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This case requires students to evaluate alternative dual-share-class corporate structures that allow companies and entrepreneurs to pursue profit with purpose. The case explores Impact Makers, an IT consulting company based in Richmond, Virginia. While original founders of the firm hold all voting rights, the cash flow rights belong to two nonprofits setting the stage for a Newman's Own model of management consulting. The case discusses whether and how the alternative corporate structure aids the firm's overall strategy to attract top-quality employees, pay them competitive salaries, and provide superior service to its clients while donating 100% of its lifetime value to charitable causes, largely through partnerships with various nonprofit organizations. More importantly, the case asks students to evaluate how such a dual-share-class and dual-purpose company can raise capital to fund continued growth.

The case opens with CEO Michael Pirron reminding himself of all the questions he had run through to execute a strategy to further grow Impact Makers' consulting business both through expanding a menu of services and through conquering new geographical markets. To do either, or both, the company needed a cash infusion. Internal cash was limited, as up to 40% of it flowed to charitable partners, demonstrating Impact Makers' commitment to its mission. Raising debt for a company without fixed assets was challenging and time consuming. Complicating it all was that being structured as a nonstock corporation rendered equity raising difficult. Could Impact Makers raise money to grow and stay true to community values at the same time?

This study aims to determine the barriers hindering the incorporation of blockchain technology (BCT) in two key service industries – hotel and health care – as well as to assess their readiness for implementing BCT after overcoming the barriers.

The barriers of this study are determined through two phases: a review of prior literature and obtaining expert opinions, which are then analyzed to identify specific barriers that are impeding the incorporation of BCT. Moreover, to generate a blockchain implementation reluctance index (BIRI), this study presents an interval-valued intuitionistic fuzzy set (IVIFS) that uses graph theory and matrix approach (GTMA). The permanent function in the GTMA approach is computed using the PERMAN algorithm. Finally, to compare the readiness of the hotel and health-care industries to adopt BCT, the BIRI values are plotted and evaluated.

The barriers identified by this study are listed under five major headings, namely, financial, operational, behavioral, technical and legal. This study revealed that the operational and technical barriers of BCT are critically hindering its widespread integration in hotel and health-care industries. Furthermore, on comparing the BIRI values of both industries, the result suggested that the hotel industry needs to work more on these barriers to effectively incorporate BCT. Besides the comparison, the BIRI values clearly indicate that both industries have to put a lot of effort into the mitigation of the barriers found by this study to successfully integrate BCT.

The experts’ opinions are used to evaluate the identified barriers, which raises the chance that the opinions are prejudiced based on the experts’ perspectives and ideologies. The sensitivity of decision-maker loads toward preference outcomes is not analyzed in this manuscript. Therefore, any recent sensitivity analysis may be considered a prospective field for future research. This study applies a multicriteria decision-making (MCDM) approach, IVIFS–GTMA, which limits the evaluation of the influence caused by individual barriers on the integration of BCT in the hotel and health-care industries. Henceforth, in future investigations, alternative MCDM methods may be used to analyze individual barriers.

According to the findings, if the hotel or health-care industry aims to incorporate BCT in its supply chain operations, it is recommended to emphasize more on the operational barriers along with the technical and behavioral barriers. The barriers mentioned in this manuscript can be used as guidance for developers in their development activities, such as scalability concerns, establishment costs, the 51% attack and the inefficient nature of BCT. Furthermore, they may address the potential users’ negative perceptions about security, privacy, trust and risk avoidance through creatively developed blockchain solutions to promote BCT implementation.

To the best of the author’s knowledge, this is the first study that identifies barriers toward BCT incorporation in the major service industries, i.e. hotel and health care. Moreover, this is the first study that compares the preparedness of the hotel and health-care industries to determine the industry that requires more work to implement BCT.

This paper aims to present a literature review of remote monitoring systems for water infrastructure in the Global South.

Following initial scoping searches, further examination was made of key remote monitoring technologies for water infrastructure in the Global South. A standard literature search methodology was adopted to examine these monitoring technologies and their respective deployments. This hierarchical approach prioritised “peer-reviewed” articles, followed by “scholarly” publications, then “credible” information sources and, finally, “other” relevant materials. The first two search phases were conducted using academic search services (e.g. Scopus and Google Scholar). In the third and fourth phases, Web searches were carried out on various stakeholders, including manufacturers, governmental agencies and non-governmental organisations/charities associated with Water, Sanitation and Hygiene (WASH) in the Global South.

This exercise expands the number of monitoring technologies considered in comparison to earlier review publications. Similarly, preceding reviews have largely focused upon monitoring applications in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA). This paper explores opportunities in other geographical regions and highlights India as a significant potential market for these tools.

This review predominantly focuses upon information/data currently available in the public domain.

Remote monitoring technologies enable the rapid detection of broken water pumps. Broken water infrastructure significantly impacts many vulnerable communities, often leading to the use of less protected water sources and increased exposure to water-related diseases. Further to these public health impacts, there are additional economic disadvantages for these user communities.

This literature review has sought to address some key technological omissions and to widen the geographical scope associated with previous investigations.

This paper seeks to understand kaizen in practice as it travels through time and space in the organisational setting.

A qualitative case study was carried out at a multinational company using mainly interviews for the data collection that were analysed from an actor-network theory (ANT) perspective.

This paper finds that the company deals with a series of paradoxes while managing the kaizen process. Efficiency and quality paradoxes are the basis for starting kaizen projects. Furthermore, intrinsic, and extrinsic motivation, emerge in these processes, and paradoxes relate to how spontaneous ideas emerge in a deliberated context of cost-saving objectives. The supply chain finance team coordinates kaizen projects with the collaboration of plant managers, promoting the paradox of autonomy and control. In addition, as kaizen mobilises and enrols the actors, some trials of strength emerge, showing actors who oppose the kaizen network and create competing networks that mutually exist in the firm.

This study presents valuable insights for professionals to successfully implement kaizen methodologies that take advantage of developing a network for problem-solving in organizations.

This study highlights the supply chain finance team's role in enrolling the actors within a network built by practitioners engaged in kaizen projects. Usually, engineers, quality, or manufacturing teams lead kaizen projects, and only occasionally, accounting and financial teams participate, including multidisciplinary teams.

This paper aims to map the research on management accounting (MA), clarifying its current role and identifying gaps and opportunities for future research.

In this paper, 784 papers were reviewed for the 1958–2019 period, published in 220 scientific journals indexed on Clarivate Analytics’ Web of Science (Science Citation Index Expanded [SCI-EXPANDED] and Social Sciences Citation Index [SSCI]). In the process, content analysis, regression analysis and bibliometric analysis were used.

The most relevant journals, authors and topics in MA, along with trends and patterns in the literature, were identified. Seven clusters that represent the overall thematic research structure of the MA field were also identified. This study shows that MA is becoming a multidimensional management decision-support instrument covering all organizational dimensions. As such, the research on MA is following the recent concerns with the sustainable development and digitalization of business processes.

Based on the findings of this research study, theoretical and practical implications for MA researchers were provided. These findings could also be useful to industry practitioners to improve their knowledge of emerging trends in MA practices, strategies and concepts.

Based on bibliometric and content analysis, a framework that shows an organizational, market and social context for the evolution of MA over the past 60 years was provided. It highlights the dynamics of MA alignment with organizational and external environment changes. Future research opportunities and implications for researchers and practitioners were also identified.

There is evidence that spirituality at the workplace has positive effects on work outcomes, and there are different models conceptualizing the construct. To date, there is no discussion highlighting how digitalization is affecting workplace spirituality and vice versa. The present review tries to close this gap by discussing the psychological dynamics in light of digitalization and spirituality in the context of work.

This is a conceptual discussion based on an extensive narrative review. The conceptual design is further tested with a real-life case study.

The result is a model that may guide future research, which consists of the four highly interdependent domains, namely psychology (with the dimensions of emotion, cognition and behavior), digitalization (with the dimensions of platforms, data and algorithms), spirituality (with the dimensions of meaning, self-transcendation and belonging), as well as the workplace (with the dimensions of work tasks, location, community and culture and values). The discussion includes implications for the future of work, suggestions for management decisions and potential future research directions.

To date, there are many discussions about digital transformation and a limited amount of them have invested in analyzing psychological dimensions. The application to spirituality and the workplace – especially when the two are combined – is almost wholly absent, which makes the present discussion both innovative and original.

The authors suggest strategies for addressing and combating these attempts at racelighting.

The authors of this article– five anti-racist educators working in various educational settings in SLC– employ the Critical Race Theory counter-story methodology (Delgado and Stefancic, 1993) to confront resistance to educational equity in Utah. They do so by first providing a historical context of race and education in Utah before presenting four short counterstories addressing the racelighting efforts of students, fellow educators and administrators when confronted with the complexities of racial injustice.

These counterstories are particularly important in light of the recent increase in color-evasive and whitewashed messaging used to attack CRT and to deny the existence of racism in the SLC school system in K-post-secondary education, and in the U.S. as a whole.

These stories are set in a unique environment, yet they hold national relevance. The racial and religious demographics in Utah shed light on the foundational ethos of the country – white, Christian supremacy. They reveal what is at stake in defending it and some of the key mechanisms of that defense.

This study evaluated the impact of a faculty training program on student assessment using the Kirkpatrick model.

A self-reported survey assessed 111 Saudi and non-Saudi participants' satisfaction. Subjective and objective measures (self-reported measures, assessment literacy inventory and performance-based assessment tasks) gauged participants' learning level. Pre- and post-training data were collected from 2020 to 2022.

A highly significant effect on satisfaction (>80%) and learning levels was observed, as manifested by workplace practices of student assessment (>70%, the cut-off score). Pre- and post-training comparisons of participants' satisfaction and assessment literacy scores showed significant improvements following training. Multiple regression analyses showed no significant effects for gender and educational attainment but a substantial impact of academic cluster on participants' student assessment skills.

Long-term effects of training faculty on assessment practices and student achievement will be studied at the institutional level in future research.

The current study contributes to human capital investment via faculty training on student assessment, helping them comply with assessment best practices. This assures the quality, fairness and consistency of assessment processes across disciplines in higher education institutions, enhances assessment validity and trust in educational services and may support institutional accreditation.

This study provides opportunities for sharing best practices and helps establish a community of practice. It enhances learning outcomes achievement and empowers higher education graduates with attributes necessary to succeed in the labor market. The human capital investment may have a long-term impact on overall higher education quality.

This study contributes to the scarce literature investigating the impact of training faculty from different clusters on student assessment using subjective and objective measures. It provides developing and evaluating a long-term student assessment program following the Kirkpatrick model.