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This paper expands upon existing sports sponsorship 'match-up' research by offering an interview-driven, empirically-grounded, 'thick' description of the decision-making processes of sports organisations in developing athlete-sponsor-team relationships. By focusing on a particular NASCAR (The National Association for Stock Car Auto Racing) organisation (BAM Racing), the study offers an in-depth interpretation of the sometimes 'messy' methods employed by executives in grafting an effective, synergistic match-up. The paper concludes with a discussion on the theoretical and practical implications of these findings.

The purpose of this paper is to use an environmental criminology and situational crime prevention (SCP) framework to study global assassinations carried out by terrorists. The authors set forth a series of hypotheses to explain successful and unsuccessful assassination incidents.

The authors use assassination data from the Global Terrorism Database from 1970 to 2014 to estimate a series binary logistic regression models.

Results indicate that various situational factors contribute to successful assassinations, such as target types, weapon types, total fatalities, and injuries.

These findings suggest that environmental criminology and SCP are valuable in developing prevention measures that thwart and disrupt attempted assassinations by terrorists.

Criminology has yet to apply environmental criminology and SCP to assassinations, a tactic often used by terrorists. This paper thus extends the existing assassination, terrorism, and criminology literature by applying this framework to assassinations performed by terrorists.

The “two communities” metaphor for the relationship between policy and academia is inconsistent with empirical evidence that shows that a sizeable minority of public servants use academic research in their policy-related work. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the two communities metaphor by comparing the personal and professional characteristics of Australian public servants who claim to use research in their policy work with the characteristics of those who claim not to use research.

Using data from a survey of 2,084 public servants from the state and federal levels in Australia carried out from 2011 to 2013, tests of statistical significance were conducted for the relationship between some personal and professional characteristics (e.g. gender, age, work experience) and the claim that research is used in policy-related work.

The “two communities” metaphor is not an accurate description of the relationship between policy and academia. In reality, public servants who claim to use academic research in their policy work are more likely to have much in common with academics, including having postgraduate degrees and work experience in the university sector.

Rather than existing as isolated solitudes, the findings in this paper suggest that the policy and academic communities possess links that can encourage the use of research in policy making.

The findings presented in this paper are especially important for the evidence-based policy movement, which emphasises the value of the use of research evidence in the creation of public policy.

The purpose of this empirical study is to identify the job tasks where decisions regarding social responsibility are likely to occur and assess the potential connections between social responsibility and professionalism.

A job study conducted by the Universal Public Procurement Certification Council (UPPCC) of 2,593 practitioners is used for data collection. Factor analysis is applied to a set of 75 procurement job tasks to determine the relationship between practitioners’ performance and management of job tasks and social responsibility variables.

The results suggest that there are specific job tasks performed and managed in both public and private sector procurement that share a unique relationship with social responsibility variables.

The manuscript advances the research on professionalism in procurement and administration through empirically testing job tasks performed and managed by practitioners and identifying relationships between job tasks according to a professional orientation toward social responsibility.

The study shows that specific job tasks are performed and managed in procurement and administration with a social responsibility consideration.

The technical nature of job tasks found to be related to social responsibility suggests a paradoxical view of the politics-administration dichotomy, and the notion that neutral tasks of both the public and private sectors are not void of a social function.

One attribute of professionalism in the literature, social responsibility, is operationalized through actual performance and management of job tasks by practitioners.

The study aims to examine the socio‐economic determinants of maternal health services utilization in Ghana.

Probit and ordered probit models are employed in this study.

The results generally indicate that most women in Ghana undertake the required visits for antenatal services and also take both doses of the tetanus toxoid vaccine as required by World Health Organization. However, the results show low levels of usage in terms of the other maternal health care services (i.e. prenatal care, delivery at a health facility, and postnatal care). There is clearly an urgent need to develop innovative strategies that will help upscale intervention especially for improvement in the use of these services by women in Ghana. The regression results reveal that utilization of maternal health services and intensity of use of antenatal services are influenced by age of mother, type of birth, education of mother, ethnicity, economic status, geographic location, residence, and religious affiliation. Obviously, this suggests that more than medical factors are responsible for the differences in the use of maternal health services by women in Ghana as well as the decision on the number of visits to undertake with respect to antenatal visits.

The findings of this study have important implications for health policy formulation targeted at improving maternal health care service utilization.

In order to succeed in an action under the Equal Pay Act 1970, should the woman and the man be employed by the same employer on like work at the same time or would the woman still be covered by the Act if she were employed on like work in succession to the man? This is the question which had to be solved in Macarthys Ltd v. Smith. Unfortunately it was not. Their Lordships interpreted the relevant section in different ways and since Article 119 of the Treaty of Rome was also subject to different interpretations, the case has been referred to the European Court of Justice.

There is a certain type of British trader who, with pharisaic unction, lifts up his voice and deplores the unhappy condition of “the heathen in his blindness,” including all persons of other nationalities and any of his own who may happen to differ in opinion from himself. On these collectively it is his habit to bestow his contemptuous regard when from his elevated position he condescends to thank Providence that as far as the methods and conduct of business are concerned he is “not as other men.” Of course, most people recognise that the attitude assumed by this type of person is one for which it is difficult altogether to blame him. Born as he was in an atmosphere reeking with traditions of insular supremacy, and nurtured from his youth up on notions of commercial arrogance, it is no miracle that he arrives at maturity with singularly inflated ideas of the greatness of his powers and person. If there is one thing more than another in which he feels particular pride it is the possession of a superabundant stock of what he is pleased to call “business acumen,” and to hear him, it might be imagined that no one could approach him in enterprise and general commercial ability.

Motivation is central to the ongoing professional development, performance and retention of healthcare workers. Despite the increasing prevalence of people with dementia (PwD) and the associated demand for geriatric nurses, there exists a paradoxical shortage. The purpose of this paper is to explore the motivation and demotivation of healthcare professionals for working with older PwD, challenges faced, factors influencing intention to leave the field of work and methods to enhance staff motivation to continue working with this group.

This grounded-theory study used thematic analysis to synthesise data from 13 semi-structured interviews relating to the motivating and demotivating factors of healthcare professionals (nurses and healthcare assistants) for working with older PwD in a hospital setting.

Staff were motivated by previous personal experiences, personal characteristics and the fulfilment of the carer–patient relationship. Conversely, staff were mostly demotivated by organisational and working environment factors (e.g. poor leadership characteristics, inadequate staffing levels, lack of development opportunities), negatively influencing their intention to remain in employment.

The generalisability of the results is limited by the size of the sample. Different organisational strategies/interventions (i.e. support, training, recognition and rewards) are necessary to nurture staff motivation, improve retention, create positive working environments and enhance patient care.

This study offers numerous ways in which to address factors contributing to demotivation in working with PwD, thereby helping to improve staff retention and support the needs of a growing population.

It was stated by a philosopher of very early days that the Gods sell their choicest goods in the cheapest market; and, it may be added, if it is necessary to impress such an obvious truism, that the greatest poverty may often be found in the midst of riches. The herring well illustrates the truths of the above paragraph.

The purpose of this paper is to provide a decision support model for optimizing the composition of portfolios of market-driven academic programs, primarily in schools offering market-driven academic programs. This model seeks to maximize financial performance during a desired planning time period while also achieving targets for other non-financial dimensions of the portfolio (e.g. mission alignment, student demographics and faculty characteristics) by deciding the types of programs to be added, redesigned and/or removed for each year of the planning period.

This paper introduces an integer linear program (i.e. mathematical optimization) to describe the portfolio optimization problem. Integer linear programs are widely used for optimizing portfolios of financial and non-financial products and services in non-educational settings. Additionally, in order to use an integer linear program for the model, qualitative data must be incorporated into the quantitative model. To do so, this paper first discusses two methods of quantifying qualitative information related to market-driven program dimensions in the following section.

The paper provides empirical insights related to the impact of this model through an illustrative case from a school offering market-driven academic programs at a prestigious private university in the USA. The results of the case highlight the potential positive impact of utilizing a similar model for planning purposes. Financially, the model results in almost double financial surplus than without the model while also achieving higher scores for all non-financial dimensions measured for the portfolio analyzed.

This paper provides a unique and impactful model for decision support in strategic planning for market-driven academic programs, an area of intense discussion and focus in higher education today.