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The study applies the principles behind the SERVQUAL model and uses Donabedian’s framework to compare and contrast Malta’s public and private hospital care service quality. Through the identification of 16 service quality indicators and the use of a Likert‐type scale, two questionnaires were developed. The first questionnaire measured patient pre‐admission expectations for public and private hospital service quality (in respect of one another). It also determined the weighted importance given to the different service quality indicators. The second questionnaire measured patient perceptions of provided service quality. Results showed that private hospitals are expected to offer a higher quality service, particularly in the “hotel services”, but it was the public sector that was exceeding its patients’ expectations by the wider margin. A number of implications for public and private hospital management and policy makers were identified.

The purpose of this paper is to identify organizational challenges that drive enterprise content management (ECM) adoption from a process point of view.

The presented results are grounded in both the academic literature on ECM and qualitative data from two case studies.

The study identifies and discusses 21 contemporary business challenges that drive ECM adoption along the content lifecycle (e.g. regarding the creation, storage, and retrieval of content).

As the scopes of both the literature review and the case studies were limited, the presented account of ECM drivers is not considered exhaustive. The paper can, nevertheless, help researchers to further theorize about ECM adoption and investigate the role that content plays in business process management.

Practitioners are provided with empirically grounded knowledge on the drivers behind ECM adoption. They can, for example, use the results to justify and evaluate ECM investments, or determine the scopes and objectives of their ECM initiatives.

This study is important because the understanding is still vague as to what organizations strive to gain through implementing ECM and what results they can expect from the same.

This paper aims to focus on increasingly entrepreneurial approaches to urban governance in the country’s second city Cork, where neoliberal strategy has driven uneven spatial development.

This paper combines insights from literature review with new knowledge derived from interviews with key informants in the city.

Post-colonial themes provoke a consideration of how uneven power dynamics stifle social innovation in the built environment.

Assembled narratives expose opaque aspects of governance, ownership and participation, presenting opportunities for rethinking urban vacancy through placemaking.

These draw on nuanced models for tourism as a platform for a broader discourse on rights to the city.

A century after independence, Ireland is recast as a leading small European economy, away from historical framings of a rural economic backwater of the British Empire.

The model of success is based on a basket of targeted investment policies and somewhat dubious indicators for growth.

This research examined changes in Dublin’s tertiary city centre shopping streets over a 30‐year period to 2002. An observational study of the occupancy of the city’s tertiary streetscape was undertaken in the summer of 2002 and compared with historical data. Results indicate significant change over the period examined: an increased vacancy rate, a very low survival rate, a considerable incidence of non‐retail specific activities, a decline in traditional retail offerings and the emergence of new categories of retailer. The paper concludes by suggesting a proactive approach is required by present day retailers in the tertiary streets to ensure future survival.

This paper aims to explore virtual simulations, merging artificial intelligence with real-world simulations, supporting Canadian armed forces (CAF) junior military leaders (JMLs) leadership development. Our research questions are: (1) How do virtual simulations support CAF junior military leadership development within a globalized and complex environment in the 21st century? (2) Could virtual simulations support a leadership culture change through efficacious “soft skills” training? In this paper, we explore the efficacy of virtual simulations for enhancing or developing leadership in JMLs in the CAF through a four-day pilot project with twenty JMLs (n = 20).

To assess the efficacy of virtual simulations for leadership development, we designed and studied a four-day leadership workshop for JMLs in the CAF using several virtual artificial intelligence leadership role-play simulations developed by McGraw Hill in their smart book textbook (Manning & Curtis, 2022) and several non-virtual in-class simulations for comparison. We selected four twenty to thirty-minute virtual role-play simulations that synergized with the in-person morning leadership workshop. We facilitated the three-hour leadership workshops and virtual/in-class simulations over four consecutive days. We emulated the ELESS model (De Freitas & Routledge, 2013) to assess soft and leadership skills.

The participants (JMLs) reported beneficial learning utility associated with the virtual simulations. Participants also expressed that further utility might be leveraged through virtual simulations incorporating greater complexity with multiple potential outcomes. They also suggested that leadership simulations designed around military situations would prove highly beneficial, something that was outside of the scope of this small pilot project.

Since this phase of our research is a pilot project, we secured a small amount of funding to test our hypothesis that simulations enhance leadership development for JMLs. These funding limitations resulted in several constraints in the research, such as the availability of virtual simulations articulating leadership from a military perspective. However, we believed the assigned organizational leadership simulations in the McGraw Hill Smart Book ecosystem would approximate generic leadership situations enough to test the hypothesis with the JMLs. As a pilot project, our sample size was relatively small (n = 20 JMLs) since participation was voluntary amidst a busy spring season for the JMLs. Since this is a pilot project, we suggest that twenty JMLs are an adequate sampling to test the hypothesis that simulations enhance JML leadership development. We will expand the sample size in the next phase of our research as we work with the CAF to expand the pool of participants to at least forty JML participants (n = 40). We also plan to secure further funding to collaborate with subject matter experts to design virtual simulations based on Canadian military leadership scenarios.

The CAF host robust simulations capabilities for combat training, but have not exploited the potential training and analytical capacity of virtual leadership simulations for leadership development within the CAF. We believe that virtual simulations provide an opportunity for the CAF to effect desired culture change through leadership development that leverages the substantial pedagogical benefits of simulations.

The CAF encountered several detrimental leadership scandals that eroded the reputational capital of the CAF. In the current geo-political climate of an expanding North American Treaty Organization (NATO) and threats from several international actors, the CAF seeks to expand its capabilities by adding and enhancing its human capital. However, the CAF currently experiences a significant gap in its human capital aspirations. There is a unanimous consensus that the endemic traditional culture of the CAF, as expressed in the recent explosive leadership scandals, is a deterrent to recruitment and thus weakens the CAF’s capability. The CAF targets leadership development with new leadership paradigms as pivotal to culture change. The CAF suggests that by enhancing leadership development in the CAF the new cadre of leadership will change the culture of the CAF and thereby enhance the reputational capital of the CAF. It is believed that this rejuvenated culture will lead to greater recruitment and retention, leading to a strengthened military. A strengthened military is important to provide effective support and protection for the Canadian people in these volatile and uncertain times. This expanded capacity will enable the CAF to address external military threats more effectively and also the increasing operations other than war (OOTW), such as the military support of long-term care facilities during COVID-19 or the military’s support in fighting record wildfires and the military’s support in climate change related disasters such as flooding.

The satisfaction measures indicated by the participants are typical evaluative measures of leadership development (Noe, 2023). These satisfaction ratings do not, however, indicate whether training has produced a change in behaviour (Brown, 2022). The implications of these outcomes for leadership education are that role-player simulations are useful leadership education and development tools because they provide a theatre of practice in which mistakes are not detrimental and serve as learning moments (Moore, 2012; Piro and O’Callaghan, 2021; Riotto, 2021). Further, the importance of role-player simulations that closely approximate the sector where leadership is experienced and practiced is perceived to enhance the experience. While the CAF invest in combat related simulations, but leadership development simulations are not as evident in the training and development array. This study seeks to assess their potential value as a leadership development tool within the wider context of character development as a leadership competency.

Tertiary teaching in Australia, as elsewhere, now incorporates a wide array of learning resources delivered across different modes to support student learning. Since the late 1990s, the sector has seen a rapid increase in use of materials that can be delivered online; however, not all students benefit, with static or falling participation rates among vulnerable student groups. This chapter describes the development and implementation of the federally funded Structural Adjustment Fund Flexibility, Innovation, Retention, Engagement (SAFFIRE) initiative to use new technologies to provide choice, flexibility, access, and support for students through a revamped curriculum in a medium-sized Australian university. SAFFIRE provided an opportunity to explore the introduction of flexible resources in tertiary teaching, including understanding the drivers, barriers, supports, and key factors in successful deployment of the changes. Within this context, the authors present a case study examining the effectiveness of course content delivery via video in an undergraduate psychology statistics course. The efficacy of video-based learning in the course was assessed through access rates, feedback, and performance, revealing strong evidence for the inclusion of video aids to improve student performance and satisfaction. The interpretation of the case study is embedded in the wider context of the process of deploying flexible online delivery within tertiary education.

This chapter considers the environmental damage related to Ireland’s recent ‘ghost estates’, placing this disastrous waste of resources in the long historical context of ancient ruins that also dot the land.

It considers ruins from an ecocritical perspective, as material artefacts attesting directly to people’s relationship with their environment.

From ancient megaliths and sacred sites to imposing castles, Ireland’s impressive ruins ignite romantic reflections in many. Yet, just like the modern ruins of ghost estates, they also tell of an often oppressive relationship between human cultures and the natural environment. Ironically perhaps, stone circles and tombs that seem to speak of people living in much closer relation to non-human nature than we moderns do are also associated with the environmental scourge of deforestation. Yet, they at least stand testament to an ethic of timelessness and robust building, as well as resistance to a seemingly irresistible process of capitalistic modernisation; the recent ruins are devoid of such ethical commitments. Given this, however, creative responses should also be noted to the logic of the ghost estates, including Cloughjordan’s Ecovillage and the NamaLab project.

Three sets of responses that all work more realistically with a recognition of the limits of sustainable development are considered in the conclusion: Transition Towns, an Ecovillage and architectural reutilisation of defunct buildings.

The aim of this paper is to gather information that will be useful to practitioners who are assessing and trying to understand the difficulties of people with intellectual disabilities who may have experienced sexual abuse. In the first part of this paper the research into the effects of sexual abuse on people with learning disability is reviewed. In the second part of this paper, the major clinical implications of these findings are explored. These include the implications for abuse evaluations, identification of individuals at increased risk of disturbance, implications for treatment and provision of psychotherapeutic services.