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Spotlights the problem of increases in administration brought about by more widespread certification to the ISO 9000 and BS 5750 standards. Introduces a quality records management system that has been designed to solve the problem of “administrative overload”, however, it also collects and collates data in several categories to provide accessible records on different subjects. Presents two case studies of businesses that are currently using the system and examines how each benefits from the features on offer.

Represents the first systematic attempt to examine the effects of school‐based interventions on children’s self‐reported PTSD‐related distress and coping ability following a series of volcanic eruptions in a sample of 112 children. Pretreatment assessments carried out after the eruptions revealed that time was more of an ally for PTSD symptoms than for active coping ability. In terms of randomly assigned intervention conditions, both an exposure and a cognitive behavioural intervention were found to lead to significant improvement in both PTSD‐related distress and coping ability. In terms of effect sizes (Cohen’s d), the coping scores changed more following the one‐hour intervention than they had during the entire two‐month pretreatment interval; PTSD‐related scores changed over half as much as during the two‐month pretreatment interval. In addition, at four‐month follow‐up, either children continued to improve (PTSD‐distress scores) or gains were maintained (coping scores). Treated children’s PTSD and coping scores were significantly more adaptive than those of untreated children. Finally, multiple regression analyses did not reveal any significant, prospective predictors of treatment responsivity. Includes consideration of the value of self‐report methodologies at the “early gates” of a multiple gating intervention model and the value of collaborations between scientists in the wake of a disaster.

The purpose of this paper is to assess the national implementation of disaster preparedness education in New Zealand primary schools through the dissemination of What's the Plan, Stan?, a voluntary, curriculum-based teaching resource.

Results and findings from a focus group study with school teachers and local civil defence staff in 2011 and a nationally representative survey of schools in 2012 were analyzed to identify intervening, facilitating and deterrent factors of uptake and use of the resource.

The main intervening factors between resource promotion and school teachers’ awareness of the resource are word of mouth among school teachers and teachers’ proactive lesson plan research. The strongest facilitating factor was school-wide use of the resource. Lack of awareness of the resource and the perceived need for teacher training are the greatest deterrents to use of the resource.

Based on the findings, several recommendations are provided for increasing use of the resource including use of web-based technology for teacher training, integration of disaster preparedness messaging into other children's programs, ongoing evaluation and curriculum requirements.

An evaluation of the implementation of What's the Plan, Stan? adds to the limited body of knowledge on the benefits and challenges to distributing a voluntary teaching resource as a national strategy for curriculum integration of disaster education. The findings and lessons are relevant for nations meeting the Core Indicators of progress toward the 2005-2015 Hyogo Framework For Action.

This chapter presents the key results of a research project that explored managing service productivity in Sub-Saharan Africa through the lens of lived experiences of bank executives employed as ‘knowledge workers’ in the Nigerian banking sector. The study adopted a qualitative phenomenological research design. Data was gathered from 16 Nigerian top bank executives purposively selected using semi-structured face-to-face interviews. Trans Positional Cognition Approach (TPCA), a new phenomenological research method, was used to analyse the data gathered. The study data analysis yielded five themes; micromanagement practices, use of dysfunctional strategies to drive service operations, deposit mobilisation target as a productivity measure, managerial indifference to potential nescience economy issues and master-servant (power culture) strategy, which epitomises fundamental managerial approaches adopted in the sector. The study identified critical service productivity management issues grounded in reality that influence the capability and potentiality of the study knowledge workers. It also contributes the novel, ‘official knowledge worker lived experience of service productivity model’ for use by decision-makers in the banking sector. Thus, it sets an agenda for these ‘knowledge workers’ line managers’ and bank regulators in the research setting. The study extended the viable system model by applying it in this phenomenological enquiry and using it to explain/deepen our understanding of the findings that emerged. The output of this work contributes to scholarly knowledge on service productivity management from the sub-Saharan African banks’ perspective. It can be generalisable in countries with similar financial and economic characteristics like the research setting.

This chapter aims to make a contribution to recent debates on the ‘governance of security’ (Johnston & Shearing, 2003) by drawing upon empirical research conducted by the author and other writers on ‘plural policing’ and the construction of closed circuit television (CCTV) surveillance networks. The chapter attempts to avoid the tendency in some of the ‘governmentality’ literature to ‘airbrush out the state’ (Hughes, 2007, p. 184), whilst at the same time showing that the aims and intentions of dominant state forces and elites are not always realised in practice. The chapter also tries to avoid any simplistic notion of a shift in policing strategies from ‘crime fighting’ to ‘risk management’. The aim instead is to show how the construction of surveillance networks is blurring the boundaries of the ‘public–private’ divide along the ‘sectoral’, ‘geographical’, ‘spatial’, ‘legal’ and ‘functional’ dimensions (Jones & Newburn, 1998), giving rise to a plural policing continuum.

This study aims to explore how business-to-business service failures manifest in a manufacturing context.

The empirical research involved two case studies: case study one included 20 interviews in the metal finishing industry; case study two included 20 interviews in the paint and coatings industry. In both case studies, suppliers and customers’ perceptions were obtained to facilitate a dyadic understanding of the phenomena.

Business-to-business service failure is a complex, dynamic and interactive process. It varies according to type of service, services supporting the products and services supporting the customers, service quality dimensions and the source of the failure. It can have a more profound impact than service failure in a consumer context because it may cause disruption to customers’ production and have a negative influence of failure on their clients in the network.

Business customers may play a role in value co-destruction rather than value co-creation by causing service failures due to errors on their part. The consequences of the domino effects revealed in this study need to be given careful consideration by managers. The research is exploratory, and the findings may be influenced by the manufacturing sector in which the case study firms are based.

Business-to-business service failure has its own distinct characteristics, as it may impact widely in the business-to-business network. Domino effects implicitly dominate business-to-business service failure episodes where negative outcomes cascade downstream and affect service recipients’ customers.

Donna L. Van Raaphorst provides a detailed statistical analysis of a large sample of Alcatraz Prison inmates using the Social Science Statistical Package. The data, drawn directly from the inmate files, is compared whenever possible with similar data provided by the Bureau of Prisons in order to determine if Alcatraz, often regarded as America's Devil's Island, really incarcerated the so-called “Worst of the Worst” in its time. The results would seem to indicate that Alcatraz inmates were, in fact, not remarkably different from those in any other Federal prison in the system.

This paper aims to investigate the effect of voluntary non-financial reporting on the evaluation of audit risk from the auditors’ viewpoint in a post-crisis period. Furthermore, this paper analyses whether auditors perceive that voluntary non-financial reporting impacts audit risk differently for old clients as compared with new clients.

This study is conducted on a sample of Italian audit firms through a paper-based questionnaire. Both Big4 and non-Big4 audit firms have been included in the sample.

Results show that integrated reporting is perceived to be the most relevant reporting method and intellectual capital statement the least relevant. Surprisingly, empirical findings over the sample period show that auditors do not perceive statistically significant differences between old and new clients.

Auditors can identify opportunities to adapt their assessment model to include voluntary non-financial report information. Moreover, they can use different assessment models regarding the research variables in the case of new and old clients.

Empirical findings highlight the growing role of voluntary non-financial reporting in the auditors’ perception of their client’s audit risk. All the observed voluntary non-financial reporting forms, except for intellectual capital, are considered as relevant by auditors in the evaluation of their client’s audit risk when compared to an indifference point. In addition, findings reveal that female auditors perceive a reduced gap in the relevance between integrated reports and intellectual capital reports compared to their counterparts.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the antecedents of individuals’ behavioral intention to transact in blockchain cryptocurrency through the theoretical lens of the expanded theory of planned behavior (TPB).

This study investigated the antecedents of a blockchain cryptocurrency adoption framework by adapting well-established items from the information systems (IS) and psychology literature to produce a survey instrument to measure individuals’ intention to engage in blockchain cryptocurrency transactions. The survey was administered to 492 individuals through Amazon Mechanical Turk.

This study resulted in a research model of an individual’s intention to transact with a blockchain cryptocurrency. Results indicated that the expanded TPB model explains 63.5% of the variance in intention to adopt cryptocurrency for transactional usage. In this study, all paths leading to behavioral intention were found to be significant in the hypothesized directions. In addition, all paths leading to attitude, subjective norms and perceived behavioral control were found to be significant in the hypothesized directions.

This study furthers prior literature by empirically validating the expanded TPB in the context of individuals’ intention to use cryptocurrency for transactional purposes. This study can better inform practitioners on individual attitudes and behaviors toward transactional cryptocurrency use. The findings provide regulators meaningful insights toward the development of a regulatory framework which encourages innovation while safeguarding the interests of individual citizens.

Distributed performance arrangements are increasingly used by organizations to structure dyadic and team interactions. Unfortunately, distributed teams are no panacea. This chapter reviews some of the advantages and disadvantages associated with the geographical and temporal distribution of team members. An extended discussion of the implications of distributed team performance for individual, team, and organizational decision making is provided, with particular attention paid to selected cultural factors. Best practices and key points are advanced for those stakeholders charged with offsetting the performance decrements in decision making that can result from distribution and culture.