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This paper aims to explore trade policy measures taken in response to COVID-19 and analyses in detail their extent and nature. It assesses their compatibility with World Trade Organisation (WTO) agreements: specifically, whether they were necessary and justifiable efforts to protect the security and health of populations and asks how this widespread recourse to trade barriers may impact on international business?

This paper analyses an extensive database from the International Trade Centre of trade measures taken in response to COVID-19. It differentiates by type of country, nature and coverage of measures (imports or exports, type of product…). On the basis of existing jurisprudence, this paper analyses whether restrictive measures were likely to be judged legal under WTO rules.

This paper finds that, although the majority of trade measures are probably justifiable, there were nevertheless many measures whose coverage and/or nature was such that a justification under existing WTO exceptions is, at the very least, arguable. Such widespread and intense instigation of potentially WTO incompatible measures in such a short period of time undoubtedly undermines the global trade rules on which international business has relied for decades.

There is little existing analysis of the legality of measures taken under the security exceptions and no substantial analyses of the measures taken in response to COVID-19. Furthermore, little scholarly attention has been paid to the impacts on international business of the increasing use of WTO “exceptions” to justify trade measures to protect national industries and populations.

The Hospital Consumer Assessment of Healthcare Providers and Systems (HCAHPS) has been recognized as a “gold standard” set of “practical standardized measures” for assessing hospital service quality. Beginning with the HCAHPS, the purpose of this paper is to extend efforts to assess patient-centered communication (PCC) and the quality of healthcare and presents a scale for measuring patient perceptions and expectations of service quality in an emerging economy context.

A self-administered survey of patients in private hospitals (N = 171) was conducted to test the proposed framework. Exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses were used to establish the measurement model. Multiple regression analysis was used to explain the scale's predictive ability. ANOVA was used to analyze service quality gaps and rank patients' priorities.

Five components of PCC are identified. Among these, nurse affective communication has a significant positive effect on patient satisfaction. The gap analysis shows that patients have high expectations for doctors' affective communication, while they perceive a low level of service performance in the realm of nurse affective communication. The study highlights a new means of measuring “reliability” in healthcare. Important findings on patients' priorities are evaluated and discussed.

Healthcare organizations and practitioners can improve patient-centered care by stressing the dimensions of PCC, including clinicians' affective and instrumental communication.

The study expands the understanding of HCAHPS instruments in an emerging economy context and opens avenues for more widespread use of the measures. The research contributes to the literature on patient-centered care and healthcare service quality by proposing a scale for managing specific practices and interactions in healthcare.

Since its initial development, numerous mental health literacy (MHL) definitions and associated measures have been created which have yet to be adequately evaluated. This paper aims to evaluate the psychometric properties of global MHL measures with the aim of identifying the most valid, reliable, responsive and interpretable measure.

A systematic review was conducted of studies that evaluated global MHL measures against at least one of the COnsensus-based Standards for the selection of health Measurement INstruments (COSMIN) taxonomy properties; validity, reliability, responsivity or interpretability.

In total, 13 studies were identified which examined the psychometric properties of 7 MHL measures. Two of these seven measures were vignette format and the remaining five measures were questionnaires. The mental health promoting knowledge-10 and the multicomponent mental health literacy measure were the most psychometrically robust global MHL measures as they had the most psychometric properties rated as adequate. Both were shown to have adequate structural validity, internal consistency and construct validity. The two vignette measures, the MHL tool for the workplace and the vignette MHL measure, were both shown to only have adequate evidence for construct validity.

The current study is the first to systematically review research that evaluated the psychometric properties of global measures of MHL.

For many years management accountants have been involved in the design of information systems for decision-making. To be effective in system design, accountants need pertinent and reliable performance measures within a valid framework. The Balanced Scorecard (BSC) has received a great deal of attention as a comprehensive model of performance that takes into account both financial and non-financial measures. This paper examines the empirical reliability and validity of the BSC framework and its associated measures. With reference to content validity, internal consistency reliability, and factorial validity, results show that BSC, with measures grouped into its four dimensions, is a valid performance model.

Previous studies have called for better reliability and validity of BSC measures. The present study may help in the design and implementation of BSCs in business units by adding robustness to the BSC framework, and by suggesting a set of valid measures associated with the four BSC dimensions. The results may lead to reduced costs of BSC design and implementation, and enhanced consistency of future studies of the BSC.

The COVID-19 pandemic has forced billions of people into lockdown; foregrounding the important relationship between architecture and health. In this context, there is heightened urgency for the construction sector to improve the healthiness of buildings. Accordingly, the research identifies the feasibility of measuring various building health indicators (BHIs) through the use of a building information management (BIM) model. The research seeks to find optimal strategies for integrating the near ubiquitous use of BIM with a range of health indicators related to building design.

A systematic literature review was undertaken to identify potential BHIs for use in BIM models. The research then undertook a Delphi technique in order to test the hypothesis. In total, three rounds of questionnaire-based surveys were undertaken with expert participants.

The research identifies three different levels of BIM complexity in order to achieve the integration of health indicators. The most simple strategy suggests BHI can be directly measured using existing BIM models; the next level of sophistication requires “plug-in” software to BIM models; the final level would require additional sensors and detectors in a “smart” building.

The research is significant for users of BIM, building designers, public health advisors, construction professionals, healthcare providers, social prescribers, architects and clients.

The integration of BHI into the architectural design process is an important step towards the construction sector improving health and well-being. The research provides for the first time a rigorous identification of the most viable mechanisms through which BIM may be used to measure the healthiness of a building.

The occurrence of fire accidents in hospital buildings has become a serious challenge and more serious in developing nations. The purpose of this paper intends to assess fire safety measures in Nigerian hospital facilities. The significance of this study is to ensure that the design and construction of hospital facilities enhance the safety of users and properties.

The data were collected via a case study and questionnaire survey and administered to the facility users. The study survey is to assess the respondents' perception of fire safety measures in hospital facilities and suggest possible policy measures that will be employed to enhance safety.

This paper found that 91% of the respondents have awareness of fire safety measures in hospital facilities. Electrical faults and combustible materials were identified as the frequent causes of fire occurrences in hospital facilities. This can be averted where flammable materials and electrical appliances are correctly installed, and safety rules enforced. Findings show that safety rules are lax in public than standard private hospitals.

This paper is limited to fire safety measures in Nigerian healthcare facilities. Future research is needed to evaluate the level of compliance from design, construction and post-construction of precautionary fire safety measures in hospital facilities in Nigeria.

This paper recommended that designers and hospital administrators should improve on fire safety measures via the development of fire safety management plan and education. Thus, enforcement of fire safety measures in hospital facilities as specified in building codes should be implemented and monitored during and after the design of the hospital buildings. Findings provide valuable lessons on how to improve the fire safety measures in healthcare facilities across the states and other developing countries with similar healthcare situations.

This paper demonstrates that the stakeholders, especially government agencies concern with approval and enforcement of fire safety measures in healthcare facilities need to reawaken to her responsibility because of the lax implementation across the states.

This study aims to explore how social networks could be used in the measurement of transactive memory systems (TMS) or other team constructs and provide motivation for future analyses of TMS measurement.

TMSs describe the structures and processes that teams use to share information, work together and accomplish shared goals. This paper proposes the use of social network analysis in measuring TMS. This is accomplished by describing the creation and administration of a TMS network instrument and evaluating the relation of the proposed network measures, previous measures of TMS and performance.

Findings include that proposed network measures perform similarly to previously proposed, frequently used measures of TMS.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is among the first papers to propose network measures for the evaluation of TMS.

The purpose of this paper is to develop and subsequently validate a Maqasid al-Shari’ah-based performance evaluation model for Islamic banks.

Initially, a comprehensive review of the existing and relevant literature is carried out and a prototype evaluation model has been developed. This has been augmented and refined through in-depth interviews of Shari’ah scholars and banking experts. Afterwards, the modified model has been validated by taking inputs from academics and Islamic banking practitioners through a focus group discussion.

The major outcome of the present work is a Maqasid al-Shari’ah-based performance evaluation model for Islamic banks. At the inception of the work, the Maqasid frameworks of Imam al-Ghazali and Abu Zahrah were combined. The combined model incorporates various dimensions, elements and the corresponding measures of three components, namely, justice, education and maslahah.

Not being able to test the model statistically or empirically can be considered as a limitation.

The comprehensive theoretical framework of the developed model addresses all aspects of human well-being. Thus, if implemented the model will ensure welfare for all the stakeholders. It will also encourage the regulators to introduce new reporting standards which will be more reflective of Maqasid al-Shari’ah.

Fulfilling Maqasid will create a positive brand image for Islamic banks, which will attract more customers both Muslims and non-Muslims. Thus, this will create a wider scope for earning more revenues.

There has been concern that Islamic banks are converging towards conventional banking systems and the same performance measure instrument is being used to evaluate the performance of both Islamic and conventional banks. The present work has developed a Maqasid al-Shari’ah-based performance evaluation model for Islamic banks.

The purpose of this paper is to present a business process measurement framework for the evaluation of a corpus of business processes modelled in different business process modelling approaches. The results of the application of the proposed measurement framework will serve as a basis for choosing business process modelling approaches.

The approach uses ideas of the goal question metric framework to define metrics for measuring a business process where the metrics answer the questions to achieve the goal. The weighted sum method (WSM) is used to aggregate the measure of attributes of a business process to derive an aggregate measure, and business process modelling approaches are compared based on the evaluation of business process models created in different business process modelling approaches using the aggregate measure.

The proposed measurement framework was applied to a corpus of business process models in different business process modelling approaches and is showed that insight is gained into the effect of business process modelling approach on the maintainability of a business process model. From the results, business process modelling approaches which imbibed the principle of separation of concerns of models, make use of reference or base model for a family of business process variants and promote the reuse of model elements performed highest when their models are evaluated with the proposed measurement framework. The results showed that the applications of the proposed framework proved to be useful for the selection of business process modelling approaches.

The novelty of this work is in the application of WSM to integrate metric of business process models and the evaluation of a corpus of business process models created in different business process modelling approaches using the aggregate measure.

The purpose of this paper is to develop a guide for managing the provision of on-campus student housing facilities (SHFs) security and safety measures.

This study adopted a mixed-method approach; the questionnaire was used as an instrument to collect quantitative data, whereas the interview was used to collect qualitative data. Descriptive and inferential statistics and importance-performance analysis models were used to analyse the quantitative data, whereas content analysis was used for the qualitative data.

This study found that students rated the satisfaction of all the SHFs safety and security measures below the level of importance. Three categories of performance level (i.e. poor, average and good) were determined. It also became evident that most of the measures were performing averagely, quite a number were poorly performing and few were performing well.

Data was collected from only one university; therefore, the findings of the research may not be generalised. A study that expands the number of participating universities is recommended.

The guide developed can be used by the facility and/or hostel managers to ensure appropriate management of SHFs security and safety measures. The guide can also assist to ensure that all the essential safety measures are provided when designing, constructing or upgrading SHFs. It would also aid in the development of policy frameworks for SHFs security and safety.

Although several studies have been conducted on SHFs, studies that mainly focussed on prioritising SHFs security and safety measures are lacking. With this paper, the authors also demonstrate the practicality of the use of the IPA model to aid the process of developing improvement priorities.