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This chapter reviews the evidence on the role of physicians in shaping inequalities in access to and utilisation of healthcare. The authors examine three types of physician decisions that can influence inequalities in access and utilisation: location decisions, decisions to work in the public and/or private sector, and decisions or behaviours in the doctor–patient encounter. For each, the authors summarise the issues and empirical evidence on possible policies to help reduce inequalities in access. Future research to reduce inequalities should focus on changes to health systems that influence physician decisions, such as health insurance expansions, the public–private mix and financial incentives, as well as physician training and policies for a more diverse physician workforce.

This study examines how asking employees to self-assess their performance during the compensation setting process, when they are unaware of their marginal contribution to firm profit, affects employer welfare. Previous research suggests that giving employees a voice in the compensation setting process can positively affect employee performance and firm profit (Jenkins & Lawler, 1981; Roberts, 2003). However, the study proposes that asking employees to assess their own performance as part of the compensation setting process can have unintended consequences that ultimately lead to higher employee compensation demands. This is because asking employees to assess their performance increases their overconfidence in their own performance and their compensation demands. As a result, employers may face the dilemma of whether to meet these higher compensation demands or risk economic losses due to employee retaliation if their demands are not met. Through experimental evidence comparing a control condition without self-assessments and three self-assessment reporting conditions, the study provides evidence that supports the notion that eliciting employee self-assessments as part of the compensation process reduces employer welfare. Data on employee perceptions of performance further support the notion that asking employees to evaluate their performance leads to an inflated perception of their performance. These findings provide a theory-based explanation of why, in practice, many companies disentangle employee performance assessments from the compensation setting process and that companies are well advised in doing so.

Dysfunctional customer behavior (DCB) is costly and problematic for organizations. This research seeks to understand how DCB spreads and how businesses can effectively deal with it through employee intervention.

This research conducted a survey study and an experimental study to examine the proposed model.

Through two studies, we discovered that when an employee intervenes to stop DCB and is perceived as having high coping ability, observing customers learn from the employee’s action, resulting in reduced empathy toward the dysfunctional customer and diminished intentions to engage in DCB. Conversely, if they perceive the employee as having low coping ability, the intervention backfires, enhancing the observers’ empathy toward the dysfunctional customer and consequently leading them to engage in more DCB.

This research unveils an additional mechanism that explains the spread of DCB. It also contributes to the employee intervention literature by shedding light on when employee intervention can backfire. Further, our application of social learning theory along with the person-situation interaction literature offers a fresh perspective in explaining service exchanges.

The organizational decision-making perspective (ODM) has a legacy regarding its concern for budgeting as an essential organizational routine in decision-making. Budgeting has also become a direct concern to organizational institutional theory (OIT) because of its prominent role in institution building, where budgeting can build trust in inter-organizational relationships. This paper builds on these two perspectives to explore organizational budget processes' formation, disruption, and re-creation over time.

We conducted a comprehensive review and critical analysis of the ODM and OIT perspectives, focusing on a fundamental paradox between ODM's emphasis on stability through organizational routines and OIT's focus on organizational legitimacy through the decoupled expression of organizational values. We then expanded on these paradoxical concerns in the context of budgeting, formalizing them into specific research propositions for future studies.

Tensions around the stability, decay, and re-creation of budgets as organizational routines emerge as a pressing issue requiring further empirical investigation from the ODM perspective. A critical issue in the OIT perspective is the potential for organizational budgets to provide an opportunity to decouple from practice through routinized expressions of rationality and to facilitate loose coupling in practice. These findings offer a fresh perspective and open up new avenues for future research in this area.

This paper contributes to the accounting and organizational research literature by shedding light on how organizations respond to the potential decay of budget routines and the manifestation of organizational values in decoupling processes by further re-creating and elaborating budget processes.

The prevalence of Congolese refugee women seeking asylum in the USA has recently garnered substantial attention. Many women have fled the Democratic Republic of Congo due to trauma and loss. Likewise, the resettlement process, particularly acculturative stress, may exacerbate mental health issues such as depression and anxiety. By recognizing the centrality of family within Congolese culture, this study aims to investigate cultural beliefs about family among Congolese refugee women in the USA, using acculturative theory as an interpretative lens.

The authors’ study centered on understanding the resettlement experiences of 20 Congolese refugee women living within an urban area of Midwest America after their arrival in America since 2011. Through using convenient sampling methods, the authors chose these particular activists as they could provide insight into their stories concerning their journey from Congo to settling down as refugees within Northeast America. During interviews, semi-structured questioning was used to gather responses from participants which were later analyzed through implementing a thematic interpretation process.

Three themes emerged encapsulating cultural beliefs about family: supporting one another; the importance of togetherness; and disciplining our children. These findings provide culturally tailored resources to support Congolese refugee women and their families upon resettlement optimally.

The authors’ work provides health equity researchers with an opportunity to better understand cultural beliefs among Congolese refugee women. Findings from this study provide an increased understanding of how to provide culturally specific tools to better aid Congolese refugee women and their families upon arrival.

The authors’ research offers insights for health equity researchers seeking to understand the cultural beliefs of Congolese refugee women. The findings contribute to an enhanced understanding of how to provide culturally specific resources better to support Congolese refugee women and their families upon arrival.

The authors verify that, to the best of the authors’ knowledge, the paper was written completely independently, and neither the entire work nor any of its parts have been previously published. The authors confirm that the paper has not been submitted to peer review, nor is in the process of peer reviewing, nor has been accepted for publishing in another journal. The authors confirm that the research in their work is original.

The main data used to develop this case were remote, synchronous interviews with the three characters in the case. The authors conducted two interviews with the main character in the case, Geoff Brown, specifically: (1) an initial 30 min interview to determine the fit and focus of the case and to help create the interview protocol for the full case interview (this initial interview was conducted on March 12, 2024); and (2) an hour-long interview to ask targeted questions to fully develop the case narrative (this interview was conducted on March 28, 2024). Geoff Brown was also involved in reviewing drafts of the case, approving the final version of the case and reviewing the assignment questions in this instructors’ manual (IM).

This case focuses on Geoff Brown, Executive Director at Alberta Chicken Producers (ACP), which is a not-for-profit organization in Alberta, Canada, that is responsible for representing 250 regulated chicken producers. Brown is grappling with what to do with the remote/hybrid work policy at ACP. Part of the impetus for reconsidering this policy was the comments from ACP’s long-tenured Office Manager and Executive Assistant, who had been asking Brown to bring this policy forward to a staff meeting for discussion throughout the past year. Brown now feels ready to move these discussions forward but is unsure of how to proceed and what the best practices would be to ensure that the policy in place for remote work is beneficial for work engagement, individual and organizational work performance, work–life balance, employee relationships and fairness perceptions.

The target audience for this case is undergraduate and graduate students taking a course in the disciplines of human resources management or organizational behavior. This case will be especially relevant for a human resources management course when studying the topics of employee benefits (e.g. work–life balance), health and safety (e.g. stress) and work design (e.g. telecommuting), and this case will be especially relevant for an organizational behavior course when studying the topics of motivation (e.g. fairness), communication, organizational culture and decision-making.