Search results

The paper provides a detailed historical account of Douglass C. North's early intellectual contributions and analytical developments in pursuing a Grand Theory for why some countries are rich and others poor.

The author approaches the discussion using a theoretical and historical reconstruction based on published and unpublished materials.

The systematic, continuous and profound attempt to answer the Smithian social coordination problem shaped North's journey from being a young serious Marxist to becoming one of the founders of New Institutional Economics. In the process, he was converted in the early 1950s into a rigid neoclassical economist, being one of the leaders in promoting New Economic History. The success of the cliometric revolution exposed the frailties of the movement itself, namely, the limitations of neoclassical economic theory to explain economic growth and social change. Incorporating transaction costs, the institutional framework in which property rights and contracts are measured, defined and enforced assumes a prominent role in explaining economic performance.

In the early 1970s, North adopted a naive theory of institutions and property rights still grounded in neoclassical assumptions. Institutional and organizational analysis is modeled as a social maximizing efficient equilibrium outcome. However, the increasing tension between the neoclassical theoretical apparatus and its failure to account for contrasting political and institutional structures, diverging economic paths and social change propelled the modification of its assumptions and progressive conceptual innovation. In the later 1970s and early 1980s, North abandoned the efficiency view and gradually became more critical of the objective rationality postulate. In this intellectual movement, North's avant-garde research program contributed significantly to the creation of New Institutional Economics.

The purpose of this paper is to explore perspectives of secondary (9–12) teachers on how to sustain growth mindset concepts within instructional practices as well as identifying barriers to sustainment.

This study employed an exploratory case study to obtain the lived experiences of participants. An inductive analysis process was utilized on the data collected through structured interviews and a semi-structured focus group.

Four major themes emerged from an in-depth analysis process: embed growth mindset practices in daily classroom instruction, communicate verbal affirmations and implement growth mindset learning tasks, allow students to experience academic successes and failures and teachers should receive continual support.

The study was limited to secondary grades (9–12). Therefore, it is recommended to expand the study to grades K-8.

Due to a gap in the literature, this study provided insights into sustaining an innovative psychological approach, growth mindset, within academic instruction. Growth mindset concepts have been supported through the work of seminal researcher Carol Dweck and other prevalent educational researchers (e.g. Robert Marzano) to provide teachers with effective classroom instructional practices that can academically progress students.

The relationship between government and market is the key to the economic development performance of market economy countries. Due to the limits such as the state/market dichotomy, the focus on static allocation efficiency and the ignorance of the diversity of the market economy and the relationship between government and market, economic liberalism and state interventionism can hardly position and explain the role and evolution of government and market in the real world accurately.

China’s economic transition has always adhered to the reform direction of the socialist market economy and the development goal of a modern socialist country as well as the symbiosis and positive and progressive evolution of government and market, blazing a “third way” in handling the relationship between government and market.

The “China’s experience” shows that the key for emerging market economies to achieve good economic development performance lies in whether they can build a new relationship of the mutual integration between and common prosperity of government and market regarding target selection, production organisation, technological innovation, institutional change and regulatory adjustment.

The second part of this paper analyses the inherent defects of economic liberalism and state interventionism as well as the reasons why they can hardly be adopted as the theoretical guidance for emerging market economies to handle the relationship between government and market. The third part analyses how China has transcended the inherent thinking of liberalism and interventionism and shaped the new relationship between government and market through goal-oriented, active and progressive, two-way interactive exploration and practice to ensure the success of China's economic transition.

This study reviews and discusses the accounting literature that analyzes the role of auditors and enforcers in the context of fraud.

This literature review includes both qualitative and quantitative studies, based on the idea that the findings from different research paradigms can shed light on the complex interactions between different financial reporting controls. The authors use a mixed-methods research synthesis and select 64 accounting journal articles to analyze the main proxies for fraud, the stages of the fraud process under investigation and the roles played by auditors and enforcers.

The study highlights heterogeneity with respect to the terms and concepts used to capture the fraud phenomenon, a fragmentation in terms of the measures used in quantitative studies and a low level of detail in the fraud analysis. The review also shows a limited number of case studies and a lack of focus on the interaction and interplay between enforcers and auditors.

This study outlines directions for future accounting research on fraud.

The analysis underscores the need for the academic community, policymakers and practitioners to work together to prevent the destructive economic and social consequences of fraud in an increasingly complex and interconnected environment.

This study differs from previous literature reviews that focus on a single monitoring mechanism or deal with fraud in a broadly manner by discussing how the accounting literature addresses the roles and the complex interplay between enforcers and auditors in the context of accounting fraud.

Simulations exist for the prediction of the behaviour of building structural systems under fire, including two-way coupled fire-structure interaction. However, these simulations do not include detailed models of the connections, whereas these connections may impact the overall behaviour of the structure. Therefore, this paper proposes a two-scale method to include screw connections.

The two-scale method consists of (a) a global-scale model that models the overall structural system and (b) a small-scale model to describe a screw connection. Components in the global-scale model are connected by a spring element instead of a modelled screw, and the stiffness of this spring element is predicted by the small-scale model, updated at each load step. For computational efficiency, the small-scale model uses a proprietary technique to model the behaviour of the threads, verified by simulations that model the complete thread geometry, and validated by existing pull-out experiments. For four screw failure modes, load-deformation behaviour and failure predictions of the two-scale method are verified by a detailed system model. Additionally, the two-scale method is validated for a combined load case by existing experiments, and demonstrated for different temperatures. Finally, the two-scale method is illustrated as part of a two-way coupled fire-structure simulation.

It was shown that proprietary ”threaded connection interaction” can predict thread relevant failure modes, i.e. thread failure, shank tension failure, and pull-out. For bearing, shear, tension, and pull-out failure, load-deformation behaviour and failure predictions of the two-scale method correspond with the detailed system model and Eurocode predictions. Related to combined load cases, for a variety of experiments a good correlation has been found between experimental and simulation results, however, pull-out simulations were shown to be inconsistent.

More research is needed before the two-scale method can be used under all conditions. This relates to the failure criteria for pull-out, combined load cases, and temperature loads.

The two-scale method bridges the existing very detailed small-scale screw models with present global-scale structural models, that in the best case only use springs. It shows to be insightful, for it contains a functional separation of scales, revealing their relationships, and it is computationally efficient as it allows for distributed computing. Furthermore, local small-scale non-convergence (e.g. a screw failing) can be handled without convergence problems in the global-scale structural model.

Purpose – The purpose of this study is to develop a numerical framework to predict the time-dependent probability of failure of a bridge subjected to multiple vehicle impacts. Specially, this study focuses on investigating the inter-relationship between changes in life-cycle parameters (e.g., damage size caused by vehicle impact, loss of initial structural capacity, and threshold intervention) and bridges probability of failure.

Design/Methodology/Approach – The numerical procedure using MATLAB program is developed to compute the probability failure of a bridge. First, the importance and characteristics of life-cycle analysis is described. Then, model for damage accumulation and life cycle as a result of heavy vehicle impacts is discussed. Finally, the probability of failure of a bridge subjected to vehicle impacts as a result of change in life-cycle parameters is presented.

Findings – The results of study show that damage size caused by both vehicle impacts and loss of initial structural capacity have a great impact on the long-term safety of bridges. In addition, the probability of failure of a bridge under different threshold limits indicates that the structural intervention (e.g., repair or maintenance) should be undertaken to extend the service life of a bridge.

Research Limitations/Implications – The damage sizes caused by heavy vehicle impacts are based on simple assumptions. It is suggested that there would be a further study to estimate the magnitude of bridge damage as a result of vehicle impact using the full-scale impact test or computational simulation.

Practical Implications – This will allow much better predictions for residual life of bridges which could potentially be used to support decisions on health and maintenance of bridges.

Originality/Value – The life-cycle performance for assessing the time-dependent probability of failure of bridges subjected to multiple vehicle impact has not been fully discussed so far.

High levels of child obesity alongside rising stunting and the absence of a coherent food policy have deemed UK’s food system to be broken. The National Food Strategy (NFS) was debated intensely in media, with discussions on how and who should fix the food system.

Using a mixed methods approach, the authors conduct framing analysis on traditional media and sentiment analysis of twitter reactions to the NFS to identify frames used to shape food system policy interventions.

The study finds evidence that the media coverage of the NFS often utilised the tropes of “culture wars” shaping the debate of who is responsible to fix the food system – the government, the public or the industry. NFS recommendations were portrayed as issues of free choice to shift the debate away from government action correcting for market failure. In contrast, the industry was showcased as equipped to intervene on its own accord. Dietary recommendations made by the NFS were depicted as hurting the poor, painting a picture of helplessness and loss of control, while their voices were omitted and not represented in traditional media.

British media’s alignment with free market economic thinking has implications for food systems reform, as it deters the government from acting and relies on the invisible hand of the market to fix the system. Media firms should move beyond tropes of culture wars to discuss interventions that reform the structural causes of the UK’s broken food systems.

As traditional media coverage struggles to capture the diversity of public perception; the authors supplement framing analysis with sentiment analysis of Twitter data. To the best of our knowledge, no such media (and social media) analysis of the NFS has been conducted. The paper is also original as it extends our understanding of how media alignment with free market economic thinking has implications for food systems reform, as it deters the government from acting and relies on the invisible hand of the market to fix the system.

Housing provision and the neighbourhood's safety are significant social sustainability concerns. If structural issues are not well checked, housing provision and the neighbourhood's safety may become threatened, especially in Lagos State, Nigeria. Thus, this study aims to investigate the perceived root cause of collapsed buildings at the construction stage using two case studies, its effect on social sustainability aspects and suggested measures to mitigate future happening and enhance achieving social sustainability aspects goals.

The researchers collected data from Nigeria's built environment experts and eyewitnesses/employees of selected cases of collapsed buildings. The study adopted a phenomenology type of qualitative research design and analysed collated data via thematic analysis and achieved saturation. The analysed data created three themes.

Results reveal that inadequate heavy equipment and personnel incapacitated relevant government agencies are responsible for handling emergency and rescue during building projects collapse. Preliminary findings show developers' greed and systematic failures as the root cause of Nigeria's building project collapse (BPC). It categorised the root causes into three groups (developer's related-cause, design team related-cause and government entities related-cause). The study suggested measures to mitigate future happening. The emerged measures were grouped into a penalty, regulatory, byelaw act, technical and safety measures.

This study contributes to curbing the threat to social sustainability of housing provision in cities. It reveals the underlying perceived root cause of collapsed buildings in Nigeria's building industry. Also, it suggested feasible measures to mitigate BPC. These measures may be modified and adopted by other developing countries facing similar challenges.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the key drivers of coopetition by adopting a managerial and economic framework. A case of coopetition failure is investigated by means of a historical example focused on the Egyptian adventure of the Italian banks in the first decades of the XX century.

The authors adopt a qualitative case study and a flexible pattern matching approach to develop theoretical ideas. Because the flexible pattern matching approach was adopted, the authors build the analysis on a tentative analytical framework specified a priori to provide guidance and focus. This approach allows a theory-driven research paradigm. The historical case study is mainly grounded on original sources drawn from some major banking and institutional archives.

While several scholars emphasised the relevance of external drivers, the literature has paid less attention to how relational and internal drivers combine. The historical case suggests that key mechanisms supporting the success of coopetition concern planning of common goals, conflicts management, alignment and formalisation of governance. In this vein, internal and relational dimensions seem to be more relevant than environment-context dimension. In addition, the historical example shows that an intra- and inter-firm alignment is required to pursue the implementation of a coopetitive strategy. This suggests the relevance of a holistic approach to investigate coopetition. Further evidence confirms the role of governance mechanisms for the success of coopetition.

The main contribution of this study is the re-consideration of the drivers of coopetition. In particular, the role of coopetition drivers has been investigated using a historical event: the Italian multinational banking in Egypt in the interwar years.

This paper proposes a progressive, multi-level framework for diagnosing maintenance performance: rapid performance health checks of key performance for different equipment groups and end-to-end process diagnostics to further locate potential performance issues. A question-based performance evaluation approach is introduced to support the selection and derivation of case-specific indicators based on diagnostic aspects.

The case research method is used to develop the proposed framework. The generic parts of the framework are built on existing maintenance performance measurement theories through a literature review. In the case study, empirical maintenance data of 196 emergency shutdown valves (ESDVs) are collected over a two-year period to support the development and validation of the proposed approach.

To improve processes, companies need a separate performance measurement structure. This paper suggests a hierarchical model in four layers (objective, domain, aspect and performance measurement) to facilitate the selection and derivation of indicators, which could potentially reduce management complexity and help prioritize continuous performance improvement. Examples of new indicators are derived from a case study that includes 196 ESDVs at an offshore oil and gas production plant.

Methodological approaches to deriving various performance indicators have rarely been addressed in the maintenance field. The proposed diagnostic framework provides a structured way to identify and locate process performance issues by creating indicators that can bridge generic evaluation aspects and maintenance data. The framework is highly adaptive as data availability functions are used as inputs to generate indicators instead of passively filtering out non-applicable existing indicators.