Search results

The objective of this review is to provide a comprehensive analysis of risk management practices in the healthcare sector, with a particular focus on identifying challenges and strategies in Moroccan hospitals.

A literature search was carried out on several academic search engines using search terms reflecting the relationship between risk management and public hospitals in Morocco.

The Moroccan public hospital is confronted with several disjunctions, which can be sources of multiple risks. This influences the quality of care provided to patients and can sometimes threaten their vital prognosis. The risk management process can help health professionals, researchers and risk managers to be agile and identify and anticipate risks in order to avoid serious accidents that can affect the whole organization, especially after the pandemic lived experiences (COVID-19).

Protecting human life in an environment where risks are omnipresent is a dilemma that every hospital organization must confront. So, risk management in the hospital is not a simple process, given the interaction of several components and the sensitivity of the field. Risk management in this establishment must be rigorous because every error can cost human life. In this sense, the analysis of risk management processes in Moroccan hospitals, based on what really exists, enables the identification of shortcomings in order to master the risk management system and thus protect goods and services as well as human life, which is the ultimate goal of the hospital organization’s existence.

Pre-pandemic research demonstrated the challenges of the nursing workforce and the provision of quality of patient care. Such challenges have been significantly intensified during the COVID-19 pandemic, not least in the workplace and fear of staff catching and transmitting COVID-19. We draw on conservation of resources (COR) theory to examine the impact of the fear of COVID-19 on nurses and the role of well-being-HRM (WBHRM) in negating the fear of COVID-19 and its impact on job stress and perceived quality of patient care.

We collected data from 260 nurses (treating COVID-19 patients) employed in US hospitals across two-waves. Data were analyzed using mediated regression and moderated mediation.

The results indicated that when nurses report higher levels of fear of COVID-19, this translates into higher levels of nursing job stress. This, in turn, reduces nurses’ perceptions of quality of patient care they can provide. As previous research has found, decreased perceptions of quality of patient care is a significant factor driving intentions to leave the profession. The results demonstrated that WBHRM practices buffer the negative impact of fear of COVID-19 on job stress, and in turn, the perceived quality of patient care.

Our paper contributes to new knowledge for healthcare managers on WBHRM bundles and their efficacy in buffering the effects of fear on job stress and quality of patient care. We contribute new knowledge on fear at work and how to manage employees’ fear through WBHRM practices.

Wearing clothes requires specifications for feeling comfortable, derived from the fibres, fabrics and finishing properties. This study aims to deal with the effect of economic blends containing hollow fibres, bamboo and cotton/polyester waste on the mechanical properties of the produced fabrics and the appropriate end use.

This research included two blends: one consisted of cotton/polyester wastes blended with bamboo and the other to which Chorisia fibres were added. Two weft counts 10,6/1 Ne were made from each blend, which were used to produce four fabric samples (S1 Chorisia-free and S2 with Chorisia); additionally, another two samples were dyed that contain Chorisia (S3) from each count. The six samples were tested by Kawabata Evaluation System (KES).

The samples gave a good total hand value (THV) for use as men's winter suits, where the thicker count 6/1, with and without Chorisia had better properties, also both counts 6, 10/1 with dye. The hollow fibres affected the fabrics’ properties, including thickness, shear, bending, thermal conductivity and weight. Both blends had a positive effect on THV.

Cotton/polyester waste, Chorisia and bamboo fibres were tested, and 2% Remazol Yellow GNL dye was used.

The ratio of blending, weft counts and dye affected the fabric’s properties, with consequences for the use of the Kawabata system and its applications.

The fabrics used in this research may be considered to be economical and have good THV.

The study proved the usefulness of fabrics made of two blends. The Chorisia component may be seen as a good alternative to cotton fibres to reduce the cost of producing high-consumption winter suit fabrics.

This study investigates the influence of the surrounding institutional context, with a particular focus on the professional perspective, on accounting education in two leading developing countries in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region, Egypt and the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA), by focusing on public universities’ undergraduate level in the two countries.

Following an interpretative approach, this study uses data collected mainly through interviews with the members of the key accounting professional and regulatory bodies, accounting professors and accounting graduates in Egypt and KSA. Theoretically, this study uses insights from the institutional theory to understand the institutional context shaping accounting education in the two examined settings.

Despite sharing several cultural aspects, we noticed differences in accounting education in the two MENA countries. We explained how the dominant institutional perspective in these contexts (i.e. the professional perspective) affects accounting education, resulting in various implications for accounting graduates and the accounting profession. In Egypt, we noticed a retreatment of the professional perspective due to the dominance of an economic perspective informed by the worse economic conditions in the country, negatively affecting accounting education. In contrast, accounting education in KSA is primarily driven by the professional context aided by the availability of facilities and resources as well as the centrality of the role played by professionals and regulators in accounting education, which has directed accounting educators towards incorporating professional knowledge into accounting curricula.

By highlighting the influence of the professional context on accounting education in a particular developing country, the findings of this study can guide regulators and policymakers in other developing countries concerning developing their accounting education programmes. Furthermore, professionals should allow accounting academics to contribute to developing the accounting profession and employers should support accounting students’ training and development.

This study contributes to the literature by examining the situation of accounting education beyond Western developed contexts, presenting an extensive theoretical explanation of the salient institutional perspectives shaping that situation.

The purpose of this study is to examine both the responses of auditees to corporate governance audit (CGA) regulation and the practices of CGA auditors.

The study used a mixed method. Content analysis of 200 annual and CGA reports was carried out for 13 years, from 2008 to 2021, split into voluntary disclosure and mandatory disclosure periods. Quantitative analysis was also conducted using Kruskal–Wallis and Dunn's tests. Data gathered were interpreted through the lens of isomorphism and Oliver's (1991) strategic responses to institutional processes.

The study revealed that in the voluntary disclosure period, auditees responded mainly with acquiescence, motivated by mimetic isomorphic pressure. In the mandatory disclosure period, auditee responses ranged from acquiescence to dismissal of corporate governance regulation (i.e. coercive isomorphic pressure). Auditor reporting of CGA findings was found to be heterogeneous, suggesting that normative and mimetic isomorphism did not homogenize auditor practices.

The absence of uniform auditee responses to CGA regulation during the mandatory disclosure period suggests that the purpose of mandating the regulation has not yet been achieved and may signal inadequate coercive isomorphic pressure from the Financial Reporting Council of Nigeria (FRCN). Similarly, heterogeneous reporting of CGA findings by corporate governance auditors inhibits the comparability of audit findings, limiting their value for information users.

This study examines corporate governance auditor practices and auditee responses to corporate governance audit regulation.

This paper investigates the impact of public support on Moroccan small and medium-sized enterprise (SME) growth’ metrics in the post-COVID-19 era, focusing on subsidies, guarantee schemes and incubation services, among other firm characteristics and financing choices.

The paper employed a quantitative approach, gathering data through a survey administered to 109 SME managers and chief financial officers (CFOs) in the Casablanca-Settat region. The survey was designed to capture a comprehensive range of variables related to firm characteristics, financing sources, and growth indicators. To streamline and reduce the complexity of the dataset, principal component analysis (PCA) was utilized, allowing for the identification of key underlying factors. Following this dimensionality reduction, several ordinal probit regression models, including a stepwise approach, were applied to examine the relationship between the identified factors and the growth metrics of the SMEs. This multi-model strategy enabled the identification of the most significant determinants across various growth metrics, ensuring a robust and nuanced analysis of SME growth.

Our findings paint a complex picture: subsidies play a positive role in boosting sales and added value but don’t strongly impact job growth. Guarantee schemes help SMEs grow their workforce and sales but have a smaller effect on net income and added value. Incubation programs show limited impact overall, hinting at a need for stronger ongoing support. Financing options offer only modest growth benefits, while factors like family involvement and effective human resource practices stand out as key growth drivers. Innovation contributes gradually, underscoring the importance of a steady, long-term approach to supporting SMEs.

It is crucial to acknowledge that this analysis is conducted within the post-COVID-19 context, a period marked by significant instability, uncertainty and a lack of visibility for firms and economies worldwide. Therefore, the results cannot be generalized. Another limitation of our work is its geographic focus, which is confined to the region of Casablanca-Settat. This regional limitation may restrict the generalizability of our findings to other areas within Morocco or to different countries with varying economic environments and policy frameworks.

The findings of this study suggest actionable steps for policymakers and public actors aiming to enhance SME growth. Tailoring credit guarantee schemes to the specific needs of SMEs across various sizes and sectors can improve financial accessibility, while fostering stronger collaboration between public entities and financial institutions ensures consistent and responsive credit flows. Additionally, strengthening incubation programs with strategic financial guidance and capacity-building initiatives can empower SMEs to build sustainable financial foundations.

This research provides valuable guidance for policymakers and managers aiming to reinforce the resilience and stimulate the growth of Moroccan SMEs in a dynamic economic environment. Also, it's the first of its kind to our knowledge in the context of a developing country.

The purpose of this study is to analyze the free convection phenomena arising from a temperature disparity between a cold circular cylinder and a heated corrugated cylinder.

Numerical simulations were used to analyze the convection patterns. The inner cylinder, made of a thermally conductive solid material, was heated through its inner surface, while the space between the cylinders was filled with air. The governing equations for velocity, pressure and temperature were solved using a Galerkin finite element method-based solver for partial differential equations.

The study explored various parameters affecting the dynamic and thermal structure of the flow, including the Rayleigh number (10³ ≤ Ra ≤ 10⁶), the number of corrugations of the inner cylinder (3 ≤ N ≤ 18), the thermal conductivity of the hollow cylinder (1 ≤ K ≤ 200) and the angle of inclination of the inner cylinder (0° ≤ φ ≤ 90°). Results indicated a notable sensitivity of flow intensity to changes in the Rayleigh number and the inner cylinder’s inclination angle φ. Particularly, for Ra = 10⁶, the average heat transfer rate increased by 203% with a K ratio increment from 1 to 100 but decreased by 16.3% as the number of corrugations increased from 3 to 18.

This research contributes to understanding the complex interplay between geometry, thermal properties and flow dynamics in natural convection systems involving cylindrical geometries. The findings offer useful insights for improving the transfer of heat procedures in real-world situations.

The study examines how calculative practices and accountability appear in a rural community of marginalised people in Egypt who depend on jasmine plantations that contribute to the production of global essences.

The data were collected from various sources, namely conversations with villagers, documents and relevant videos and news available on social media and the Internet. This study draws on the concepts of social accountability, the politics of blame avoidance and using calculative practices as a language to explain accountability in context.

The author found a lack of accountability on the part of the government and business owners, with serious implications for the livelihoods of people in a community that has been wholly dependent on jasmine plantations for a century. Power holders have deployed a blame-shifting game to avoid social responsibility. In response, calculative practices rather than advanced accounting tools are used by the poor in the community to induce power holders to be accountable.

The findings of this study show that authorities need to take proactive steps to address the disadvantaged position of powerless people in the lower echelons of society, recognising their accountability for those people.

This paper enhances the understanding of the status of calculative practices and accountability in a community of marginalised people who contribute to the production of global commodities. The paper also enhances the understanding of what goes on behind the scenes with popular and prestigious commodities, whose development is initiated in poor countries, with the end product marketed in rich Western countries.

This study aims to examine the association between anti-corruption corporate disclosure and earnings management practices by bringing evidence from a developed market.

The study uses data from non-financial FTSE 100 Shares in 2016 and 2017. This study develops a disclosure index to capture the anti-corruption disclosures and run pooled, fixed effects and generalized methods of moments regression models to explore the anti-corruption disclosure–earnings management association. This study also disentangles discretionary accruals into positive and negative, use adjusted discretionary accrual computation and take a more conservative view on discretionary accruals computation as an additional analysis.

The results show a negative and significant association between anti-corruption disclosure and earnings management practices. When disentangling discretionary accruals (overvalued/positive and undervalued/negative), the authors found that higher anti-corruption disclosures were negatively associated with positive discretionary accruals, but not associated with negative discretionary accruals. The additional analysis confirmed the previous results, showing that anti-corruption disclosures are perceived as a substantive practice, rather than a mere disclosure practice for legitimacy reasons.

This study contributes to debate on the symbolic versus the substantive uses of anti-corruption disclosures in the UK context.

This chapter aims to analyse how tourism has oscillated from a wicked problem and a geopolitical strategy tool in Brazilian federal tourism public tourism policies (PTP) over the past century (spanning from 1921 to 2022). Recently tourism has garnered significant relevance, emerging as an alternative avenue for development within the constraints and resource limitations faced by the National States. The empirical study collected secondary data from the government official press, encompassing records from the Senate, the House of Representatives, as well as the executive and judiciary branches. Considering this timeframe, a corpus comprising more than 31,000 documents TNAs (‘Tourism Normative Acts’) was meticulously gathered and systematically analysed. Our analytical framework integrates classical geopolitics, with a primary focus on State actors and the nation-building process, and the public policy approach, which is focussed on the degrees of wickedness. Our findings show that (a) the number of international tourists as well as the number of NAT have increased in a considerable way recently, but we cannot directly connect both; (b) three are the periods (1970–1980, 1990–2000, and 2002–2016) in which we can see a tourism geopolitical strategy has been more explicitly and effectively mobilized, and it is not necessarily reflected in the number of NAT, but in the actions generated in each period; and (c) the wicked degree of the tourism policies seem to be reduced according to the more explicit geopolitical strategy is. Despite, the importance tourism has reached, the support system underpinning this endeavour remains deficient, notably in terms of material and financial resources essential for its efficacious execution.