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Studies report that frontline employees frequently discriminate against overweight customers, a group of vulnerable consumers that is growing worldwide. However, because most discrimination by frontline employees is covert, the authors ask whether overweight customers perceive discrimination and what influences this perception. Drawing on field theory, this paper aims to investigate how two environment factors (frontline employee overweight and frontline employees’ neutral treatment of other customers) and two person factors (customer pre-encounter affect and self-esteem) influence customer-perceived weight discrimination.

In a pilot study and three experimental studies, the authors examine the impact of covert discrimination of overweight customers by frontline employees on customers’ perception of discrimination and the influencing effects of environment and person factors. Hypotheses are tested using regression analysis.

The authors find that overweight customers perceive covert weight discrimination by frontline employees. Frontline employee overweight mitigates the effect of covert discrimination, and (state and trait) self-esteem amplifies this effect. Frontline employees’ neutral treatment of other customers is insignificant. Customer (state and trait) negative affect directly increases customer-perceived discrimination independent of covert discrimination.

While extant research focuses on marketplace discrimination triggers and consequences, the perspective of the discriminated customer and what influences his or her perception of covert discrimination has attracted much less attention. Moreover, research rarely addresses overweight as a discrimination trigger. As environment and person influences frequently shape service encounters, the authors contribute novel and relevant insights to the literature. This is of high value, especially in light of the harmful consequences marketplace discrimination entails for customers and service firms.

Money laundering poses significant challenges for policymakers and law-enforcement authorities. The money-laundering phenomenon is often acknowledged as a type of “serious and organised crime” yet has traditionally been described as a complicated three-stage process, involving the “placement, layering and integration” of criminal proceeds. This article aims to reexamine the money-laundering concept within the realm of organised crime and critique its legal underpinnings.

This paper explores how criminal actors collude in organised money-laundering schemes to circumvent laws and frustrate the efforts of officials, while advancing the regulatory-spatial paradigms of which organised money launderers operate. In doing so, it reframes the debate towards the “who” and “where” of money laundering.

This paper argues that authorities’ efforts to combat money laundering relies on rigid legal definitions and flawed ideals that fail to address the money-laundering problem.

There has been little scholarly debate that questions the fundamental approach to conceptualising money laundering. This paper proposes a new approach to combating money laundering that better incorporates the actors involved in money laundering and the spaces in which it occurs.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the interplay of organizational humorous teasing and workplace bullying in hospital work life in order to investigate how workplace bullying can emerge from doctors and nurses experiences of what, at first, appears as “innocent” humorous interactions.

Based on an ethnographic field study among doctors and nurses at Rigshospitalet (University Hospital of Copenhagen, Denmark) field notes, transcriptions from two focus groups and six in-depth interviews were analyzed using a cross-sectional thematic analysis.

This study demonstrates how bullying may emerge out of a distinctive joking practice, in which doctors and nurses continually relate to one another with a pronounced degree of derogatory teasing. The all-encompassing and omnipresent teasing entails that the positions of perpetrator and target persistently change, thereby excluding the position of bystander. Doctors and nurses report that they experience the humiliating teasing as detrimental, although they feel continuously forced to participate because of the fear of otherwise being socially excluded. Consequently, a concept of “fluctuate bullying” is suggested wherein nurses and doctors feel trapped in a “double bind” position, being constrained to bully in order to avoid being bullied themselves.

The present study add to bullying research by exploring and demonstrating how workplace bullying can emerge from informal social power struggles embedded and performed within ubiquitous humorous teasing interactions.

This paper aims to provide a comprehensive review of literature on policing money laundering to evaluate the quality of evidence presented in academic and grey literature. In doing so, this paper reflects upon what strategies and mechanisms work in preventing, detecting and disrupting money laundering.

To investigate the quality of evidence presented in academic and grey literature on money laundering, the authors have conducted a structured literature review of over 1,000 sources. The authors have then evaluated the quality of evidence of these sources by using three distinct methods, namely, the Maryland scale, research excellence framework and quality of empirical evidence framework.

This paper finds a large number of studies on money laundering meeting the highest academic quality standard. However, only a very small number of those studies include empirical evidence that policing measures actually work with no study able to demonstrate a correlation between money laundering measures and risk factors at any point in time.

This paper provides practical and theoretical insights into what works in money laundering and the role of scientific evaluations. It is particularly relevant for the successful implementation of anti-money laundering policy measures, including, for example, the UK’s Economic Crime Plan 2023–2026, which aspires to measure the progress and impact of policing in this area.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the feasibility of the adaptive reuse of a particular case study, and the evaluation of it within the context of international research done on similar projects. It aims to highlight the reuse potential of industrial structures by private developers, and the financial, environmental and social advantages that they could hold.

A literature review that explores these themes is followed by the post-occupancy analysis of the case study. Data were gathered primarily through interviews with key role players in the project, site visits and an analysis of the relevant project documentation.

While there are a number of international examples of the reuse of power stations in particular, these are mostly on a large scale, dependent mostly on government funding, lottery funding and donations and generally stripped of most of their machinery. The case study is a smaller-scale example which demonstrates that a project of this nature can be entirely funded by a private developer, that it can be sustainable and that it can be done while keeping most of the original machinery in place. The case study confirms a number of findings that are revealed in current research in the field, and it also shows the relative advantages of adaptive reuse when compared to new-build projects.

There is fairly limited information and published research about adaptive reuse, especially in South Africa, so the paper builds on international knowledge on the subject while exposing a suitable local example. It is hoped that the study will not only lead to further research and post-occupancy analysis of similar projects in South Africa in particular, but also support international research that indicates the feasibility of adaptive reuse.

The Thesen Islands power station (or the Turbine Hotel as it is now known) could potentially be used as a precedent for similar redevelopments, and it could shed some light on the opportunities and constraints related to the management of fixed engineering assets.

This paper aims to critically explore the challenges facing the UK in implementing registers of beneficial owners, a measure mandated by the EU’s anti-money laundering (AML) directive to enhance beneficial ownership transparency.

This study systematically reviews the literature surrounding beneficial ownership transparency to critically analyse the extent to which challenges facing the UK, impact upon its ability to successfully implement registers of beneficial owners.

This study demonstrates that a lack of beneficial ownership transparency facilitates money laundering by concealing corrupt wealth and frustrating authorities’ efforts to trace illicit finance. It demonstrates that implementing registers of beneficial owners may be a superficial approach to tackling the multifaceted problem of money laundering. Better intergovernmental cooperation is required to improve beneficial ownership transparency and to ensure measures to curb offshore money laundering are successful.

This research focuses on one aspect of AML control from the UK’s perspective. Further work is needed to investigate the concerns from the perspective of offshore jurisdictions and how global AML rule affects developing economies.

The study informs policymakers and other professionals implementing the UK’s registers of beneficial owners to enhance future strategies and better combat offshore money laundering.

This is the only study to explore the challenges facing the UK in implementing registers of beneficial owners, thus providing novel insight into the moral, legal and practical dilemmas to imposing AML control.

This study aims to provide a critical overview of freeports’ trading operations and consider to what extent they may present a money-laundering and tax-evasion risk.

This study reviews the literature surrounding freeports and offers an up-to-date narrative of their potential money-laundering and tax-evasion activities. The paper relies on secondary data from published sources referencing peer-reviewed papers and “grey-literature” material relating to freeports, offshore finance and anti-money laundering control.

This study demonstrates the attractive trading advantages offered by freeports to enable enterprise and innovation. However, the study reveals that the secretive offshore space in which freeports operate also helps to obscure beneficial ownership and illicit trade-based practices that frustrate authorities’ efforts to trace laundered monies and recover government taxes. Despite freeports’ trade offerings, stronger regulation is needed to prevent them from being abused for money-laundering and tax-evasion purposes.

This study provides an important insight into the money-laundering and tax-evasion risks presented by freeports and, in doing so, advances the contemporary debate on illicit activities occurring through offshore jurisdictions.

Many national retailers have complained about increases in business rates tax bills since the 2017 revaluation. What impact has the 2017 business rates revaluation had on independent high street retailers in market towns in the north of England? The paper aims to discuss these issues.

The study uses Valuation Office Agency rating list data to determine rateable value and business rates payable for independent high street retailers in eight northern market towns either side of the 2017 rating revaluation. The data were analysed using business rates matrices to reveal the impact of the new rating list on independent retailers in the eight locations.

Analysis reveals that the majority of independent retailers in the northern market towns sampled have experienced reductions in both the rateable value of their premises and business rates payable. Increase in the rates relief threshold has extended relief to almost half of the independent retailers in the study, most of whom receive 100 per cent relief.

Charity shops receive at least 80 per cent rates relief which means they are able to afford to pay higher rents. This “sets the tone” for landlords setting market rents in that location which are then used as comparable evidence by the VOA when determining rateable values at revaluation further polarising the gap between rate payers and those to are exempt.

Focussing on independent retailers on high streets in markets towns in north of England, this study provides an alternative perspective to the orthodox view of business rates revaluations having a negative impact on retailers.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the impact of the introduction of the business rates retention scheme (BRRS) in England which transferred financial liability for backdated appeals to LAs. Under the original scheme, business rates revenue, mandatory relief and liability for successful appeals is spilt 50/50 between central government and local government which both share the rewards of growth and bear the risk of losses.

The research adopts a microanalysis approach into researching local government finance, conducting a case study of Leeds, to investigate the impact of appeals liability and reveal disparities in impact, through detailed examination of multiple perspectives in one of the largest cities in the UK.

The case study reveals that Leeds, despite having a buoyant commercial economy driven by retail and service sector growth, has been detrimentally impacted by BRRS as backdated appeals have outweighed uplift in business rates income. Fundamentally BRRS is not a “one size fits all” model – it results in winners and losers – which will be exacerbated if local authorities get to keep 100 per cent of their business rates from 2020.

LAs’ income is more volatile as a consequence of both the rates retention and appeals liability aspects of BRRS and will become more so with the move to 100 per cent retention and liability.

Such volatility impairs the ability of local authorities to invest in growth at the same time as providing front line services over the medium term – precisely the opposite of what BRRS was intended to do. It also incentivises the construction of new floorspace, which generates risks overbuilding and exacerbating over-supply.

The research reveals the significant impact of appeals liability on LAs’ business rates revenues which will be compounded with the move to a fiscally neutral business rates system and 100 per cent business rates retention by 2020.