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In 2018, the National Human Trafficking hotline received 275 cases of human trafficking in Pennsylvania, a higher than average portion of the 10,949 human trafficking cases received for the USA. Whether human trafficking victims receive services or enter the criminal justice system as prostitution offenders depends on how police identify them, as police officers are usually the first to interact with human trafficking victims. Thus, understanding how police identify human trafficking is important. The purpose of the study is to explore Pennsylvania police perceptions of human trafficking.

Scenarios were presented in a survey to 489 Pennsylvania police officers.

Police training improved officer identification of human trafficking (vs prostitution) involving older victims. Officers with more tenure were less likely to identify older victims of human trafficking than officers with less tenure. However, older officers were better able to successfully identify older (i.e. age 25 years) victims of human trafficking, but officer age had no effect on identifying younger (i.e. age 15 years) victims of human trafficking. The implications are discussed in the study.

The study contributes to the literature by testing (1) whether training affects police ability to identify human trafficking victims in a scenario, controlling for other factors and (2) whether victim age affects officer identification of human trafficking victims. More officers correctly identified younger victims of human trafficking when force was explicitly stated, but more officers misidentified younger victims when force was not explicitly stated and older victims when force was explicitly stated.

Archaeological, palaeontological and geological research has been conducted in Kenya for many years. These research efforts have resulted in exceptional depth of understanding of the region's cultural heritage including those with rock art. Unfortunately, very few of the research programmes have engaged communities as active participants in conservation and consumers of the research findings. The purpose of this paper is to report how collaboration between the National Museums of Kenya and the Trust of African Rock Art (TARA) is creating a link between research, conserving heritage and community engagement.

An overview of two rock art tourism community projects undertaken by TARA will reveal that engaging communities and disseminating research findings does not only foster preservation of sites but is critical in transforming rock art sites into economic endeavours whose outcomes are providing alternative livelihoods.

Community engagement remains the only viable way of ensuring long-term conservation of heritage sites going forward.

TARA is the only organization conducting this kind of work in the African continent. This case study therefore, provides authentic information on local community involvement as a conservation strategy in the African context.

This study aims to examine the relationship between knowledge management and career development in an era characterized by high levels of youth unemployment and a demand for specialized skills. Despite the increasing transition to a knowledge-based economy, there is a significant gap between young people’s skills and career readiness, necessitating an in-depth analysis of the role of knowledge management at the individual, organizational and national levels.

The authors conducted a qualitative study using the theory-context-characteristics-methodology approach based on a systematic literature review. The authors created an ecological framework for reflecting on knowledge management and career development, arguing for a multidisciplinary approach that invites collaboration across sectors to generate innovative and reliable solutions.

This study presents a comprehensive review of the existing literature and trends, noting the need for more focus on the interplay between knowledge management and career development. It emphasizes the need for businesses to promote the acquisition, storage, diffusion and application of knowledge and its circulation and exchange to create international business human capital.

The findings may help multinational corporations develop managerial training programs and recruitment strategies, given the demand for advanced knowledge-based skills in the modern workspace. The study also discusses the influences of education, experience and job skills on business managers’ performance, guiding the future recruitment of talents.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this review is among the first to assess the triadic relationship between knowledge management, career development and the global unemployment crisis. The proposed multidisciplinary approach seeks to break down existing silos, thus fostering a more comprehensive understanding of how to address these ongoing global concerns.

This study aims to provide a comprehensive analysis of various approaches to the residential property market evolution modelling and to examine the macroeconomic fundamentals that have shaped this market development in Ukraine in recent years.

The study uses a comprehensive data set encompassing relevant macroeconomic indicators and historical apartment prices. Multifactor linear regression (MLR) and ridge regression (RR) models are constructed to identify the impact of multiple predictors on apartment prices. Additionally, the ARIMAX model integrates time series analysis and external factors to enhance modelling and forecasting accuracy.

The investigation reveals that MLR and RR yield accurate predictions by considering a range of influential variables. The hybrid ARIMAX model further enhances predictive performance by fusing external indicators with time series analysis. These findings underscore the effectiveness of a multidimensional approach in capturing the complexity of housing price dynamics.

This research contributes to the real estate modelling and forecasting literature by providing an analysis of multiple linear regression, RR and ARIMAX models within the specific context of property price prediction in the turbulent Ukrainian real estate market. This comprehensive analysis not only offers insights into the performance of these methodologies but also explores their adaptability and robustness in a market characterized by evolving dynamics, including the significant influence of external geopolitical factors.

In his recent book Critique of Information, Scott Lash claims that contemporary times can better be understood as the information age rather than as postmodernism, the risk society, late capitalism, consumer society, etc. “Information society is, first, preferable to postmodernism”, he states, “in that the former says what the society principle is rather than saying merely what it comes after. Second, postmodernism deals largely with disorder, fragmentation, irrationality, whilst the notion of information accounts for both the (new) order and disorder that we experience.” He goes on to delineate the great difference that he sees between narrative and discourse, on the one hand, and information as it is presented by the media on the other. “Unlike, say, narrative or discourse or painting, the information in the papers comes in very short messages. It is compressed. Literally compressed. Narrative as in the novel works from a beginning, middle and end. The subjective intentions of the protagonist are the motor of the plot, the events follow from one an other as causes and effects. Discourse ‐ as in philosophic or social scientific texts ‐ is comprised of conceptual frameworks, of serious speech acts, of propositional logic, of speech acts backed up by legitimating arguments. Information is none of these.”. In fact, Lash suggests that, “the primary qualities of information are flow, disembeddedness, spatial compression, temporal compression, real‐time relations.” He ends his interpretation of our contemporary society with the conclusion that “informational knowledge is increasingly displacing narrative and discursive knowledge”.

Recent research provides useful insights on management accounting routines, yet little is written on their foundations. In particular, factors which may contribute to eventual management accounting routines have not been detailed in terms of the process of routinization. Thus, this paper aims to provide an initial theory-based understanding on the foundation of management accounting routines. In turn, it is hoped that this will raise further research interest on this topic.

Drawing on extant literature, a framework on foundations of management accounting routines is developed, and two empirical cases illustrate its operationalization.

The framework illustrates that a more complete understanding of change to management accounting routines can be gleaned when more is known about their foundations. The foundations are likely to be influenced by a combination and/or interaction of factors at the organizational level, the organizational field level and the economic and political level.

Because of the so far limited understanding of the foundation of management accounting routines, more research is required. This framework may be useful to guide such research.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is one of few papers to offer an initial theory-based understanding on the foundations of management accounting routines specifically. This understanding can be built on to improve our knowledge in the management accounting domain of the complex, but ubiquitous, concept of organizational routines.

The purpose of this study is to test whether equity theory (ET) – which posits that individuals compare their outcome/input ratio to the ratio of a “comparison other” and classify individuals as Benevolent, Equity Sensity, and Entitled – applies to the modern workplace of global virtual teams (GVT), where work is mostly intellectual, geographically dispersed and online, making individual effort nearly impossible to observe directly.

Using a sample of 1,343 GVTs comprised 6,347 individuals from 137 countries, this study tests three ET’s predictions in the GVT context: a negative, linear relationship between Benevolents’ perceptions of equity and job satisfaction in GVTs; an inverted U-shaped relationship between Equity Sensitives’ perceptions of equity and job satisfaction in GVTs; and a positive, linear relationship between Entitleds’ perceptions of equity and job satisfaction in GVTs.

Although the second prediction of ET is supported, the first and third have statistically significant opposite signs.

The research has important ramifications for management studies in explaining differences in organizational behavior in GVTs as opposed to traditional work settings.

The authors conclude that the main novelty with ET in GVTs is that GVTs are an environment stingy with satisfaction for “takers” (Entitleds) and generous in satisfaction for “givers” (Benevolents).

The purpose of this paper is to highlight the problems in the measurement of culture in consumer studies and offers suggestions for remedies.

Drawing on literature from related fields, the paper discusses some general issues in the measurement of culture and draws consumer researchers’ attention to the flaws in the common cultural measures in consumer research. Implications for future research are also provided.

The paper highlights two main shortcomings of commonly used culture instruments which are seldom taken into account by consumer researchers. Specifically, the commonly used culture dimensions in consumer studies do not have clear conceptual boundaries. Moreover, important differences between the different approaches to culture measuring (self- vs group-referenced and values vs practices) are always overlooked. The paper suggests that consumer research needs more focussed and refined measures and discusses which approach is better in which context.

This paper explores the issues of conceptual ambiguity and approach inconsistency in order to draw consumer researchers’ attention to the flaws in common measures of culture. Only when one measures what one expects to measure will the relationship that one observe between these cultural dimensions and consumer behavior be valid.

This paper aims to illustrate a useful classroom exercise that addresses this challenge. International experiences help university students develop global cultural awareness and better understand culture’s impact on decision-making. As more companies grow their global operations, they seek students with global competency (Eaton and Kleshinski, 2014). However, less than 7 per cent of US university students have basic cultural intelligence according to Lopes-Murphy (2014). This presents faculty with the significant challenge of developing students’ global competency within the walls of the classroom.

This paper describes a phenomenological research classroom activity titled the “Global Consumer Exchange” (GCE) to help business faculty authentically build students’ global awareness, understanding of culture and understanding of global consumer behavior. In addition, the GCE offers a context to help faculty highlight the economic, logistical and technological concerns that global businesses must consider. The GCE was administered in an undergraduate consumer behavior course in cooperation with students from the Republic of Panamá.

Following the GCE, US students reported new awareness of issues they had never considered before and also indicated an increased interest in understanding other cultures. The students also expressed a newfound willingness to personally reach out to international students.

This GCE offers business faculty an easy-to-implement and easily adaptable activity to authentically broaden students’ intercultural awareness and develop a deeper understanding of international business concepts. Through this activity, students are able to gain experience applying phenomenological research methods. The GCE can also be adapted for any course and applied to a wide variety of countries partnerships with university international student organizations and/or English as a second language programs.

The purpose of this study is to investigate how in-service teachers within the context of an American Jewish day school perceive, practice and develop Information Literacy (IL) as a sociocultural practice and through Continuing Professional Development (CPD). A research gap exists in relation to empirical studies which examine sociocultural IL practices and the CPD learning experiences of in-service teachers within the professional environment of their work. Two emergent and compatible frameworks for investigating teachers’ IL practices and CPD in context are identified and discussed within that context: the sociocultural approach and the interactive CPD model.

The research adopted an interpretivist phenomenological perspective. Semi-structured in-depth interviews were conducted with six teachers to explore their IL experiences. Questions addressed the participants’ previous background, the working culture of the school, approaches to learning and developing new knowledge, sources and methods of obtaining work-related information, IL practices and the differences between IL and CPD practices.

Although teachers value the role of IL in their professional lives and they have confidence in their performance of it, they remain confounded by the IL terminology. Within the teachers’ everyday working environment, the primacy of social and embodied information and the centrality of information sharing demonstrated the social and experiential nature of learning and the significance of contextualisation to IL development. The study found IL, CPD and learning to be inseparable, as they intersected within a single, organic situated learning practice of becoming an expert in context.

This study makes valuable contributions to theory by supplying empirical evidence of sociocultural IL practices, linking the currently disparate scholarships on IL, CPD and learning and providing suggestions for future research. In addition, the study demonstrates alternative avenues for developing teachers’ IL and offers recommendations for supporting their CPD.