Search results

This paper aims to explore the content of Safeguarding Adult Reviews (SARs) from older adult care homes to understand how safety is understood and might be measured in practice.

SARs relevant to older adult care homes from 2015 onwards were identified via the Social Care Institute of Excellence SARs library. Using thematic analysis, initial inductive coding was mapped to a health-derived safety framework, the Safety Measurement and Monitoring Framework (SMMF).

The content of the SARs reflected the dimensions of the SMMF but gaining a deeper understanding of safety in older adult care homes requires additional understanding of how this unique context interacts with these dimensions to create and prevent risks and harms. This review identified the importance of external factors in care home safety.

This study provides an insight into the scope of safety issues within care homes using the SARs content, and in doing so improves understanding of how it might be measured. The measurement of safety in care homes needs to acknowledge that there are factors external to care homes that a home may have little knowledge of and no ability to control.

This paper aims to examine the association between money laundering and infrastructure quality and whether the strength of auditing and reporting standards (SARS) moderates this association.

The sample includes 348 country-year observations over the period of 2015–2017. The authors use Basel Anti-Money Laundering reports for 2015, 2016 and 2017 to collect data concerning money laundering. Infrastructure quality and the remaining variables are gathered from the Global Competitiveness reports for the same years.

Results show that money laundering is negatively associated with infrastructure quality. This negative association remains stable for countries characterised by low SARS, while it becomes less pronounced for countries with high SARS. Additional tests for the moderating impact of the SARS, using an interaction term between money laundering and SARS dummy variable, confirm that high SARS mitigates the adverse effect of money laundering on infrastructure quality.

These findings are important for policymakers, as they put emphasis on the adverse effect of money laundering and financial crimes on infrastructure quality and how solid auditing and reporting standards may improve infrastructure quality and reduce the negative effect of money laundering on the same variable. Thus, strengthening legislations concerning auditing and reporting standards in one country may improve infrastructure quality and combat money laundering and its adverse impacts.

The purpose of the study is to explore the contribution of safeguarding adult reviews (SARs) to the contemporary stories of what social work practice is and what social workers should do. Evidence of this contribution is sought by analysis of SARs as publicly available documents capturing contemporary social work alongside considering social worker’s views of these reports.

This paper presents two components of the wider research study as follows: documentary analysis exploring discussions of social work practice held within a sample of SARs xD;xA; and analysis of focus groups and semi-structured interviews established to explore the knowledge, experience and views of front-line social workers in relation to SARs.

It is suggested that social workers locate the value of SARs within the arena of learning and development often celebrating the SAR processes in bringing agencies together more so than the actual report. This paper argues that SARs hold considerable power in their ability to present a narrative about contemporary social work in England, and that social workers themselves can be wary of this power.

The research is limited by the scope of the data which includes a sample of SARs from one geographical area and data collected from social workers who volunteered to participate.

This paper draws on the evidence gathered and presents some recommendations to support the potential for SARs to positively enhance social work identity and practice.

This paper explores the stories about social work that are found within a sample of SARs and seeks to explore how these stories fit with the stories that social workers themselves share about SARs.

There has been considerable research interest in SARs; however, to date there has not been a research exploration of the impact of SARs on professional social work and front-line social workers in practice. This paper presents early findings and analysis from research in progress as part of a Doctorate of Social Work Study at University of East London who provided ethical approval and supervisory support.

This paper aims to examine the housing market responses to two outbreaks of respiratory diseases in Hong Kong during the Information Era – the 2003 SARS and COVID-19 outbreaks.

The authors first investigate the aggregate housing price changes during SARS and COVID-19. Next, the authors conduct a battery of univariate analyses pertaining to the relationship between district-level housing price movements and geographic and demographic patterns during the pandemic periods. Finally, to shed light on the housing price dynamics at the micro level, the authors conduct an estate-level analysis with the data of 234 residential estates from 2003 to 2020, focusing on the impacts of SARS and COVID-19 on the idiosyncratic volatility of residential estates.

Overall, SARS and COVID-19 outbreaks are negatively associated with housing prices. However, unlike SARS, the impact of COVID-19 on housing prices was moderate and transient. The geographic imbalances of the epidemic-induced underperformance are observed at the district and estate levels. Finally, the estate-level analysis presented in this paper indicates that the average idiosyncratic volatility of residential estates is 1.5% higher during the SARS period but 3.7% lower during the COVID-19 period. Lower volatility during COVID-19 is likely explained by household learning from the SARS period.

Regulators and investors could resort to efficient information disclosure to attenuate idiosyncratic volatility's adverse impact on housing market returns.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, the authors are among the first to examine housing market responses to the 2003 SARS and COVID-19 outbreaks using the Hong Kong housing market as a laboratory.

This paper aims to examine the association between the strength of auditing and reporting standards (SARS, hereafter) and sustainability and investigates whether ethical behavior of firms moderates relationship between SARS and sustainability.

The sample consists of 500 country-year observations over the period of 2014–2017. Sustainability is collected from the Global Sustainable Competitiveness Index Reports for 2014, 2015, 2016 and 2017, while SARS and ethical behaviors are collected from the Global Competitiveness Reports for the same years.

The findings of this study suggest that the SARS is associated with sustainability. Similarly, ethical behavior of firms has a positive and significant effect on sustainability. When testing for the moderating effect of ethical behavior of firms on the association between SARS and sustainability, the results show that the positive association SARS becomes positive and more significant for countries where firms operate with high ethical behaviors, while the association becomes insignificant for settings where firms operate with low ethical behaviors.

The findings emphasize the role played by SARS and business ethics in improving sustainability. These results may have policy implications for governments aiming to improve sustainability by strengthening auditing and reporting standards and enforcing laws obliging firms to act ethically.

This paper aims to investigate the determinants of the strength of auditing and reporting standards (SARS) in 41 European countries. It posits that there are a number of country‐level determinants for the SARS and these determinants are grouped into four main categories: legal framework, corporate governance, market and higher education. This study aims to expand the domain of auditing and reporting by using country‐level data than is usually found in the auditing literature.

Data were accessed from the World Economic Forum (WEF) Report (2009), World Bank Reports on Observation of Standards and Codes (ROSC) and the International Federation of Accountants (IFAC). The ROSC was used to synthesise the status of auditing in the 41 countries, whereas the IFAC report was used to determine the adoption of international standards on auditing. Data on SARS and its determinants were gathered from the WEF Report to empirically examine the validity of the hypotheses. The ranks of SARS were regressed on the ranks of its determinants.

This paper provides additional empirical evidence on SARS in Europe. It suggests that, in addition to extant literature, judicial independence and efficiency of the legal framework, ethical behaviour of firms, efficacy of corporate boards, strengths of the stock market and extent of staff training in the European countries impact on its SARS.

Because the ROSC are not available for all the European countries, this study could not comment on the status of auditing for all the 41 countries. Second, had the countries been grouped into developed, emerging and developing, the determinants of SARS could be different.

This paper emphasises the importance of the efficiency of legal framework, corporate governance and the training of staff to maintain a reasonable SARS.

This study fills the research gap regarding the absence of an empirical cross‐country study on the determinants of the SARS in Europe

Hong Kong was particularly affected by the 2003 outbreak of Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS). During the epidemic, it seemed as if the Hong Kong government and health system were barely coping, leading to calls of mismanagement and governance incapacity. In the wake of the SARS outbreak, two inquiries were conducted. The purpose of this article is to review the Hong Kong's response to SARS from the perspective of two inquiries.

An historical analysis of the institutional arrangements for health care delivery in Hong Kong is undertaken, followed by a chronology of developments in the SARS outbreak. The article then reviews outbreak management and the findings of the two inquiries. Finally, it considers whether the Hong Kong health system can be reformed to manage any future infectious disease epidemic better.

Both leadership and coherency were lacking in Hong Kong's response to SARS. These are age‐old problems in the Hong Kong health sector. The prospects for mending the health system appear limited, given that leadership and coherency have been consistently absent features of post‐1997 governance in Hong Kong.

This article reviews events in the immediate period following the SARS outbreak. A future follow‐up study of the Hong Kong government and health system's capacity to respond to infectious disease outbreaks would be useful.

This article provides a review that will be useful to policymakers and researchers.

No other article reviews the Hong Kong health system's SARS response.

This paper aims to investigate the relationship between the strength of auditing and reporting standards (SARS) and money laundering, and test whether the SARS moderates the association between corruption and money laundering.

The sample consists of 348 country-year observations over the period 2015–2017. Data on money laundering are collected from Basel Anti-Money Laundering Reports for 2015–2017, while data on SARS and corruption are collected from the Global Competiveness Reports for the same years.

The findings of this study suggest that the SARS is negatively associated with money laundering, while corruption has an insignificant effect on the same variable. The effect of corruption on money laundering becomes positive and significant after removing the SARS. This result implies that the SARS and corruption represent two concurrent forces influencing money laundering phenomenon with a prevailing negative effect for the SARS. When testing for the moderating effect of SARS on the positive association between corruption and money laundering, findings show that the positive association remains stable under low SARS environments, while it is mitigated under high SARS. This moderating effect is further confirmed when using an interaction variable between the SARS dummy variable and corruption as this interaction variable has a negative effect on money laundering.

The findings emphasize the role played by the SARS in reducing money laundering and mitigating the positive association between corruption and money laundering. These results may have policy implications for governments aiming to combat this phenomenon.

As an essential component of Islamic governance for ensuring religious compliance, Shari’ah annual reports (SARs) play an important role in providing communication between Shari’ah board (SB) members and stakeholders. This paper aims to determine the ethical disclosure in SARs to identify how close the Shari’ah disclosure to the standards set by AAOIFI and also substantive morality of Islam. The research also aims to examine the factors determining disclosure performance.

Two disclosure indices are developed to generate data from the SARs: the AAOIFI standards for Shari’ah governance index for form related approach, an Islamic ethicality augmented index reflecting on substantive morality approach. The sample consists of 41 Islamic banks from 15 different countries for the period of 2007–2014. Sampled 305 SARs were examined through disclosure analysis in line with the two indices developed for this study. The econometric analysis was run to identify the factors determining disclosure performance.

The findings suggest that AAOIFI guidelines have an influence on the level of disclosure, even if Islamic banks have not adopted them. However, the level of disclosure for the ethically augmented index is found to be very limited with reliance on general statements in most of the cases. As part of determining factors, the popularity of Shari’ah scholars is significant for both indices, while the existence of an internal Shari’ah auditing department holds some explanatory power. The adoption of AAOIFI standards at the country level, the regulatory quality and the duration of Sharīʿah-compliance are particularly deterministic factors in terms of complying with AAOIFI standards for SARs.

Although SB is the most crucial division of corporate governance in Islamic banks in terms of securing the “Islamic” identity of these institutions, their most important communication instrument, namely, SAR, has not been explored sufficiently, alongside an insufficient attempt to constitute Islamic corporate governance. Initially, this study attempted to constitute an Islamic corporate governance framework as a theoretical construct, which provides context for the empirical part of the research and this should be considered a novel approach. Second, the empirical part of the research aims to fill the gap observed in the literature such as small sample size and index construction-related matters. This research is conducted with a larger sample size as compared to the available studies in the literature and it has developed two indices for disclosure analysis along with developing an Islamic morality-based index beside an index based on AAOIFI standards.

The war in Iraq, the threat of terrorism and the Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) epidemic have made international business activities increasingly difficult and risky. The worldwide economic downturn and slow growth in domestic markets are forcing companies to depend more than ever on overseas trade. SARS emerged in China in November 2002 and has spread to 26 countries. The SARS epidemic has caused the most severe economic crisis in Southeast Asia since the wave of bank failures and currency devaluations that swept the region five years ago. The SARS epidemic has prompted health officials to implement travel advisories and restrictions, in order to defer nonessential travel to regions of Asia with large numbers of SARS cases. They are enforcing quarantine and isolation measures in major cities to try and limit the spread of SARS. The President of the United States has signed an executive order adding SARS to the list of communicable diseases that can be quarantined. A major disruption in China could paralyze just‐in‐time supply chains and cause an economic crisis for retailers and other businesses worldwide. The SARS epidemic has caused many economists to drastically reduce their economic‐growth forecasts for Asia. New infectious diseases, such as SARS, can emerge and easily travel around the globe, infecting less‐resilient hosts and mutating because of the influence of viruses and bacteria in their new environment. Health officials are even more concerned about the pandemic disaster that hasn’t happened, but may still. However, the SARS epidemic has created positive economic benefits for some companies.