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Concerns regarding the dysfunctional behaviours of public officials have sparked renewed interest in public service ethics and spirituality. While national and organizational systems have been established to eliminate dysfunctional behaviours such as corruption, sexual harassment and misuse of confidential information, the practice continues to have a demoralizing impact on developing countries. The study aims to intend to investigate the empirical relation between the application of spirituality and ethics in reducting dysfunctional behaviours within Ghana's Public Sector.

The study conducted a qualitative case analysis that utilized 28 semi-structured interviews and four focus groups. Interviews and group discussions with public sector staff, managers and policymakers were used to collect qualitative data. This approach facilitated an in-depth investigation into their views on dysfunctional actions and the possible impact of workplace spirituality and ethics in the Ghanaian public service.

The study uncovered a persistent recurrence of dysfunctional behaviours, such as fraudulent activities, resource misuse, unofficial work and inappropriate use of official time. There was uncertainty regarding the effectiveness of integrating ethics and spirituality to curtail dysfunctional behaviours. Nevertheless, the results supported adopting spiritual and ethical rejuvenation in the public service as a universal solution to overcome these behaviours.

This study enhances comprehension of dysfunctional behaviours in Ghana's public service by providing insights into how spirituality and ethics can transform it. The potentials of workplace spirituality and ethics can lead to a strong public service that embodies accountability, integrity and effectiveness, thereby serving as a pivotal device for Ghana's holistic advancement.

The present research aims to understand the performance disclosure levels provided by Italian healthcare organisations (HCOs). The authors conducted this study to assess the transparency of HCOs' performance reporting processes by examining the amount and the type of information disclosed in Annual Performance Reports (APRs).

The present study uses a qualitative research methodology based on manual content analysis. The APRs of a sample of 171 Italian public HCOs were analysed.

Results evidence that the APRs provide a sufficient level of disclosure of performance information, putting high attention on the epidemiological conditions; however, the APRs do not present a strong information function for stakeholders' decision-making purposes. The Italian HCOs APRs are not easily understandable because the APRs are not very concise and present information mainly in discursive terms with limited graphic support.

To the best of the authors' knowledge, this is the first research investigating both the extent and type of performance information reported by Italian HCOs in the APRs, considering the particular contextual conditions caused by the most significant challenge the healthcare (HC) sector has faced in recent years: the epidemiological crisis of the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19). The study also explores whether APRs are currently used by HCOs as a merely regulatory requirement or as an information tool for accountability and decision-making purposes.

This study aims to adopt a systematic review approach to examine the existing literature on law and LLMs.It involves analyzing and synthesizing relevant research papers, reports and scholarly articles that discuss the use of LLMs in the legal domain. The review encompasses various aspects, including an analysis of LLMs, legal natural language processing (NLP), model tuning techniques, data processing strategies and frameworks for addressing the challenges associated with legal question-and-answer (Q&A) systems. Additionally, the study explores potential applications and services that can benefit from the integration of LLMs in the field of intelligent justice.

This paper surveys the state-of-the-art research on law LLMs and their application in the field of intelligent justice. The study aims to identify the challenges associated with developing Q&A systems based on LLMs and explores potential directions for future research and development. The ultimate goal is to contribute to the advancement of intelligent justice by effectively leveraging LLMs.

To effectively apply a law LLM, systematic research on LLM, legal NLP and model adjustment technology is required.

This study contributes to the field of intelligent justice by providing a comprehensive review of the current state of research on law LLMs.

This chapter provides a comprehensive examination of the diverse strategies employed in various Asian regions to address family planning. Beginning with an in-depth analysis of family planning programs in South Asia, this chapter offers a comparative overview that highlights the unique characteristics and outcomes within this dynamic context. Furthermore, this chapter employs case studies to explore the multifaceted influences of religious beliefs, legal frameworks, and sociocultural factors on family planning practices. By delving into these complexities, it offers a nuanced understanding of the challenges and successes in different Asian regions. This comparative exploration equips policymakers and practitioners with valuable insights to inform more effective and culturally sensitive family planning initiatives.

This chapter focuses on the intricacies of marginalized communities in Bangladesh. It provides an in-depth understanding of these communities, considering their sociocultural backgrounds and the challenges they face. This chapter introduces the empowerment paradigm, highlighting the importance of empowering marginalized groups as a catalyst for positive change. It further explores various strategies and initiatives designed to uplift these communities, emphasizing the pivotal role of family planning in this process. By examining the transformative impact of family planning on marginalized communities, this chapter underscores how it can lead to improved health, education, economic opportunities, gender equality, and overall community development in the Bangladeshi context.

In 2014, the Health Service Executive (HSE) in Ireland published its Safeguarding National Policy and Procedures (HSE, 2014). Under this policy, all agencies providing services through the social care directorate must ensure a robust culture of safeguarding is in place. Concurrent to this has been a move in social policy, practice and research to include the voice of the service user, both in terms of planning and reviewing services. (e.g. HIQA, 2012; Flanagan, 2020) This article examines whether service users with intellectual disabilities want to be involved in safeguarding plans and, if so, how that can be supported. Using focus groups service users demonstrated their knowledge of safeguarding as a concept, how they felt about the issues raised, and, crucially what they felt they would like to see happen next in addressing a safeguarding incident or concern. The focus groups took place in a large organisation providing residential services, day services, independent living supports and clinical supports. Engaging service users in planning and responding to safeguarding concerns is a fundamental principle of human rights legislation, both nationally and internationally. This study aims to highlight that it is both possible and desirable to engage fully with service users using a range of simple communication tools. For this to be implemented as routine practice in services providing support for people with intellectual disabilities, authentic leadership is required. Services will need to devote time, human resources and will need champions to get on board with the necessary culture shift.

Qualitative research examined peoples’ “lived experiences” and knowledge of safeguarding. Focus groups were used with thematic analysis highlighting common themes throughout, as guided by Braun and Clarke (2006). There were two objectives: Objective 1: measuring participant’s understanding of the safeguarding process. Objective 2: compare the potential differences between safeguarding plans devised by the participants in the focus groups, versus plans devised by trained designated officers responsible for safeguarding within the service.

Four principal themes emerged – 1. participants understanding of safeguarding; 2. restorative justice; 3. consent; and 4. high levels of emotional intelligence and compassion. Participants demonstrated that they could and did want to be involved in safeguarding planning and showed little variation in the plans compared to those completed by trained staff.

The study was completed with a small sample size in a single service in one area. It may not represent the lived experiences and knowledge of safeguarding in other services and indeed other countries. The video may have led to some priming; for instance, the Gardai in the footage being called may have resulted in the participants stating that contacting Gardai should be part of the plan. After the video was shown, there was a heightened awareness of safeguarding. This may indicate that participants are aware of safeguarding but unsure of the terminology or how to discuss it out of context.

For this to be implemented as routine practice in services providing support for people with intellectual disabilities, authentic leadership is required. Services will need to devote time and human resources and will need champions in the safeguarding arena to get on board with the shift in culture required.

While there did not appear to be many barriers to listening to participants, to progress this as a standard practice a very real shift in culture will be needed. It is important for practitioners to ask: Is the vulnerable person aware that this concern has been raised? What is known of the vulnerable person’s wishes in relation to the concern? To truly engage with service users in safeguarding plans these questions need to be more than a “tick box” exercise. This process needs to be fully embedded into a culture that promotes a person-centred, rights-based, inclusive approach as a standard rather than a one-off project. Some structural changes will be needed regarding the time given to designated officers, and what resources they can access (such as speech and language therapy). However, the real difference will be made by services operating authentic leadership that champions engagement on this scale, to fully answer the question posed by the researchers at the beginning of this report, “Whose safeguarding is it anyway?”

There appears to be little evidence of service user engagement in terms of planning and processing safeguarding responses, either in research or anecdotally.

The institutional conditions of primary care provision remain understudied in low- and middle-income countries. This study analyzes how primary care doctors cope with medical uncertainty in municipal clinics in urban India. As street-level bureaucrats, the municipal doctors occupy two roles simultaneously: medical professional and state agent. They operate under conditions that characterize health systems in low-resource contexts globally: inadequate state investment, weak regulation and low societal trust. The study investigates how, in these conditions, the doctors respond to clinical risk, specifically related to noncommunicable diseases (NCDs).

The analysis draws on year-long ethnographic fieldwork in Pune (2013–14), a city of three million, including 30 semi-structured interviews with municipal doctors.

Interpreting their municipal mandate to exclude NCDs and reasoning their medical expertise as insufficient to treat NCDs, the doctors routinely referred NCD cases. They expressed concerns about violence from patients, negative media attention and unsupportive municipal authorities should anything go wrong clinically.

The study contextualizes street-level service-delivery in weak institutional conditions. Whereas street-level workers may commonly standardize practices to reduce workload, here the doctors routinized NCD care to avoid the sociopolitical consequences of clinical uncertainty. Modalities of the welfare state and medical care in India – manifest in weak municipal capacity and healthcare regulation – appear to compel restraint in service-delivery. The analysis highlights how norms and social relations may shape primary care provision and quality.

European justice systems are facing a dramatic performance crisis due to the frequent inability to resolve cases without incurring unreasonable delays and backlogs. In this framework, the Italian Judicial system places itself well below the European countries average, in terms of speed of resolution of administrative, civil and criminal trials. The purpose of the paper was to (1) identify factors affecting Italian judicial system efficiency and (2) identify potential actions to manage them, improving judicial system efficiency.

In order to achieve the aims of this paper, a systematic review to map all critical factors discussed in previous studies was performed. Studies were extracted from Google Scholar, Web of Science and SSRN databases. In total, 22 studies were included.

The identified factors of inefficiency of the Italian judicial system have been divided into three macro-classes depending on whether they concern human resource management, the judicial process or whether they pertain to internal or external outside the judicial organization. For each of these, possible strategies have been developed in a new conceptual framework.

The framework seeks to assist policymakers in forming policy measures that can significantly increase court effectiveness. This is the first attempt to review and map all factors affecting judicial system efficiency systematically, providing a new conceptual framework to manage them.

This study investigates the influence of e-marketing risks on a Corporation’s Reputation (CR) resulting from its online marketing of products and services.

A comprehensive analysis was conducted to enhance the company’s e-marketing strategies and bolster its reputation in the market. This involved an investigation into key factors of e-marketing risks, such as customer confidence, product quality, marketing fraud, credibility and customer knowledge and proficiency in using online platforms. These factors have directly impacted the company’s reputation, including aspects such as product/service quality, attractiveness, performance and commitment to social responsibility.

Its finding indicates that customers' lack of confidence in e-marketing has a strong impact on CR, followed by product quality and credibility. The absence of consumer awareness about e-marketing websites and e-fraud frequently negatively affects the organizational reputation.

To enhance the corporation’s reputation, it is recommended that companies provide educational resources on online shopping, including guidance on using the company’s website, comparing prices and other services that facilitate online purchases. This will help to support the credibility of e-marketing and enhance customer trust.

This research is an exploration of how e-marketing has affected a Corporation’s Reputation. It provides modern knowledge about the dynamic interplay between digital strategies and brand perception. Investigating this relationship provides valuable insights into the evolving landscape of consumer trust in the digital age. By analysing the various ways in which e-marketing influences a company’s reputation, innovative approaches can be developed to enhance its online presence and build lasting customer trust.