Brian Cook, John Forrester, Louise Bracken, Christopher Spray and Elizabeth Oughton
The purpose of this paper is to explore how flood management practitioners rationalise the emergence of sustainable flood management. Key to this analysis are differences rooted…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to explore how flood management practitioners rationalise the emergence of sustainable flood management. Key to this analysis are differences rooted in assumptions over what flood management is and should do.
Design/methodology/approach
The popularity of natural flood management offers a case with which to explore how a dominant framing persists and how individuals at the government-public interface negotiate different visions of future flood management. The authors draw on the perceptions of flood experts, elucidating a deep hold amongst a professional community “grounded” in science and economics, but also their desire to innovate and become more open to innovative practices.
Findings
The authors show how the idea of “sustainable” and “natural” flood management are understood by those doing flood management, which is with reference to pre-existing technical practices.
Research limitations/implications
This paper explores the views of expert decision making, which suffers from challenges associated with small sample size. As such, the findings must be tempered, but with recognition for the influence of a small group of individuals who determine the nature of flood management in Scotland.
Practical implications
The authors conclude that, in the context of this study, a technical framing persists by predetermining the criteria by which innovative techniques are judged.
Originality/value
Broadly, these findings contribute to debates over the evolution of flood management regimes. This recognises the importance of events while also emphasising the preparations that shape the context and norms of the flood management community between events.
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Sasha Romanosky and Elizabeth L. Petrun Sayers
The purpose of this study is to examine how companies integrate cyber risk into their enterprise risk management practices. Data breaches have become commonplace, with thousands…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this study is to examine how companies integrate cyber risk into their enterprise risk management practices. Data breaches have become commonplace, with thousands occurring each year, and some costing hundreds of millions of dollars. Consequently, cyber risk has become one of the gravest risks facing organizations, and has attracted boardroom-level attention. On the other hand, companies already manage many kinds of difficult and growing risks, and that firms lose less than 1% of annual revenues as a result of cyber incidents. Therefore, how should firms appropriately address cyber risk? Is it indeed a materially different kind of risk area, or is it simply just one more risk that can seamlessly be integrated into existing enterprise risk management (ERM) practices?
Design/methodology/approach
The authors performed thematic analysis based on semi-structured interviews, with non-probabilistic, purposive sampling, to answer two main questions. First, how do firms manage enterprise risks, generally? And second, how are they integrating cyber risk into these existing processes?
Findings
The authors find that there is considerable variation in the approach and sophistication in ERM practices, such as whether they are driven more like an auditing function, or as a risk champion. The authors also find that despite the novelty of cyber risk, it can be integrated like other enterprise risks, and that cyber risk is most often seen as an operational risk (similar to workplace accidents or fraud), rather than a strategic risk, emerging from, for example, technology innovation and R&D.
Research limitations/implications
The generalization of the results is limited by the sample size and variation of firms interviewed. While the authors attempted to interview enterprise risk managers across a wide variation of firms, there were clear limitations in the scope. That being said, the authors were fortunate to be able to examine ERM and cyber risk practices across small and large, private and publicly traded companies, from a variety of business sectors.
Practical implications
The authors believe these finding are important because they present evidence that while cyber risk may be new, it does not require specialized handling or processes to track it at the enterprise level. While some firms may choose to provide special accommodations or attention because of their data collection or business practices, this approach is neither necessary nor required of all firms in all situations.
Originality/value
This research is one of the only papers that, to the best of the authors’ knowledge, examines how cyber risk is integrated at an enterprise level.
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Regi Alexander, Avinash Hiremath, Verity Chester, Fatima Green, Ignatius Gunaratna and Sudeep Hoare
The aim of the project was to evaluate the short‐term treatment outcomes of patients treated in a medium secure service for people with intellectual disability. A total of 138…
Abstract
The aim of the project was to evaluate the short‐term treatment outcomes of patients treated in a medium secure service for people with intellectual disability. A total of 138 patients, 77 discharged and 61 current inpatients, treated over a six‐year period were included in the audit. Information on demographic and clinical variables was collected on a pre‐designed data collection tool and analysed using appropriate statistical methods. The median length of stay for the discharged group was 2.8 years. About 90% of this group were discharged to lower levels of security and about a third went directly to community placements. None of the clinical and forensic factors examined was significantly associated with length of stay for this group. There was a ‘difficult to discharge long‐stay’ group which had more patients with criminal sections, restriction orders, history of abuse, fire setting, personality disorders and substance misuse. However, when regression analysis was done, most of these factors were not predictive of the length of stay. Clinical diagnosis or offending behaviour categories are poor predictors of length of hospital stay, and there is a need to identify empirically derived patient clusters using a variety of clinical and forensic variables. Common datasets and multi‐centre audits are needed to drive this.
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Ayomipo Jeremiah Amiola, Hollyanna Wilson, Elizabeth Patteril, Verity Chester and Regi Alexander
People with intellectual disabilities (IDs) typically present with co-occurring communication difficulties. Research indicates that cognitive-linguistic impairment is predictive…
Abstract
Purpose
People with intellectual disabilities (IDs) typically present with co-occurring communication difficulties. Research indicates that cognitive-linguistic impairment is predictive of poor health literacy, which can preclude individuals from developing a comprehensive understanding of their health, care and treatment needs. People accessing forensic intellectual and developmental disability (FIDD) services are more likely to engage meaningfully in treatment and rehabilitation only if they feel empowered to play active roles in their own care. Delivering proposed treatment programmes in an accessible format, which meets their language needs, is likely to promote this.
Design/methodology/approach
This paper aims to describe the development and evaluation of an easy read version of the “Ten point treatment programme” within an inpatient FIDD service. An expert panel comprising speech and language therapists and education professionals utilised a quality improvement method to develop this. Patients and staff evaluated this resource and gave feedback through surveys or meetings. The resource was refined based on responses, and a final version produced.
Findings
The easy-read Ten-Point Treatment programme resource was considered valuable by patients and staff from this service.
Research limitations/implications
Future research should seek to pilot this resource, to explore alternative multi-modal means of accessible information provision coproduced at every level and to examine ways in which this resource could be incorporated within health-care consultations. Another research direction will be to assess the impact of this resource on comprehension, drawing upon objective, previously validated measures.
Practical implications
Provision of an easy-read version of the Ten-Point Treatment Programme may support individuals with communication difficulties to understand health and care information relevant to their inpatient admission and may empower them to take more active roles in their treatment pathway. It is important to acknowledge, however, that easy read is not an accessible means of information provision for all individuals with ID and that the empirical evidence for its impact is limited.
Originality/value
This is the first published attempt to evaluate the acceptability of an easy-read version of the Ten-Point Treatment Programme within an inpatient FIDD service in the UK.
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Ted Baker and Friederike Welter
The purpose of this paper is to make the argument that previously marginalized but now flourishing subfields of entrepreneurship research continue to provide insights that can…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to make the argument that previously marginalized but now flourishing subfields of entrepreneurship research continue to provide insights that can form the basis for future entrepreneurship research that is more broadly practical and critical. What is currently core or “mainstream” in entrepreneurship research would then be seen as an important but rare special case.
Design/methodology/approach
The essay briefly explores a number of illustrative themes that have emerged and become important in women’s entrepreneurship research (acknowledging that some similar themes have emerged in other subfields). These themes are used to suggest how broader application of such insights to theory-building about entrepreneurship in general – rather than “just” to “women’s entrepreneurship” – might greatly enrich the field.
Findings
The authors’ arguments suggest that research focused on ghettoized subfields such as women’s entrepreneurship challenge the assumptions of what entrepreneurship is and what it contributes. For example the richer perspective on motivations, goals, and outcomes and on the possibilities of emancipation that currently animate research on women’s entrepreneurship can improve the understanding of all entrepreneurship.
Originality/value
Too much of current entrepreneurship research is both of limited practical value for “practitioners” and of little “critical value” for scholars interested in how things might work better. The authors argue that by broadening the set of goals, motivations, contexts and accomplishments that are taken as legitimate targets of study, entrepreneurship research can become both more practical and more critical and thus more broadly useful and legitimate.