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The purpose of this paper is to provide a detailed account of the “Views from the Frontline” and “Frontline” methodologies, which underpinned the case studies presented in this issue.

A participant observer account of the development of the methods, leading to a critical discussion of their deployment and impact and a concluding discussion of further work required.

The study found that iterative development of the programmes had improved their ability to gather and analyse local experience, knowledge and priorities concerning risk and resilience, but raised a concern over the means by which this information was able to achieve necessary political influence.

This technical paper is a first assessment of the underlying method and application of “Views from the Frontline” and “Frontline” and benefits from the participant observer status of the authors. More work is required on the underlying questions concerning qualitative vs quantitatitive methods, and on the means of achieving political impact from the work.

The aim of this paper is to investigate the feasibility of using the core conflictual relationship theme (CCRT) method, used to assess relationship patterns and interpersonal schemas, within a small group of men who had intellectual and developmental disabilities (IDD). The relationship anecdote paradigm interview, with minor adaptation, was used to collect material from participants necessary to generate a CCRT. CCRTs formulated in the study are described and consideration is given to the potential clinical application of CCRT method in this patient group.

A small sample of four men with IDD was taken from a medium-low secure forensic service. Initial interviews, necessary to elicit narrative anecdotes for CCRT formulation, were conducted at the start of a psychotherapeutic treatment study. Trained judges completed a CCRT formulation for each participant.

Participants in the study were able to provide personal information necessary to formulate a CCRT. Unexpected common themes were shared in participants who had committed contact sexual offences, this differed from a participant with autistic spectrum disorder who had committed a non-contact sexual offence. The CCRT method can be feasibly used in a mild IDD population. The CCRT method is clinically relevant and provides an opportunity for the exploration of clinical micro-theories related to interpersonal schemas found in offenders who have IDD.

This is the first study, to our knowledge, reporting results of the CCRT method with adults who have mild intellectual disabilities.

This paper aims to review the latest management developments across the globe and pinpoint practical implications from cutting-edge research and case studies.

This briefing is prepared by an independent writer who adds their own impartial comments and places the articles in context.

Using financial and non-financial indicators in combination represents the most effective approach to identifying emerging problems within companies.

The briefing saves busy executives, strategists and researchers hours of reading time by selecting only the very best, most pertinent information and presenting it in a condensed and easy-to-digest format.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the relationship of financial ratios and non-financial factors of successful and failed corporations in the USA. Specifically, the authors provide evidence on whether financial ratios and non-financial factors can be jointly included as indicators to improve the predictive capacity of organisational success or failure in different countries and sectors.

The paper utilises a mixed method exploratory case study focussing on listed corporations in the US and Australian manufacturing, agriculture, finance and property sectors.

The financial ratio findings demonstrate that (with the exception of the failed Australian manufacturing sector) the integrated multi-measure (IMM) ratio approach consistently provides a higher classification rate for the failed and successful groups than those provided by an individual measure. In all cases the IMM method scored higher for US companies (with the exception of the failed Australian property sector). The findings also show that irrespective of the country location or sector, non-financial factors such as board composition and managements’ involvement in organisational strategy impact on a corporation’s success or failure.

The findings reveal that non-financial factors occur prior to financial ratios when attempting to predict organisational success or failure and the IMM approach enables a more thorough examination of the predictive ability of financial ratios for US and Australian organisations. This intuitively indicates that when combined with financial ratios, non-financial factors may be a useful predictor of corporate success or failure across countries and sectors.

Sound internal processes and the identification of both financial ratios and non-financial factors can be utilised to improve the reliability of financial failure models, enable corrective and preventative steps to be implemented by management and potentially reduce the costs of failure for US and Australian organisations.

The purpose of this paper is to examine external event stakeholders’ strategic actions to advance their interests in tourism events, based on their resource relationships with the event. It takes the novel approach of examining stakeholder influence strategies from the external stakeholder perspective.

The study used a qualitative case study research design, with five government-owned tourism events in Sarawak, involving primary data from 37 interviews with external stakeholders.

The stakeholders perceived that they were not overly dependent on the events studied due to their short duration. Two types of resource relationships were found: event-dependent stakeholders and event non-dependent stakeholders. Stakeholders were found to be deploying various influence strategies, which were largely subtle, positive and collaborative in nature, regardless of whether they were event-dependent or event non-dependent stakeholders.

The findings are limited to the context examined in this study. Going forward, stronger public–private partnerships and formalised resource relationships are needed to ensure continuity of resource supplies and greater event innovation.

The study adds to the knowledge of how event external stakeholders exert their influence in accordance with their interests and resource dependency relationship with government-owned tourism events in the context of Sarawak, Borneo.

The spirits industry is a major economic contributor worldwide, often requiring years of maturation in barrels that is associated with significant release of ethanol into the surrounding environment. This provides carbon nutrition for colonisation of black fungal growths, one type being Baudoinia compniacensis, or Whisky Black. Although growth is localised in production areas, numerous sites exist globally, and this paper's purpose is to investigate the extent and implications of colonisation.

The paper presents and discusses the results of a visual survey of the area surrounding a site where whisky is maturing in nearby bonded warehouses. The evaluation considers radial zoning distance from the ethanol source and material substrate types and surface textures. Classical key stages of Building Pathology, namely manifestation, diagnosis, prognosis and therapy, are considered.

Key findings are that the colonisation of the fungus is non-uniform and dependent on the substrate building material. Additionally, rougher-textured building materials displayed heavier levels of fungal manifestation than smooth materials. Aspects such as distance, wind direction and moisture are considered relative to the extent and level of fungal growth.

This investigation provides the first assessment of the extent and nature of the fungal growth in properties built in surrounding areas to bonded warehouses. Such information can facilitate open dialogue between stakeholders that recognise the aspirations of values of corporate social responsibility, whilst balancing the economic importance of distilling with recognition of the fungus's impact on property values and appropriate recurring remedial treatments.

A series of seven empirical studies conducted in Sheffield lend support to the notion that learners do spontaneously display styles of information processing behaviour originally identified by Pask and Scott, that even versatile postgraduate students are susceptible to the effects of matching and mismatching of teaching and learning styles, and that the arena in which these learning styles may be observed extends beyond learning to information seeking activity including database searching. Much research is still to be done to resolve the enigma of learning styles. However, arguably Pask’s time has come in the sense that current computing software and educational infrastructure now allow with relative ease the testing of the potential of Pask’s constructs using large samples of students, and the realisation of this potential in the development and delivery of mainstream teaching and learning resources.

Megaprojects present an intricated pattern of leadership activities, which evolve over their planning and delivery and comprises several stakeholders. A framework is useful to navigate this complexity; it allows to identify and cluster the key elements. This paper aims to introduce a novel framework based on boundary spanners to describe the structural pattern of shared leadership in megaprojects.

A systematic literature review about boundary spanning and shared leadership is used to identify and cluster the key elements of shared leadership in megaprojects. The systematic literature review provides a rich theoretical background to develop the novel shared leadership framework based on boundary spanners.

There are three key dimensions characterizing shared leadership topology in megaprojects: stakeholders, boundary spanning leadership roles and project phases. The novel framework shows how project leadership dynamically transfers among different stakeholders, showing the importance of shared leadership as a leadership paradigm in megaprojects.

The novel framework epitomizes shared leadership in megaprojects by exploring its antecedents with social network metrics. This paper stresses that shared leadership is the envisaged form of leadership in megaprojects. By modeling complex project leadership in a simple, yet effective way, the framework fosters critical thinking for future research. The modeling introduced by this framework would also benefit practitioners in charge of megaprojects.

The paper moves the project leadership research to the network-level by taking boundary spanners as shared leadership roles in megaprojects. It shows how shared leadership is a valuable management tool for planning and delivery megaprojects.

The purpose of this paper is to identify three key areas where autistic people may find themselves impacted through COVID-19, namely, education; employment; and anxiety.

This paper provides some views based on the extensive experience of using immersive technologies for the utilisation and application with autistic groups during COVID-19.

This paper offers some examples of immersive technology application that might be helpful for practitioners, services and others to consider in overcoming possible challenges faced by people with autism.

This opinion piece offers expert insights to the role immersive technologies and virtual reality might play during COVID-19 in the lives of autistic groups.