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The purpose of this paper is to investigate the role of generation in teachers’ advice and information-seeking interactions in Flemish secondary school teams, and moreover how the content of advice shapes these interactions. Four content-related advice and information-seeking networks are investigated in this study: subject-matter knowledge, classroom management, innovative teaching methods and ICT.

Data were collected from 660 teachers in ten secondary education schools in Flanders (Belgium) by using an online socio-metric survey. Social network analysis was conducted, more specifically quadratic assignment procedure and multilevel P2 modeling.

The findings underline the importance of investigating content-related advice networks. Generation affects the formation of interactions. First, the results revealed that older teachers are less likely to ask advice on subject-matter knowledge, classroom management and innovative teaching methods. Second, the data showed that older teachers are more likely to be asked for advice on subject-matter knowledge. Third, young teachers are more likely to be asked for advice on innovative teaching methods and ICT. Fourth, homophily effects occurred for the youngest teachers when advice is about subject-matter knowledge, and for the oldest teachers for advice about classroom management.

This study is innovative due to its application of social network analysis to investigate intergenerational knowledge flows, and due to its clear focus on content-related advice-seeking interactions that go beyond the approach of general advice and information-seeking interactions.

The Flemish Examination Centre designed an intervention to establish a professional learning community on the topic of writing assessment. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the effects of this intervention and explain how this intervention succeeded in establishing a professional learning community.

A mixed method design was used to answer the research questions. Quantitative analysis of comparative judgement data provided insight into the effects of the intervention. More specifically was analysed whether examiners judged more in line after the intervention. Qualitative analysis of the conversations within the intervention served to examine how interdependent examiners behaved in the professionalisation exercises and to gain insight into how a professional learning community was established.

The analysis showed that the intervention of the Flemish Examination Centre facilitated the formation of a professional learning community. This was visible in the quantitative analysis. The qualitative analysis showed that highly interdependent activities were helpful in establishing the professional learning community.

This study shows that interactions of high interdependence are beneficial to facilitate professional learning communities.

This study shows that the assessment data can guide a well-thought out design of interventions to establish professional learning communities among assessors. Assessment data can be a guidance for supportive group constellations and discussions to improve assessment practices. The key in this regard lies in the level of interdependence that is created among participants.

Small and medium-scale enterprises (SMEs) are the engine of growth of most developing countries, as they employ a large number of people as opposed to large firms. Consequently, these enterprises should succeed in expanding to become significant employers and producers. However, what seems obvious at least through cursory observation is that the current state of SMEs betrays an economic loss with respect to the benefits that ought to be forthcoming from their potential. This loss can be triggered by a number of factors. The study determines the drivers of internal fraud and their impact on Ghanaian SMEs and prescribes coping mechanisms.

Primary data collected on 250 SMEs collected from various sectors across Accra, the capital of Ghana, are used for this study. Using a cross-sectional regression, the authors identify the key drivers of internal fraud that hamper the growth of Ghanaian SMEs.

The regression results show that although several fraud variables impact negatively the growth of the SME sector, it is only accounting fraud which is significant. This study also revealed that stealing, fake currency issued for the payment of goods or service and non-payment of goods or service account for almost 83 per cent of fraud cases experienced by SMEs.

The study was limited to the SMEs located in the Accra, the capital of Ghana.

The study will offer SMEs owners methods that will assist in their determination to fight fraud in the business that they manage.

The survival of SMEs is paramount to job creation. Consequently, combating fraud that stifle the growth of SMEs will allow SMEs to grow to their full potential and create more job opportunities for the unemployed. This will minimizes the social vices such as robbery, stealing, drug trafficking and prostitution that confront nations.

This study should be useful to managers of SMEs, auditors and the security agencies in developing economies in particular, in their quest to combat fraud within SMEs.

Business process improvement is vital for organizations as business environments are becoming ever more volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous. Process improvement methods help organizations sustain competitiveness. Many existing methods, however, do not fit emerging business environments as they entail initiatives with long implementation times, high investments and limited involvement of process participants. What is needed are agile process improvement approaches. The purpose of this paper is to explore the potential of digital nudging – a concept offering tools that lead individuals to better decisions – to improve business processes.

Using process deviance as theoretical lens, an online experiment with 473 participants is conducted. Within the experiment, business processes and digital nudges are implemented to examine whether digital nudging can mitigate the weaknesses of existing process improvement methods.

Digital nudging can influence the decisions of process participants and entail positive process deviance that leads to process improvement opportunities. Further, the research gives a first hint on the effectiveness of different digital nudges and lays the foundation for future research.

Since exploring a completely new field of research and conducting the experiment in a synthetic environment, the paper serves as a first step toward the combination of digital nudging, business process improvements and positive process deviance.

The major achievement reported in this paper is the exploration of a new field of research. Thus, digital nudging shapes up as a promising foundation for agile process improvement, a discovery calling for future research at the intersection of digital nudging and business process management.

The purpose of this study is twofold. First, this study reflects on the development of professional capital through understanding collective cultural factors, namely, academic optimism and shared vision. Second, it aims at exploring teacher learning. Teacher learning resulting in changes to teacher knowledge, attitudes and practices is crucial for the necessary changes education is continually confronted with. This learning is too often studied as a result of individual traits or structural factors, such as motivation or time. The authors investigated how teacher learning is influenced by academic optimism and shared vision.

The authors administered an online web-based survey to 278 teachers in higher education, using the educational change to online learning due to the covid pandemic as a unique chance to study the role of collective cultural factors in teacher learning.

Results showed how teachers characterized their learning, academic optimism and shared vision during the educational change to online learning resulting from the covid pandemic. The authors found that teacher learning was greatly influenced by teachers' collective sense of efficacy, an aspect of their academic optimism. Teachers' strong belief in each other, that they as fellow professionals could handle the challenging changes that the covid pandemic required, strongly enhanced teacher learning during the covid pandemic. Teachers' feeling of a professional community helped teacher to make sense of, and push through, the undeniable chaos that was the covid pandemic.

Collective cultural factors are rarely studied in conjunction with educational change. Insights into how a collective culture of professionalism enhances or hinders teacher learning are important for theory, policy and practice as it helps understand how teacher teams can be supported to build their professional capital by learning from educational change.

Digitalization, innovation and changing customer requirements drive the continuous improvement of an organization's business processes. IT demand management (ITDM) as a methodology supports the holistic governance of IT and the corresponding business process change (BPC), by allocating resources to meet a company's requirements and strategic objectives. As ITDM decision-makers are not fully aware of how the as-is business processes operate and interact, making informed decisions that positively impact the to-be process is a key challenge.

In this paper, the authors address this challenge by developing a novel approach that integrates process mining and ITDM. To this end, the authors conduct an action research study where the researchers participated in the design, creation and evaluation of the approach. The proposed approach is illustrated using two sample demands of an insurance claims process. These demands are used to construct the artefact in multiple research circles and to validate the approach in practice. The authors applied learning and reflection methods for incrementally adjusting this study’s approach.

The study shows that the utilization of process mining activities during process changes on an operational level contributes to (1) increasing accuracy and efficiency of ITDM; (2) timely identification of potential risks and dependencies and (3) support of testing and acceptance of IT demands.

The implementation of this study’s approach improved ITDM practice. It appropriately addressed the information needs of decision-makers and unveiled the effects and consequences of process changes. Furthermore, providing a clearer picture of the process dependencies clarified the responsibilities and the interfaces at the intra- and inter-process level.

Companies vary in their attitudes toward regulatory (ethics) risk. The purpose of this study is to assess how regulatory risk‐averse, risk neutral and risk seeking companies employ distinct managerial risk and slack accumulation strategies and differ in their auditor scores and bankruptcy risk.

The authors test their hypotheses using the GAO‐assembled database of financial restatements that allows contrasting voluntary restaters (firms that restated without being prompted either by external auditors or the SEC) and forced restaters (firms requested to restate by the SEC or external auditors). The paper uses logistic regression for comparing different groups of firms to test the hypotheses.

The results of the data analysis mostly supported the hypotheses. The findings suggest that a firm's attitude towards regulatory risk is associated with organizational slack (available and potential), risk (managerial and organizational), and auditor's rating.

Some limitations of the study are: use of cross sectional data does not allow testing causal effects, relying on GAO office for categorizing firms in different regulatory category introduces the possibility of bias in analysis, and use of only North American firms in the sample limits the generalizability of the findings.

Firms' attitudes toward regulatory risk and their respective risk and slack management strategies could be used to detect fraud early on before such firms transgress from the realm of legality to borderline legality and illegality.

Some contributions of the study are: it shows that a firm's fraud tendency or regulatory risk behavior is associated with the type of slack accumulated and available in the firm, regulatory risk‐averse companies take less managerial and bankruptcy risks, and earn higher evaluations from auditors, it demonstrates that regulatory risk‐averse companies differ from regulatory risk neutral companies.