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This paper aims to review the effectiveness of a Smoke‐free Homes Project in a deprived area, Salford, in the UK. The project aimed to reduce exposure to secondhand smoke within the home, chiefly amongst households with resident smokers.

Local people from ten deprived communities were recruited as Smoke‐free Advisors, raising awareness of the dangers of secondhand smoke and “rewarding” participants for making one of three smoke‐free promises, ranging from keeping their home smoke‐free (gold promise) to not smoking around children.

In nine months, the project more than doubled its original target of 1,440 smoke‐free households, achieving 3,261 smoke‐free promises. Three‐quarters of these were the full, “gold” promise. At follow up, 98 per cent claimed they had kept to their promise, with 72 per cent describing this as “fairly easy” or “very easy”. Most common reasons given for signing up were children's health or meeting a Smoke‐free Advisor. The target for 50 per cent of promises to come from households with at least one smoker was narrowly missed: 47 per cent was achieved. Although not directly targeting cessation, 81 per cent of smokers reported changes to their smoking habit: one‐quarter quitting, 14 per cent trying unsuccessfully, and 42 per cent cutting down.

Smoke‐free Homes Projects have much to contribute in terms of denormalising smoking in deprived areas.

Despite their popularity, Smoke‐free Homes Projects have rarely been evaluated for effectiveness. This project demonstrated that a three‐stage model using local people can reduce exposure to secondhand smoke, alongside smoking itself, in areas where smoking is often seen as “the norm”.

The purpose of this paper is to develop a methodology aiming to improve the process of prioritizing among projects, focusing on the strategic impacts. The methodology is expected to have a particular relevance for companies operating in a distributed organizational environment.

The methodology has been developed within the PROMISE project, where ten applications and eight corresponding companies (application owners) represent the cases where the methodology has been developed and tested.

The paper has documented a need for a methodology that links projects and initiatives to overall the overall company strategies. Through the PROMISE project such a method business effect evaluation methodology (BEEM) is developed. The structure of the method and the process of using it are described.

This paper presents a methodology, BEEM, proven relevant in different contexts when projects and units need to be evaluated, compared, prioritized and coordinated according to strategies and key business drivers. BEEM is also a methodology that could guide projects and units in a distributed organizational environment according to overall strategies. Thus, the methodology might also be used by projects and units to improve the strategic position and/or business development.

The purpose of this paper is to evaluate a number of promises typically made by owners of professional sports franchises in the USA that are also typically ignored or underevaluated by public bureaus and their elected principals using the Barclays Center in Brooklyn, New York as a case study. Ex post subsidy outcomes are evaluated against ex ante subsidy promises in order to draw lessons that can inform and improve subsidy debates elsewhere.

The case study adopts a pre-post strategy drawing on data from multiple sources over a period of up to ten years in order to triangulate the narrative and build credibility. The franchise owner’s ex ante promises and financial projections were obtained from various media including newspaper, video and interviews between December 2003, when the arena was publicly announced, and September 2012, when the arena opened. Data on ex post outputs were obtained from financial documents and government records covering periods from September 2011 through June 2016.

The franchise owner is found to have exaggerated the arena’s financial condition, under-delivered on its employment promises, and exaggerated the scope and timeliness of ancillary real estate development. Only promises of event frequency and attendance levels, measures of the public’s demand for the facility, have been met during the first three years.

Because the evaluation is a case study, causal conclusions cannot be drawn and some aspects of the Barclays Center context may not be applicable in other jurisdictions or subsidy debates. In addition, the case study does not evaluate an exhaustive list of the promises franchise owners make.

Franchise owners have a financial incentive to overpromise public benefits, since subsidy levels are tied to what the public is perceived to receive in return. This case study demonstrates that the public sector should not take owners’ promises and projections of public benefits at face value. Moreover, the case study reveals that the public sector should put more effort into ensuring ex post policy and data transparency in order to facilitate benefit-cost analyses of such subsidies.

The data required to evaluate promises, other than economic development ones, made by franchise owners are not systematically collected across state and local governments in the USA, making large-n studies impossible. Case studies are underutilized approaches in this area of public affairs, and this paper illustrates their usefulness. By focusing on a single facility, an evaluation of the franchise owner’s less acknowledged and arguably more important promises about the facility and its local impact is possible.

This paper is about a single case study of a three-year BSc Mental Health Nursing degree programme based at a London University. The purpose of the paper is to evaluate the extent to which the programme sufficiently addresses the ten quality criteria developed by the “PROMISE” (2009) Mental Health Promotion Project. PROMISE (2009) is a European public health project funded by the European Commission and was conducted from 2009 to 2012. Its aim was the European-wide development of criteria and training guidelines in mental health promotion and recommended these should be integrated into the professional training curricula of nurses, psychiatrists, psychologists and social workers.

A content analysis method (Bryman, 2012) was used for this case study. This method allowed for a line-by-line scrutiny of the contents of the curriculum for evidence of the ten PROMISE quality criteria for mental health promotion (PROMISE project; http://promise-mental-health.com/training-guidelines.html).

The findings revealed that the PROMISE (2009) project was not one of the four key documents stated as forming the basis for the design of the curriculum content. However, the study found evidence of the curriculum addressing the first PROMISE criterion of embracing the principles of mental health promotion in seven of the 14 modules (50 per cent) in the programme. In the first year of the programme five of the ten PROMISE quality criteria were embedded in two of the four modules. In year 2, quality criteria 1, 4 and 7 were addressed in the course content of four of the five modules (see Table I). In the final year of the programme PROMISE quality criteria 1, 2, 4 and 8 were embedded in the syllabus and assessment strategy in two out of the five final year modules. It was also found that quality criteria 2 and 9 were not included in any of the modules in the programme.

This is a case study based on the content analysis of a single curriculum document in a London University. It is therefore not possible to make wide generalisation of its findings across the countries involved in the EU Promise project. However, it could be argued that it is possible to find a number of the key findings present in other UK University programmes that may be similar in structure to that selected for this study. The other limitation to this content analysis is that the evaluation process did not include accounts of the students’ experience on the programme. This could have contributed significantly to the outcome of the evaluation exercise. Although the methodology used is simple, practical and relatively sound, it is not necessarily rigorous in terms of quantitative research methodology but arguably an acceptable contribution to the spectrum within qualitative research paradigm.

The emergence of the “PROMISE” criteria especially on a European-wide basis puts emphasis on the importance of mental health promotion in the training of health care professionals. This is expected to be achieved by the training institutions in the European Union. In the UK, this notion is well embraced in various health policy documents (e.g. “No Health Without Mental Health” DH 2011). In the case of the programme examined at one London University, work is required to ensure that a pervasive incorporation of mental health promotion strategies in the curriculum in order to help the students to become better equipped to understand and effectively apply the mental health promotion criteria in their work upon qualification.

This is one of the first papers to address the “PROMISE” project and the issue of incorporating mental health promotion criteria in a pre-registration mental health pathway training programme in a university in the UK.

This paper reviews the latest management developments across the globe and pinpoints practical implications from cutting‐edge research and case studies.

This briefing is prepared by an independent writer who adds their own impartial comments and places the articles in context.

Closed‐loop product lifecycle management (PLM), is a new principle that is gradually taking hold in the engineering world. The idea is to continuously gather data on the condition and performance of a product throughout its life and use that information to predict its remaining lifetime, possibly extend the overall product life, cut maintenance costs, lessen the impact on the environment through more effective reuse and recycling and ultimately improve the design of future products. In Europe, this concept is being developed through PROMISE, an EU‐funded project bringing together 25 partners in nine countries.

Provides strategic insights and practical thinking that have influenced some of the world's leading organizations.

The briefing saves busy executives and researchers hours of reading time by selecting only the very best, most pertinent information and presenting it in a condensed and easy‐to‐digest format.

In today’s world, high-quality economic development is possible through innovative entrepreneurial activity, which has led to the creation of various kinds of innovation infrastructure facilities that support future high-tech projects. However, the system of selecting start-ups to populate and produce for such organisations does not take into account several factors that exert strong influence on the success of an innovative entrepreneurial project. In this article, the author presents the developed multi-factor methodology of project scoring, which is recommended for use both at the initial stage and in the process of development and implementation of innovative idea.

The suggested multi-factor methodology is both a qualitative and quantitative methodology that allows evaluation of proposed projects by taking into account individual goals of the innovation infrastructure, serving as a flexible tool for analysing project potential and taking into account the model of human behavioural preferences as a key driver of economic activities.

As a result of the first (qualitative) stage of the study, the author confirmed the hypothesis that the theoretical model of behavioural preferences corresponds to the demonstrated behavioural characteristics of reference respondents. As a result of the second (quantitative) phase of the research, the author conducted a survey of business incubator residents claiming one of the four models of behavioural preferences, followed by quantitative analysis to determine the extent to which the demonstrated behavioural traits of the respondents correspond to those presented in the theoretical model. The results of the second stage of the study were used in the final scoring of start-ups to identify the most promising projects in terms of development.

The project scoring methodology was tested in two of the largest business incubators in St. Petersburg and clearly demonstrated that the use of qualitative indicators significantly increases the ability of incubator experts to make decisions regarding incoming project information.

The American Association of Universities/Association of Research Libraries (AAU/ARL) German Resources Project was reorganized in 1998 to include formal working partnerships with German research libraries in pursuing its objective of cooperative collection development. The intent has been to make use of technological developments in telecommunications and computing in addressing the serious challenges arising from stagnant collection development budgets and rapidly rising prices of library materials. Because of their rich traditions and strong support, as well as their sharing similar aims with their American counterparts, German research libraries represent valuable international partners for ARL member libraries in fostering innovative research services for scholars. Explores the conceptual and historical background of cooperative collection development in North America, as well as of German publishing and library history, and in so doing delineates the many points of contact between American and German research libraries.

The purpose of this paper is to state a hierarchy methodology to select the most promising innovative projects, based on the processes defined by the successful Project Management Institute.

Open innovation is a new option for companies to acquire knowledge; however, in a changing and global market, it is necessary to define and select properly the proposals to be financially supported. A proven multicriteria decision methodology (MCDM) is recommended in this case to hierarchize alternatives. Moreover, analytical hierarchy process (AHP) has been considered in this study as a proven and simple MCDM.

AHP has been demonstrated as a suitable option to evaluate innovative project proposals, thanks to its integration with the Project Management Institute methodology. A process example has been included to demonstrate its application.

Innovative projects and project proposal selection have always implied subjective criteria. Moreover, some of the processes defined in the methodology were not well defined in the project proposal.

The management of a project portfolio in a rational way would help decision makers to fund the most promising projects/alternatives under consideration. In this way, the inherent risk of R&D projects would be minimized.

The management of a portfolio of innovative proposals is less often addressed in the literature. This paper focuses on the hybridization of the criteria and processes described in the PMBOK Guide and an MCDM.

The purpose of this paper is to analyze relations among different kinds of visualization in annual reports and to trace their interaction with activities in marketing and sales, in design and planning, and in operations. For this purpose it is intended to produce insight into the referents that make up a particular image found in the annual report: the 3‐D visualization.

It is a case study of a firm that uses different kinds of visualization in many parts of its activities. The case study is based on different kinds of empirical data, such as annual reports, interviews and field observations. This allows a better understanding of relations and translation between visualization and organizational practices. The paper draws on theoretical work on photography and 3‐D visualizations and is inspired by the actor‐network theory approach in its analysis of how various kinds of visualizations interact.

It is suggested that visualization is important in all aspects of the firm's activities such as accounting, communication, selling, planning and operations. It is shown how the visualizations interact with one another and are superimposed on one another to develop even stronger modes of reporting in the annual report and stronger coordination towards the market, production and operations. Visualizations in annual reports are not merely window dressing but also their traces and referents have to be found elsewhere than in the financial reporting system.

This is a single case study, and more cases need to be analyzed to understand the complexities of interactions between visualizations.

The paper produces insight into the referents that make up a particular image found in the annual report: the 3‐D visualization.

It is no surprise that garbage is not garbage for some. It is money. This is why garbage has been overestimated to a point that money allocated for waste-to-energy (WtE) projects feed individual pockets. Many countries have already adapted WtE as a successful solution for both energy and waste crisis. Although in Sri Lanka six WtE projects were promised, the government abruptly decided that it would not have any more projects other than the two plants that were under construction. The purpose of this paper is to analyse barriers to the implementation of WtE projects in Sri Lanka.

An exploratory case study was selected as the research strategy to achieve the research aim. In total, two WtE megaprojects, which have been initiated implementation in Sri Lanka, were used as cases. A total of 12 semi-structured interviews with four personnel from each case and four government officials were used as the data collection technique. Data analysis was carried out using code-based content analysis. The barriers were extracted through analysis of case findings using an abductive analysis. The strategies to mitigate identified barriers were formulated based on attributes highlighted through case study findings and further validated through the opinions of three experts.

Barriers were analysed using the PESTEL framework to get ample insight into barriers that impact on the implementation of WtE projects in Sri Lanka. Less support from the government due to their less awareness on WtE, high investment and operational cost, lack of expert knowledge on WtE technologies in Sri Lanka, absence of a proper regulatory framework for implementation WtE technologies, lengthy process and delay in getting approvals from government process, poor attitudes of public and their protests due to the less awareness on WtE are the foremost barriers identified in this study. Further, strategies were proposed based on the empirical research findings to overcome barriers to facilitate the successful implementation of WtE projects in Sri Lanka.

So far only two WtE megaprojects have been initiated the implementation in Sri Lanka. Therefore, the scope of the study was limited only to those projects. Moreover, the type of waste considered in this study is municipal solid waste (MSW), which has become a bigger problem in Sri Lanka.

The current study unveils an analysis of barriers for implementation of WtE projects in Sri Lanka, including strategies for mitigating identified barriers. The findings would enable relevant stakeholders, i.e. policymakers, industry practitioners, investors, government bodies and researchers to make informed decisions on implementation of WtE projects and thereby promote successful implementation of WtE projects in Sri Lanka.