Search results

The objective of this article is to examine the criminal conduct of convicted bankers and institutions for the purpose of identifying any measurable factor that can determine the degree of risk an organization faces from the threat of organized crime.

Primary research was conducted of the money laundering related acts of bankers and banks charged with criminal offenses. In addition, interviews were conducted of professionals with first‐hand knowledge, directly involved in the events related to these prosecutions.

Although maintenance of a competent anti‐money laundering compliance program is required by law, the real measure of a financial institution's risk from organized crime is directly proportional to the degree with which the business line of an institution genuinely embraces, participates in, and benefits from the anti‐money laundering protocols established by the institution's compliance function.

This paper is original research conducted and presented from the viewpoint of a specialist.

Undercover policing operations are on the increase in the UK and the USA and questions surrounding the judicial and administrative controls of such operations in the field of white collar crime investigations need to be addressed. This paper considers recent case examples involving such methods, looking in particular at recent developments in the law relating to entrapment and agents provocateurs and also at the differing regimes of administrative control in the UK and USA. While some US developments point to a restriction on the scope of undercover operations, the UK courts and European Court of Human Rights have been providing judicial backing to such police methods.

This paper aims to suggest a user-approach to doing style designs for apparel products.

A case of the approach to produce a collection of party dresses for mothers-to-be was presented. Two consecutive studies were conducted to understand and identify the needs of contemporary business women for maternity party dresses to attend banquets and functions. In these two studies, direct dialogue with target customers and scene deployment were used to collect the voice of the customer (VOC); affinity diagramming was used to organize the collected VOC data into items that were required by target customers; and the pairwise comparison method of analytic hierarchy process was used to identify important requirements.

In using various design techniques and incorporating appropriate fashion elements, style designs were produced with the primary focus on meeting user needs.

It has been a common practice that marketers do market research and designers do style creation. However, a joint effort of these two parties is required to better understand and address user needs. With the main focus on collecting and analyzing the VOC and organizing it into customer needs before applying various design techniques and incorporating appropriate fashion elements, the style designs that were produced in this case study were highly capable of satisfying user needs.

The purpose of this paper is to consider recent UK case law on money laundering and consider how the concept of “predicate offence” continues to have a restricting influence on the scope of the relevant legislation. The paper aims to consider recent experience both in the UK and abroad and that notions of what money laundering is and how it can be prosecuted need to quickly evolve to maintain the credibility of the anti‐money laundering environment. This requires a move to accepting that the offence can be proved by reference to the way money is treated that is not dependent on a specified or predicate offence.

The paper presents a review of relevant case law and commentaries thereon. It assesses of new international approaches and analyses specific UK legal provisions relating to money laundering and how they can be amended to be more effective in practice.

Nearly ten years after the advent of the Proceeds of Crime Act 2002 (POCA), a minor but telling amendment to the definition of “criminal property” would help to remove uncertainty as to what constitutes criminal property and increase confidence in the use of the POCA money laundering provisions as an effective weapon against offenders.

The requirement for further legal research and debate is implied.

Practical implications of the paper are the improvement of the effectiveness, and encouraging more use of, the POCA money laundering provisions.

Social implications of the paper are the protection of communities by improved effectiveness of measures taken against those who profit from crime.

This paper encourages debate on the topic of money laundering and knowledge.

Quality Function Deployment (QFD) has been practiced by leading companies around the world since 1966. Its two‐fold purpose is to assure that true customer needs are properly deployed throughout the design, build and delivery of a new product, whether it be assembled, processed, serviced, or even software, and to improve the product development process itself. This paper describes the evolution of the method, its current best practice, and proposals for future direction, not only to log its history and key players correctly, but also to convey the richness and depth of the applications throughout multiple industries.

This paper reviews the Lean Healthcare and Productive Ward: releasing time to care (RTC) literature and extracts the reported effects and impacts experienced by employees who implement it. The purpose of this paper is to identify and investigate the strength of the connection between the two models and explores the implications for leadership and implementation.

This study reviewed the Lean Healthcare and Productive Ward: RTC literature using strict systematic inclusion criteria. A qualitative content analysis was used to identify key characteristics of reported employee experience, effect or impact. Themes and categories were ranked by the number of citations and presented.

This study outlines the similar employee effects and impacts that exist between Lean-type improvement initiatives and the Productive Ward: RTC programme. It discusses the three top themes of: Empowerment, Leadership and Engagement and explores the opportunities for leadership. It also identifies one key difference between the two initiatives, the socio-cultural effect and impact which is strongly reported with Lean-type improvement initiatives. The socio-cultural element is discussed and presented as one of the fundamental aspects of Lean and the original Toyota production system.

This study brings new insights for leaders involved in Lean-type improvement initiatives which are currently being imported into healthcare and provides a comprehensive list of reported employee impacts and effects of value to healthcare leaders attempting to establish an environment and culture of improvement.

Much of the communication strategy literature propounds the ideal of integrated communications. To support the achievement of an organisation’s aims and goals and to prevent a fragmented image of the organisation emerging, all communication, both internal and external, should be aligned, consistent and comprehensively integrated. This article examines “Contact 20/20”, a communication strategy recently put in place by a company providing supply chain management to the international oil and gas industry, and considers how that strategy measures up against some of the ideals put forward in the literature.

The verbal and nonverbal behaviors that individuals display (i.e., their communication styles) influence the status positions they attain in their task groups. Prior research has generally concluded that communication behaviors that convey agency (i.e., characteristics denoting intelligence, ambition, and dominance) are more effective for obtaining a high-status position in a task group than communication behaviors that convey communality (i.e., characteristics denoting warmth, sincerity, and agreeableness). The message from these prior studies is that it is more status enhancing to be smart than to be social. The objective of this chapter is to challenge this assertion and argue that in some task groups it may be more status enhancing to be social rather than to be smart. I suggest that the status benefits of particular communication styles depend on the characteristics of the group to which an individual belongs to. Thus, in contrast to prior research in this area, I argue for a more contextual approach to the study of communication styles and status conferral, focusing on how structural and process differences between groups influence how the group members’ words and actions are evaluated.