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As COVID-19 outbreak has created a global crisis, treating patients with minimum resources and traditional methods has become a hectic task. In this technological era, the rapid growth of coronavirus has affected the countries in lightspeed manner. Therefore, the present study proposes a model to analyse the resource allocation for the COVID-19 pandemic from a pluralistic perspective.

The present study has combined data analytics with the K-mean clustering and probability queueing theory (PQT) and analysed the evolution of COVID-19 all over the world from the data obtained from public repositories. By using K-mean clustering, partitioning of patients’ records along with their status of hospitalization can be mapped and clustered. After K-mean analysis, cluster functions are trained and modelled along with eigen vectors and eigen functions.

After successful iterative training, the model is programmed using R functions and given as input to Bayesian filter for predictive model analysis. Through the proposed model, disposal rate; PPE (personal protective equipment) utilization and recycle rate for different countries were calculated.

Using probabilistic queueing theory and clustering, the study was able to predict the resource allocation for patients. Also, the study has tried to model the failure quotient ratio upon unsuccessful delivery rate in crisis condition.

The study has gathered epidemiological and clinical data from various government websites and research laboratories. Using these data, the study has identified the COVID-19 impact in various countries. Further, effective decision-making for resource allocation in pluralistic setting has being evaluated for the practitioner's reference.

Further, the proposed model is a two-stage approach for vulnerability mapping in a pandemic situation in a healthcare setting for resource allocation and utilization.

Economic pluralism proposes that economists and social planners should consider alternative theories to establish a range of policy actions. Neoclassical, Feminist and Marxian theories evaluate well-grounded causes of wage discrimination. However, a reluctance to consider less-dominant theories among different schools of economic thought restricts analysis and proposed policies, resulting in a monism method. The paper aims to discuss these issues.

The authors provide a brief review of the theoretical literature on wage discrimination. The significance of a pluralistic analysis is demonstrated by addressing correspondence test patterns of wage discrimination.

In considering Neoclassical, Feminist and Marxian theories, racist attitudes, uncertainties regarding minority workers’ productivity and power relations in lower-status sectors might generate discriminatory wages. Each cause deserves corresponding policy action.

Time is needed to provide a pluralistic evaluation of wage discrimination. In addition, pluralism requires rigorous investigations to avoid incoherencies. Pluralism might be jeopardised if there is a limited desire to engage with less-dominant theoretical frameworks. Also, pluralism might be misled with rejection of dominant theories.

Given pluralism, wage discrimination might be reduced by implementing equality campaigns, creating low-cost tests to predict workers’ productivity and abolishing power relations towards minority workers.

Little work has been on economic pluralism in the study of wage discrimination. The current study addresses the gap in the literature.

The authors examine how performance measurement systems (PMSs) and academic agency influence the meaning of research quality in practice. The worries are that the notion of research quality is becoming too simplistically and narrowly determined by research quality's measurable proxies and that academics, especially manager-academics, do not sufficiently realise this risk. Whilst prior literature has covered the effects of performance measurement in the university sector broadly and how PMSs are mobilised locally, there is only little understanding of whether and how PMSs affect the meaning of research quality in practice.

The study is designed as a comparative case study of two university faculties in Finland. The role of conceptual analysis plays a notable role in the study, too.

The authors find that manager-academics of the two examined faculties have rather similar conceptual understandings of research quality. However, there were differences in the degree of slippage between the “espoused-meaning” of research quality and “meaning-in-practice” of research quality. The authors traced these differences to how the local PMS and manager-academics’ agency relate to one another within the context of increasing global and national performance pressures. The authors developed a tentative framework for the various “styles of agency”. This suggests how the relationship between the local PMS and manager-academics’ exerted agency shapes the “degrees of freedom” of the meaning of research quality in practice.

Given that research quality lies at the heart of academic work, the authors' paper indicates that exploring the three matters – performance measurement, the agency of manager-academics and the meaning of research quality in practice – in combination is crucial for the sustainability of the academe. The authors contribute to the literature by detailing the way in which local PMS and manager-academics' agency have material impacts on what research quality means in practice. The authors conclude by highlighting the pressing need for manager-academics to exercise the agency in efforts to safeguard a broad and pluralistic understanding of research quality in practice.

The purpose of this paper is to present an expanded introduction of Jasanoff’s (2003, 2007) work on “technologies of humility” to the accounting literature and to show how it can be useful in developing critical dialogic accountings for non-financial matters.

Drawing on Jasanoff’s (2003, 2007) distinction between “technologies of hubris” and “technologies of humility”, this study extends prior research on critical dialogic accounting and accountability (CDAA) that seeks to “take pluralism seriously” (Brown, 2009; Dillard and Vinnari, 2019). This study shows how Jasanoff’s work facilitates constructing critical, reflexive approaches to accounting for non-financial matters consistent with agonistics-based CDAA.

Jasanoff’s four proposed focal points for developing new analytical tools for accounting for non-financial matters and promoting participatory governance – framing, vulnerability, distribution and learning – are argued to be useful in conceptualising possible CDAA technologies. These aspects are all currently ignored or downplayed in conventional approaches to accounting for non-financial matters, limiting accounting’s ability to promote more socially just and ecologically sustainable societies.

The authors introduce Jasanoff’s work on technologies of humility to show how CDAA, informed by Jasanoff’s proposed focal points, can help to expose controversial issues that powerful interests prefer to obscure, to surface the normative foundations of technocratic analytic methods, to address the need for plural perspectives and social learning and to bring all these aspects “into the dynamics of democratic debate” (Jasanoff, 2003, p. 240). As such, they provide criteria for constructing accounting technology consistent with agonistics-based CDAA.

The main purpose of this study is to define healthcare quality to encompass healthcare stakeholder needs and expectations because healthcare quality has varying definitions for clients, professionals, managers, policy makers and payers.

This study represents an exploratory effort to understand healthcare quality in an Iranian context. In‐depth individual and focus group interviews were conducted with key healthcare stakeholders.

Quality healthcare is defined as “consistently delighting the patient by providing efficacious, effective and efficient healthcare services according to the latest clinical guidelines and standards, which meet the patient's needs and satisfies providers”. Healthcare quality definitions common to all stakeholders involve offering effective care that contributes to the patient well‐being and satisfaction.

This study helps us to understand quality healthcare, highlighting its complex nature, which has direct implications for healthcare providers who are encouraged to regularly monitor healthcare quality using the attributes identified in this study. Accordingly, they can initiate continuous quality improvement programmes to maintain high patient‐satisfaction levels.

This is the first time a comprehensive healthcare quality definition has been developed using various healthcare stakeholder perceptions and expectations.

Decision making at local planning level is usually concerned with evaluation of alternatives and selection of a preferred action. This can be improved with the use of multicriteria (MCA) methods which provide a systematic process for trading off effects of various alternative, synthesizing, individual contributions. This paper illustrates three MCA methods for evaluating complex planning projects where multiple criteria are taken into account. These methods are applied to an example of urban regeneration. Subjective issues, such as those related to the perception of quality of life, are taken into account alongside more quantitative data. The results obtained using the three methods are considered when applied to three alternative design solutions.

This article aims to explore the challenges posed by the conceptual framework and diversity of practice of education for sustainable development (ESD). The implications of plurality of ESD perspectives and methodological approaches as well variations in ESD practice will be addressed. Critical framework for conceptualizing of ESD which takes environmental ethics into account will be proposed through the discussion of The Ecocentric and Anthropocentric Attitudes Toward the Sustainable Development (EAATSD) scale.

The paper opted for a general review approach, covering literature that provides an overview of the concepts and practices of ESD, as well as program evaluation studies. Additionally, qualitative evaluation of EAATSD scale with students of higher professional education was conducted, using in-depth interviews and dialogue with individual students as well as classroom discussions.

It was found that there are wide and inconclusive debates about the aims of ESD based on the critique of sustainable development discourse in general and instrumentalism embedded in ESD in particular. According to the qualitative evaluation, EAATSD scale can be used for testing anthropocentric and Ecocentric Attitudes Towards Sustainable Development in students of higher education. Based on these results, this scale was found to be revealing of the critical view of paradoxes and challenges inherent in multiple goals of sustainable development as well as useful for testing anthropocentric and ecocentric attitudes in students of higher education.

Reliability of the scale needs further statistical testing, and as is the case in conventional EE/ESD evaluations, and consequent research is necessary to improve institutional, national, and international applicability to particular cases. Future research should draw from this critical review in order to devise alternative evaluation tools.

In practice, this implies that currently administered evaluations of generic ESD, while useful in concrete cultural or institutional settings, might be premature. The article concludes with the reflection upon which conceptual, methodological, cultural, and ethical challenges of ESD which should be useful for ESD researchers and practitioners in different national settings.

This article fulfills an identified need to address the paradoxes of sustainable development and to study how ESD can be more effective.

The purpose of this paper is to present an evaluation of a collaborative commissioning approach to improve quality and experience and reduce cost within integrated health and social care.

A multi-method approach is used involving qualitative interviews, documentary analysis and non-participant observation.

The findings suggest that the approach provides a suitable framework for the collaborative commissioning of integrated health and social care services.

Further research is now needed to provide a definitive evaluation of its value outside of Wales.

With the significant scrutiny on health systems, the approach demonstrates effectiveness in securing quality improvements, achievement of recognised care standards and patient outcomes, while providing scope for financial gains and a goal for stakeholders to engage in effective communication.

This research presents an innovative method for collaborative commissioning and reveals activities that appear to contribute to more effective commissioning processes.

The purpose of the paper is to present usability heuristics for the evaluation of public library web services.

Heuristics for library services are based on Nielsen's classical list of heuristics and results of previous usability research of library web services. A total of 15 public library web sites were evaluated on the basis of these applied heuristics. One part of the study was supported through usability tests. The results of these studies were utilized to evaluate the applied heuristics.

The applied heuristics are divided into three categories: heuristics critical from the usability viewpoint; heuristics concerning major problems; and heuristics connected to minor usability problems but still important and concerning conventions of web design. The use of the heuristics and the results they give are evaluated to provide a basis for their use in future.

The applied heuristics lists have been tested in two different studies, and the combined list based on them has so far been utilized in practical evaluation, but has not been formally tested.

The heuristics for library web services presented in this paper can be applied to usability evaluation of public library web services.

Library web sites should be user friendly, because the services are meant for all citizens. The applied heuristics for public library web services provide a starting point for usability evaluation that can be continued with other methods.

The nature of evaluation research vis‐à‐vis management education and development (MED) has undergone major changes over the last 30 years. Broadly, the quantitative positivistic research designs of the early 1960s have given way to qualitative naturalistic designs. This shift represents a sea‐change both in terms of methodology employed by evaluation researchers in this field, and in terms of what is meant by evaluation.