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There has been a significant increase in flooding in the UK over the past ten years. During this time, Government policy has moved from investment in flood defences towards encouraging property owners to take responsibility for reducing the impact of flooding. One of the ways in which this can be achieved is for homeowners to adapt their properties to flood risk by implementing property level flood risk adaptation (PLFRA) measures. While there has been some attempt to develop an understanding of the benefits of such measures, these previous studies have their limitations in that the intangible benefits have not been fully considered. As such, there remains a need for further development of these studies towards developing a more comprehensive understanding of PLFRA measures. It is against this background the purpose of this paper is to present a conceptual cost benefit analysis (CBA) framework for PLFRA measure. This framework brings together the key parameters of the costs and benefits of adapting properties to flood risk including the intangible benefits, which have so far been overlooked in previous studies.

A critical review of the standard methods and existing CBA models of PLFRA measures was undertaken. A synthesis of this literature and the literature on the nature of flooding and measures to reduce and eliminate their impacts provides the basis for the development of a conceptual framework of the costs and benefits of PLFRA measures. Within the developed framework, particular emphasis is placed on the intangible impacts, as these have largely been excluded from previous studies in the domain of PLFRA measures.

The framework provides a systematic way of assessing the costs and benefits of PLFRA measures. A unique feature of the framework is the inclusion of intangible impacts, such as anxiety and ill health, which are known to be difficult to measure. The study proposes to implement one of the stated preference methods (SPM) of valuation to measure these impacts, known as the willingness to pay method, as part of a survey of homeowners. The inclusion of these intangible impacts provides the potential to develop a more comprehensive understanding of the benefit cost ratio (BCR) for different stakeholders. The newly developed CBA conceptual framework includes four principal components: the tangible benefits to insurers; the tangible benefits to the government; the tangible benefits to homeowners; and the intangible benefits to homeowners.

This tool offers the potential to support government policy concerned with increasing the uptake of PLFRA measures through increasing the information available to homeowners and thereby supporting the decision-making process.

Recently, the focus of UK and European flood risk management policy has been towards promoting the uptake of property level flood adaptation measures. Despite this focus, the take‐up of property level flood adaptation measures (both resilient and resistant) remains very low. One of the apparent barriers to uptake is the cost of installing such measures. This study aims to investigate the cost of adopting resilient reinstatement measures by considering a small number of actual properties that were flooded in Cockermouth during 2009.

Secondary data obtained from a loss adjusting company provides the basis for analysis. The data take into consideration the cost benefit of resilient repair, assuming the same properties were flooded again. The traditional reinstatement costs were established as the actual cost of putting the properties back in a like‐for‐like manner while resilient reinstatement costs were established by creating new resilient repair schedules based on recommended good practice.

The results of the study show that the percentage extra cost for resilient reinstatement over traditional repair cost ranged from 23 to 58 per cent with a mean of 34 per cent depending on the house type. However, while resilient repairs were found to be more expensive than traditional (i.e. like‐for‐like) methods, they were found to significantly reduce the repair costs assuming a subsequent flood were to take place. Resilient flood mitigation measures seem most promising and, given repeat flooding, will help in limiting the cost of repairs up to as much as 73 per cent for properties with a 20 per cent annual chance of flooding, which indicates that the up‐front investment would be recovered following a single subsequent flood event.

The uptake of resilient reinstatement among the floodplain property owners in the UK is very low and one of the reasons for the low uptake is lack of understanding of the cost and benefit of adopting such measures. While there have been previous studies towards investigating the costs of resilient reinstatement, it is believed that this is the first to use real claims data and information to analyse the tangible costs/benefits of resilient reinstatement.

Despite the importance of increasing engagement and minimising attrition and drop‐out in parenting interventions, there is a paucity of empirical evidence examining factors related to engagement and participation. The range of factors examined in relation to engagement is generally limited in scope and variety, focusing on variables of convenience rather than utilising a theoretically‐driven approach.The aim of this article is to review the factors related to parental engagement with interventions and to describe strategies and implications for improving engagement with parenting interventions. Several policy and practice implications are identified: (1) Poor parental engagement may threaten or compromise the capacity of parenting programmes to deliver valued outcomes. Viable engagement strategies need to be a core part of prevention and early intervention parenting programmes; (2) Agencies delivering parenting services need a proactive engagement strategy, which includes strategies to prevent drop‐out, as well as strategies to actively respond to parental disengagement; (3) Research is needed to test the efficacy and robustness of different engagement enhancement strategies. Empirical tests are needed to test the effectiveness of different engagement strategies in order to ensure that the most efficient, cost‐effective and efficacious approach is used in order to engage parents. Investment of research effort to improve parental engagement is likely to have a high yield in terms of programme efficiency, utility and cost effectiveness. We conclude that research examining how to improve engagement and decrease non‐completion is needed to strengthen the population level value of parenting programmes as preventive interventions.

The purpose of this paper is to develop a business model to generate quantitative evidence of the benefits of implementing radio frequency identification (RFID) technology, limiting the scope to outpatient surgical processes in hospitals.

The study primarily uses the define‐measure‐analyze‐improve‐control (DMAIC) approach, and draws on various analytical tools such as work flow diagrams, value stream mapping, and discrete event simulation to examine the effect of implementing RFID technology on improving effectiveness (quality and timeliness) and efficiency (cost reduction) of outpatient surgical processes.

The analysis showed significant estimated annual cost and time savings in carrying out patients' surgical procedures with RFID technology implementation for the outpatient surgery processes in a hospital. This is largely due to the elimination of both non‐value added activities of locating supplies and equipment and also the elimination of the “return” loop created by preventable post operative infections. Several poka‐yokes developed using RFID technology were identified to eliminate those two issues.

Several poka‐yokes developed using RFID technology were identified for improving the safety of the patient and cost effectiveness of the operation to ensure the success of the outpatient surgical process.

Many stakeholders in the hospital environment will be impacted including patients, physicians, nurses, technicians, administrators and other hospital personnel. Different levels of training of hospital personnel will be required, based on the degree of interaction with the RFID system. Computations of costs and savings will help decision makers understand the benefits and implications of the technology in the hospital environment.

One of the most serious problems facing the country today is maintaining dietary standards, especially in the vulnerable groups, in the face of rising food prices. If it were food prices alone, household budgetry could cope, but much as rising food prices take from the housewife's purse, rates, fuel, travel and the like seem to take more; for food, it is normally pence, but for the others, it is pounds! The Price Commission is often accused of being a watch‐dog which barks but rarely if ever bites and when it attempts to do this, like as not, Union power prevents any help to the housewife. There would be far less grumbling and complaining by consumers if they could see value for their money; they only see themselves constantly overcharged and, in fact, cheated all along the line. In past issues, BFJ has commented on the price vagaries in the greengrocery trade, especially the prices of fresh fruit and vegetables. Living in a part of the country given over to fruit farming and field vegetable crops, it is impossible to remain unaware of what goes on in this sector of the food trade. Unprecedented prosperity among the growers; and where fruit‐farming is combined with field crops, potatoes, cabbage, cauliflower and leafy brassicas, many of the more simple growers find the sums involved frightening. The wholesalers and middle‐men are something of unknown entities, but the prices in the shops are there for all to see. The findings of an investigation by the Commission into the trade, the profit margins between wholesale prices and greengrocers' selling prices, published in February last, were therefore not altogether surprising. The survey into prices and profits covered five basic vegetables and was ordered by the present Prices Secretary the previous November. Prices for September to November were monitored for the vegetables—cabbages, brussels sprouts, cauliflowers, carrots, turnips and swedes, the last priced together. Potatoes were already being monitored.

The purpose of this paper is to demonstrate heroism as an embodied system of leadership and well-being. Heroic leadership is presented as a baseline for sustainable futures and global health.

This paper presents an embodied reading of heroic leadership and its sustainable development across five stages. It outlines its core functions, its grounding in self-leadership through physical and mental trauma and its holistic benefits, resulting in the development of the Heroic Leadership Embodiment and Sustainable Development (HLESD) model. The efficacy of HLESD is demonstrated in an empirical case study of heroism promotion and education: the Hero Construction Company and the Heroic Imagination Project.

Heroic leadership is revealed as an emergent, dynamic and distributed form of sustainable development.

This paper demonstrates the critical connections between heroism, sustainability, embodied leadership and well-being and how they stand to benefit from each other, individuals and communities at large.

The implementation of HLESD in educational, counselling and broader contexts in consultation with a wide range of professionals stands to offer significant benefits to pedagogies, clinical practice, holistic therapies and twenty-first-century societies, at both the community and policy level.

The emerging field of heroism science and the use of heroic leadership as an interdisciplinary tool is a novel approach to well-being, which holds immense potential for the imagining and fostering of sustainable personal and collective futures.

Despite the present focus on improving the resilience of homes to flooding in UK flood risk management policy and strategy, a general measurement framework for determining levels of flood resilience in UK homes does not exist. In light of this, the aim of this study was to develop a means to evaluate the levels of resilience in flood-prone homes from the perspective of homeowners'.

A quantitative research methodology was employed, with empirical data obtained through a postal survey of homeowners who had experienced flooding. The responses received were then analysed using a combination of statistical techniques including agreement/reliability tests and multiple regression to develop a model of flood resilience.

A predictive model was developed that allows the resilience of a property to be quantified and measured as perceived by homeowners. The findings indicate that the main factors found to influence the level of flood resilience were: property type (PT), presence of cellar/basement (C/B), property wall type (PWT), property ground floor type (PGFT), kitchen unit type (KU), flood experience (FE), flood source (FS) and flood risk level (FRL).

The resulting model provides unique insights into resilience levels to the benefit of a range of stakeholders including policy makers (such as Defra/Environment Agency), Local Authority flood teams, property professionals, housing associations and homeowners. As a result, homeowners will be in a better position to determine which interventions should be prioritised to ensure better flood protection.

This is the first study of its kind to have rigorously quantified the level of flood resilience for individual homes. This study has quantified the effectiveness of individual resilience measures to derive the first reliable means to measure the overall levels of resilience at the individual property level. This is regarded as a significant contribution to the study of flood risk management through the quantification of resilience within individual UK homes, enabling the prioritisation of interventions and the overall monitoring of resilience.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the potential learning consequences of AACSB accreditation as perceived by administrators and faculty members at four Canadian university business schools.

A qualitative, multiple case study approach was employed. A purposive sample of four Canadian business schools was selected and data were collected from multiple sources. The data were analyzed using NVivo7 and a cross case analysis was performed.

The results indicate that AACSB accreditation facilitated organizational learning in three of the four schools. Respondents felt that accreditation promoted strategic alignment, a re‐assessment of the school's mission, and an emphasis on performance management; others identified an increased focus on quality and/or research. Accreditation also served as a catalyst for change, one which motivated program improvement. In terms of contextual factors, leadership was found to be the most pervasive influence on organizational learning effects. Resource dependence was also found to be influential.

This research highlights the importance of educational leadership in facilitating organizational learning through evaluative inquiry. Because of the qualitative methodology, the sample size is limited to four university business schools.

This study has practical implications for management education internationally, as AACSB accreditation is increasingly a global phenomenon. The findings will be of interest to educational administrators, policy makers, managers, and accrediting bodies who are interested in facilitating learning through accreditation

This research offers a novel approach to studying the question of AACSB accreditation and its learning effects. By using a qualitative multiple case study method, this research provided a unique opportunity to focus more keenly on context and its role in influencing the potential learning consequences of accreditation.

The purpose of this study was to evaluate the effects of an online mental health ally program on several measurements of readiness to help and stigma reduction. Allyship is one way to support people with mental health challenges beyond traditional care services.

The efficacy of the program was evaluated in pre and postintervention surveys (n = 26) including measures of self-care, help-seeking intentions, peer-support self-efficacy, advocacy, knowledge of resources and stigma. A within-subject, repeated measures design was conducted analyzing changes at completion. Twenty-six participants who completed the program (either with or without lived experience of mental illness) were included in the study. A subgroup of participants (n = 11) who reported lived experiences of mental illness were assigned additional measures of internalized stigma, stigma stress, stigma resistance and self-esteem.

Analysis of mean differences indicated a statistically significant change in scores pre and postcompletion. The program increased peer-support, help-seeking intentions and self-esteem, while reducing internalized stigma and stigma stress. Findings provide preliminary support for program effectiveness in training individuals to support others and themselves through mental health challenges.

Trained allies might improve the lives of individuals with mental health challenges by reducing discrimination and improving social support. We discuss the implication of allies to complement the mental health system.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first exploratory study on the efficacy of an online ally training program for individuals with mental illness. The NoStigmas Ally Program is a novel and original development in ally training.