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Many of you may already be familiar with the term ‘powder coating’. For those of you who are not, I would like to describe the term briefly. Powder coating is a relatively new process by which dry plastic powders are applied to a clean metal surface. After application, the coated object is heated, fusing the powder to form a smooth, tough coating. Available today are many plastic powders offering a wide range of properties and colours. These powders are fully formulated and are free‐flowing ready for application to metal. Previous coatings for such items have been applied from solution. The dry plastic powders are normally higher molecular weight polymers than those used in solution: because of this, the coatings produced have greatly increased durability, toughness and abrasion resistance.

The purpose of this paper is to explore different health care professionals’ discourse about privacy – its definition and importance in health care, and its role in their day-to-day work. Professionals’ discourse about privacy reveals how new technologies and laws challenge existing practices of information control within and between professional groups in health care, with implications not only for patient privacy, but also for the role of information control in professions more generally.

The authors conducted in-depth, semi-structured interviews with n=83 doctors, nurses, and health information professionals in two academic medical centers and one veteran’s administration hospital/clinic in the Northeastern USA. Interview responses were qualitatively coded for themes and patterns across groups were identified.

The health care providers and the authors studied actively sought to uphold the protection (and control) of patient information through professional ethics and practices, as well as through the use of technologies and compliance with legal regulations. They used discourses of professionalism, as well as of law and technology, to sometimes accept and sometimes resist changes to practice required in the changing technological and legal context of health care. The authors found differences across professional groups; for some, protection of patient information is part of core professional ethics, while for others it is simply part of their occupational work, aligned with organizational interests.

This qualitative study of physicians, nurses, and health information professionals revealed some differences in views and practices for protecting patient information in the changing technological and legal context of health care that suggest some professional groups (doctors) may be more likely to resist such changes and others (health information professionals) will actively adopt them.

New technologies and regulations are changing how information is used in health care delivery, challenging professional practices for the control of patient information that may change the value or meaning of medical records for different professional groups.

Qualitative findings suggest that professional groups in health care vary in the extent of information control they have, as well in how they view such control. Some groups may be more likely to (be able to) resist changes in the professional control of information that stem from new technologies or regulatory policies. Some professionals recognize that new IT systems and regulations challenge existing social control of information in health care, with the potential to undermine (or possibly bolster) professional self-control for some but not necessarily all occupational groups.

Little is known about factors that affect patient use of online medical records (OMR). Specifically, with rising vulnerability concerns associated with security and privacy breaches, patient use of OMR requires further attention. This paper aims to investigate patient use of OMR. Using the Unified Theory of Acceptance and Use of Technology (UTAUT), factors affecting continued use of OMR were examined.

The Health Information National Trends Survey 5 (HINTS 5), Cycle 1 data were used. This is an ongoing nation-wide survey sponsored by the National Cancer Institute (NCI) of the USA. The subjects were 31-74 years old with access to the Internet. Descriptive information was projected to the US population.

In total, 765 respondents representing 48.7 million members of the US population were analyzed. Weighted regression results showed significant effects of perceived usefulness, visit frequency and provider encouragement on continued use of OMR while vulnerability perception was not significant. Moderating effects of these variables were also noted. Perceived usefulness and provider encouragement emerged as important predictors.

Insights may help design interventions by health-care providers and policymakers.

Insights should help patient empowerment and developers with designing systems.

This is the first study to examine health-care consumers’ continued use of OMR using nationally representative data and real-world patients, many of who have one or more chronic diseases (e.g. diabetes, hypertension, asthma) or are cancer survivors. Results highlight factors helping or hindering continuing OMR use. As such, insights should help identify opportunities to increase the extent of use, project future OMR usage patterns and spread the benefits of OMR, including bringing forth positive health outcomes.

Subsistence marketplace can be characterized as a marketplace with widespread cognitive and social vulnerabilities, due to low income and low literacy levels. This may result in retailers exploiting the consumers. The purpose of this research paper is to develop a holistic learning program to impart marketplace intelligence to overcome these vulnerabilities of subsistence consumers.

Using vicious cycle approach, the authors illustrate the self-perpetuating nature of consumer vulnerabilities. The authors argue that retailers behave in an opportunistic manner and exploit the consumers. This further reinforces the vulnerabilities of subsistence consumers resulting in a vicious cycle. The authors draw insights from Sen’s capability approach and propose marketplace intelligence as a potential solution to eradicate consumers’ vulnerabilities. The authors apply Biggs’s 3Ps model to design a learning program to impart two types of marketplace intelligence – marketplace metacognition and marketplace social intelligence.

Based on a review of literature on subsistence marketplace initiatives, persuasive knowledge management and education research, the authors have devised a holistic learning program comprising an integrated learning environment (presage), problem-based approach (process) and assessment strategies for learning outcomes (product).

This study marks a pioneering effort toward liberating subsistence consumers from the vicious cycle of retailers’ exploitation by empowering them with marketplace intelligence. This study’s novelty lies in conceptualizing consumer vulnerabilities in the subsistence marketplace as a self-perpetuating phenomenon and subsequently designing a holistic learning program to impart intelligence toward alleviating these vulnerabilities.

Drawing from our current original research on cultural trends in Latin America‐based multinational firms, this paper challenges the stereotypical perception of Latin America as a homogeneous region and explores the cultural distances among groups of multinational employees. After collecting surveys from 733 employees across eight multinationals in Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, and Mexico, we establish that, much like it happens in other lumped‐together regions of the globe, such as “East Asia” and “Africa”, Latin American countries present significant differences in the way firm employees respond to situations where cultural traits are at stake. By researching these countries, we recorded significant variation in aspects such as the treatment and place of women in the workplace, attachment or detachment to formal rules, formal organizational hierarchies, and structured business planning, in addition to varying levels of tolerance to invasion of privacy. Implications of the study include the need to develop methodologies that adequately capture cultural differences within large geographic blocs and business practices that prepare the expatriate, the international manager, and the policy maker for the different realities they are bound to encounter in different countries.

This study examined relationships involving Machiavellianism, the career plateau, job satisfaction and salary in a sample of commercial bank officers in the United States. Results showed that American bankers had relatively low Machiavellianism scores compared to scores reported for other groups. While a negative relationship between job satisfaction and Machiavellianism was found, there was no association between salary and Machiavellianism. Those who scored high on Machiavellianism were more likely to believe that they had reached a career plateau than were those who scored low. Some results are explained in the context of the U.S. banking industry environment.

An individual’s ethical ideology has been identified as one of the key components in fluencing ethical decision making in organisations. The Ethics Position Questionnaire is designed to measure ethical ideology in relation to two dimensions, namely Idealism and Relativism. This study investigates the factor structure of this measure in a sample of Chinese managers, and compares the dimensions found to those found in the original study. In addition, a regional comparison is under taken and the results show that there are significant differences in ethical ideology across different regions in China. These results are discussed and suggestions for future research are made.

Comparative cultural closeness between Canada and the U.S. established in part by the Hofstede (1980) study continues to influence some business research efforts that assume cultural parity between the two nations. Sampling business professionals, evidence emerges that cautions assuming cultural parity between Canada and the U.S. based on typical and selected Anglo culture type dimensions. Contributing as an updated empirical test of the Anglo culture type assumption between the two nations, uncertainty avoidance was higher in the U.S. sample and varied more by country than by individual characteristics or by an indication of professional discipline type.

Provides a review of the position of women in management in a number of countries. Describes how in almost all countries, management positions are dominated by men. Concludes that, although many similarities were found in women’s work experience across cultures, cultural factors accounted for the unique experiences of women in a given country.

An abstract lattice of empty set cells is shown to be able to account for a primary substrate in a physical space. Space‐time is represented by ordered sequences of topologically closed Poincaré sections of this primary space. These mappings are constrained to provide homeomorphic structures serving as frames of reference in order to account for the successive positions of any objects present in the system. Mappings from one section to the next involve morphisms of the general structures, representing a continuous reference frame, and morphisms of objects present in the various parts of this structure. The combination of these morphisms provides space‐time with the features of a non‐linear generalized convolution. Discrete properties of the lattice allow the prediction of scales at which microscopic to cosmic structures should occur. Deformations of primary cells by exchange of empty set cells allow a cell to be mapped into an image cell in the next section as far as the mapped cells remain homeomorphic. However, if a deformation involves a fractal transformation to objects, there occurs a change in the dimension of the cell and the homeomorphism is not conserved. Then, the fractal kernel stands for a “particle” and the reduction of its volume (together with an increase in its area up to infinity) is compensated by morphic changes of a finite number of surrounding cells. Quanta of distances and quanta of fractality are demonstrated. The interactions of a moving particle‐like deformation with the surrounding lattice involves a fractal decomposition process, which supports the existence and properties of previously postulated inerton clouds as associated to particles. Experimental evidence of the existence of inertons is reviewed and further possibilities of experimental proofs proposed.