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This study contributes to the understanding of the health effects of pesticides exposure and of how pesticides have been and should be regulated.

This study presents literature reviews for the period 2000–2013 on (i) the health effects of pesticides and on (ii) preference valuation of health risks related to pesticides, as well as a discussion of the role of benefit-cost analysis applied to pesticide regulatory measures.

This study indicates that the health literature has focused on individuals with direct exposure to pesticides, i.e. farmers, while the literature on preference valuation has focused on those with indirect exposure, i.e. consumers. The discussion highlights the need to clarify the rationale for regulating pesticides, the role of risk perceptions in benefit-cost analysis, and the importance of inter-disciplinary research in this area.

This study relates findings of different disciplines (health, economics, public policy) regarding pesticides, and identifies gaps for future research.

In the academic field of business management, several potential theories were established during the last decades to explain companies' decisions, organizational behavior, consumer patterns, and internationalization, among others. As a result, businesses and scholars were able to analyze and decide based on theoretical approaches to explain the current conditions of the market. Secondary research was conducted to collect more than 36 management theories. This chapter aims to develop the most famous theories related to business applied in the international field. The novelty of this chapter relies on the compilation of recognized previous research studies from the academic literature and evidence in international business.

This paper focuses on governance in higher education in China. It sees that governance as distinctive on the world scale and the potential source of distinctiveness in other domains of higher education. By taking an historical approach, reviewing relevant literature and drawing on empirical research on governance at one leading research university, the paper discusses system organisation, government–university relations and the role of the Communist Party (CCP), centralisation and devolution, institutional leadership, interior governance, academic freedom and responsibility, and the relevance of collegial norms. It concludes that the party-state and Chinese higher education will need to find a Way in governance that leads into a fuller space for plural knowledges, ideas and approaches. This would advance both indigenous and global knowledge, so helping global society to also find its Way.

The field of teaching technologies is in constant interplay between educational and industrial advances. Since the beginning of the twenty-first century, digitalization and automatization have become increasingly important. In industrial and social life, we see similar fast-moving developments. These factors challenge education, specifically vocational education, greatly, and raise two very different, yet very much connected questions: how to prepare students for their vocational lives and how to prepare teachers to communicate the necessary competencies to their students? This chapter provides an overview of advances, challenges, and possible solutions, focusing on the three key fields of vocational education in Germany: Industry 4.0, Education 4.0, and innovative teacher education. Most importantly, however, the text examines the continuous interplay between and among these fields. The beginning of the chapter is dedicated to vocational teacher education, in accordance with industrial and educational advances. Specifying this, characteristics of Industry 4.0, as well as students' and teachers' perceptions of Industry 4.0, are discussed. This is followed by an introduction to the concept of so-called learning factories as a possible way of integrating aspects of Industry 4.0 in German vocational schools. The end of the chapter is dedicated to the required changes in educational settings today and in the future. Though Industry 4.0, Education 4.0, and innovative teacher education are each widely discussed in the current literature, the interplay of all three fields reveals a research gap. This chapter tries to close this gap and provide an important contribution to the research field.

Contemporary organisations are data-driven with sophisticated and strong Information Technology (IT) supporting the Business Intelligence (BI) systems. Due to the Industrial Revolution 4.0, businesses are subjected to volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity (VUCA). The accuracy and agility of decision making (DM) play a key role in the success of contemporary organisations. Traditional methods of DM, i.e. based on tacit knowledge, are no longer relevant in the constantly altering business scenarios. Innovations in the IT domain have accomplished systems to gather and process business data at an exponential speed. Context-driven analytics along with computation capability and performance-driven visualisation have become an implicit need for businesses. BI systems offer the capabilities of data-driven DM simultaneously allowing organisations to predict the future business scenarios. Qualitative research is conducted in this chapter. In the research, interviews, questionnaires, and secondary data from previous research are used as data source. Case studies are discussed to clarify the business use cases of BI systems and their impact on managerial DM. Theoretical foundations are stated basis a thorough literature review of the available body of knowledge. The current environment demands data-driven DM in an organisation at all levels, i.e. strategic, tactical, and operational. Heterogeneous data sources add unlimited value to the decision support systems (DSSs). The BI systems have become an integral part of the technology landscape and an essential element in managerial DM. Contemporary businesses have deployed BI systems in all the functions.

On the basis of the data collected from 144 practitioners, we studied impact of the Palm Beach County Quality Improvement System (QIS) on practitioners. We found that (a) the duration of early learning coaching, (b) the intensity of career advisors, (c) quality workshops and conferences, (d) college courses, and (e) scholarship for books and supplies in relation to taking college courses are related to improving practitioners' job skills and level of certification and degree in early childhood care and education. We found that additional income to practitioners through the WAGE$ program is effective in retaining them. We also found that the professional development program has differential impact on practitioners of various racial and ethnic groups and that more encouragement and support should be given to African-American and Hispanic practitioners to engage in professional development and pursue advancement in the level of certificate and degree. All these findings have implications for the policy of early care and education in general and for other quality improvement initiatives for early care and education in particular.

Purpose – This chapter will discuss empirical results on how attitudes toward group work and the prospect of publishing in wikis influence students’ work in collaborative knowledge construction. It will also explore how writing for an audience can be used in information literacy education.

Methodology – Data were collected by pre- and post-questionnaires and group interviews from two 8-week courses in an upper secondary school. In total, 58 students were involved. The quantitative data was analyzed by frequency and correlation analysis. Content analysis was applied to transcribed interviews.

Findings – Group work experiences carried over from one context to another. Ways to undertake group work influenced the learning experience. Cooperation – sharing tasks to be undertaken individually – tended to be a negative experience while working closely together enhanced learning. Wikis were mainly used as platforms for combining texts written individually by the students. The prospect of publishing on public Wikipedia had a considerably stronger influence on students’ motivation than publishing a text for fellow classmates on the school wiki.

Practical implications – Wiki-publishing enables an emphasis on information use as part of information literacy instruction, where students learn to adapt their texts toward their audiences. Careful instruction is, however, needed for the use of social media tools and collaborative processes, in order for them to serve their purpose.

Originality – The study showed how group work attitude in general influence future group work experiences. It also demonstrated the influence of publishing texts on wikis or Wikipedia on students’ motivation.

The paper provides an overview of research published in the innovation and operations management (IOM) literature on 15 methods for cost management in new product development, and it provides a comparison to an earlier review of the management accounting (MA) literature (Wouters & Morales, 2014).

This structured literature search covers papers published in 23 journals in IOM in the period 1990–2014.

The search yielded a sample of 208 unique papers with 275 results (one paper could refer to multiple cost management methods). The top 3 methods are modular design, component commonality, and product platforms, with 115 results (42%) together. In the MA literature, these three methods accounted for 29%, but target costing was the most researched cost management method by far (26%). Simulation is the most frequently used research method in the IOM literature, whereas this was averagely used in the MA literature; qualitative studies were the most frequently used research method in the MA literature, whereas this was averagely used in the IOM literature. We found a lot of papers presenting practical approaches or decision models as a further development of a particular cost management method, which is a clear difference from the MA literature.

This review focused on the same cost management methods, and future research could also consider other cost management methods which are likely to be more important in the IOM literature compared to the MA literature. Future research could also investigate innovative cost management practices in more detail through longitudinal case studies.

This review of research on methods for cost management published outside the MA literature provides an overview for MA researchers. It highlights key differences between both literatures in their research of the same cost management methods.