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The NASD and the SEC are looking into methods, fees, conflicts of interest, and other issues related to fairness opinions. The fairness opinion process as currently practiced is likely to be deemed inadequate, and as such will offer less protection to boards of directors. To protect the role of the fairness opinion process as a risk‐mitigating tool, the board must changes its perceptions and expectations. The board must insist that the financial advisor help it gain a thorough understanding of all the valuation issues that impact a transaction ‐ including, for example, the appropriateness of the valuation methodologies and assumptions employed and the strategic implications of the acquisition or divestiture.

The paper describes an integrated, interdisciplinary nonprofit management three-course concentration developed for an undergraduate public service major at a small, private college. We describe the course development process and implementation issues pertinent to nonprofit management education that include where to house programs, faculty issues, interdisciplinary teaching, students’ needs and experiential learning. Our course objectives aimed to develop business competencies from accounting, finance, management and marketing in the context of nonprofit organizations for students with no prior business knowledge. The paper concludes with a description of our three courses.

Virtual reality, virtual space, virtual organizations, virtual teams; the word “virtual” is today’s organizational buzzword. One of the fastest‐growing, high‐tech office trends today is “virtual teams”. These teams cross time, space, and cultural boundaries and do so effectively with the use of technology. This paper will look at the changing nature of work, give a definition of virtual teams, discuss the qualities needed for successful virtual team membership, and view the communication challenges existing for virtual teams in the twenty‐first century.

A key feature of performance in many professions is that of vigilance, carefully monitoring one’s environment for potential threats. However, some of the characteristics that may make someone successful in such work may also be more likely to make them fail in the long-term as a result of burnout, fatigue, and other symptoms commonly associated with chronic stress. Among these characteristics, neuroticism is particularly relevant. To exert the effort that vigilance work requires, sensitivity to threats, a core aspect of neuroticism, may be necessary. This is evidenced by higher rates of neuroticism in vigilance-related professions such as information technology (IT). However, other aspects of neuroticism could attenuate performance by making individuals more distractible and prone to burnout, withdrawal, and emotional outbursts. Four perspectives provide insight to this neuroticism–vigilance paradox: facet-level analysis, trait activation, necessary conditions, and job characteristics. Across these perspectives, it is expected that too little neuroticism will render employees unable to perform vigilance tasks effectively due to lack of care while too much neuroticism will cause employees to become overwhelmed by work pressures. Contextual and personological moderators of the neuroticism–vigilance relationship are discussed, as well as two behavioral styles expected to manifest from neuroticism that could explain how neuroticism may be associated with either good or bad performance-relevant outcomes.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the accounting and governance of public private partnerships (PPPs) that are structured as joint venture partnerships. Drawing on Giddens’ structuration theory, the paper examines how human agents interact with these joint venture structures and analyses the effects on financial disclosures and public accountability for taxpayers’ investments.

The authors adopt a cross-case analysis to investigate two such PPP schemes, which form part of the UK’s programme of investment in primary healthcare, known as the Local Improvement Finance Trust (LIFT) policy. The authors employ a combination of interviews and analysis of financial statements and publicly available official documents.

The corporate structure of these LIFT schemes is very complicated so that the financial accounting is opaque. The implication is that the joint venture mechanism cannot be relied upon to deliver transparency of reporting. The paper argues that the LIFT structures are deliberately constructed by human agents to act as barriers to transparency about public expenditure.

The financial reporting undermines public accountability and transparency as both are necessarily restricted. Policy makers should pay attention to not only the private sector technologies but also the manner in which structures are used to reduce transparency and consequently undermine public accountability.

The paper provides detailed analysis from the perspective of structuration theory to show how human agents use structures to impact on financial reporting and public accountability.

This paper aims to present affective computing or Emotion AI in the context of work and how organizational leaders such as managers and human resource (HR) professionals can implement this technology to foster an emotionally healthy workplace.

The authors provide a current overview of affective computing technology through definitions, examples and general use cases. This is in light of the current scrutiny on artificial intelligence (AI) use broadly across society. The authors address this from a research perspective and show how this advanced AI tool can be implemented in organizations for the benefit of employees.

Affective computing or Emotion AI is still relatively unknown, and yet, it is already part of our daily lives. Emotion AI platforms have the potential to be an essential part of HR tools. It is crucial, however, to use this technology in an ethical and responsible manner.

There is little awareness and understanding of use cases of affective computing tools in organizations, particularly for the well-being of the workforce. This paper provides HR leaders, managers and researchers with an overview of the origins of the field and major considerations for responsibly implementing Emotion AI to support employee mental health.

The purpose of this paper is to compare the effects of two types of community-based, residential treatment programs among justice involved persons with dual diagnoses.

A randomized clinical trial examined treatment conditions among justice involved persons with substance use disorders who reported high baseline levels of psychiatric severity indicative of diagnosable psychiatric comorbidity. Participants (n=39) were randomly assigned to one of three treatment conditions upon discharge from inpatient treatment for substance use disorders: a professionally staffed, integrated residential treatment setting (therapeutic community), a self-run residential setting (Oxford House), or a treatment-specific aftercare referral (usual care). Levels of psychiatric severity, a global estimate of current psychopathological problem severity, were measured at two years as the outcome.

Participants randomly assigned to residential conditions reported significant reductions in psychiatric severity whereas those assigned to the usual care condition reported significant increases. There were no significant differences in psychiatric severity levels between residential conditions.

Findings suggest that cost-effective, self-run residential settings such as Oxford Houses provide benefits comparable to professionally run residential integrated treatments for justice involved persons who have dual diagnoses.

Results support the utilization of low-cost, community-based treatments for a highly marginalized population.

Little is known about residential treatments that reduce psychiatric severity for this population. Results extend the body of knowledge regarding the effects of community-based, residential integrated treatment and the Oxford House model.

This paper is focused on service failure and recovery in the hotel industry in the UK. The objectives of the research were to: assess the types and magnitude of service failures experienced by hotel guests; evaluate the service recovery strategies used by hotels and their effectiveness; and discover whether or not there were differences in attitudes and behaviour between business and leisure guests. Data were collected from a sample of guests in a four‐star hotel. Discussion of the findings leads to some suggestions for improvements for hotel management.

Today, many companies don’t want employees who merely “do their jobs.” Instead, they want people who will make them profitable. And because profit‐generation is increasingly in the hand of “teams” of co‐workers who collaborate on short‐ or long‐term projects, or even permanently, companies are looking for people who can fit this type of work structure. This article discusses how a high performance team is much like a wolf pack, and gives a background on the purpose of teams, and describes the many reasons for failure of teams, discussing the qualities needed for successful teams in the 21st century.

This chapter evaluates a model of the organizational context of burnout with direct reference to a new measure, the Areas of Worklife Scale (AWS). The model proposes a structured framework for considering six areas of worklife – workload, control, reward, community, fairness, and values – that have resonated through the literature on burnout over the previous two decades. The chapter presents extensive data on the AWS, testing a model of the six areas’ interrelationships as well as their overall relationship to the three aspects of burnout. The results of these analyses are discussed in reference to the psychometric qualities of the measure and the implications of a structured approach to work environments for future development of research on burnout. Implications for developing workplace interventions are also considered.