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To establish how people become managers.

A survey of 50 managers carried out at the end of 2004 by students on the BA in Business and Management course at the University of Westminster. A total of 25 students chose two managers each to interview. Of the managers, 38 were from the UK.

Out of 50 managers surveyed, 47 were specialists before they acquired management responsibilities. Only 12 received management training before becoming managers and that training was not always felt to be effective. The transition from specialist to becoming a manager of specialists was often stressful. Only two people became managers as a direct result of undertaking business studies degree programmes.

Specialists often acquire managerial responsibilities, and often quite early in their career. Those aspiring to management have found that their entry route is via a specialist department. Consequently, it is appropriate to see that managers have the right blend of specialist and managerial skills and that they are given help in adjusting to managerial roles. The implications of the specialist route into management needs to be reflected in the structure of increasingly popular undergraduate programmes in business studies. There is a case for such courses having both specialist options and a managerial component.

There is little research about how people become managers. It is particularly important that the specialist route identified is understood by those wishing to become managers, by universities and colleges running both business and specialist courses and by employers.

The extant literature has established that industry-specialist auditors gain performance-enhancing industry-specific sub-specialty knowledge (e.g., Solomon, Shields, & Whittington, 1999) via training and on the job experience. This knowledge has been shown to allow specialists to outperform non-specialists on a range of industry-specific tasks. The current study extends this line of research by comparing and contrasting the relative performance gains enjoyed by industry-specialist auditors in two different industry settings, one regulated and the other unregulated. When specializing in regulated industries, auditors gain very detailed industry-specific knowledge which is not the case for specialists in unregulated industries (Dunn & Mayhew, 2004). By comparing industry-specialists to non-specialists with matching industry-based experience, this study measures the relative benefits of specialization in different industry settings, rather than the benefits of specialization per se, which has been well established in the literature. This study finds that the performance gains made by regulated industry-specialists significantly outweigh those made by unregulated industry-specialists on industry-specific tasks. The implications of these results for future research and practice are explored in the body of the chapter.

This study aims to explore the empirical correlation between patient flow issues, quality of green health services and patient satisfaction in specialist medical department factors from patients’ perspectives as service consumers.

This research is a type of nonintervention empirical research that uses an open survey to explore the views and experiences of users of specialist medical department services. The targeted population is hospital patients included in the top five national PERSI (Indonesian Hospital Association) Award 2022 Green Hospital Category, with a total number of respondents of 572 people. This study uses the partial least square-structural equation modeling analysis method with the SmartPLS application.

Patient flow problems generally affect the quality of eco-friendly health services, except for the waiting time problem, which affects service quality. It should be understood as a top priority for patients to receive services from medical specialists without risking time as a core service aspect from the patient’s perspective. In addition, all variables in eco-friendly hospital services affect patient satisfaction, except in the case of visits to specialist medical departments, which do not affect medical support services and hospital practices that are responsive to the delivery of care services resulting from medical support services that are inseparable in integrated services as well as health care following medical ethics.

This study has a novelty in understanding the implications of green practice in determining patient satisfaction in medical specialist department as the epicenter of hospital services and the main object of assessment for the quality of hospital services.

The purpose of this paper is to examine whether firms use different earnings management approaches when facing financial difficulties and the effects of industry-specialist auditors in constraining those choices. The empirical results suggest that (1) firms with lower risk of business failure but with stronger incentives to adjust earnings upward tend to use real earnings management (REM) income-increasing approaches while (2) at the same time, using discretionary accruals for income-decreasing earnings management, due to constraints imposed by specialist auditors on the use of accrual-based earnings management (AEM). This is consistent with the findings of Chi et al., and the authors do not find similar evidence for the firms with higher risk of failure. Also, (3) regardless of the level of failure risk, firms turn to REM while interestingly, such REM behavior is effectively curbed by industry-leading specialist auditors (specialist auditors with the highest client market share) on financially distressed firms. These results extend the findings of Chi et al. (2011), suggesting that industry-specialist auditors have different tolerance levels for earnings management approaches by firms with different levels of business failure risk. That is, when auditing clients with higher risk of failure, specialist auditors are more likely to maintain higher audit quality through more stringent audit testing and use of more audit staff time to prevent an occurrence of audit failure.

The authors examine earnings management behavior across firms in Taiwan with different levels of business failure risk and the effects of audit partner industry specialization in constraining that behavior. Chi et al. (2011) studied low-risk firms with incentives to adjust earnings upward and found firms use REM when the auditors constrain AEM. The authors extend the work of Chi et al. and observe firms with different levels of failure risk.

The authors find (1) lower risk firms may use discretionary accruals to adjust earnings downward while the authors find no similar evidence for financially distressed firms, (2) lower risk firms may use REM when their industry-specialist auditors curb AEM and (3) the industry leaders among specialist auditors do the same for the financially distressed firms. The results demonstrate the extent to which industry-specialist auditors apply different tolerance levels for earnings management behaviors across firms with different levels of failure risk.

The study contributes to the literature in the following three ways: first, the authors fill a gap in the existing literature by comparing firms with higher risk of business failure to firms with lower risk of business failure to explore the possible difference in the two different kinds of earnings management behavior; second, the authors extend the findings of Chi et al. (2011) and examine whether specialist auditors, when auditing firms with higher risk of business failure, will input more audit effort to constrain their clients' use of REM and third, since business failures have a significant impact on the capital markets and any associated audit failures can have an even greater negative impact on investor confidence, the study provides information useful to auditors and regulators in the formation of salient policy regarding the use of REM by firms experiencing high risk of business failure.

This study investigates how the timeliness of financial reporting by listed companies in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) is influenced by the interaction effect between industry-specialist auditors and board governance.

The Emirati capital markets – the Abu Dhabi Securities Exchange (ADX) and the Dubai Financial Market (DFM) – were used to obtain the data, which covered the seven-year period between 2011 and 2017. In total, 385 observations were obtained. Descriptive statistics and multiple regression were the principal statistical tests employed using the panel data method.

The results of the direct effect tests reveal that board independence and industry-specialist auditors have no significant influence on financial reporting timeliness. Nevertheless, the results also show that the timeliness of financial reporting by listed companies in the UAE is influenced by the interaction effect between auditors' industry specialisation and the governance of firm boards. More specifically, the results reveal that financial reporting timeliness is positively associated with board independence for companies audited by industry-specialist auditors. This finding is consistent with the notion that industry-specialist auditors complement the role of effective board governance.

This study only focuses on secondary data from non-financial companies listed in the UAE markets. Therefore, the outcomes may not be generalisable to sectors related to finance. Future researchers are recommended to examine financial sectors and apply alternative measurements such as surveys or interviews with directorial boards and external auditors. Furthermore, this study used only one measure of industry-specialist auditors, while board governance was limited to board independence. Future studies could utilise different measurements for industry-specialist auditors and more board governance measures to obtain more robust findings.

The evidence provided indicates that when a company listed in the UAE has a high-quality board, it benefits by engaging auditors who specialise in the industry in terms of improving the timeliness of financial reporting. The findings also indicate the need for closer monitoring of management to safeguard their reputation. This might attract the attention of the Big Four audit firms and industry–specialist auditors to continuously re-evaluate their audit work, professional training and staff skills, while they might also try to differentiate their performance and monitoring capabilities from the non-Big Four audit firms and non-industry specialist auditors.

The main contribution of this study to the overall body of research is the concept that having independent directors is associated with improved reporting timeliness because financial reports are monitored with greater efficiency by industry–specialist auditors. This study provides evidence for the interaction effect between internal and external governance mechanisms on financial reporting quality, which has not been the focus of prior studies on financial reporting quality.

The purpose of this study is to examine the association between auditor industry specialization and accounting quality in the European Union (EU).

This study employs a difference-in-differences design and explores audit quality from different industry specialist perspectives and different accounting standard regimes. Specifically, this study examines accounting quality among audits performed by non-industry specialists, EU member country-level industry specialists (EUM-level), EU community-level industry specialists (EUC-level), as well as joint industry specialists.

This study finds evidence of an improvement in accounting quality among audits performed by non-industry specialists post-IFRS. There is also evidence of an improvement in accounting quality among audits performed by EUC-level industry specialists post-IFRS. In addition, accounting quality among audits performed by EUM-level industry specialists seems to be greater than that of audits performed by non-industry specialists in either the pre-IFRS period or the post-IFRS period. Overall, the mandatory adoption of IFRS in the EU appears to be associated with an improvement in accounting quality among some auditor groups.

Industry specialization and accounting quality are not directly observable constructs; this study inevitably employs proxy measures for both. The findings of this study are location-specific and apply to mandatory IFRS adopters only.

This study informs regulators with respect to the importance of industry specialist auditors and financial reporting quality, particularly within the context of the EU. The findings suggest that industry specialists were a significant accounting quality determinant during the mandatory adoption of IFRS. The findings have implications for regulators in the EU and beyond.

This study is among the first to investigate the impact of auditor specialization on accounting quality in the EU, particularly in connection with the adoption of IFRS.

The purpose of this paper is to address a critical problem for health-care organizations: patient referral leakage. This paper explores the nature of patient referrals by examining how health-care providers’ breadth and depth of connectivity within a hospital network and identification with each other influence the likelihood of future patient referrals.

The data was collected by using a multi-sourced data set from the health-care industry. The proposed model was tested by using logistic regression to determine the likelihood of a primary care physician’s (PCP) referral to a specialist within a hospital network.

A model linking provider connectivity to examine co-creation practices in the form of patient referrals is tested. Results indicate that patient referrals are multidimensional. A PCP’s likelihood to refer to a specialist within the hospital network is influenced by the breadth and depth of connectivity of each provider.

This investigation extends service ecosystems to patients, health-care providers and hospital organizations, making it the first to explore how different degrees of connectivity (breadth of referral partners and depth of exchange) between and among health-care providers influence the likelihood of future patient referrals. Findings complement extant literature on service ecosystems by empirically showing that provider relationships are interdependent and rely on the mutual coordination of benefits within the entire health-care organization and network.

Managers and health-care professionals can use the framework to build and strengthen relational ties/alliances within a service organization. An ecosystems perspective reduces patient referral leakage through enhanced organizational performance, competitive advantage and continuity of care.

The authors offer a novel view of referral relationships using hard-to-access proprietary data. Moreover, this study responds to the need for transformative service research by offering service researchers and policymakers a means to enhance consumer well-being. The main contribution of this study is a framework to gain a better understanding of patient referral relationships between employees (i.e., health-care providers) in an organization, thereby affording an opportunity to bolster operational efficiencies, improve clinical outcomes and strengthen referral pathways. By viewing health-care networks through a service ecosystems perspective, contextual boundaries and the relative power of relationships are also identified. The novel use of rarely available hospital data in this setting helps explain how patient leakage compromises the health of the ecosystem and its members.

The purpose of this paper is to explore new banks ' market niche position choices at the time of founding.

The authors used data on the establishment of new banking organizations in California, over 1979-1988, to test the hypotheses. During that time, banking within California experienced dramatic deregulation, which provided ample opportunities for new bank start-ups.

New banks were found to enter more often in specialist market niches when the market was highly concentrated, but less often when there were more non-bank financial institutions active in the market. The frequency of new specialist entries displayed an inverted U-shaped pattern as the number of established specialist banks in the market increased.

The findings confirm the idea that elements of market structure influence the niche positioning decisions of new ventures. The paper contributes to our understanding of entrepreneurial decision making in response to environmental conditions.

Staff specialists are increasingly concerned about their credibility with executive groups. Events and trends of the past few years have meant more pressures on the staff man. This is partly a consequence of better technical training for line managers. While there has always been plenty of evidence of executive scepticism of staff advice, now more and more managers are able to back up their intuitive doubts with more reasoned consideration of the technical underpinnings of information they receive from experts. Not only can many executives question the conclusions of the staff man but they may also be able to delve into the technical process through which those conclusions evolved.