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This paper aims to show the potential decay resistance of furfurylated wood and investigate possible eco‐toxicity of such materials produced. This paper deals with the environmental aspects and durability of furfurylated wood, both laboratory and field tests are included in the investigations. Results from several decay tests, emission analysis studies and ecotox tests are presented. The results show that furfurylated wood is highly decay resistant. Furthermore, no significant increase in eco‐toxicity of leaching water was found and degradation through combustion does not release any volatile organic compounds or poly‐aromatic hydrocarbons above normal levels for wood combustion. Durability enhancement by furfurylation of wood is not believed to be harmful to the environment. Wood modified with furfuryl alcohol, “furfurylated wood”, is currently being marketed as a non‐toxic alternative to traditional preservative treated wood (wood impregnated with biocides). This paper summarises much of the long term exposure of furfurylated wood ever caried out, and present the first eco‐tox tests on such material ever done.

This case has three primary objectives. First, it allows students to think through a conceptual cost and benefit analysis associated with the decision-making process in line with basic economic thinking. Students will revisit core concepts of marginal benefit vs marginal cost, the notion of opportunity costs and the role of sunk costs in this type of analysis, while also highlighting the nature of market structure, oligopolies and competition across firms in an industry. The second goal of this case is to consider the role of business ethics in the DC-10 case: specifically, to consider the potential influence of moral awareness and moral disengagement in unethical decisions made by McDonnell Douglas. Students will develop an understanding of these concepts and solidify their learning by applying them to the case and engaging in active discussion. Finally, the third goal of the case allows students to explore organizational culture and specifically offer recommendations for organizations thinking about the link between decision-making, the role of ethics and culture.

The technical reports released by the National Transportation Safety Board along with secondary data such as available public data such as news reports were used to round out the synopsis of the case study.

This case explores the accidents of two McDonnell Douglas DC-10s in the early 1970s at the onset of the jumbo jet race between Boeing, Lockheed and McDonnell Douglas. It explores the series of events during the “Windsor Incident” in 1972 and the subsequent accident over Paris in 1974. It explores the reasons why the cargo door on the DC-10 was faulty and subsequently why the door was not fixed. It examines the interplay of industry suppliers such as McDonnell Douglas and how they interact with oversight authorities such as the Federal Aviation Authority. The Teaching Note focuses on the economic thinking at McDonnell Douglas, behavioral ethics and organizational culture.

This case is best explored over a 90 min session but could be expanded to take up one 3 h session. The authors have used this case format in an undergraduate organizational behavior class, an MBA Leadership and Organizational Change class, and an MBA Economics of Managers class. It works particularly well in the MBA setting, as students with work experience can see the links between the mistakes made by McDonnell Douglas and their workplaces.

This paper describes the installation and the first year's operation of a commercial computer‐based cataloguing system and the extent to which this system has been adapted to the specific needs of a new university (the Universitaire Instelling Antwerpen). The catalogue is regarded principally as a finding tool. Cataloguing is done locally according to minimal rules which are, however, MARC‐compatible; input effort is minimised by the use of automatic field recognition and automatic error detection. The data is batch processed by a computer bureau in England. The catalogue is output on COM microfiche in three sequences: 1. author; 2. title; 3. ‘KWUC’ (Keyword and UDC)‐a KWOC‐type format within broad UDC classes and originated from manually tagged title‐derived keywords. The system has been well received by users. Plans for further automation of the UIA Library are outlined.

Hot and humid climates (HHCs) are potential environmental hazards that directly affect construction workers' health and safety (HS) and negatively impact workers' productivity. Extensive research efforts have addressed the effects of HHCs. However, these efforts have been inconsistent in their approach for selecting factors influencing workers in such conditions. There are also increasing concerns about the drop-off in research interest to follow through intrusive and non-real-time measurements. This review aims to identify the major research gaps in measurements applied in previous research with careful attention paid to the factors that influence the intrusiveness and selection of the applied data collection methods.

This research integrates a manual subjective discussion with a thematic analysis of Leximancer software and an elaborating chronological, geographical and methodological review that yielded 701 articles and 76 peer-reviewed most related articles.

The literature included the physiological parameters as influencing factors and useful indicators for HHC effects and identified site activity intensity as the most influencing work-related factor. In total, three main gaps were identified: (1) the role of substantial individual and work-related factors; (2) managerial interventions and the application of the right time against the right symptoms, sample size and measurement intervals and (3) applied methods of data collection; particularly, the intrusiveness of the utilised sensors.

The focus of researchers and practitioners should be in applying nonintrusive, innovative and real-time methods that can provide crew-level measurements. In particular, methods that can represent the actual effects of allocated tasks are aligned with real-time weather measurements, so proactive HHC-related preventions can be enforced on time.

This review contributes to the field of construction workers' safety in HHCs and enables researchers and practitioners to identify the most influential individual and work-related factors in HHCs. This review also proposes a framework for future research with suggestions to cover the highlighted research gaps and contributes to a critical research area in the construction industry.

Internal control mechanisms are fundamental to organizational governance; particularly, to the agency relationship associated with decentralization of decision rights. Management accounting and organizational literatures provide conflicting predictions on the association between decentralization and internal controls, with some research arguing that internal controls be tightened to mitigate the risks associated with greater decentralization of decision rights while other work avers that tighter internal controls defeat the purposes of decentralization. In this chapter, we argue that managers choose these two organizational design variables jointly. Capitalizing on a unique database of control practices in the purchasing and payment process within the procurement function, this chapter examines the relationship between control tightness – a critical characteristic of internal controls – and decentralization. Using a simultaneous equation model, the study finds that decentralization and internal control design are endogenously determined. Tight control is negatively associated with the level of decentralization, while decentralization has a positive effect on the tightness of control. These results reconcile the apparently contradictory results relating these two variables. The chapter also finds that decentralization and tight control mechanisms operate both independently and synergistically to improve performance.

Leaders lack essential information about their performance from their followers. In light of the frequently encountered error avoidance climate in the police, leaders should actively seek feedback to fill this gap. The purpose of this paper is to explore organizational, personal and situational antecedents of police leaders' daily feedback-seeking behavior.

The authors used a diary study and examined error-management climate, feedback orientation and two situational characteristics, namely daily occasions for feedback-seeking and daily time pressure. Hierarchical linear modeling was used to analyze the N = 188 daily entries from 27 leaders (minimum of three daily entries per leader).

Results show that police leaders seldom seek daily feedback from their followers. A positive (i.e. learning-oriented) error-management climate and occasions for feedback-seeking foster leaders' daily feedback-seeking, whereas no main effects of feedback orientation and time pressure were found. However, time pressure moderated the relationship between occasions for feedback-seeking and daily feedback-seeking, with higher time pressure leading to a weaker relationship.

This is the first study empirically examining feedback-seeking as a key leadership behavior on a daily basis. The results show that organizational conditions promote leaders' feedback-seeking behavior and indicate organizations should foster an error-management climate to promote feedback-seeking of their leaders.

Mountbatten offers a vivid description of the current‐awareness function using the analogy of a very wide conveyor‐belt, representing the information publishers, on which books, periodicals and reports appear at random: ‘The searcher is on a platform just above the belt and as the information material passes underneath he can pick up and read anything that he thinks might be of interest to him. You can imagine his frustration as he realises that for every item he takes time to examine, hundreds of others of possible interest to him have passed by’. Personality and environment will determine whether the individual can find an intelligent compromise between the extremes of neurosis induced by worrying about the material he is missing, or complacency with any system which produces one or two interesting items.

This study aims to examine the extent to which external auditors (EAs) use the work of the internal audit function (IAF) based on the purpose of its primary activities. The authors rely on attribution theory, which suggests that individuals search for meaning when an event occurs. In this setting, the authors explore how the overall (assurance vs advisory) or specific (e.g. risk management and evaluating internal controls) focus of IAF activities influences perceived EA reliance on the IAF’s work.

The authors first explore the research question with data extracted from a broad, longitudinal survey conducted triennially by the national chapters of the Institute of Internal Auditors in Austria, Germany and Switzerland. The data includes responses from 2014, 2017 and 2020 administrations of the survey. The authors conduct a parallel survey with practicing EAs attending two training sessions of a European office of a global network firm. Hypotheses were tested using ordered logistic regression.

Among the chief audit executive (CAE) participants, the authors observe that a balanced or primarily assurance-related purpose of the IAF, relative to a primarily advisory-related purpose, is associated with higher perceived EA reliance. The authors observe similar perceptions of the extent of reliance among the EA participants.

With a unique data set of practicing internal auditors from three countries, coupled with a sample of EAs, to the best of the authors’ knowledge, this study is the first to examine differences in EA reliance across the IAF’s primary roles. The study relies on data from three European countries, which differs from prior EA reliance literature with a largely North American focus. Further, comparison between perceptions of EAs and CAEs is a novel approach and this paper’s findings suggest that perceptions of CAEs could be a reliable proxy for EA-intended behavior.