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The purpose of this paper is to examine the influence of manager ability on a firm’s choice of lease classification and the decision to capitalize vs lease firm-specific assets.

The authors use regression analysis to examine the association between manager ability, lease classification and asset specificity.

Using 31,110 firm-year observations from 1998 to 2013, the authors find a significant positive relationship between manager ability and the decision to classify leases as operating. The authors also find that high-ability managers are more likely to capitalize, rather than lease, specialized firm-specific assets.

The results imply that manager ability influences the choice of lease classification, which provides some support for the recent changes to lease accounting in Accounting Standard Update (ASU) 2016-02. The authors also show that asset specificity may serve as a mitigating factor in high-ability managers’ preference for operating leases, which implies that high-ability managers’ concerns with operational efficiency outweigh the benefits of off-balance sheet financing in their purchasing decisions if the asset in question is firm-specific.

The findings may be useful to boards of directors, investors and accounting academics concerned with the role that managerial ability plays in operational decision making and financial reporting.

The results imply that high-ability managers prefer off-balance sheet financing, which is unlikely to limit their access to external capital, but that this relationship is mitigated if the firm requires highly specialized assets.

Existing approaches to the financial lease versus purchase decision assume, at least implicitly at the moment of the decision, that purchase entails ownership of the leasable asset over its entire remaining economic life. At any subsequent moment in time, however, if a firm already owns the leasable asset, it can retain long-term use of the asset by deciding to either retain ownership or enter into a sale and leaseback agreement. The purpose of this chapter is to detail the derivation of an innovative, yet intuitive, theoretical approach to analyze a firm's financial lease versus purchase decision in asset markets conducive to future sales and leaseback of owned assets.

Almost all historical accounts of psychological work related to the self-concept begin with the pioneering work of William James (e.g., Harter, 1996; Pajares & Schunk, 2002, 2005; Roeser et al., 2006). James' distinction between the self as knower and agent (the I-self) and the self as known and object (the Me-self), in the famous Chap. 10, on self-consciousness, in his Principles of Psychology (1890), undoubtedly informs much subsequent work on the self-concept (a term that James never used himself). In particular, the general idea that the self is made up of different constituents (e.g., the Me-self contains material, social, and spiritual selves) arranged hierarchically is still very much a basic structural assumption in many contemporary theories of the self-concept, just as James' assumption that the I-self can create and monitor a variety of Me-selves anchors much self-concept methodology and process theorizing. With respect to the general aims of self-concept research, James' framing of self-esteem (a term he did use) also has been extremely influential on subsequent generations of both self-esteem and self-concept researchers. For James, self-esteem is a feeling that “depends entirely on what we back ourselves to be and do” (James, 1981, p. 310), a feeling that depends on the success with which we achieve those things we set out to achieve.²

By adopting the dictum that all knowledge is knowledge from a point of view, educators can arrange the literature on leadership into nine categories from three conceptually distinct points of view, namely the Leader, the Follower, and the Investigator. Students who come to appreciate and account for point of view not only increase their understanding of leadership, but also prepare to compensate, if not transcend their own point of view – a skill that successful participants in leadership will increasingly require.

Strengths-based professional development has been associated with positive outcomes in academia and in the organizational workplace. Students pursuing their doctoral degrees in the biomedical sciences in the US are often on graduate assistantships, where they experience an academic component to their training integrated with an employee-like existence. The individual who serves as their academic and research advisor is often their supervisor, who pays their stipend. The traditional training structure poses unique challenges and may be accompanied by stress, burnout and imposter phenomenon. The purpose of this study is to utilize a strengths-based approach to equip students with essential personal and professional skills that build self-awareness and self-confidence further preparing them for their future in the scientific workforce.

The authors developed and implemented a novel strengths-based professional development cohort program for doctoral students in the biomedical sciences at a research-intensive (R1) institution. The program was designed to create a supportive and inclusive space for participants (n = 18) to explore their identity as a student and scientists and to develop and leverage their talents for more effective and strategic use. Program outcomes were evaluated through a mixed methods case study design using a post-program Likert-based survey (n = 10 participants) and participant interviews (n = 13). Explanatory sequential design was used in the interpretation of the findings.

The results show that the program had a positive impact on students’ perceptions of themselves as scientists, as well as on their self-efficacy, self-confidence and interpersonal interactions in the research setting.

This strengths-based professional development program demonstrates immense potential as a model to equip students with self-awareness and a new foundation of essential skills needed to supplement their technical and scientific training for their future careers in the team-based workplace.

This study demonstrates how professional development programming can complement scientific training by equipping students with self-awareness and other lifelong skills to navigate feelings of imposter phenomenon and interpersonal relationships in the team-based workplace.

In vol. 6, 1976, of Advances in Librarianship, I published a review about relevance under the same title, without, of course, “Part I” in the title (Saracevic, 1976). [A substantively similar article was published in the Journal of the American Society for Information Science (Saracevic, 1975)]. I did not plan then to have another related review 30 years later—but things happen. The 1976 work “attempted to trace the evolution of thinking on relevance, a key notion in information science, [and] to provide a framework within which the widely dissonant ideas on relevance might be interpreted and related to one another” (ibid.: 338).

The Seminar on Library Interior Layout and Design organised by IFLA's Section on Library Buildings and Equipment, and attended by people from over twenty‐two countries, was held at Frederiksdal, Denmark, in June 1980. This present article neither reports on the Seminar's proceedings, as it is hoped to publish the papers in due course, nor describes fully the Danish public libraries seen, but rather uses the Seminar's theme and the library visits as a point of departure for considering some aspects of the interior layout—the landscape—of public libraries. Brief details of the new Danish public libraries visited are given in a table at the end of the article.

The purpose of this paper is to perceive the perspective of Portuguese and Czech’ talented athletes regarding: the main reasons pointed to drop out of sport, putting into analysis motivational factors; the conciliation of School and Sport, and how the organization of schools and sports contexts are articulated in relation to the training and promotion of students, athletes and citizens; and the contributions (positive/negative) of sports to daily life and society.

This study uses a qualitative approach to interview eight talented athletes from different sports that had to drop out the practice of sport and explores their narratives regarding experiences and the relational dynamics between sports contexts and schools.

Athletes identify factors that led to drop out: the coach profile or the methodology and dynamics of practicing/training; time consuming; and the impossibility of reconciling sports with school/job. Athletes can identify the sport’s culture, self-development and health being as positive contributions of sports, whereas injuries were referred as the main negative factor of sport. As proposal of changes, athletes referred to the need of a more professional organization of the sport contexts and to more proximity between school policies and sport policies allowing conciliating both.

One limitation that could be pointed to this research is the difference between the Czech and Portuguese socio-cultural and political situation, not only in the concept and organization of sports activities (since scholar years) but also in the general society. This difference could have more visibility when interpreting the data that led to this fact referred above.

It is recommended a more proximity relationship between researchers and the contexts of practice (sport contexts) being that it is important that these contexts should have feedback from the investigations carried out. Only in this way coaches, federations and confederations can be aware of the motivational factors that lead to talented athletes drop out, and make a greater investment in initial formation of the coaches and propose policies that try to establish partnerships with schools or professional contexts which could help the management of athletes’ times outside of sport.

Departing from the athletes’ feelings, concerns and motivations related to sport and the reasons that led to their drop out, we argue for the definition of public policies, in both countries, that promote non-discrimination of young people who wish to maintain a path linked to sports in articulation with other areas of their lives.

Much of the existing literature on shared decision making (SDM) in mental health has focused on the use of decision aids (DAs). However, DAs tend to focus on information exchange and neglect other essential elements to SDM in mental health. The purpose of this paper is to expand the review of SDM interventions in mental health by identifying important components, in addition to information exchange, that may contribute to the SDM process in mental health.

The authors conducted a systematic literature search using the Ovid-Medline database with supplementary scoping search of the literature on SDM in mental health treatment. To be eligible for inclusion, studies needed to describe (in a conceptual work or development paper) or evaluate (in any type of research design) a SDM intervention in mental health. The authors included studies of participants with a mental illness facing a mental health care decision, their caregivers, and providers.

A final sample of 31 records was systematically selected. Most interventions were developed and/or piloted in the USA for adults in community psychiatric settings. Although information exchange was a central component of the identified studies, important additional elements were: eliciting patient preferences and values, providing patient communication skills training, eliciting shared care planning, facilitating patient motivation, and eliciting patient participation in goal setting.

The review indicates that additional elements, other than information exchange such as sufficient rapport and trusting relationships, are important and needed as part of SDM in mental health. Future SDM interventions in mental health could consider including techniques that aim to increase patient involvement in activities such as goal settings, values, and preference clarification, or facilitating patient motivation, before and after presenting treatment options.