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The purpose of this study is to analyze the nonlinear relationship between electricity consumption (EC) and electricity transmission losses (ETL) in Ghana. Also, we examined how ETL moderate the effect of EC on economic growth in Ghana from 1980 to 2021.

We used timeseries data from 1980 to 2021 within an autoregressive distributed lag framework to analyze the links among ETL, EC and economic growth in Ghana.

Findings show the existence of an asymmetric long-run relationship between EC and ETL. Also, the negative effects of ETL on EC are bigger in the long run. In addition, ETL and EC combine to reduce economic growth, in the long run, providing evidence for the energy-led growth theory in Ghana. Population and inflation were also found to have a significant effect on economic growth in Ghana.

We examined the nonlinear nexus of EC and ETL, which extant studies have ignored in discussing the link between EC and economic growth. Again, we showed that ETL reduces EC causing a reduction in economic growth.

In recent years the movement of refugees has led to increasing negative media and political discourse about migration in the United Kingdom, particularly as the number of refugees crossing the English Channel has increased. Despite this hostility, little is known about how the UK public perceive the journeys made by refugees or the refugees themselves.

In this study the authors used a story completion method to analyse perceptions and understandings of refugees. Participants were given the opening of a story about refugees crossing the English Channel and were asked to complete the remainder of the story. In total, 84 participants completed stories that ranged in length from two to 423 words. The stories were analysed using reflexive thematic analysis.

Each of the completed stories was analysed using reflexive thematic analysis and three themes were generated: Conflicting emotions: Uncertainty and the relief of reaching safety after a traumatic journey; The spectre of illegality: Borders and the uncertainty of what happens next; and Welcome or unwelcome?: Cultural values of welcome and hospitality.

The authors argue that this original use of the story completion method highlights how participants draw on cultural narratives of hospitality and welcome and that their stories are constructed using emotional categories that are in contrast to the more binary constructions of refugees that are present in media and government discourse about refugees and the English Channel crossings.

The objective of this study is to examine developments in the discursive practice of non-financial reporting in the public healthcare sector. In doing so, the authors investigate how the main reform foci of productivity and quality are represented, with a specific focus on the patient.

Drawing on critical discourse analysis (CDA), the authors conduct a longitudinal study (2007–2018) of healthcare reporting foci across the five administrative regions responsible for public hospitals in Denmark. The study analyses sixty annual reports and draws on contemporary reform documents over this period. CDA enables a micro-textual analysis, combined with macro-insights and discussions on social practice.

The findings show complex webs of presentation strategies, but in particular two changes occur during the period. First, the patient is centred throughout but the framing changes from productivity and waiting lists to quality and dialogue. Second, in the first years, the regions present themselves as actively highlighting financial and quality concerns, which changes to a passive and indirect form of presentation steered by indicators and patient legislation enforced by central government. This enhances passivity and distance in healthcare regional non-financial reporting where the regions seek to conform to such demands. Simultaneously, however, the authors find a tendency to highlight very different local initiatives, which shows an attempt to go beyond a pure automatic mode of reporting found in earlier studies.

Responding to the literature on both healthcare and financial reporting, this study identifies novel links between micro-level texts and macro-level social practices, enabling insights into the potentially intertwined impacts of public-sector reporting. The authors offer insights into the complexity of the construction of non-financial reporting in the public sector, which has a wider impact and different intentions than private-sector reporting.

The purpose of this paper is to critically examine the perceptions of food business operators (FBOs) in Kirklees Council in relation to the importance of official food inspection of food premises, performed by the local authority.

A semi-structured questionnaire was developed to survey the opinions of FBOs in Kirklees Council in relation to the significance and consistency of official food control. The business types included were retailers, commercial restaurants, schools, care homes, pub, bars and cafes.

Based on the total of 236 respondents, the results show that 45.8% of the respondents opined that official food control has considerably improved their food hygiene practices and that official inspection is their only source of information about the latest food safety legislation. Moreover, another 168(71.2%) believed that the instructions given by the inspectors are clear and easily understandable. However, some respondents, especially the small and medium-sized businesses believed that remedying noncompliance caused them financial burden. In addition, significant positive correlations exist between the bigger FBOs and high frequencies of negotiating noncompliance with the inspectors due to the high cost of capital that will be needed to remedy the spotted noncompliance by an officer during control (Kruskal–Wallis r = 0.034, p < 0.003).

As with most studies, it is important to borne in mind that the design of the current study is subject to limitations and these limitations could be addressed in future research. The self-reported data collection employed in this study is limited by the fact that it rarely can be independently verified. In other words, the self-reported data used in this study might be subject to (1) selective memory: respondents might remember or not able to remember all the details of the inspections that occurred at some point in the past, however, inspections are often documented, and businesses usually have a copy of every inspection reports. (2) exaggeration: respondents might over or underrepresent outcomes of inspections and (3) attribution: respondents might attribute positive events and outcomes to their own agency but attribute negative events and outcomes to external forces. Nonetheless, the strength of this study lies in its large sample size and high response rate which makes it easier to assess the representativeness of the sample and to generalise the results.

The behaviour of the FBOs towards food control and the opinion of the FBOs about food safety may have an important effect on the organisation of official food control in Kirklees Council, but there is no scientific data to back it up. Furthermore, the perceptions of FBOs and the role of food control in food safety in Kirklees Council have not been investigated, which makes this research a novelty.

Literature on the relationship between social performance and economic performance of social enterprises has long been inconclusive. This paper aims to investigate whether and, if so, how social performance contributes to economic performance of social enterprises. Specifically, drawing from the resource-based view and signalling theory, the study examines how the development of reputation, which enables social enterprises to signal the enterprises' stakeholders' commitment towards social causes, mediates the relationship between the two.

Employing a quantitative research design, data were collected from a sample of 164 social enterprises in the UK and analysed using structural equation modelling (SEM).

The results illustrate that whilst the direct relationship between social and economic performance is inconclusive, social performance contributes indirectly to improve economic performance through improving social enterprise reputation.

To the best of the authors' knowledge, this study is the first of this kind in the context of social enterprises which sheds light on the long-standing conflicting literature on the relationship between the dual objectives (i.e. social and economic) by providing reputation as the mediating variable.

The study examines the instigating factors behind the development of the local content (LC) policy in Ghana and it further investigates the accountability mechanisms that drive the LC policy implementation to promote sustainable development.

The study reports on a series of interviews with key actors using Institutional Theory and the application of Bovens’ (2010) Global Accountability Framework as a lens for discussion and interpretation of results.

The results reveal that two forces instigated LC policy enactment. One is external funding pressure from the Norwegian government and the World Bank. The other is the government’s engagement of Civil Society Organisations and other internal stakeholders to justify its activities and missions to signal adherence to impartiality, neutrality, and, to a lesser extent, solidarity. The analysis also reveals tensions in how accountability legitimacy relates to implementation of the LC policy. The study further discovers that while participation, transparency, monitoring, and evaluation are frequently invoked as de jure institutional legitimacy in oil and gas contracts, actual practices follow normative (de facto) institutionalism rather than what the LC policy law provides.

The interview had a relatively small number of participants, which can be argued to affect the study’s validity. Nevertheless, given the data saturation effect and the breadth of the data obtained from the respondents, this study represents a significant advancement in LC policy enactment knowledge, implementation mechanisms and enforcement in an emerging O&G industry.

The findings of this study suggest that future policy development in emerging economies should involve detailed consultations to increase decision-maker knowledge, process transparency and expectations. This will improve implementation and reduce stakeholder tension, conflict and mistrust.

The findings of this study build on earlier investigations into legitimacy, accountability and impression management in and outside the O&G sector. Also, the findings reveal the legitimising tactics used by O&G actors to promote local content sustainable development targets.

Introduction: Numerous decision-making situations are faced in education where Artificial Intelligence may be prevalent as a decision-making support tool to capture streams of learners’ behaviours.

Purpose: The purpose of the present study is to understand the role of AI in student performance assessment and explore the future role of AI in educational performance assessment.

Scope: The study tries to understand the adaptability of AI in the education sector for supporting the educator in automating assessment. It supports the educator to concentrate on core teaching-learning activities.

Objectives: To understand the AI adaption for educational assessment, the positives and negatives of confidential data collections, and challenges for implementation from the view of various stakeholders.

Methodology: The study is conceptual, and information has been collected from sources comprised of expert interactions, research publications, survey and Industry reports.

Findings: The use of AI in student performance assessment has helped in early predictions for the activities to be adopted by educators. Results of AI evaluations give the data that may be combined and understood to create visuals.

Research Implications: AI-based analytics helps in fast decision-making and adapting the teaching curriculum’s fast-changing industry needs. Students’ abilities, such as participation and resilience, and qualities, such as confidence and drive, may be appraised using AI assessment systems.

Theoretical Implication: Artificial intelligence-based evaluation gives instructors, students, and parents a continuous opinion on how students learn, the help they require, and their progress towards their learning objectives.

In the quest for better construction workforce management, this chapter explored the background of workforce management and related theories, models, and practices. Through a review, the chapter provided meaning to the concept of construction and workforce management. The chapter concluded that while the construction industry worldwide is important to the economic growth of the countries where it operates, the industry’s management of its workforce is challenged by several problems. These problems include the nature of the industry, skill shortage, unhealthy working environment, and poor image of the industry, among others. Also, while the construction industry is rich in diversity, this has been a major source of problems for workforce management. The chapter further revealed that to improve workforce management and attain better-performing construction organisations, careful recruitment, effective training, providing a safe working environment, putting policies to promote diversity, and ensuring innovativeness, among others, are essential.

The implementation of BIM in the construction industry requires the coevolution of the various aspects of the BIM ecosystem. The human dimension is a very important dimension of the ecosystem necessary for BIM implementation. It is imperative to study this aspect of the BIM ecosystem both from the employer perspective and employee availability to provide insights for stakeholders (job seekers, employers, students, researchers, policymakers, higher education institutions, career advisors and curriculum developers) interested in the labour market dynamics.

To understand the BIM actor roles through the employer lens and the actual BIM actors in the construction industry, this study employed data mining of job adverts from LinkedIn and Mncjobs website. Content analysis was employed to gain insights into the data collected. Also, through a quantitative approach, the existing BIM actor roles were identified.

The study identified the employers' expectations of BIM actors; however, it is noted that the BIM actor recruitment space is still a loose one as recruiters put out open advertisements to get a large pool of applicants. From the data analysed, it is concluded that the BIM actor role is not an entirely new profession. However, it simply exists as construction industry professionals with BIM tool skills. Also, the professional development route is not well defined yet.

This study presents a realistic angle to BIM actor roles hence enhancing BIM implementation from the human perspective. The findings present an insight into the preferred against the actual.

In this paper, the authors reflect critically on their experience as researchers on the Impacts 18 programme: a re-study concerned with the long-term effects of Liverpool European Capital of Culture (ECoC) 2008. Situating Impacts 18 at the confluence of three important debates within the cultural policy field, the paper considers the causation, nature and significance of the shortcomings of the research, with a view to advancing cultural evaluation practices and encouraging re-studies in a field where they are seldom used.

The authors draw on documentary analysis of unpublished research outputs, along with their own research notes and critical reflections. The paper focuses on two projects from the Impacts 18 programme, in particular, in order to illustrate the broader issues raised in terms of the epistemological framing, methodological design and execution of the Impacts 18 research.

The paper highlights and explores the various issues that affected Impacts 18 in terms of its epistemological framing and methodological design, as well as problems encountered in terms of data management and stakeholder relationships.

As a large-scale re-study of a cultural event, Impacts 18 represents an exceedingly rare occurrence, despite the acknowledged dearth of evidence on the longer-term impacts of such events. Similarly unusual, however, are critical and candid retrospectives from research authors themselves. The paper is thus doubly unusual, in these two respects, and should help to advance research practice in an under-researched area.