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The purpose of this paper is to describe how an Academic Health Science Centre, providing pediatric rehabilitation services, research, and education, developed a Centres for Leadership (CfL) initiative to integrate its academic functions and embrace the goal of being a learning organization.

Historical documents, tracked output information, and staff members’ insights were used to describe the ten-year evolution of the initiative, its benefits, and transformational learnings for the organization.

The evolutions concerned development of a series of CfLs, and changes over time in leadership and management structure, as well as in operations and targeted activities. Benefits included enhanced clinician engagement in research, practice-based research, and impacts on clinical practice. Transformational learnings concerned the importance of supporting stakeholder engagement, fostering a spirit of inquiry, and fostering leaderful practice. These learnings contributed to three related emergent outcomes reflecting “way stations” on the journey to enhanced evidence-informed decision making and clinical excellence: enhancements in authentic partnerships, greater innovation capacity, and greater understanding and actualization of leadership values.

Practical information is provided for other organizations interested in understanding how this initiative evolved, its tangible value, and its wider benefits for organizational collaboration, innovation, and leadership values. Challenges encountered and main messages for other organizations are also considered.

A strategy map is used to present the structures, processes, and outcomes arising from the initiative, with the goal of informing the operations of other organizations desiring to be learning organizations.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the impact of different categories of ownership concentration on corporate voluntary disclosure practices in New Zealand.

The study applies panel data regression analysis to a sample of New Zealand listed companies from 2001 to 2005. Two‐stage least squares analysis (2SLS) is conducted. Ownership concentration is categorised into four mutually exclusive ownership structures.

The paper finds that firm‐year observations characterised by financial institution‐controlled ownership structure tends to make significantly fewer (more) disclosures at high (low) concentration levels supporting expropriation. In contrast, firm‐year observations in the high (low) concentration group with government‐ and management‐controlled ownership structures exhibit considerably higher (lower) voluntary disclosure scores, suggesting a positive monitoring effect at high ownership concentration level.

The results provide evidence for the proposition that the efficiency of large block holders' monitoring varies with the level of ownership concentration.

To promote transparency in capital markets, regulators can encourage or discourage certain types of large shareholding, while monitoring the level of ownership concentration by means of regulation. Investors, especially less sophisticated retail investors, will benefit from the findings that different ownership groups affect disclosure policies differently.

The findings strengthen the importance of differentiating ownership structures into various classes to infer the real impact of differential controlling properties on managerial disclosure decisions. Furthermore, the results reveal that the relationship between ownership concentration and voluntary disclosure practices has a non‐linear pattern.

This paper aims to explore one question: to what extent does urban rehabilitation impact the housing search cost of the low-income tenants.

This paper adopts the fixed effects time-on-market (TOM) model and pricing model to study the research question.

Urban rehabilitation lifts the subdivided units (SDUs’) prices by around 7%. For the SDU located in old districts, urban rehabilitation gives rise to the rental price up by 11%–12%. The SDUs in the area without urban rehabilitation experience a short marketing period of 16%–17%. The SDU located in the old district that is without urban rehabilitation would have a short marketing time.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the pioneering research to investigate the relationship between rehabilitation and low-income rental housing from the improved search theory. The improved search theory posits that under the circumstance of urban rehabilitation, low-income tenants’ options are limited and the search behavior will be restricted in the affordable areas, and then TOM will be shortened. With the concentration of SDUs in Hong Kong, the test of the search theory is broken down into two hypotheses. (H1) Urban rehabilitation leads to low-income housing prices increase. (H2) Low-income housing located in areas without urban rehabilitation has a shorter TOM.

The purpose of this paper is to develop a clear understanding of the features that increase the probability of condos’ sale, with a focus on design-related features.

The present research uses survival analysis (SA) and the Cox proportional-hazards regression (CPHR) to analyze condo sales data provided by the REALTORS® Association of Edmonton (RAE) (Alberta, Canada).

The analysis of the provided data shows that the listed price, building age, appliances and condo fees have less effect on the time a condo spends on the market compared to the condo’s physical features, such as construction material, interior finishing and heating type and source.

The data used in the present research comes from one geographical area (i.e. Edmonton, Canada). Furthermore, the data provided by the RAE does not include any real estate transactions not involving a realtor. Additionally, the present research, owing to its focus on design-related features, does not control features related to the external environment, such as community and transportation proximity.

The findings of the present research help construction practitioners (e.g. architects, builders and realtors) better understand the features that influence condo buyers’ decisions. This knowledge helps to develop designs and marketing strategies that increase the likelihood of selling and decrease the time listed condos spend on the market.

The present research expands our knowledge of the drivers influencing the purchasers’ decisions concerning the building’s physical features that can be controlled during the design stage. Also, analyzing the provided data by using SA and CPHR, as followed in this paper, facilitates the inclusion of records that are listed but not sold, which helps to overcome the survivorship bias and avoid the over-optimism that exists in the present literature.

Developing residential units is crucial in the socio-economic development of a country. The investor faces not only uncertain transaction price (price risk), but also uncertainties about the marketing period risk. Predicting when the incurred money is being realized is difficult because of the imperfect nature of the real estate market. Thus, the purpose of this study is to analyze the variables that explain the time on the market (TOM) of housing units, identifying the relationships in-between and the effects on TOM of residential properties.

Following a multi-stage sampling process, a random sample of 120 housing units was selected. Data were collected using a self-administered questionnaire. The questionnaire contained 57 variables that can affect TOM. Semi-structured interviews were conducted to confirm some of the data and information on residential units from the developers. Direct observations were conducted to verify certain physical attributes and, finally, they were comprehensively analyzed using quantitative analysis techniques in SPSS 16.0 Statistical package.

Results confirmed that lesser advertising prices, attractive environment, proximity to the city center and proper shape of lands reduce the TOM. Similarly, higher prices, longer distance to the city center and irregular shape of land increase the TOM. The results strengthen the necessity of a comfortable environment appropriate to live, probably with greenery or water bodies, which is a key influential factor that reduces the TOM in Sri Lanka.

wIn the Sri Lankan context, there are few contributions to the real estate literature in this regard. Many scholars have concentrated on physical and economic characteristics, whereas this research adds the environmental factors. Therefore, this research makes a significant contribution to the body of knowledge in this area, as it puts more attention on including several variables, as well as newly introduced variables as determinants. Consumers can apply the research findings to assess the relative importance of housing attributes and services which they perceive most valuable, and then to make their purchase decisions. The findings also contribute to the investigations of the behavior of housing attributes and enable knowing as to what factors are to be promoted and what to be omitted to gain a shorter TOM.

The purpose of this paper is to propose a hybrid decision-making model for optimizing the initial design strategies of pre-sales housing, identifying factors affecting the initial design of housing, and developing different initial design approaches and strategies based on buyers’ preferences.

Indicators and factors in line with the local initial planning and design are created according to the design quality indicator framework. The important indicators and factors are screened out preliminarily with the fuzzy Delphi method and decision-making trial and evaluation laboratory based analytic network process. The performances of two actual cases under similar site conditions are checked with regard to the overall residential sales rate and time on the market (TOM).

The result shows that the proposed model can effectively improve the sales rate, shorten the TOM and better complies with buyer design strategy demands, and thus positively correlating to economic value.

Pre-sales make possible the customized strategy of allowing future residents to participate in the housing design process. However, buyers’ participation in the design process is highly limited, and developers usually determine their planning and initial residential design strategies based on experience and intuition. With the proposed approach, the initial residential design of a project can be effectively intervened, so that home users can truly participate in the design, and the residential construction service can be provided in a unique, but non-universal way.

This study aims to provide insights into the scale and use of information and communication technology (ICT) in managing medical devices in the National Health Service (NHS), with a focus on reverse exchange (RE) systems as a part of the broader reverse logistics (RL) systems, within which medical devices are returned and exchanged.

Two case studies were conducted with NHS Hospital Trusts, whilst another was built upon secondary resources. Primary findings were triangulated with the information collected from the NHS Trusts’ reports, direct observation and a preliminary round of consultations with 12 health-care professionals working in other NHS Trusts or Integrated Equipment Community Services.

The findings of this paper suggest that the sophistication of ICT implementation increases with the risks and value associated with medical devices. Operational attributes are derived from ICT implementations which can positively affect RE performance. The forces that drive the adoption of ICT in the NHS include pressure from government, business partners and patients; competitive pressure; perceived benefits; organisation size; top management support; and the availability of sufficient resources. Obstacles are mainly centred around the lack of sufficient resources.

Although the trusts that participated in this research are representative of different regions, the generalisation of the study results may be limited by the size of the sample organisations, so the results can only provide insights into the research problem. As this work is exploratory in nature, there is insufficient data on which to form definitive recommendations.

NHS Trusts may use the six operational attributes identified and verified by the case studies to benchmark their ICT implementation for device management. The actual and potential benefits of ICT implementation could inform technology development and encourage the uptake of ICT in healthcare. Governmental bodies can utilise this information to develop directives to actively drive ICT adoption in device management and the associated RE system. A well-considered training programme is needed to improve staff ICT skills to fully realise the potential of ICT systems which support the effective RE of medical devices.

The results of this paper suggest that the reverse management of medical devices backs up the supply chain attained through using ICT, which in turn reduces capital costs, medical risk and increases the finance available for frontline medical treatment.

This chapter describes signalling theory, which is used to interpret the findings. Section 3.2 outlines the implications of signalling theory as a way of correcting market failure through voluntary disclosure. Section 3.3 discusses theoretical constructs, outlining independent variables, interaction of independent variables and mediating variables. Section 3.4 outlines the empirical model used for linear regression to investigate disclosure signals and their association with corporate reputation. Section 3.5 outlines the empirical model developed to investigate the directors' perception of the effectiveness of intellectual capital value drivers in enhancing corporate reputation. It also outlines the approach adopted to compare disparity between intellectual capital disclosure and directors' perception of the ability of drivers to enhance intellectual capital value of corporate reputation. Section 3.6 provides a summary for the chapter.

This paper presents an overview of a national case study exploring the IS/IT outsourcing phenomenon in the public and private sectors of a developing country. Kuwait has been used as an example of a developing country and the data collection for this study was done there. The primary data on IS/IT outsourcing practices, obtained for the first time in Kuwait, were collected by means of survey questionnaires and semi‐structured interviews supported by organisational documentation. Several public and private sector organisations were selected to participate in the investigation. The main findings of the study suggest that there are differences between the two sectors in their motivation and risk factors evaluation behind the adoption of an IS/IT outsourcing business strategy. The findings also provide an insight into how outsourcing practices, as an information system strategy, are motivated and managed in the context of a developing nation.

The following classified, annotated list of titles is intended to provide reference librarians with a current checklist of new reference books, and is designed to supplement the RSR review column, “Recent Reference Books,” by Frances Neel Cheney. “Reference Books in Print” includes all additional books received prior to the inclusion deadline established for this issue. Appearance in this column does not preclude a later review in RSR. Publishers are urged to send a copy of all new reference books directly to RSR as soon as published, for immediate listing in “Reference Books in Print.” Reference books with imprints older than two years will not be included (with the exception of current reprints or older books newly acquired for distribution by another publisher). The column shall also occasionally include library science or other library related publications of other than a reference character.