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1 – 10 of 886According to the US National Safety Council (NSC), in 2001 there were 1,537,600 injuries and illnesses reported for all work occupations in America. The National Safety Council…
Abstract
According to the US National Safety Council (NSC), in 2001 there were 1,537,600 injuries and illnesses reported for all work occupations in America. The National Safety Council estimated that these work injuries and related costs totalled more than US$132bn annually, with an average cost of US$85,848 per injury or illness. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, janitors and cleaners have the fifth highest occupational injury and illnesses rate in the US. In 2001, janitors and cleaners reported 52,600 injuries or illnesses, with more than 38,600 of these injuries requiring time away from work. Custodial accidents and illnesses are costing more than US$4.5bn each year. Custodial costs have a dramatic effect on large organisations. Boeing in Seattle, Washington, and Sandia National Laboratories in Albuquerque, New Mexico, were the focus of a research study conducted by Brigham Young University Facilities Management faculty and students in 2003. A new cleaning approach called OS1 (Operating System One) was developed by ManageMen, a custodial consulting company. Boeing and Sandia implemented the OS1 system over several years. The research compared pre‐OS1 custodial recordable accidents, incidents and lost work days with post‐OS1 implementation accidents, incidents and lost work days. The findings, presented in this paper, show that, with the implementation of OS1, recordable accidents and lost work days were significantly reduced, with some reductions as high as 90 per cent. The study also showed a significant reduction in overall custodial operating costs.
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Ninad Pradhan, Dinesh Patlolla and Rupy Sawhney
The purpose of this paper is to present an optimised scheduling system for facility mangers and custodians. Experience-driven systems currently in use can result in poor ratings…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to present an optimised scheduling system for facility mangers and custodians. Experience-driven systems currently in use can result in poor ratings for facility maintenance metrics such as overtime hours, utilisation difference and labour costs.
Design/methodology/approach
The cleaning schedule and custodian work assignments defined by the manager are simulated for the entire year. Clustering and routing algorithms assign work to custodians equally and find optimal cleaning routes. The manager may use the resulting feedback to iteratively find a suitable schedule which lowers costs.
Findings
Data were collected at a large university building in consultation with facility management and custodians. Results indicate a significant reduction in overtime hours, improvement in utilisation difference and a lowering of labour costs.
Research limitations/implications
The methodology was validated at a single building in the facility. Variable selection and optimisation model design will benefit from a comprehensive case study which spans the entire facility.
Practical implications
The methodology may easily be integrated with existing facility maintenance software, adding to it features such as a manager scheduling interface with feedback on critical cleaning metrics and a custodian user interface which highlights room visitation routes and task times.
Originality/value
This study acts on the need for facility cleaning labour cost management highlighted in literature. It achieves its goals using a novel combination of scheduling, simulation and optimisation. It is designed to empower key decision-makers, i.e. facility managers and custodians, with better information.
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Chris Blatch, Andrew Webber, Kevin O’Sullivan and Gerard van Doorn
The purpose of this paper is to determine recidivism costs and benefits for 1,030 community-based male offenders enrolled in a domestic abuse program (DAP) compared to an…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to determine recidivism costs and benefits for 1,030 community-based male offenders enrolled in a domestic abuse program (DAP) compared to an untreated control group (n=1,030) matched on risk factors.
Design/methodology/approach
The study time frame was October 1, 2007-June 30, 2010 with reconvictions measured to December 31, 2010. Follow up averaged 19 months. Controls received standard community supervision, but no domestic violence group interventions. Follow up measures included court costs for violent and non-violent reconvictions; re-incarcerations and community-based orders costs measured in days.
Findings
Adjusting for time at risk, DAP enrollees had 29 percent fewer reconvictions, 46 percent fewer violent reconvictions, 34 percent fewer custodial days, but 23 percent more days on community orders. Costs: DAP enrollment avoided $2.52 M in custodial costs, but higher community correction costs (+$773 K) and court costs (+$5.8 K), reducing the DAP’s criminal justice system cost savings to $1.754 M ($8.92 M for the DAP group compared to $10.67M for controls). Cost benefits: when the 64 DAP program costs were deducted ($602 K), the net benefit to the New South Wales criminal justice system was $1,141 M, or $1,108 per enrollee, providing a net benefit/cost ratio of 2.89. If the DAP was completed, the net benefit was $1,820 per offender. These results compares favorably to economic evaluations of other community-based interventions.
Practical implications
Group interventions for domestically violent (DV) offenders can provide good investment returns to tax payers and government by reducing demand on scarce criminal justice system resources. The study provides insights into justice costs for DV offenders; a methodological template to determine cost benefits for offender programs and a contribution to cost-effective evidence-based crime reduction interventions.
Originality/value
Using a rigorous methodology, official court, custodial and community correction services costing data, this is the first Australian cost benefit analysis of a domestic violence group intervention, and the first to justify program expenditure by demonstrating substantial savings to the criminal justice system.
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Aditya Agrawal and Keiran Sharpe
Purpose – This chapter aims to contribute to the policy debate on private sector involvement in traditionally core defence activities through rigorous economic analysis…
Abstract
Purpose – This chapter aims to contribute to the policy debate on private sector involvement in traditionally core defence activities through rigorous economic analysis. Punishment and correction in the US military prisons have traditionally been considered as a core activity that has been governed, regulated and managed by the military service personnel. It has been shown however, that military facilities such as stockades and brigs have often failed to meet their correctional objectives – a quality issue.
Methodology – The chapter constructs a case study to illustrate the method of analysis. Well-trained and motivated military custodial personnel play an important correctional role but are not available in sufficient numbers in military prisons. It is therefore proposed to source these services through the private sector. Specifically, the chapter proposes that private sector providers should provide custodial personnel for stockades and brigs. Traditionally the private sector has been employed to reduce costs, rather than improve quality. This chapter adapts and applies the framework developed by Hart, Shleifer and Vishny (1997) to study the governance model and incentive regime that could enable the use of the private sector, reduce the risk of excessive cost cutting and enable quality outcomes to be achieved.
Findings – This chapter argues that private sector involvement could effectively increase the contestability of supply.
Implications – The chapter demonstrates the scope for private sector involvement to increase quality, rather than just decrease costs. It follows that the private sector can contribute to core national security outcomes. However, this implication needs significantly more exploration for specific contexts.
Value – The adopted mode of analysis provides a template for rigorous analysis of similar proposals in the future.
Resettlement programmes provide support for young offenders during their custodial sentence and for approximately nine months after release. This article describes how the costs…
Abstract
Resettlement programmes provide support for young offenders during their custodial sentence and for approximately nine months after release. This article describes how the costs and benefits of providing an effective service of this kind were estimated based on the ‘RESET’ programme, published evidence on the costs of crime and the likely reduction in offending due to an intensive support programme. The cost of crime has been estimated at £46,459 per year (after allowing for a reduction due to the time spent in custody), plus prison custody at an average of £30,475 and emergency accommodation at an average of £1,106, making a total of £78,040 for each offender. Using a fairly modest assumption that good support in resettlement could lead to approximately a 35% reduction in frequency and a 10% reduction in seriousness of offending, a saving of £20,407 per offender per year could be achieved. These savings would more than offset the average cost of a good quality resettlement service of £8,074. The scheme would break even if the frequency of offending were reduced by only 20%.
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Judd Michael and Nathaniel Elser
This paper aims to propose a quadruple bottom line approach for higher education leaders who must decide whether to accept sustainability initiatives that do have not have a…
Abstract
Purpose
This paper aims to propose a quadruple bottom line approach for higher education leaders who must decide whether to accept sustainability initiatives that do have not have a business case. The authors describe a personal waste management program at a major university to illustrate how a quadruple bottom line framework may impact decisions to adopt a sustainability practice in higher education. The authors also demonstrate how opportunity costs can be applied to better understand the true costs of such waste management programs.
Design/methodology/approach
This exploratory research uses a case study approach with a unique accounting method to determine the costs of a personal waste management system. System costs are calculated for the entire university and for sample units within the university.
Findings
University leaders chose to continue the new waste management program in light of evidence showing higher than anticipated costs. The authors illustrate how this decision was driven by consideration of a fourth bottom line, that of the educational value of the sustainability initiative. It is discussed whether proposed sustainability initiatives such as these should be evaluated using a traditional triple bottom line framework, or, in the case of higher education, if equal consideration should also be given to factors related to the educational mission of the institution.
Originality/value
The authors develop a quadruple bottom line framework to explain the frequent implementation of economically costly sustainability programs in higher education contexts. This paper also reviews the rise of “personal waste management” programs at higher education institutions, demonstrates how the value of employee time can and should be considered as a cost of a comprehensive campus sustainability program (i.e. recycling and composting) and illustrates a novel means for using opportunity costs to determine those costs.
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The prison population in England and Wales has risen dramatically in recent years and rates of reoffending following release are, at best, disappointing. This article considers…
Abstract
The prison population in England and Wales has risen dramatically in recent years and rates of reoffending following release are, at best, disappointing. This article considers some of the evidence in relation to what is going wrong and how resettlement for prisoners might be made more effective. Ultimately, however, the expansion in the custodial population mitigates the potential to reduce recidivism. An argument is made for a justice reinvestment approach similar to that advocated by the House of Commons Justice Committee.
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– The purpose of this paper is to analyze investor reactions to ethical screening by pension plan managers.
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to analyze investor reactions to ethical screening by pension plan managers.
Design/methodology/approach
The author presents a sample consisting of data corresponding to 573 pension plans in relation to such aspects as financial performance, inception date, asset size, number of participants, custodial and management fees, and whether their managers adopt ethical screening or give part of their profits to social projects. On this data the author implements the fixed effects panel data model proposed by Vogelsang (2012).
Findings
The results obtained indicate that investors/consumers prefer traditional or solidarity pension plans to ethical pension plans. Furthermore, the findings show that ethical investors/consumers are more (less) sensitive to positive (negative) lagged returns than caring and traditional consumers, causing traditional consumers to contribute to pension plans that they already own.
Research limitations/implications
The author does not know what types of environmental, social and corporate governance criteria have been adopted by ethical pension plan managers and the weight given to each of these criteria for selecting the stock of the firms in their portfolios that could influence in the investors’ behaviour.
Practical implications
The results obtained in the current paper show that investors invest less money in ethical pension plans than in traditional and solidarity pension plans; this could be due to the lack of information for their part. To solve this, management companies could increase the transparency about their corporate social responsibility (CSR) investments to encourage investors to invest in ethical products so these lead to raising CSR standards in companies, and therefore, sustainable development.
Social implications
The Spanish socially responsible investment retail market is still at an early phase of development, and regulators should promote it in order to encourage firms to adopt business activities that take into account societal concerns.
Originality/value
This paper provides new evidence in a field little analysed. This paper contributes to the existing literature by focusing on examining the behaviour of pension funds investors whose investment time horizon is in the long-term while previous literature focus on analysing behaviour of mutual fund investors whose investment time horizon is in the short/medium term what could cause different investors’ behaviour.
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Niyi Awofeso and William D. Rawlinson
Repeated influenza outbreaks are surprisingly rare in prison settings worldwide, a factor that has made it superfluous, to date, to develop contingency plans for responding to…
Abstract
Repeated influenza outbreaks are surprisingly rare in prison settings worldwide, a factor that has made it superfluous, to date, to develop contingency plans for responding to prison‐based influenza epidemics. However, the influenza outbreak that occurred in an Australian prison in 2000 has highlighted the appropriateness of developing an outbreak plan, not least because of the security implications of a widespread prison influenza epidemic. Using reported attack rates and morbidity profiles of the 2000 Australian prison influenza outbreak to develop scenarios, the authors estimated the cost ‐ benefit of mass vaccination and antiviral chemotherapy approaches for the control of hypothetical widespread influenza outbreaks in New South Wales prisons, occurring at an average frequency of once every 10 years. It was concluded that, from the perspectives of maintaining prison security as well as health care services’ provision to prisoners, early antiviral chemotherapy for symptomatic individuals will have more favourable cost ‐ benefit ratios than a mass vaccination approach for controlling prison‐based influenza outbreaks that occur in line with this model.
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Queensland’s first private prison became operational in January 1990 under contract to Corrections Corporation of Australia. The major reason for privatization was to attempt to…
Abstract
Queensland’s first private prison became operational in January 1990 under contract to Corrections Corporation of Australia. The major reason for privatization was to attempt to reduce alleged public sector bureaucratic complexities and to increase the efficiency of the delivery of corrective services. Compares two Queensland prisons of similar security status (one public, one private) in terms of the nature of the inmate population in an attempt to determine whether either has a cost advantage. Compares actual cost data and suggests reasons for the apparent differences.
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