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The main purpose of this paper is to document the first author's experience of using institutional ethnography (IE) to “take sides” in healthcare research. The authors illustrate the points with data and key findings from a study of cardiovascular disease prevention.

The authors use Dorothy E Smith's IE approach, and particularly the theoretical tool of “standpoint”.

Starting with the development of the study, the authors trouble the researcher's positionality, highlighting tensions between institutional knowledge of “prevention” and other locations where knowledge about patients' health needs materialises. The authors outline how IE's theoretically and methodologically integrated toolkit became a framework for “taking sides” with patients. They describe how the researcher used IE to take a standpoint and map institutional relations from that standpoint. They argue that IE enabled an innovative analysis but also reflect on the challenges of conducting an IE – the conceptual unpicking and (re)thinking, and demarcating boundaries of investigation within an expansive dataset.

This paper illustrates IE's relevance for organisational ethnographers wishing to find a theoretically robust approach to taking sides, and suggests ways in which the IE approach might contribute to improving services, particularly healthcare. It provides an illustration of how taking a patient standpoint was accomplished in practice, and reflects on the challenges involved.

In this viewpoint article, the authors consider the challenges in implementing restrictive policies, with a particular focus on how these policies are experienced, in practice, from alternative standpoints.

The authors draw on social science studies of decommissioning work to highlight how patient and official versions of value often vary, creating difficulties and distrust as restrictive policies are implemented. Patients and the public are well aware that financial calculations are somehow embedded in concepts of “evidence” and “value” but are usually unfamiliar with the social infrastructures that produce and utilise such concepts. The authors discuss with reference to a contemporary restrictive programme in England.

While policymakers and researchers frequently present restrictive policies as “win-win” scenarios (achieving both cost-savings for healthcare services and improved patient care), social science analyses highlight the potential for tensions and controversies between stakeholders. The authors recognise that cost containment is a necessary component of policymaking work but argue that policymakers and researchers should seek to map (and make visible) the socially organised reasoning, systems and processes that are involved in enacting restrictive policies. Although transparency may pose challenges, it is important for informed democratic engagement, allowing legitimate scrutiny of whose voices are being heard and interests served (the “winners” and “losers”).

The authors argue for social science analyses that explore overuse, value and restrictive practices from alternative (e.g. patient) standpoints. These can provide important insights to help identify priorities for intervention and support better communication.

Approaches to quality improvement in healthcare based on clinical communities are founded in practitioner networks, peer influence and professional values. However, evidence for the value of this approach, and how to make it effective, is spread across multiple disciplines. The purpose of this paper is to review and synthesise relevant literature to provide practical lessons on how to use community‐based approaches to improve quality.

Diverse literatures were identified, analysed and synthesised in a manner that accounted for the heterogeneity of methods, models and contexts they covered.

A number of overlapping but distinct community‐based approaches can be identified in the literature, each suitable for different problems. The evidence for the effectiveness of these is mixed, but there is some agreement on the challenges that those adopting such approaches need to address, and how these can be surmounted.

Key lessons include: the need for co‐ordination and leadership alongside the lateral influence of peers; advantages of starting with a clear programme theory of change; the need for training and resources; dealing with conflict and marginalisation; fostering a sense of community; appropriate use of data in prompting behavioural change; the need for balance between “hard” and “soft” strategies; and the role of context.

The paper brings together diverse literatures with important implications for community‐based approaches to quality improvement, drawing on these to offer practical lessons for those engaged in improving healthcare quality in practice.

Nonexperts do not always follow the advice in cybersecurity warning messages. To increase compliance, it is recommended that warning messages use nontechnical language, describe how the cyberattack will affect the user personally and do so in a way that aligns with how the user thinks about cyberattacks. Implementing those recommendations requires an understanding of how nonexperts think about cyberattack consequences. Unfortunately, research has yet to reveal nonexperts’ thinking about cyberattack consequences. Toward that end, the purpose of this study was to examine how nonexperts think about cyberattack consequences.

Nonexperts sorted cyberattack consequences based on perceived similarity and labeled each group based on the reason those grouped consequences were perceived to be similar. Participants’ labels were analyzed to understand the general themes and the specific features that are present in nonexperts’ thinking.

The results suggested participants mainly thought about cyberattack consequences in terms of what the attacker is doing and what will be affected. Further, the results suggested participants thought about certain aspects of the consequences in concrete terms and other aspects of the consequences in general terms.

This research illuminates how nonexperts think about cyberattack consequences. This paper also reveals what aspects of nonexperts’ thinking are more or less concrete and identifies specific terminology that can be used to describe aspects that fall into each case. Such information allows one to align warning messages to nonexperts’ thinking in more nuanced ways than would otherwise be possible.

This chapter examines the everyday experiences of short women, focusing on the problems they face and the coping strategies used to navigate being short in a heightist society. Further, this chapter views height as a stigmatized identity, which both negatively and positively impacts short women.

Sixteen qualitative interviews were conducted with women 5′2″ and under.

Using the literature on stress, and coping models laid out by social psychologists, this chapter elucidates the unique place of short women in American society.

While there has been a wealth of literature on how short stature impacts men, research on how short stature impacts women has been scant.

In 2020, the Westminster Government proposed statutory provision prohibiting the use of ‘consent to serious harm for sexual gratification’ as a defence to criminal charges of violence. This addition to the Domestic Abuse bill was made in response to the 18 month campaign by We Can’t Consent To This and a cross party group of MPs, after rising numbers of homicides of women where the perpetrators claimed the woman asked for the violence, in ‘rough sex’, ‘gone wrong’.

This research is based on new data and detailed analysis on 67 non-fatal violent assaults and 24 homicides where the accused claimed that this violence was consensual, focussing on criminal cases in England and Wales over the 10 years from 2010. Some earlier cases are included for historical context and particularly where they became influential in later Criminal Justice System (CJS) outcomes. It addresses a shortage of data on the use of ‘consent’ claims in defence to charges of fatal and non-fatal violence, using keyword searches on historic news and legal archives and submissions from victims in criminal cases to establish the extent of these claims, the nature of the assaults claimed consensual, and to assess the CJS’s response to the claims.

This research – part of the evidence from We Can’t Consent To This which was considered by Government – set out the case for new law on consent defences to violence, despite there being existing common law in England and Wales. This research finds that the so-called ‘rough sex’ defences have been successful in deflecting prosecution for violence against women for decades, identifying failings at every stage of the CJS, in fatal and non-fatal violent assaults. Notably the women injured in these criminal cases do not agree that they consented to the violence, where they are able to take part in criminal proceedings. But still the claims that they did appear to have succeeded.

This research proposes that change in attitudes and outcomes is needed at every stage of the CJS, and, with the UK Government proposing to keep the criminal law on this ‘under review’, identifying where further provision in law or in practice may be needed.

Despite formal ethics education and ethics-related continuing professional education (CPE) requirements, professional accountants continue to play a central role in enabling corporations to make unethical business decisions and take unethical business actions. Several jurisdictions in the United States require ethics education for licensure, but often the focus is on memorizing rules and regulations, rather than on providing tools to improve the moral practice of professionals and to help them resolve ethical dilemmas. The authors analyzed recent state Certified Public Accountant (CPA) society course offerings and found much more emphasis on memorization than on ethical reasoning to satisfy State CPA CPE requirements. To improve accountants’ ethical awareness and behavior, CPE providers should stress ethical reasoning rather than merely memorizing rules. Such changes will make future and present accountants and auditors more ethically aware, and thus more likely to improve their ethical decision-making. Nonetheless, the authors suggest that effective ethics education and training should start in the classroom with help from departmental advisory councils. Ethics courses offered in accounting programs as well as those offered by CPE providers can leverage the experience of members of advisory councils to create programs that resonate with professionals and foster lifelong ethical awareness and ethical reasoning skills.

A narrative review of existing research literature was conducted to identify practices that are likely to improve the quality of de-escalation and use-of-force training for police officers.

Previous reviews of de-escalation and use-of-force training literature were examined to identify promising training practices, and more targeted literature searches of various databases were undertaken to learn more about the potential impact of each practice on a trainee's ability to learn, retain, and transfer their training. Semi-structured interviews with five subject matter experts were also conducted to assess the degree to which they believed the identified practices were relevant to de-escalation and use-of-force training, and would enhance the quality of such training.

Twenty practices emerged from the literature search. Each was deemed relevant and useful by the subject matter experts. These could be mapped on to four elements of training: (1) commitment to training (e.g. securing organizational support for training), (2) development of training (e.g. aligning training formats with learning objectives), (3) implementation of training (e.g. providing effective corrective feedback) and (4) evaluation and ongoing assessment of training (e.g. using multifaceted evaluation tools to monitor and modify training as necessary).

This review of training practices that may be relevant to de-escalation and use-of-force training is the broadest one conducted to date. The review should prompt more organized attempts to quantify the effectiveness of the training practices (e.g. through meta-analyses), and encourage more focused testing in a police training environment to determine their impact.

The purpose of this paper is to identify predictors of charlatan behaviour and investigate relationships among the construct and other variables like: trust in management, organisational commitment, turnover intention, supervisory support, job performance and some job characteristics in Botswana and Swaziland.

Data were collected using self‐administered questionnaires in this survey. Usable questionnaires were received from a total of 484 respondents. Respondents were from public and private sector. Five hypotheses were tested.

Result shows a strong and significant inverse relationship between charlatan behaviour and trust on the one hand and a direct significant relationship with continuance commitment on the other. Supervisory support, employee participation and goal clarity were also significantly albeit inversely correlated with charlatan behaviour but not so with all other study variables. The significant predictors of charlatan behaviour were trust in management and continuance commitment.

The predictor variables for charlatan behaviour in this study were few and the sample is heavily skewed towards the public sector. Future studies would benefit from looking at how co‐worker trust and ethical behaviour scales would relate to charlatan behaviour, as well as cross‐cultural and multi‐cultural comparison.

Deliberate management policies that build trust, identify and tackle charlatan behaviour during selection and performance evaluation while sustaining employee commitment is vital. So is dealing with the potential problems posed by charlatans especially the possibility of upsetting and demotivating other sincere and committed employees.

The paper re‐awakens a new task for HR practitioners and researchers: that of identifying organisational charlatans. Also striving to create sustained commitment while building trust and segregating (or incorporating where possible) charlatans.