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This study explores the perceptions of Australian employers regarding the benefits and challenges of micro-credentials within higher education and enablers of their effectiveness.

A qualitative approach that included 11 semi-structured interviews with employers affiliated with an Australian university was used. A deductive thematic approach was employed to analyse the data.

Micro-credentials were generally seen to be beneficial for an array of people, including employees, employers, customers and communities – stakeholders in all environmental layers of micro-credentials’ ecological system. Findings also indicated that both challenges of micro-credentials and enablers of their effectiveness depended heavily on attributes of learners, employers and higher education providers. The conclusion is that, based on the evidence of this study, micro-credentials within higher education are worth trialling.

Although research interest in micro-credentials is growing, few empirical studies have investigated micro-credentials’ benefits, challenges and enablers of effectiveness, especially from the perspective of employers. The study carries practical and policy implications for those involved with micro-credential research and development.

Accounting history has tended to ignore the accounting research enterprise, focusing instead on particular episodes or periods, such as histories of standards setting or histories of the accounting profession. In effect, methodological and theoretical differences within the accounting research discipline have so profoundly divided the discipline that researchers working in one area are relatively unable or unwilling to understand the key issues in other areas. This chapter seeks to shed some light on the greatest divide in accounting research: the divide between positive and critical accounting research. This chapter argues that both positive and critical accounting research can trace their origins to certain key figures who were doctoral students at the University of Chicago in the late 1960s and early 1970s. The chapter employs Foucault’s concept of genealogy to examine the origins of the positivist and critical paradigms in accounting research.

In an article entitled “Identifying and combating organizational leadership toxicity,” authors Watt, Javidi, and Normore (Watt, Javidi, & Normore, 2015) identified and outlined techniques for combating leadership toxicity in Law Enforcement. This chapter extends this work by linking Volatility, Uncertainty, Complexity, and Ambiguity (VUCA) to toxic leadership. Crisis happens. Volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity (VUCA), (a term) coined at the Army War College in the early 1990s (Mack, O., Kare, A., Kramer, A., & Burgartz, T. (2015), Managing VUCA world. New York, NY. Retrieved from http://www.lawenforcementtoday.com/2015/12/02/capturing-the-moment-counter-vuca-leadership-for-21st-century-policing/#sthash.IKYJInr4.dpuf), is a sobering new reality for leaders and the organizations they serve. In simple terms, VUCA is chaos. It falls on leaders to understand it, prepare for it, and minimize the disruptive and destabilizing effects of it.

In 2003 HM Treasury published a revised “Green Book”, otherwise known as The Green Book Appraisal and Evaluation in Central Government – a technical guide, which is designed to help decision makers appraise and evaluate capital expenditure decisions more effectively. Coincidentally, the RICS brought out its revised edition of the “Red Book”, now called The Appraisal and Valuation Standards, in March 2003. This paper looks at the development and recent changes to these documents particularly from the viewpoint of a public sector property practitioner involved in day‐to‐day appraisal.

In the current climate of outsourcing services the extent to which facilities managers make use of external contractors to supply property valuations and appraisals has grown significantly. In‐house facilities or property managers in the UK that are members of the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors (RICS) are bound to the use of the RICS Appraisal and Valuation Manual (the Red Book). This paper examines the roles of the Red Book for property professionals involved in the review of appraisal reports and contrasts it with the Uniform Standards of Professional Practice (USPAP) used in the USA. The paper concludes that the Red Book in its existing form may inhibit any appraisal review process that any organisation may try to implement.

Examines a practical problem that arises in the Depreciated Replacement Cost (DRC) valuation of specialised property assets, particularly those owned by Central Government and the National Health Service which are subject to capital charging. The DRC approach values the site on a market basis and the building on a cost basis, adjusted for obsolescence, and aggregates the two elements. The literature and most practitioners having tended to focus on the problems of the cost elements, aims to look more closely at the problems relating to the site valuation. Different approaches significantly affect the value and can also react perversely with other strands of Government policy. While the main focus here is on Central Government property assets, these throw into sharp focus issues which are of wider interest.

The following is an introductory profile of the fastest growing firms over the three-year period of the study listed by corporate reputation ranking order. The business activities in which the firms are engaged are outlined to provide background information for the reader.

History teaching in a multi‐cultural society was one of the most frequently discussed topics in educational circles in 1990. Anybody who learned history in the pre‐1960 period would, however, have been surprised to learn that it was thought that “multi‐cultural society” was a new‐thing in the UK. To them the history of these islands seemed to be one wave of invaders after another with a sort of English only established as a universal language some 400 years ago. This strand in our history was matched by another in which brave Britons went off in search of fame and fortune, or to head off a foreign threat, overseas.