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Physiotherapists throughout the UK have a professional obligation to keep up to date and practice effectively. The Scottish Physiotherapists Clinical Effectiveness Network (SPCEN) was established in 1999 with the aim of providing a mechanism through which physiotherapists could share and learn from experiences, avoid duplication of effort and undertake proactive activities. The purpose of this paper is to report on the experience of the SPCEN and provide an evaluation of the impact the network has made on the clinical effectiveness activities of physiotherapists throughout Scotland.

A questionnaire survey was distributed to 2,118 physiotherapists across Scotland (response rate of 54.5 per cent). It aimed to determine the level of clinical effectiveness activity, the confidence of physiotherapists in engaging in these activities and the extent of involvement with clinical guideline implementation.

Results were analysed in two groups. Group 1 consisted of those that reported that they did participate in network activities (40 per cent n=330) and Group 2, those who did not (60 per cent n=686). Participants were significantly more engaged in undertaking a range of clinical effectiveness activities than non‐participants (p<0.0001), had greater confidence in their own ability to engage and were involved in the implementation of clinical guidelines to a greater extent (p<0.0001).

Establishing the SPCEN has resulted in more confident physiotherapists who are engaging in greater levels of clinical effectiveness activity throughout Scotland.

This paper provides the reader with an indication of the value networks can achieve.

How can we design and redesign more effective, fair, and enforceable government institutions? By government institutions, I mean the entire set of rules and organizations that enables governments to perform their functions. In government, the political machinery, such as the electoral system, tends to get the spotlight, but, in reality, this constitutes only small portion. Meanwhile, the largest portion of government machinery – the public-administration system – has been given short shrift. It has not been sufficiently researched, and reformers do not clearly understand how to improve it. This book is concerned with the reform of public-administration institutions and deals with political institutions only to the extent the latter shape the former.

The purpose of this paper is to identify and share learning about safeguarding children under Covid-19 drawn from a series of webinars held by the Association of Safeguarding Partners (www.theASP.org.uk). The learning is relevant for health, police, local authority and other relevant safeguarding agencies and includes sharing information about both the challenges and opportunities presented during the Covid-19 pandemic. By creating a webinar lead community of learning, lessons can be drawn that will help safeguard children during the remaining of the pandemic and during the release of lockdown as it emerges.

This paper summarises themes from discussions within three webinars run by The Association of Safeguarding Partners (TASP) (www.theASP.org.uk). Each webinar was attended by between 60 and 80 participants, sessions involving presentations and discussions on topics such as “managing safeguarding reviews at a distance”, “the impact on early years’ provision” and “how work with families and children has changed with remote working methods”. With the participants’ consent, webinars were recorded, and these can be viewed on www.theasp.co.uk. Webinars were supported by an on-line programme: “meeting sphere” capturing comments in a “chat” facility and providing capacity for participants to collectively code comments into themes.

Findings from the webinars note concerns about continuing and undetected abuse of children within and outside of the home; about the changing nature of criminal exploitation; and about the strains created by social distancing on children in families experiencing problems with poor mental health, drug and alcohol misuse and domestic abuse. Findings include some important lessons, including the discovery of innovative ways of working, the rapid collation of data across partnerships and about different methods of engaging with children, young people and families. Findings include suggestions about the impact of changes on the future safeguarding of children.

There is little published discussion of the implications of Covid-19 on practitioners working on safeguarding children. While some research is emerging, there have been few opportunities for practitioners to listen to emerging practice ideas under Covid-19 or to discuss in an informal context how to address the new and emerging problems in safeguarding children. This think piece contains original material from webinars held with safeguarding children practitioners and is valuable for those working to safeguard children during and post Covid-19.

This study aims to identify the key attributes of esports venues as perceived by spectators. Using the stimulus-organism-response framework, it also examines how these attributes influence customer experience, satisfaction and re-attendance intentions.

This mixed-methods research comprises two main stages. In the qualitative stage (Stage 1), we conducted a literature review, interviews with live esports event attendees and observations at two esports events to identify key esports venue attributes from spectators’ perspectives. In the quantitative stage (Stage 2), we recruited 564 esports game attendees at two live events to validate a measurement scale developed from the qualitative procedures. We also examined the relationships between venue attributes and the three spectator outcomes by using structural equation modeling.

Five key perspectives of esports venue attributes emerged from the qualitative analysis: (1) stage and stage lighting, (2) Internet infrastructure, (3) visibility of display screens, (4) concourse layout and (5) seating comfort. These dimensions were validated through exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses and were found to directly influence spectator experience and satisfaction, but not re-attendance intentions.

This study provides pioneering insights into the specific esports venue attributes that drive spectator outcomes. The findings offer valuable directions for future esports research and practical strategies for esports venue management.

Evidence for the availability and utilisation of family-friendly work conditions (FFWCs) in Malaysia has not been comprehensively reviewed. Whether persistent inequities are due to poor employer provision of work conditions or low employee uptake remains unknown. This scoping review to assess the scope of available evidence for availability and utilisation of specific FFWCs among women in Malaysia, and synthesise reported findings.

This scoping review used Arksey and O’Malley’s framework and twenty-two articles were reviewed.

Flexible work hours, telecommuting/work from home, staggered work hours, childcare centres proximal to workplaces, and childcare subsidies were reported as most commonly available work conditions. Available leave varied across organisations and sectors in provision of payment and duration. Flexible work hours, leave, and childcare centres proximal to workplaces were the conditions most used by employees. However, the validity of observed availability and utilisation of work conditions in Malaysia is questionable, due to inconsistencies in the specificity and range of work conditions assessed and heterogeneity of samples.

National monitoring of the accessibility and uptake of FFWCs is required to guide investment decisions about family-friendly policy initiatives to effectively advance gender equity in the Malaysian labour force.

This scoping review provides the first comprehensive synthesis and summary of the availability and utilisation of FFWCs in Malaysia.

The peer review history for this article is available at: https://publons.com/publon/10.1108/IJSE-02-2024-0103

Jenny Chapman is a practitioner, consultant and lecturer in vocational rehabilitation, and has extensive experience of rehabilitation, training and service management in Australia and the UK. Continuing our occasional series on lessons from other countries we asked Jenny to give an account of some aspects of a very successful programme in which she worked for a number of years. The Commonwealth Rehabilitation Service (CRS) in Australia, where Jenny gained her experience in vocational rehabilitation, continue to provide effective ‘return to work’ programmes for disabled people. The use of methods such as workplace assessment is one reason why Australia is extremely successful in return to work and placement rates.

Many jurisdictions fine illegal cartels using penalty guidelines that presume an arbitrary 10% overcharge. This article surveys more than 700 published economic studies and judicial decisions that contain 2,041 quantitative estimates of overcharges of hard-core cartels. The primary findings are: (1) the median average long-run overcharge for all types of cartels over all time periods is 23.0%; (2) the mean average is at least 49%; (3) overcharges reached their zenith in 1891–1945 and have trended downward ever since; (4) 6% of the cartel episodes are zero; (5) median overcharges of international-membership cartels are 38% higher than those of domestic cartels; (6) convicted cartels are on average 19% more effective at raising prices as unpunished cartels; (7) bid-rigging conduct displays 25% lower markups than price-fixing cartels; (8) contemporary cartels targeted by class actions have higher overcharges; and (9) when cartels operate at peak effectiveness, price changes are 60–80% higher than the whole episode. Historical penalty guidelines aimed at optimally deterring cartels are likely to be too low.

Over 30 years have passed since the enactment of Title IX, the legislation that required all schools receiving federal aid to provide “equal opportunity for both sexes to participate in interscholastic, intercollegiate, intramural, and club athletic programs” (East, 1978, p. 213). Since 1972, girls’ and women's sport participation has increased in high schools, colleges and universities, the Olympics, and professional sports. Researchers interested in the study of gender and sport have raised critical questions and conducted empirical research concerning the meanings of masculinity and femininity, the implications of sport participation, the meanings of heterosexuality and homosexuality, gender equity, and media coverage of sports (Dworkin & Messner, 2002). One persistent theme in the literature on girls’ and women's sport participation is the connection between athleticism and femininity. Historically, researchers have used the role conflict perspective or the apologetic defense strategy to examine girls’ sport participation. In this chapter, I analyze athleticism and femininity on a high school basketball team using a third framework.

The purpose of this paper is to explore board functions and their location in family firms.

Through structured induction in a four-case study of medium-sized Swedish family firms, the authors demonstrate that board functions can be located in other arenas than in the common board and suggest propositions that explain their distribution.

(1) The board is but one of several arenas where board functions are performed. (2) The functions performed by the board vary in type and emphasis. (3) The non-family directors in a family firm serve the owners, even sometimes governing them, in what the authors term “bidirectional governance”. (4) The kin strategy of the family influences their governance. (5) The utilization of a board for governance stems from the family (together with its constitution, kin strategy and governance strategy), the board composition and the business conditions of the firm.

Being a case study the findings are restricted to concepts and theoretical propositions. Using structured induction, the study is not solely inductive but still contains the subjectivity of induction.

Governance agents should have an instrumental view on the board, considering it one possible governance arena among others, thereby economizing on governance.

The institutional pressure toward active boards could paradoxically reduce the importance of the board in family firms.

The board of a family company differs in its emphasis of board functions and these functions are performed with varying emphases in different governance arenas. The authors propose the concept of kin strategy, which refers to the governance importance of the structure of the owner and observations on bi-directional governance, indicating that the board can govern the owners.