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The authors present the application of the López-Fresno approach in designing an integrated management system (IMS) for an aviation company to the development of an IMS in a government-run organization responsible for the medical evaluation of work disabilities. The purpose of this paper is to share the design process, with the intention of showing that this approach is applicable to other sectors and proposing generalization and applicability strategies to other smaller government entities.

The study involves two phases. Phase I applies the López-Fresno approach to design a basic IMS-I and ends with a European Foundation for Quality Management (EFQM) evaluation, whose suggestions were taken into consideration for the final design of IMS-II during phase II. The data were obtained from the organization's own functioning. There was a significant degree of personal involvement by the authors, external consultants and members of the management committee in areas ranging from the approach itself to the various components analyzed.

The approach led to a better use of human and material resources and produced various advances in both internal and external communication and significant progress in employee motivation in their dealings with users and stakeholders.

The study offers guidelines and recommendations for designing an IMS adapted to small, compact, administrative organizations that operate with stakeholders with highly disparate outlooks and interests, with different quality levels, in a context related to competitiveness and economic development.

This paper aims to present the concepts of two different ways of generating a dynamic structure of the urban system to further allow in understanding specific urban behavior facing against flood and further evaluate the potential effect of specific resilience strategies aiming to decrease the exposure and vulnerability of the system.

Two system dynamics model structures are presented in form of Casual Loop Diagrams.

The main differences among the tow approaches are the time horizon and the approach that regulates the assessment of the resilience through a dynamic composite indicator: the first model refers to baseline at initial simulation time; the second model is focused on the ratio service supply to demand.

Within the approach, the purpose is to properly and efficiently evaluate the effect of different Flood Risk Management strategies, i.e. prevention, defence, mitigation, preparation and recovery for consistent and resilient flood governance plans with different type of resilience scenarios.

The need for such tool is underlined by a lack on the assessment of urban resilience to flood as whole, considering the physical and social dimensions and the complex interaction among their main components. There are several assessment tools based on an indicator approach that have been proposed to meet this need. Nevertheless, indicator-based approach has the limitation to exclude the complexity of the system and its systemic interaction in terms of feedbacks’ effects among the identified components or variables selected for the system description. This peculiarity can be provided by System Dynamics modeling.

The relevance of institution leaders’ personal qualities for providing quality education is widely recognized. The purpose of this paper is to explore vocational education and training (VET) institution leaders’ character features. The research question was twofold: What are the features of the character of the pedagogical leaders of three Latvian VET institutions according to students, teachers and institution board members? What are the differences between respondents’ groups regarding their perceptions of leaders’ virtues?

Six members of the institution board, five teachers and six students participated in structured qualitative interviews collected in 2013 in three high-quality VET institutions from different fields (tourism, sports and maritime education). Secondary analysis of latent content was used to explore respondents’ perceptions of leaders’ virtues, using software AQUAD 7 for qualitative data analysis.

The results revealed significant differences between students’ and staff (teachers’ and institution board members’) perceptions: the staff members appreciated particularly leaders’ performance virtues (“teamwork orientation”) and intellectual virtues (“critical thinking”), whereas, for students, heads’ moral virtues were more relevant, especially “magnanimity”. Respondents also showed concern about VET institution leaders’ civic virtues (“neighborliness,” “community awareness,” and “communicability”).

The results suggest that different perspectives, and in particular students’ voices, should be integrated in VET leaders’ assessment process and that their continuing professional development should also address their intellectual, moral and civic virtues.

This study represents an innovative methodological trial for investigating educational institution heads’ leadership from the lens of virtue ethics.

The purpose of this paper is to provide a selected bibliography of recent resources on library instruction and information literacy.

The paper introduces and annotates periodical articles, monographs, and exhibition catalogues examining library instruction and information literacy.

The paper provides information about each source, discusses the characteristics of current scholarship, and describes sources that contain unique scholarly contributions and quality reproductions.

The information may be used by librarians and interested parties as a quick reference to literature on library instruction and information literacy.

Policy or regulatory risks represent one of the major barriers for renewable energy investments, especially against the background of several retrospective reductions of support schemes in Europe. This paper aims to contribute to the literature by offering a categorization of major risk drivers and determinants of policy risk associated with renewable energy projects in developed countries.

Based on a narrative (traditional) review of the academic literature and supported by industry studies regarding cases of support scheme cuts in Europe (from the end of 2010 until the end of 2013), the paper derives determinants of policy risks of renewable energy investments.

As a main result, the paper offers a concise categorization of major risk drivers of policy and regulatory risks associated with renewable energy investments in developed countries along with potential indicators.

The derived categorization of major risk drivers and the set of indicators are of high relevance for risk management and risk assessment of renewable energy investments, where understanding the underlying risk drivers is vital. The findings can thus be applied when establishing a sound risk management for renewable energy investments.

The paper helps (potential) investors, policymakers and regulators to assess policy risks associated with renewable energy investments.

The study aims to show how the public interest has been argued to justify the political interference in the accounting of financial entities as a tool to face a critical financial situation in a country. And to offer a different perspective of the publicness notion that focuses on the field of financial accounting for private entities.

The paper draws on legal and political arguments referred to the public interest that consider the balancing approach, and so goes beyond the traditional agency framework, to explain politicians' influence on financial reporting. The behavior of the newly elected Spanish government, which issued accounting impairment rules for banks is described, and the accounting practices of a highly politically connected financial entity—Bankia—are used to illustrate the consequences of that intervention.

The paper evidences that the government intervention, which implied non-compliance with IFRS, was in line with its economic goals, led to the financial sector bailout and avoided the rescue of the country. This is what we call “breaking rules to achieve the public interest”, which is also consistent with a big-bath behavior to justify the bailout and legitimate the decision to breach IFRS. The silence of enforcers is consistent with the balancing approach that suggests compliance costs from a breach of rules are perceived less relevant after a high-level decision.

This is a country-specific study based on a single case study that limits the generalizability of the findings.

This research provides a new angle to consider the political motivations to intervene in accounting in the private sector, as well as the enforcers' motivations to allow it. From an interdisciplinary perspective, it shows how politicians have argued the “public interest” to use (and abuse) to intervene in accounting rules, as well as to influence the accounting practice of a highly politically connected bank. It also highlights the potential long-term unintended consequences of these actions.