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The purpose of this study is to explore the gender-related discourses in the annual reports of the listed companies in Bangladesh.

To fulfill this objective, a sociological discourse analysis (SDA) of the gender-related texts in the annual reports of Bangladeshi companies (listed in the Dhaka Stock Exchange) was conducted. Sandberg and Holmlund’s (2015) organizational impression management tactics (description, praise, admission, defense and writing styles) was applied as the analytical framework of SDA. The findings of the study were interpreted from a triangulation of two different theories: legitimacy theory and impression management theory.

The study suggests that the companies in Bangladesh are disclosing gender-related information to a limited extent. They provide some information in relation to equal opportunities, business activities targeted to women and corporate contribution to women’s welfare. Most of these gender-related discourses are rhetorical in nature. The companies used various impression management tactics such as description, praise, positive writing style, vague writing style and emotional writing style.

This study is exploratory in nature and focuses on cross-sectional data. Thus, it does not identify the trend of corporate gender reporting over the years.

At the policy level, the findings revealed a need for reporting guidelines for gender narratives. Although there is a global gender reporting guideline as proposed under global reporting initiative, there is no local guideline in Bangladesh. Our findings suggest that in the absence of proper directives, companies presented facts and figures rhetorically and qualitatively.

Our findings provide valuable insights for the companies in assisting the Government of Bangladesh to deal with the prevailing gender inequality and achieved gender-related sustainable development goals. It is argued that the government should take more interest in corporate social responsibility activities (such as promoting gender equality) and introduce legislation and guidelines for social accounting.

This is one of the very few studies that illustrate the corporate gender reporting of a developing economy – Bangladesh. To make a unique contribution to corporate gender disclosure, the study has drawn its analysis from a triangulation of the impression management and the legitimacy perspectives. Also, the use of SDA for annual report analysis has informed the readers about “how” the corporate narratives are presented in the annual reports rather than “what” issues are disclosed as commonly done in content analysis.

The purpose of this paper is to explore contextual barriers to supplier development for sustainability (SDS) in global supply chains and managerial remedies to mitigate such barriers.

A dyadic case study design was adopted with a Western European buyer and six of its Chinese suppliers. The database consists of 41 interviews and 81 documents.

Contextual barriers to SDS in global supply chains derive from complexities in the sustainability concept, socio-economic differences, spatial and linguistic distance, as well as cultural differences between buyers and suppliers. Partial remedies include effective joint communications, an open organizational culture, and the fostering of cross-contextual understanding.

The findings contribute to theory development at the intersection of sustainable and global supply chain management research. They help to explain why scarce sustainability-related progress in global supply chains has occurred in recent years.

The identified barriers facilitate managerial decision making that will expedite SDS progress in global contexts.

By diffusing knowledge regarding available remedies, the study contributes to improving SDS effectiveness, thereby fostering sustainability capabilities and performance of suppliers.

This research highlights the criticality of contextual barriers to SDS. The barrier effects that stem from differing real-world conceptions of sustainability may inform future sustainable supply chain management research within and beyond SDS.

Construction professionals (CPs) are often exposed to various challenges and pressures at work including urgent deadlines, high demands, uncertainty in tasks, and complex problems, which may induce stress and affect performance directly. Mindfulness-based stress reduction (MBSR) training has been used for several years to reduce stress among various types of people, such as nurses, teachers, and family caregivers, but its application to CPs with highly dynamic environment remains uncertain. This study aimed to investigate the impact of MBSR training on the performance of CPs via an intervention study involving two groups (MBSR and control).

Participants in both groups were assessed using a questionnaire survey and a semi-structured interview at the pre- and post-intervention stage. Multiple research methods were used to derive quantitative and qualitative analyses, including factor analysis, independent t-test, Pearson correlation, and contextual analysis.

The findings overall confirm that MBSR has a direct effect on CPs, improving their mindfulness characteristics and enhancing performance by reducing their stress.

A number of practical recommendations are made such as (1) arranging standard eight-week MBSR training for CPs; (2) giving special leave for attending the full mindfulness training; (3) establishing a suitable environment in the office for meditation;(4) allowing CPs an opportunity to pause at difficult moments to create space to respond instead of simply reacting; and (5) expressing love and kindness through gratitude, recognition, and regular feedback.

This research can be considered as valid evidence to convince construction organizations conducting MBSR to the CPs, which is indeed not too remote to enhance their performance as well as the holistic construction performance.

Quality functional deployment (QFD) can be a powerful technique if appropriately applied. However, it can generate a great deal of paperwork and sometimes the benefits are disappointing. Presents a number of analysis tools which should be used in conjunction with QFD. These tools provide enhancements which help to understand the nature of the product and demonstrate how to use QFD more effectively.

This paper aims to discover and analyze the challenges hampering blockchain technology’s (BT’s) implementation in the Indian health-care sector. A total of 18 challenges have been prioritized and modeled based on an extensive literature search and professional views.

An integrated multi-criteria decision-making approach has been used in two phases. Best worst method (BWM) is used in the first phase to prioritize the challenges with sensitivity analysis to validate the findings and eliminate a few challenges. In the second phase, interpretive structural modeling is applied to the remaining 15 challenges to obtain relative relationships among them with cross-impact matrix multiplication applied to classification analysis for their categorization.

The study’s results reveal that limited knowledge and expertise, cost and risk involved, technical issues, lack of clear regulations, resistance to change and lack of top management support are the top-ranked or high-intensity challenges according to the BWM. Interpretive structural modelling findings suggest that the lack of government initiatives has been driving other challenges with the highest driving power.

This work has been conducted in the Indian context, so careful generalization of the results is needed.

This work will give health-care stakeholders a better perspective regarding blockchain’s adoption. It will help health-care stakeholders, service providers, researchers and policymakers get a glimpse of the strategies for eradicating mentioned challenges. The analysis will help reduce the challenges’ impact on blockchain’s adoption in the Indian health-care sector.

The adoption of BT is a novel concept, especially in developing countries such as India. This is one of the few works addressing the challenges to BT adoption in the Indian health-care sector.

Purpose – To provide classroom teachers with an overview of a range of assessments that can be administered either individually or to a group.

Design/methodology/approach – The chapter is organized from early literacy skill assessments (both individual and group based) to comprehension and standardized tests.

Findings – Provides detailed information on skills required for each element of reading, design of assessment, intended purpose, and process of administration.

Research limitations/implications – This is not an exhaustive list, the authors strove to highlight the most reliable and practical assessments from a large body of possible choices.

Practical implications – This is a valuable source for classroom teachers who are provided with a wide-range of assessment choices covering the breadth of reading skills with extensive details on each.

Originality/value of paper – Teachers need a range of assessments to choose from to make decisions at the individual, class and school level.

This paper aims to investigate seven prominent translations of the Qur'anic verb-noun collocations into English (Pickthall, 1930; AL-Hilali and Khan, 1977; Ali, 1934; Arberry, 1955; Shakir, 1999; Sarwar, 1981; Saheeh International, 1997) to unfold their renditions of the style and meaning of such Qur'anic verb-noun collocation into English.

The study follows a corpus-based research in a sense that the study is conducted on seven translations of the Noble Qur'an that have been taken form The Qur'anic Arabic Corpus, using linguistic and exegetical analyses. Based on Reiss’ model of text analysis (2000), the author analyses the intralinguistic and extralinguistic features of the Qur'anic verb-noun collocations.

Findings reveal that linguistic and exegetical analyses are perquisites for adequate rendition, which prevent deviation in meaning and translation loss. It is also found that Qur'anic collocations use unique literary techniques and devices, which hinder their natural and adequate renditions into English.

The novelty of this study lies in studying the architectural design of the Qur'anic verb-noun collocations in terms of the unique selection of words and style. Such unique architectural design of such collocations creates monumental hindrances in their rendition into other languages, which have not been given due attention in translation studies.

Controlling partner opportunism in public-private partnership (PPP) requires effective adaptation of governance mechanisms over life-cycle. This paper proposes a process framework of effective governance adaptation for controlling partner opportunism in case of PPP.

Using in-depth interview data and extensive secondary data, a comparative case analysis of governance adaptation for controlling partner opportunism in two provinces in the “National Health Insurance Program” in India was conducted. The study uses contextual analysis and critical incident technique to identify the opportunistic behaviors and use processing tracing to map the adaptation of governance mechanisms for effective control of partner opportunism.

The paper makes several propositions and proposes a three-stage framework for effective governance adaptation for controlling partner opportunism. The study proposes that governance adaptation begins with the iterative process of discovering governance needs, followed by the dynamic interaction between governance mechanisms shaping the adaptation process. The process ends with two-dimensional alignment–alignment of partner's goal and alignment of governance mix with governance needs resulting in effective governance.

The paper contributes to the existing debates on governance mix and its effectiveness in PPP by proposing two-dimensional alignment for optimal governance adaptation leading to effective PPP governance.

Existing research presents contradictory findings about the effectiveness of governance mechanisms to control partner opportunism. The proposed process-view of governance adaptations tries to address this conundrum to some extent.

The purpose of this article is to explain the dynamics of public appointments and present new possibilities for research in this field.

The article is based on a systematic literature review from 2012 to 2021, identified in Web of Science, Scopus and SciELO, in English, Spanish or Portuguese. To explain the dynamics of public appointments, the following were analyzed: the nomination process; the motivations, objectives and criteria used; the results and impacts of appointments; and the profile of the nominees. The study focused only on discretionary appointments to fully public bodies and agencies.

The literature offers a limited explanation for the dynamics of appointments, by focusing on the dichotomy between loyalty and competence. Despite this, studies suggest that different contextual factors, such as administrative tradition or strategic choices, for example, determine the dynamics of appointments, indicating that it is a complex process that goes beyond the simple discussion of merit or clientelism.

The article presents an unprecedented analysis of the literature on the dynamics of public appointments and proposes an explanatory model that indicates that other factors, in addition to merit and loyalty, should be considered relevant for the selection criteria, the nomination process and the profile of who will be appointed. This model is useful both for the practical management of appointments and for the advancement of theory in this field and should receive improvements and future empirical evaluations.

Recovery is a central component of UK substance misuse policy, however, relatively little is known about the views and meanings of recovery by those experiencing it. The purpose of this paper is to explore these factors, and understand how service user experiences align to current understandings of “recovery capital”.

This paper draws on qualitative interviews with 32 individuals from six UK recovery communities, including those commissioned by a statutory service (n=8) and a peer-led recovery community (n=24).

Meanings of recovery differed between people in abstinence-based communities and those not; however, all had consistent views on their own recovery outcomes and the benefits they believed recovery brought. All viewed recovery as a process; a continuous journey with no end-point. Internal motivation, peer support, social networks and daily structure were integral to supporting individuals achieve and maintain recovery. Key benefits of recovery reflected recovery capital and included positive relationships, sense of belonging, increased self-worth and confidence, employment and education.

This research shows that recovery experiences and outcomes are not centred entirely on the individual but are wider, more holistic. Maintaining recovery involves being connected to themselves and to the wider environment: family, friends, peers and society. Although the recovery capital model has many elements that were discussed by the participants of this research, the discourse they used does not align with the model. To validly measure and quantify recovery outcomes, individuals need to identify with the measures themselves.

From policy and commissioning perspectives, these findings suggest benefits of recovery that were viewed by participants as indicators of success: demonstrate elements which support recovery; and highlight key social value outcomes which people attribute to recovery.

These “softer”, qualitative benefits should be considered by policy-makers, commissioners, statutory and non-statutory services in order to evidence outcomes. However, it should also be recognised that a temporally static approach to assessing recovery may be in contradiction to the meaning and perspectives held by those in recovery communities who conceptualise it as a long term and ongoing process.

This paper adds to understandings of experiences and meanings of recovery, with a particular focus on the measurement of outcomes and their meanings, and the role of abstention and continued drug use within the recovery process.