Search results

The study draws on emerging research on declining employee mental health, particularly employees with low educational attainment, in human resource management (HRM) and health and tests whether labor market institutions are empirically associated with better mental health among workers from different educational backgrounds.

This study draws on a large national sample of part- and full-time workers and models a conditional relationship between labor market institutions and employee self-rated mental health using ordinary least squares (OLS) models with fixed effects.

The findings indicate membership in a labor market institution such as a union is positively associated with improved employee mental health, but the relationship is moderated by educational attainment. Union membership is associated with better mental health among employees with low educational attainment and appears to bring these workers up to a level of mental health that is comparable to more highly educated workers, thereby reducing mental health inequality. However, union membership has no effect on the mental health of more highly educated employees.

Despite the recognition that declining worker mental health presents challenges for workers, organizations and society, systematic empirical research on institutional mechanisms that may affect mental health is limited. This study draws on data of part- and full-time workers to model the relationship with a sample large enough to specify conditional models to account for heterogeneous relationships conditional on workers' educational attainment. The findings have important implications for our understanding of employee mental health, employment relations and institutional mechanisms to help workers and improve organizational performance.

The rapid expansion of internet usage and device connectivity has underscored the importance of understanding the public’s cyber behavior and knowledge. Despite this, there is little research that examines the public’s objective knowledge of secure information security practices. The purpose of this study is to examine how objective cyber awareness is distributed throughout society.

This study draws on a large national survey of adults to examine the relationship between individual factors – such as demographic attributes and socioeconomic resources – and information security awareness. The study estimates several statistical models using weighted logistic regression to model objective information security awareness.

The results indicate that socioeconomic resources such as income and education have a significant effect on individuals’ information security awareness with richer and more highly educated individuals exhibiting greater awareness of important security practices and tools. Additionally, age and gender represent consistent and clear informational gaps in society as older individuals and females are significantly less knowledgeable about an array of information security practices than younger individuals and males, respectively.

The findings have important implications for our understanding of information security behavior and user vulnerability in an increasingly digital and connected society. Despite the growing importance of cybersecurity for all individuals in nearly all domains of daily life, there is substantial inequality in awareness about secure cyber practices and the tools and techniques used to protect one’s self from attacks. While digital technology will continue to permeate many aspects of daily life – from financial transactions to health services to social interactions – the findings here indicate that some users may be far more exposed and vulnerable to attack than others.

This study contributes to our understanding of general user information security awareness using a large survey and statistical models to generalize about the public’s information security awareness across multiple domains and stimulates future research on public knowledge of information security. The findings indicate that some users may be far more exposed and vulnerable to attack than others. Despite the growing importance of cybersecurity for all individuals in nearly all domains of daily life, there is substantial inequality in awareness about secure cyber practices and the tools and techniques used to protect one’s self from attacks.

The purpose of this paper is to try to understand the reasons for the differences in amplitude of monetary policy (MP) rate cycles in the USA and the euro area. Among the different candidates, the paper aims to test the role of economic structures, macroeconomic shocks, and MP behaviour.

The paper starts by estimating vector autoregressive models both for the USA and the euro area to identify the economic structures, the MP rules, and the macroeconomics shocks of both areas. Then, it runs counterfactual simulations (by injecting European Central Bank's (ECB) monetary rule in the US model for example) to examine which factors had the most significant impact on differences in MP activism (measured by the variance of interest rates).

The paper finds that differences implied by MP rules alone cannot explain the dissimilarity of interest rates paths. In the same way, while cyclical shocks are different in each area, they do not suffice to explain the factual divergences. Finally, it is the structural dissimilarities which essentially explain the difference in interest rate variances.

The paper brings new informations on a controversial issue and it tends to reject the official explanations given by ECB's governor who points out differences in shocks.

This paper investigates the Jensen's free cash flow (FCF) hypothesis in the context of UK cash acquisitions. Under this hypothesis, financial slack induces mangers to acquire targets for cash if such behaviour generates either pecuniary or non‐pecuniary rewards for them, giving rise to a potential agency problem around cash takeovers. We argue that the stronger position of shareholders, as opposed to firm managers, in the UK should help in constraining such potential agency problems around such mergers. Compared to the USA, position, this should make the FCF hypothesis less relevant in the UK.

This paper uses short‐run announcement period returns and long‐run calendar‐time returns in testing our hypotheses.

This paper shows that low leverage and high FCF may be advantageous provided shareholder monitoring is adequate. By analysing both announcement period and long‐term returns, we show that acquirers with high levels of FCF are superior performers, and that any long‐run under‐performance of cash acquirers appears to be associated with low cash resources and low institutional ownership.

Inevitably, long‐run returns measurement is contentious, although we present results from alternative models to mitigate this. Limitations are necessarily imposed by the sample size, meaning that multi‐way partitioning of the data is not feasible.

The practical implications are that the UK regulatory and institutional ownership regime may actually protect the interests of shareholders and mitigate agency problems.

As far as we are aware, this is the first paper to systematically test FCF, leverage and institutional ownership effects in the context of UK cash acquisitions.

Increasingly, emerging information technologies such as shared software and continuous accounting are offering alternative ways to perform accounting tasks in a supposedly more efficient fashion. Yet, few studies have investigated how they affect the provision of accounting services, especially in the context of small accounting firms, which provide legal and tax services to entrepreneurs and businesses. Drawing on the service perspective, the paper critically examines how technological innovation challenges and reconfigures the co-production of accounting services in these firms.

The paper answers calls issued in prior studies to conduct empirical research on emerging information technologies for accountants. It focuses on the specific context of small accounting firms and draws on interviews with small accounting firms' managers (n = 20).

The study emphasizes five significant challenges that accounting firm managers face when using information technologies to support the provision of their services (ensuring reliability, factoring in their heterogeneous client base, repricing, training clients to use new technologies and promoting advisory services). Information technologies are shown to have a structuring role in the co-production of accounting services, as they lead to reconfigurations of the relationships between accountants and their clients. A range of four configurations is developed to highlight accountants' strategies to maintain collaborative relationships with their clients while integrating new technologies into their work practices.

By conceptualizing accounting services as a co-production process, the paper offers new insights into the implications of emerging information technologies for small accounting firms.

The purpose of this paper is to understand how the creativity of pupils and teachers is nurtured through the use of a virtual world (VW) within a sociotechnical network affecting pupils’ learning in a pilot secondary school.

The analysis is the result of a pluri-disciplinary systemic analysis involving didactics, sociology, psychology and management science on an individual, collective and systemic scale. This participatory action research is based on interviews and systematic observations in class, in-world and in the global ecosystem. Linguistic and multimodal analysis is applied to the data, through teacher monographs that hint at the teachers’ activity.

Pupils’ and teachers’ creativity appeared to be anchored within four main interdependent nurturing conditions the personal inclinations and professional interactions in the sociotechnical network sustaining the VW; a creative regulation allowing compromises with the institutional constraints of pedagogical control; avatars and 3 D boundary objects that act as a motor of teachers-pupils inquiry and creativity; the sociotechnical network that contributes, through the actors’ play, to bringing the organisational rules of the school towards an innovation trajectory, that in turns mediates success in the use and the adoption of the new technology.

Although this is a study within a specific school, the findings can be put to use by other pedagogical teams who would wish to integrate a VW to re-engage pupils.

The participatory design processes taking place within a sociotechnical network support teachers in the building of Virtual World scenarios negotiated with researchers and start-up developers.

The pedagogical use of a virtual world opens new learning engagement opportunities for the pupils through enhanced experiential learning and sustains the transformation of teachers’ professionality.

The authors’ approach differs from the previous educational VW literature, in that they integrate the teachers’ creativity and their pedagogical scripts into their study, within a systemic approach, thus requiring a wider theoretical framework, necessary for understanding the building of strategies and knowledge that foster teachers’ and pupils’ creativity in educational settings using a VW.

Purpose – This chapter considers the economic and political relationship between artificial intelligence tools such as facial recognition software and Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender and Queer (LGBTQ) identity construction and identification. In doing so, the chapter considers the threats and opportunities to diverse LGBTQ identities from algorithmic governance.

Methodology/approach – The author analyzes public discourse on these issues and its relationship to agency for LGBTQ communities. The conceptual approach integrates research into surveillance capitalism and neuroliberalism with “digiqueer” criminology to map the relationship between digital media technologies, institutional legitimacy and negotiations for LGBTQ rights, recognition and resources.

Findings – The discussion shows that the surveillance capitalist principles of blurred consent and redistributed privacy are underpinned by geopolitical and technological forces that have undermined the legitimacy of governments and big tech companies. LGBTQ community resistance to harms perpetrated through digital media platforms is one positive consequence of the ambiguities of surveillance capitalism, but which also reflects the investment required by such communities to secure basic protections that the general population might take for granted.

Originality/value – Research into the relationship between recognition and redistribution through access to rights granted to different social groups on the basis of sexuality, sexual expression and identity is under-interrogated. This chapter responds to that gap with a focus on the role that digital media technologies can play in securing recognition and redistribution of resources for LGBTQ communities, or the significance of their absence and/or diminution in current contexts.

This chapter explores social enterprises as an alternative and addition to traditional entrepreneurial ecosystems (EEs). It reviews the substantial social enterprise literature in order to identify the myriad of competing tensions constraining development and success of social EEs in areas of significant poverty and economic deprivation. Following this, the findings of several contemporary and novel studies are discussed. These collectively evidence ways social enterprises are overcoming the seemingly immutable constraints they operate under. In particular, the Social Enterprise Places initiative has been highly effective in supporting the development of flourishing social EEs in many locations in the UK. However, the growth of social enterprises, both in number and economic importance, presents further challenges that social enterprise owners and managers will have to contend with. Consequently, these organisations and their allied ecosystems require continued structural, financial and skills support.

This chapter investigates resistance initiated by trans athletes and their allies and evaluates developments in policies and practices at the international, national and local levels of sport. The limitations of liberal approaches to trans inclusion are identified, and examples of radical, transformative approaches grounded in intersectional feminism are presented, together with an analysis of the crucial roles of solidarity work provided by allies and accomplices. The potential offered by boxing as a route to empowerment for trans and nonbinary participants is examined. An overview of recent media coverage of trans athletes suggests that global resistance is having an important impact on mainstream journalism. Finally, this chapter outlines how a successful campaign challenging a trans-exclusive Sport Canada's 2022 opinion survey and a recent report by Canadian Centre for Ethics in Sport provide further evidence of effective resistance to trans exclusion in sport.