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The purpose of this paper is to consider the potential utility for higher educational institutions, and in particular libraries, of the balanced scorecard (BSC) performance measurement tool, originally developed by Kaplan and Norton for use in businesses and since adapted for the public and non‐profit sectors.

The relevant literature was reviewed to ascertain key aspects and functionalities of the BSC framework, survey implementations and determine perceptions of the system's effectiveness and weaknesses, and – while the BSC has as yet been put into practice only infrequently in libraries – treat its appropriateness for information service.

The BSC supplements financial accounting with non‐financial leading indicators to link performance drivers and outcome measures in cause and effect relationships that can predict future performance and drive a single organizational strategy. Also intended as a straightforward reporting “dashboard” revealing whether improvements in one area have been at the expense of another, the BSC is considered more effective as an aid in forecasting the overall health of an organization than traditional accounting‐based models. It provides a capacity to monitor obligations to stakeholders and to produce transparent and reliable financial information, and the resulting internal control environment can promote integrity and ethical values.

Academic libraries may find the BSC a useful approach in determining service value, in demonstrating fiscal responsibility, and – through metrics focused on organizational goals and strategy – in validating their role, as knowledge‐based and networked environments, in the delivery of a quality educational product to their customers.

3D-printed devices proved their efficacy across different clinical applications, helping personalize medical treatments. This paper aims to present the procedure for the design and production of patient-specific dynamic simulators of the human knee. The scope of these simulators is to improve surgical outcomes, investigate the motion and load response of the human knee and standardize in-vitro experiments for testing orthopedic devices through a personalized physical representation of the patient’s joint.

This paper tested the approach on three volunteers. For each, a patient-specific mathematical joint model was defined from an magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) of the knee. The model guided the CAD design of the simulators, which was then realized through stereolithography printing. Manufacturing accuracy was tested by quantifying the differences between 3D-printed and CAD geometry. To assess the simulator functionality, its motion was measured through a stereophotogrammetric system and compared with the natural tibio-femoral motion of the volunteers, measured as a sequence of static MRI.

The 3D-printing accuracy was very high, with average differences between ideal and printed parts below ± 0.1 mm. However, the assembly of different 3D-printed parts resulted in a higher average error of 0.97 mm and peak values of 2.33 mm. Despite that, the rotational and translational accuracy of the simulator was about 5° and 4 mm, respectively.

Although improvements in the production process are needed, the proposed simulators successfully replicated the individual articular behavior. The proposed approach is general and thus extendible to other articulations.

This paper aims to examine the European Union (EU) 95/2014 Directive’s impact on large public companies. It chose Italy as a pivotal country that made non-financial information assurance mandatory, going beyond the EU Directive’s original requirements. Specifically, it investigates how the UE Directive fosters institutionalisation of the non-financial reporting (NFR) process in organisations.

Two large public companies in Italy are used as case studies. Data are gathered from annual and integrated reports, institutional websites and semi-structured interviews with the managers and employees involved in different organisational positions. The authors adopted the neo-institutional theory as a theoretical lens to identify the organisations’ response to the (external) institutional pressures influencing corporate reporting practices.

The findings demonstrate how the EU Directive fostered changes to large public companies’ reporting practices and external pressures contributed to influencing changes to internal organisational practices in terms of new internal processes, procedures and structures. These changes are motivated by the companies’ need to guarantee reliable information to be produced in their non-financial reports.

This paper helps academics and policymakers to advance NFR practices by understanding regulatory factors that can foster changes in the internal reporting process and responsibility within organisations.

The findings provide some empirical insights to foster reflections on the EU Directive’s effectiveness in changing reporting practices. This paper contributes to enriching the literature on institutional theory in shaping mandatory non-financial disclosure by identifying the institutional pressures influencing the effectiveness of regulations to change NFR practices.

As neoliberal reforms take hold in the vocational education and training (VET) sector in Australia, there is renewed interest in the quality of teaching practice. However, despite the value of practitioner inquiry to the quality of teaching in schools, scholarly practice in higher education, and established links between the quality of teaching and outcomes for learners and between practice-based inquiry and pedagogic innovation in VET, the practices has received little attention. The purpose of this paper is to explore the value of a college-wide culture of scholarly activity to learners, enterprises, VET institutions, educators and the national productivity agenda.

Drawing on the education literature, empirical examples of scholarly activity drawn from the authors’ experiences of working with VET practitioners, this paper asks what constitutes research and inquiry in VET, why should these practices be integral to educative practice and what value do they bring to the sector? In addressing the questions, the authors explore how research and inquiry is defined in the literature and draw on three empirical examples of scholarly activities to provide a national, institutional and individual view. A discussion about the value of scholarly activities to VET stakeholders and how the practices might be fostered and sustained concludes the paper.

The paper concludes that practice-based scholarly activities in VET cultivate rich potential for renewed and innovative pedagogies that improve outcomes for learners, respond to industry demands for innovative skills, build “pedagogic capital” for VET institutions, enrich the knowledge base of policy makers and build resilience and professionalism. The authors conclude by positioning VET educators as scholars in their own right along a continuum of scholarly activity and posing the proposition that when valued, scholarly activities are practices for new times that will build a strong and vibrant profession for the future.

This paper brings together the authors’ experiences of working with VET practitioners as the authors engage in scholarly activities. While each vignette was drawn from a formal research project in each case, the paper itself was not structured around a formal research activity, although a small survey was undertaken for vignette 1. This poses limitations to the findings of the study. However, the purpose of the paper is not to be conclusive but to forward an argument for more scholarly activity in VET in order to promote further research and debate.

This paper contributes to the current debate in Australia about the quality of teaching in VET and the sectors’ capability to produce “work-ready” graduates. It brings to the fore the value of scholarly activity for educators, learners, industry and communities, VET institutions and the broader national innovation agenda. As such, it has relevance to all VET stakeholders, most particularly policy makers, leaders and practitioners in VET.

Postdoctoral scholars are increasingly pursuing diverse career paths requiring broad skill sets. This study aims to create a more comprehensive understanding of current approaches and strategies for postdoctoral scholars professional learning and development.

This literature review is a systematic examination and synthesis of the current literature describing professional learning and development pertaining to postdoctoral scholars. The objectives and components of initiatives were extracted and narratively synthesized to identity important patterns and themes across the literature.

Commonalities amongst professional learning and development initiatives for postdoctoral scholars included skills development in the following areas: teaching and learning, mentorship, academic careers, academic writing, industry careers, networking, career planning, project management, time management, communication, leadership and balancing work-life demands.

In synthesizing the literature that describes professional learning and development opportunities for postdoctoral scholars, it is apparent that opportunities look different in every setting with no empirical evidence that one strategy is more effective than another. Given the significant resources often required to support professional learning and development initiatives, a deeper understanding of the benefits and deficiencies of various components is needed to ensure scarce resources are invested in the most effective strategies.

Public procurement activities have long been treated as a minor subset of industrial or business-to-business buying. Consequently, the literature reports sparse research on the nature of government buying or how commercial firms can successfully market to the government. While this lack of research may not have been critical with respect to traditional public buying, recent procurement reforms and new contracting arrangements suggest our knowledge of business-to-business buying is inadequate with respect to the new environment of public buying and government/business relationships. One important and unique issue is how to handle the relationship with business suppliers during the contract implementation process. This paper proposes a taxonomy of government/business relationships as an organizing framework for understanding the complexities of buyer-seller relationships in government contract implementation. Archival case studies provide illustrations and justification for the taxonomy.

This paper aims to examine the differences in expenditure and satisfaction level between first-time and repeat spectators to a motor sport event, as well as differences in their intention to return and to recommend the host destination.

A structured questionnaire was developed and data were collected on-site during the 2012 Federation Internationale de l’Automobile (FIA) World Rally Championship (WRC) in Sardinia via 210 interviews. A series of descriptive analysis, independent t-tests, chi-square tests and regression analysis were run for the purposes of the study.

Findings showed first-timers spend more and are more satisfied than repeaters, even if no significant differences were reported. Repeaters reported to be more willing to return and to recommend, with significant differences, only in the intention to return.

The study is based on a convenience sample of a relatively small size, and it might be influenced by the idiosyncratic characteristics of the location. Further, it does not consider the mediating effect that the budget of spectators and their travel/event career ladder can exert over their behaviour.

Destination marketers and event organizers need to run their marketing operations to renew their customer mix and/or to increase the standard level of quality to be delivered to repeaters. Further, their marketing and communication strategy should be personalized, and incentives should be given to encourage both groups to purchase multiple products simultaneously.

The paper adds to the growing, and often still inconsistent, research aiming to compare first-timers’ and repeat visitors’ behaviours by offering insights from the context of motor sport events, where no published paper exist so far.

The purpose of this paper is to present a professional development experience for higher education academic staff within the framework of an international Tempus project focused on reorienting university curricula to address sustainability. The project included revising curricula to phase sustainable development principles into university courses.

A qualitative approach was used to examine perceived professional development. Focus groups have been conducted with the academic staff who participated in the project.

The results provided evidence that revising their curricula offered the participants an opportunity to discuss different principles, teaching methods, didactic processes and practices in Education for Sustainable Development (ESD). Several strategies emerged during curricula revision such as a positive attitude towards meta-cognitive strategies and a goal-oriented approach to curriculum planning. Moreover, the project induced the academic staff to reconsider their teaching methods.

The main limitation is the restricted generalisability of the findings, because of the small number of participants. Further research is needed to confirm the theoretical model that emerged. Implications of the results for professional development and the induction of change in academic staff are also discussed.

There is little information about training experiences for enhancing professional development in academic staff using ESD principles, and this study provides a starting point. According to the results, the project had an impact on the participants’ attitudes, teaching principles and methods, course design skills and assessment approaches.

This article provides a comprehensive look at suitability rules, first in the traditional brokerage context and then in terms of their application to online brokerages in general. It outlines the arguments made by the online brokerages to differentiate their world from traditional broker‐dealers, and offers hypothetical scenarios in which suitability concepts may apply in the online brokerage setting. The authors suggest that online brokerages should be allowed time to determine the appropriate rules in light of how the technology itself evolves over the next several years.