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The paper reports on the implementation of the Revised Elderly Persons' Disability Scale use – a 53‐item, seven sub‐scale functional assessment tool – in a range of older adult care institutions. Staff education on the instrument's use is provided; patient assessments collated centrally; and results fed back to respective care facilities. This study explores the views of qualified and unqualified staff on the use of the scale in their respective UK National Health Service, Local Authority or Private Residential older adult care facilities.

An action research mode was adopted where the researcher was a member of a team responsible for planning, development, and co‐ordination of community care projects for adults leaving hospital care. Structured and semi‐structured interviewing was employed to explore personal experience of the instrument's use in older adult care institutions. A total of 20 care staff qualified in nursing or social work and nine unqualified staff participated in this research.

Participants reported that scale use contributed positively to the planning and delivery of care. Its use influenced the admission of individuals for care by the institutions studied and improvements in the quality of the transfer of clients between settings were reported. It proved straightforward to use and unqualified staff reported their greater involvement in the care planning process as a result of its implementation. Participants reported that instrument use contributed to the identification of staff training needs.

Evidence for functional assessment scale effectiveness is equivocal and little has been published on the experience of scale use by a range of elder care staff. This experience forms this study's sole focus and scale use is shown to have the potential to contribute to care improvement.

We assess the impact of NZ IAS 32 on the financial reporting of convertible financial instruments by retrospective application of the standard to a sample of New Zealand companies over the period 1988 ‐ 2003. NZ IAS 32 has a broader definition of liabilities than does the corresponding current standard (FRS‐31) and it does not permit convertibles to be reported under headings that are intermediate to debt and equity. The results of the study indicate that in comparison with the reported financial position and performance, the reporting of convertibles in accordance with NZ IAS 32 would result in higher amounts for liabilities and higher interest. Thus, analysts using financial statement information to assess risk of financial distress will need to revise the critical values of commonly used measures of risk and performance when companies report under NZ IAS

States and development bodies are increasingly stimulating social enterprise activity in communities as an empowering social and economic development intervention. This type of development initiative is often facilitated by actors who are external to communities, and the role of community members is not clear. This paper aims to explore whether facilitated social enterprise benefits or disempowers communities.

The focus is a case study of a project based in Scotland designed to stimulate the creation of social enterprises involved in community growing. The case study approach involved a mix of methods, including formal (semi-structured) interviews, participant observation and analysis of documentary evidence. Analysis of findings was undertaken using Muñoz and Steinerowski’s (2012) theory of social entrepreneurial behaviour.

Findings suggest that social enterprise that originates outside communities and is facilitated by external actors is potentially disempowering, particularly when social enterprise development does not necessarily align with community needs. The paper reiterates findings in previous studies that certain roles in facilitated social enterprise require to be community-led. Projects that do attempt to facilitate social enterprise would benefit from community participation at the project planning stage.

If facilitated social enterprise is increasingly promoted as an empowering development intervention, this paper provides insight about how facilitated social enterprise occurs in practice and gives preliminary information about possible barriers to empowerment using this approach to development.

This study aims to investigate whether CEOs who graduated from prestigious universities can provide a better-quality working environment.

Using a sample of 1,877 observations from all companies listed on the Indonesia Stock Exchange from 2019–2021, this research employs logistic OLS and coarsened exact matching (CEM) analyses to ensure robust results.

This study revealed that companies with CEOs who are alumni of a reputable university provide a high-quality working environment. These results are robust using the coarsened exact matching (CEM). Additional analyses exploring subindicators of working environment quality revealed that CEOs who have received an education from a reputable university have a better understanding of the importance of continuous education and training.

The findings of this study can provide guidance for managers and decision-makers in managing human resources and the work environment more effectively. By understanding the impact of high-quality education on leadership abilities in creating a supportive work environment, companies can be more strategic in recruiting and developing their leaders.

This study provides a unique contribution by providing empirical data on the quality of the working environment in Indonesia, specifically focusing on the role of CEOs from a reputable university as policy-makers, which has not been extensively explored in previous research.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the impact of product market competition on dividend payout and share repurchases in Australia in which a full dividend imputation system has been in place since 1987.

Panel data estimation with industry and year-fixed effects is employed to examine the role of industry competition on dividend payout and share repurchases. The paper uses a sample of ASX200 non-financial firms, including 4,272 observations over the period 1992–2015. To address the endogeneity problem, the authors utilize the event of Australia–United States Free Trade Agreement (AUSFTA), which became effective on 01 January 2005, and perform a difference-in-difference analysis.

The authors find that firms operating in competitive markets are likely to pay more dividends and repurchase more shares to reduce agency costs. The positive relation between industry competition and dividends is stronger among firms where the CEO and the Chairman of the Board are the same person and among firms with higher market-to-book ratio and higher standard deviation of stock returns. The study results are robust when the authors account for the impact of franking credit on dividend payment. In the difference-in-difference analysis, the authors find strong evidence of a casual relation that product competition drives changes in dividend policy.

The findings are consistent with the notion that intense product market competition can mitigate agency conflicts between managers and shareholders and with the information signalling explanation of market competition. As such, regulators may want to introduce policies that encourage more market competition (e.g. market deregulation) to enhance market efficiency.

This study incorporates product market competition in explaining the firm payout policy.

Special education in China has lagged behind regular education for many years, however, the past few decades, the government has made considerable efforts to develop and improve the special education system. While the citizens of China have had a generic moral interest in disability since ancient times, the development of special education schools did not occur until American and European missionaries started schools for the visually and hearing impaired in the 19th century. The next major influence in the development of the special education system occurred with China’s Cultural Revolution in 1978. Interestingly, there is not any exclusive legislation on special education but in the 1980s, the government started Learning in Regular Classrooms (LRC), which is China’s version of inclusion. LRC has progressed rapidly the past two decades; however, the quality of instruction is low due to a lack of specialists, a shortage of personnel, inadequate funding, and limited technology as well as other barriers that are delineated in the chapter. The chapter emphasizes the government’s recent efforts in in-service teacher training, the preparation of preservice teachers, working with families, developing community rehabilitation training programs, and implementing evidence-based practices. Special education in China today is at a good place but it has quite a way from the ideal situation.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the association between company reputation and dividend policy.

In this study, sample of 98,809 firm-year observations from 22 countries covering 2005–2016 were used.

Firm reputation concerns are associated with higher propensities to pay dividends and payout ratios. Further, this positive effect is more pronounced for firms with high free cash flows, high information asymmetry and low institutional monitoring. The results are robust to an instrumental variable approach, propensity score matching and the Heckman two-stage correction approach while addressing endogeneity concerns.

These findings have significant implications for various stakeholders, such as existing and potential investors, managers, policymakers and regulators, by providing insights into the relationship between corporate reputation and firm dividend payout decisions. Corporate reputation is highlighted as crucial for accessing finance, emphasizing the role of national regulators and policymakers in facilitating firms' efforts to improve their reputation. The study highlights the dynamics of corporate reputation and dividend payout, calling for proactive engagement from regulators and policymakers. Crafting policies conducive to reputation-building can enhance firms' financial prospects, indicating the need for strategic interventions at managerial, regulatory and policy levels. Understanding the influence of economic context is crucial for firms to tailor reputation management strategies and optimize funding opportunities in different economic environments.

Overall, results suggest that reputation serves as a disciplining mechanism, where firms will pay dividends to maintain their reputations.

The first to fall. US newsletter specialist NewsNet, which offered same‐day and real‐time access to business newsletters and worldwide newswires, has announced it is closing down its operation. This makes it the online industry's first recorded casualty at the hands of the Internet.

The purpose of this paper was to investigate the factors influencing financial performance of small hotels, particularly in developing countries like Tanzania.

This investigation used financial ratio analysis on business performance data collected from small hotels in Tanzania through face‐to‐face interviews. Currently there is no existing data on such aspects of the hotel industry in Tanzania. As a consequence, Arusha region was selected as the sample for this study due to a significant amount of hospitality industry activity in this area.

Findings of this investigation suggest that operating factors in small hotels such as inefficiencies due to lack of employee training, low investments in fixed assets and technology may be equally responsible for low profitability as are government policies that ignore appropriate emphasis on ensuring safety and security, and quick processing of licenses and permits.

Even though this is one of the few studies that has investigated the profitability of small hotels in a developing country, its findings are based on the analysis of one (even though a prominent) tourist area of East Africa.

Nevertheless, findings provide preliminary evidence for professionals and policy makers to critically evaluate factors that would ensure profitability of small hotels in countries such as Tanzania.

As this paper highlights, this is critical because such businesses are locally owned and may truly and positively influence economic development.

The important role of comprehensive assessment in recognising the need for and organising often complex care regimes for individual older people is widely accepted. However, the process of carrying out such assessments continues to present challenges to those involved, as it frequently requires people to work in different settings and across professional and agency boundaries. This paper explores the situation in the light of current working practice and policy directives. More work will be needed if small‐scale examples of good practice are to be applied across whole systems.