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The article compares the major features of pension provision in the UK and in France. It considers why the UK population appears to be at best indifferent to their system of provision, when overall it is financially secure, whereas the French system, which is faced with increasing costs, receives wide support. The significant differences in provision, apart from the method of funding, are in the level of coverage and the extent of member involvement. The article concludes that, if the UK system took some steps in this direction, perhaps employees would begin to perceive pension provision as the valuable benefit it is, and more employers would be encouraged to introduce, or retain, defined benefit occupational pension schemes.

The Bureau of Economics in the Federal Trade Commission has a three-part role in the Agency and the strength of its functions changed over time depending on the preferences and ideology of the FTC’s leaders, developments in the field of economics, and the tenor of the times. The over-riding current role is to provide well considered, unbiased economic advice regarding antitrust and consumer protection law enforcement cases to the legal staff and the Commission. The second role, which long ago was primary, is to provide reports on investigations of various industries to the public and public officials. This role was more recently called research or “policy R&D”. A third role is to advocate for competition and markets both domestically and internationally. As a practical matter, the provision of economic advice to the FTC and to the legal staff has required that the economists wear “two hats,” helping the legal staff investigate cases and provide evidence to support law enforcement cases while also providing advice to the legal bureaus and to the Commission on which cases to pursue (thus providing “a second set of eyes” to evaluate cases). There is sometimes a tension in those functions because building a case is not the same as evaluating a case. Economists and the Bureau of Economics have provided such services to the FTC for over 100 years proving that a sub-organization can survive while playing roles that sometimes conflict. Such a life is not, however, always easy or fun.

The purpose of this paper is to present a preliminary psychometric evaluation of the electronic mobile shower commode assessment tool (eMAST) 1.0.

A cross-sectional validation study was undertaken with 32 adults with spinal cord injury (SCI), aged 18 years or older, who use mobile shower commodes for toileting and/or showering. The eMAST 1.0, Quebec user evaluation of satisfaction with assistive technology, Version 2.0 (QUEST 2.0), and modified system usability scale (SUS) were administered online via SurveyMonkey. The eMAST 1.0 was re-administered approximately seven days later. Psychometric properties of internal consistency, test-retest reliability, and convergent validity were assessed.

As hypothesised, the eMAST 1.0 demonstrated strong internal consistency (Cronbach’s α=0.73, N=32); acceptable test-retest reliability (intra-class coefficient (3, 1)=0.75 (0.53-0.88, 95 per cent confidence interval) (n=27)); and strong, positive correlations with the QUEST 2.0’s devices subscale and modified SUS (Pearson’s correlation coefficients 0.70 and 0.63, respectively).

The sample was not fully representative of Australian data in terms of gender, or state of residence, but was representative in terms of SCI level. Age data were not assessed. The sample size was small but adequate for a preliminary psychometric evaluation.

The preliminary psychometric evaluation indicates the eMAST 1.0 is a valid and reliable instrument that measures usability of MSCs for adults with SCI. It may be useful for exploring relationships between usability and satisfaction of MSCs.

This research provides accounting-ethics authors and administrators with a benchmark for accounting-ethics research. While Bernardi and Bean (2010) considered publications in business-ethics and accounting’s top-40 journals this study considers research in eight accounting-ethics and public-interest journals, as well as, 34 business-ethics journals. We analyzed the contents of our 42 journals for the 25-year period between 1991 through 2015. This research documents the continued growth (Bernardi & Bean, 2007) of accounting-ethics research in both accounting-ethics and business-ethics journals. We provide data on the top-10 ethics authors in each doctoral year group, the top-50 ethics authors over the most recent 10, 20, and 25 years, and a distribution among ethics scholars for these periods. For the 25-year timeframe, our data indicate that only 665 (274) of the 5,125 accounting PhDs/DBAs (13.0% and 5.4% respectively) in Canada and the United States had authored or co-authored one (more than one) ethics article.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the differential effects of workplace stress and the use of social support by contingent vs standard employees.

Conservation of resources (COR) theory is used to frame research questions. Using content analysis of 40 interviews from individuals in the hospitality industry, differences between the levels of stress reported by contingent and standard employees as well as differences in their use of social support networks to offset stress is examined.

Contingent employees report experiencing more stress than do standard employees in the same profession. Furthermore, contingent employees seek out more social support than do standard employees. There was no difference between the two groups with respect to the desire for social support from three sources: vertical, horizontal, and customer groups.

This study extends the literature on contingent workers, the literature on how different types of employees deal with stress, as well as adding to the COR literature by showing that contingent employees experience and assuage their stress differently than do standard employees.

People with developmental disorders are significantly more likely to experience adverse childhood experiences (ACEs), although the impact of ACEs on this population is not well understood. Furthermore, considerably less is known about the exposure to, and impact of, ACEs in detained adolescents with complex developmental disorder needs. This paper aims to explore the exposure to ACEs in an adolescent population detained in a secure specialist developmental disorder service.

A retrospective file review was used to explore ACEs and placement histories within a specialist developmental disorder inpatient service. Data was collated for a convenience sample of 36 adolescents, 9 of whom were female, aged 13–20 years (M = 17.28 years).

A total of 33 participants (91.7%) had experienced at least 1 ACE, with 58% experiencing 4 or more ACEs and 36% experiencing 6 or more ACEs. The most common ACEs reported were physical abuse (61.6%), parental separation (58.3%) and emotional abuse (55.6%). The majority of participants had also experienced high levels of disruption prior to admission, with an average of four placement breakdowns (range 1–13, standard deviation = 3.1). ACEs held a significant positive association with the total number of placement breakdowns and total number of mental health diagnoses.

Adolescents detained in specialist developmental disorder secure care had, at the point of admission, experienced high levels of adversities and had been exposed to high levels of experienced and observed abuse. The level of exposure to adversity and ongoing disruptions in care suggests that Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services’ developmental secure services should consider adopting dual treatment frameworks of developmental disorder and trauma-informed care.

This study explored the early-life and placement experiences of a marginalised and understudied population.

Using a routine dynamics perspective, the authors address a central question in a practice-driven institutional theory: where does change come from? In particular, the authors focus on the possibility that small variations in routines can accumulate into big changes in institutions. The analysis is limited strictly to endogenous change. The authors use narrative networks to formalize and operationalize key concepts, such as variation and change. The authors reinterpret results from a published simulation model (Pentland, Liu, Kremser, & Hærem, 2020) that examined endogenous change in organizational routines. The simulation suggests that over a wide range of conditions, minor variations can lead to irreversible structural changes in routines. In the absence of exogenous shocks and institutional entrepreneurs, patterns of action that were previously possible can become impossible. The mechanism underlying these changes requires both accumulation and forgetting. Without forgetting, small variations may pile up (like dirty laundry), but they will not result in big changes.

Borrowing from practice theory to enhance institutional theory has much potential. It may help institutional scholars reconnect with its constructivist, processual origins. Yet previous attempts of borrowing across paradigmatic boundaries – both in organization studies and in institutional theory – teach us that borrowing is not a straightforward adoption. Instead, theories that cross known paradigmatic boundaries go through a process of translation, and may well get lost in the way. In this paper, the author focuses on methodology and points to impediments to the fruitful adoption of a practice-driven approach to institutionalization, and offers ways to overcome them. In particular, the author points to the need to change the focus from process as an outcome to the inner life of the process; capturing action in vivo and in situ; and finding ways to focus on practice yet not lose connection to its institutional context and implications.