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The prosthodontics sector is facing major challenges because of scientific and technological advances that imply a clearer definition of lines of action and decision making processes. Measuring quality of service in this sector is a complex decision problem since the perceptions of three main players need to be considered: patients, dentists and dental technicians. This study sought to develop an artificial-intelligence-based (AI-based) method for assessing service quality in the dental prosthesis sector.

Using strategic options development and analysis (SODA), which is grounded on cognitive mapping, and the measuring attractiveness by a categorical based evaluation technique (MACBETH), a constructivist decision support system was designed to facilitate the assessment of service quality in the dental prosthesis sector. The system was tested, and the results were validated both by the members of an expert panel and by the vice-president of the Portuguese association of dental prosthesis technicians.

The methodological process developed in this study is extremely versatile and its practical application facilitated the development of an empirically robust evaluation model in this study context. Specifically, the profile analyses carried out in actual clinics allowed the cases in which improvements are needed to be identified.

Although already applied in the fields of AI and decision making, no prior work reporting the use of SODA and MACBETH for assessing service quality in the prosthodontics sector has been found.

This research provides accounting-ethics authors and administrators with a benchmark for accounting-ethics research. While Bernardi and Bean (2010) considered publications in business-ethics and accounting’s top-40 journals this study considers research in eight accounting-ethics and public-interest journals, as well as, 34 business-ethics journals. We analyzed the contents of our 42 journals for the 25-year period between 1991 through 2015. This research documents the continued growth (Bernardi & Bean, 2007) of accounting-ethics research in both accounting-ethics and business-ethics journals. We provide data on the top-10 ethics authors in each doctoral year group, the top-50 ethics authors over the most recent 10, 20, and 25 years, and a distribution among ethics scholars for these periods. For the 25-year timeframe, our data indicate that only 665 (274) of the 5,125 accounting PhDs/DBAs (13.0% and 5.4% respectively) in Canada and the United States had authored or co-authored one (more than one) ethics article.

The purpose of this paper is to understand the profile of use of gerontechnology in Spanish older adults considering their age group (60–70; 71–80 and over 80 years) and to discern whether groups of subjects with similar characteristics can be established to ascertain which factors are behind the profile of frequent gerontechnology use.

A quantitative study is presented to understand the profile of use of gerontechnology in Spanish older adults. The sample comprised 497 participants (aged between 60 and 94 years).

The results show that, even though most participants consider technology to be useful in their daily lives, there is still a lack of knowledge on how to use it, especially among older subjects. This highlights the importance of promoting technological cocreation initiatives such as senior living labs.

Other researchers are encouraged to include the voices of older adults using gerontechnology in further studies.

If we want to increase the acceptance of technology by older adults, we must first let them take part in the design of the technologies they will use.

This research provides promising data that should merit attention to contribute to the well-being and quality of life of older adults in a society where currently technology is a key part in every sphere of our daily life.

The value of this research lies in the implications of “aging in place” studies today.

An increasing amount of students’ and teachers’ work in the classroom involves digital technologies such as tablets and laptop computers. The purpose of this paper is to gain insight into the possibilities and challenges related to teachers’ use of digital textbooks and, through this work, the conditions for technology-enhanced learning (TEL).

This study was based on interviews with two teachers. In the analysis, The Ecology of Resources Model (Luckin, 2010) was used.

The findings of this study show that teachers see challenges in finding time to review digital textbooks and support the work with the textbooks in the classroom. However, the teachers in this study prioritize this work, seeing it as providing structure and improved accessibility for students.

The findings of this study point toward the need to support teachers in their work with reviewing and using digital textbooks, as well as other digitalized resources. How schools as organizations can support teachers’ activities, both individually and collaboratively, will be important. If this work is supported it may, in turn, have impact on TEL and promoting students’ use of digital textbooks and improving student outcomes.

This small study provides interesting insights into how teachers prioritize their work with digital textbooks to, despite challenges related to time, individualize and support students’ work with digital textbooks and other digital resources. Research on teachers’ use of digital textbooks in practice is limited.

Although studies have investigated reasons for software as a service (SaaS) adoption, it is unclear how firm-level SaaS use impacts future SaaS intentions. The purpose of this paper is to propose a theoretical model that integrates the technology-organization-environment framework, institutional theory, diffusion-of-innovation theory and the opportunity-risk framework to analyze the drivers of SaaS use and its continuance intention.

The authors evaluated the direct, moderating and mediating effects of determinants on SaaS continuance intentions using structural equation modeling and data from 301 firms.

Results found that top management support and normative pressures influenced SaaS use. Cost saving and security concerns were direct predictors of perceived opportunities and perceived risks, respectively. Perceived opportunities and risks and actual SaaS use influenced SaaS continuance. Interestingly, perceived opportunities were found to be a negative moderator on the relationship between SaaS use and SaaS continuance.

The results reveal insightful and controversial findings for SaaS research.

The purpose of this paper is to explore how a visual perspective can be applied to strategic communication research. First, the term visual communication will be examined from various perspectives with an attempt to develop a foundation for this new academic territory. Second, this study summarises how visual approaches are applied in strategic communication research during 2005-2015, this is done by a literature review including an overall content analysis.

In order to explore how visual approaches can be applied to strategic communication research, the study started with a literature review by examining the term visual communication from various perspectives. The second step was to do a brief content analysis in order to provide a detailed pattern of theoretical visual approaches in strategic communication research published in scientific journals in the field of strategic communication 2005-2015. A qualitative coding scheme was developed based on the classification of visual approaches in communication research by Barnhurst et al. (2004) and Martin (2011).

The findings of this study not only support previous research indicating that visual approaches in communication research are increasing; the study also points in the direction of that visual approaches in the research field of strategic communication has slightly emerged during 2005-2015.

This study summarises how visual approaches are applied in strategic communication research during 2005-2015.

This study can provide important knowledge about an innovative visual perspective in strategic communication research.

The world’s aging population has led to a greater use of prescription and non-prescription medication by the elderly. Besides, older drinkers consume alcohol often regardless of the medication they consume. The purpose of this paper is to examine the intake of medication and alcohol simultaneously in a group of elderly in the community of Madrid, and the possible differences in consumption between men and women.

An observational cross-sectional study of 342 elderly in Madrid, aged 65–96 years was conducted, including the collection of anthropometric data (weight, height, waist circumference, BMI), information about the quantity of daily alcohol intake and medication taken from each subject.

A high percentage of the sample used medication, especially women. A smaller percentage of the sample consumed alcohol, being more frequent among men and decreasing with age. In addition, almost half of the sample (46.4 percent) combined medication intake with alcohol, especially men. High alcohol consumption was observed simultaneously in those subjects taking medication; in addition to the non-perception of the real risk to health. Statistically significant sex differences were observed, since men drank more, including when taking medication; although women may be more vulnerable to harm derived from alcohol.

This study contributed to estimate the risk to the public health of old people, and the integrity of their health, by observing the consumption of both medication and alcohol, given that medication taken in conjunction with alcohol can cause adverse side effects.

The purpose of this paper is to use theories of institutional logics and institutional entrepreneurship to examine how and why macro-, meso-, and micro-level influences inter-relate in the implementation of integrated transitional care out of hospital in the English National Health Service.

The authors conducted an ethnographic case study of a hospital and surrounding services within a large urban centre in England. Specific methods included qualitative interviews with patients/caregivers, health/social care providers, and organizational leaders; observations of hospital transition planning meetings, community “hub” meetings, and other instances of transition planning; reviews of patient records; and analysis of key policy documents. Analysis was iterative and informed by theory on institutional logics and institutional entrepreneurship.

Organizational leaders at the meso-level of health and social care promoted a partnership logic of integrated care in response to conflicting institutional ideas found within a key macro-level policy enacted in 2003 (The Community Care (Delayed Discharges) Act). Through institutional entrepreneurship at the micro-level, the partnership logic became manifest in the form of relationship work among health and social care providers; they sought to build strong interpersonal relationships to enact more integrated transitional care.

This study has three key implications. First, efforts to promote integrated care should strategically include institutional entrepreneurs at the organizational and clinical levels. Second, integrated care initiatives should emphasize relationship-building among health and social care providers. Finally, theoretical development on institutional logics should further examine the role of interpersonal relationships in facilitating the “spread” of logics between macro-, meso-, and micro-level influences on inter-organizational change.

The purpose of this study is to better understand the ways in which K-8 teachers from a semirural, predominantly white district perceive their responsibilities to work toward anti-racism, as well as to learn more about how the teachers can be supported as they work to overcome the challenges facing teachers in these fraught times in this country’s history.

The authors use a reconstructive approach to critical discourse analytic methods (Bartlett, 2012; Hughes, 2018; Luke, 2002, 2004; Martin, 2004) to analyze an online discussion that took place among participants in a virtual anti-racist critical professional development course (Kohli, 2019; Kohli et al., 2015) as they grappled with what it means to confront their own racial identities, positionalities and responsibilities.

Three primary tensions emerged in teachers’ discussion: between geographic and professional identities; between individual and institutional responsibility; and between literacy instruction and critical literacy instruction. In all three cases, teachers expressed the difficulties associated with enacting anti-racist critical literacy pedagogy in their school context, while also leaving space for possibility.

The findings from this study add to the field’s understanding about how teachers in various contexts approach the work of anti-racist critical literacy pedagogy at different stages in their careers and how teacher educators might support them in doing so.

This study is important in its focus on professional development for in-service teachers, as much of the work has focused on preservice teachers and those who have been in classrooms for varying lengths of time have different levels of experience and different professional needs (Hambacher and Ginn, 2021). It is also notable that these teachers worked in a semirural, predominantly white district, as teachers working in such geographic locations often do not receive education about engaging with diversity (Anthony-Stevens et al., 2017; Anthony-Stevens and Langford, 2020) and it is essential that teachers and students in these districts are engaged if we are going to make headway in challenging whiteness in schools.

Advanced construction technologies (ACTs) are transforming infrastructure projects, yet there has been little research into and theorization of the process by which these innovations are diffused. The purpose of this paper is to address this paucity of research by exploring the problems of information asymmetries between vendors and customers in the ACT diffusion process. Specifically, the paper explores whether information asymmetries exist between vendors and customers in the ACT diffusion process and what forms they take.

A structured survey of 153 vendors and customers of advanced construction technologies was undertaken across three international ACT exhibitions in Australia.

By comparing the perspectives of both customers and vendors across 15 technology diffusion process variables using importance-performance analysis and principal component analysis, significant differences are found between vendors’ and customers’ perceptions of how effectively information flows in the ACT diffusion process. The results show that vendors are significantly more optimistic than customers about information asymmetries on a wide range of diffusion variables. They also highlight significant potential for information asymmetries to occur which can undermine the advanced technology diffusion process.

The results provide important new conceptual and practical insights into an under-researched area, which is of increasing importance to a major industry, which is being transformed by advanced technological developments.