate internal, external and international regulations of quality assurance criteria and standards. This paper could become a valuable reference for university managers, practitioners and quality professionals facing similar challenges.

This paper explores the creation of a global protocol on ethics in public relations. It begins by looking into the global ethical debate. It examines existing codes of ethics of a selection of public relations institutes and associations around the world, provides comparative analysis of these codes and discusses the pros and cons of their enforcement. It suggests that the immediate way forward in a highly litigious world is to provide some values‐based guidance to member associations together with access to an evolving database of case studies illustrating ethical problems. In the medium term more effective sanctions may be possible.

Customer satisfaction measurement (CSM) should be central to the total quality improvement process within service‐oriented firms. A normative framework is described that contains a sequence of ten research modules providing internal/external customer information for quality planning. The modules facilitate decision making according to the PDCA cycle of total quality management. The framework is based on the CSM/quality improvement practices of leading European and North American firms, methodologies developed in academic settings, and the general logic of survey research.

Research in the field of corporate social responsibility (CSR) has become a trending topic in recent years. Research that is often done is related to CSR disclosure, mostly for large companies. Likewise, the current standards and guidelines ignore micro, small, and medium enterprises (MSMEs). On the other hand, the MSME business sector in the world also impacts the economy, social, and environment, so CSR is needed. CSR activities and reporting cannot be separated from the concept of materiality due to a large amount of leeway in management’s discretion regarding topics and aspects. The purpose of this study is to analyze the issue of MSMEs materiality. The samples collected were 33 MSMEs. The research results show that the material issues for both sectors are similar, which are customer care and satisfaction (profit), employee rights, training and development (people), electricity consumption, and waste management (planet). The concept of materiality is expected to play an important role in MSMEs as a CSR strategy so that MSMEs can apply it to their business practices. Thus, MSMEs pay attention to profit, social, and environment, which is interpreted simply. The management of MSMEs can use this result to formulate CSR’s business strategies and apply them to their business practices. Thus, MSMEs can play a role in sustainability, which is expected to improve financial performance.