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The purpose of this paper is to describe specific features of a Victorian (Australia) state-wide hub and spoke model of speech pathology provision established for adults with complex communication needs (CCN). Two case studies highlighting successful examples of services developed to enhance community inclusion will be described and the challenges discussed.

The route to community inclusion is described through a case study illustration of one communication accessible community site and one disability service study. The disability service research involved focus groups, survey and interview data and demonstrated the efficacy and sustainability of a support worker training model.

Sustainable change in the community and in disability services can occur through partnerships, training, and long-term commitment. Support workers who can facilitate interactions for people who have cognitive and communicative disabilities are an essential component of building the capacity of communities to include people with CCN. Collaboration between community members, specialised supports and people with disabilities enhances active community participation.

This innovative, state-wide model has the capacity to be replicated elsewhere. On-going speech pathology services are integral to support adults with CCN providing both short-term individualised services, sustainable staff training and community engagement.

This study aims to examine whether a company’s corporate social responsibility (CSR) transparency (reflected in two separate dimensions of social transparency and environmental transparency) affects a company’s dependence on expensive trade credit (TC) financing.

The authors use a panel of S&P 500 index companies between 2012 and 2019 and ordinary least squares estimators. Transparency ratings represented by Bloomberg scores capture both the quantity and quality of verified CSR practice information.

CSR transparency (CSRT) is negatively associated with a firm’s dependence on expensive TC financing. This study’s results continue to hold after a battery of robustness tests like substitute proxies for TC, use of two-stage least squares regression, industry-adjusted dependent variable, generalized linear model and bootstrapping approach. This association is stronger among companies with higher information asymmetry (IASY) and lower quality regarding governance and financial reporting. Further investigation indicates that potential channels through which CSRT mitigates a company’s reliance on TC financing are the cost of debt (CoD) and stock liquidity. This study’s findings suggest that transparent companies have a lower CoD and higher stock liquidity. This helps these companies to be more financially flexible and eventually less dependent on expensive TC financing.

By combining two separate research lines of TC and CSR, this study adds to both works of literature as it is the first (to the best of the authors’ knowledge) to present evidence of the effect of CSRT proxied by Bloomberg scores on a company’s reliance on TC (a real economic decision and financial policy). Additionally, this study documents the moderating effects of financial reporting quality, IASY and corporate governance on the relationship between CSRT and TC financing. In conclusion, this study provides empirical evidence regarding the potential mechanisms of CoD and stock liquidity, through which CSRT influences a company’s reliance on TC financing.

This case was researched using publicly available sources, including Mercury Systems financial filings and press releases, news stories about the seasoned equity offering, financial information from Bloomberg and industry information from IBISWorld Industry Reports and articles related to seasoned/secondary equity offerings, intangible asset valuation and the use of revolving lines of credit. Quotes are taken from Mercury financial reports and press releases and express the (optimistic) opinions of company executives.

Mercury Systems, a technology company in the aerospace and defense industry, announced a six million share seasoned stock offering in June 2019. This resulted in a 6% stock price decrease. A stock price decrease is a typical event when a firm announces the issuance of new common shares, but with Mercury Systems, there were concerns about how much money the firm needed to fund its strategy of growth through acquisitions. If internally generated funds were not sufficient, should the firm issue debt or have another seasoned equity issue? Students will look at the objectives and success of the most recent seasoned equity issue, determine future funds needs and how the firm should finance these needs.

This case is appropriate for undergraduate and graduate students in corporate finance electives. Typically, topics such as seasoned equity offerings are not covered in introductory courses, so this is recommended for finance electives. Even in advanced finance courses, sometimes there is insufficient time to cover seasoned equity offerings.

This paper aims to examine the media coverage of a new reproductive benefit (oocyte cryopreservation) made available to employees at Apple and Facebook in 2014, in light of an ongoing public debate around the conflict experienced by women to be both “ideal workers” and “ideal mothers”.

The study examines the coverage of the new benefit as a news item in major American newspapers and websites. It uses problem/solution frame analysis and provides a qualitative analysis of the leads, journalists’ rhetoric and sources found in 23 news articles on the topic. A rudimentary quantitative analysis of positive and negative solution evaluations is also included.

All the articles were found to use a problem/solution frame in their presentation of the new benefit as a news item. When biology is presented as at the root of the motherhood/career conflict, as it was by many journalists and their chosen sources, this logically leads to a biotechnological solution, such as egg-freezing. Other potential contributors to motherhood/career conflict, such as rigid and gendered career timelines and inadequate supports for working parents, are largely left out of the discussion – as are potential broader workplace and socio-cultural changes.

This study was limited to news articles only; the coverage of the issue in opinion pieces and in other media might have different findings. An experimentally designed study might lead to interesting findings on the impact of these framing elements (leads, rhetoric, sources) on readers’ responses to this topic.

This study contributes to research on the media coverage of motherhood and to management scholarship on gender, parenthood and work.

Students need to know basic capital budgeting techniques to value INFINITI and its competitors. Issues include how to: handle taxes in a discounted cash flow analysis when valuing an S Corp. where incentives depend on current (known) and future (unknown) tax provisions; value a firm using comparable multiples analysis and transactions data; assess the costs and benefits of acquiring a firm versus being acquired; and analyze an industry and perform a ratio and financial statement analysis.

The case information was obtained through interviews with co-founder Mark Schwaiger. In addition, the authors researched industry and comparable company data, along with current events relating to the professional employer organization (PEO). Financial data was obtained from the owners and competitor data was obtained from Thomson One and Bloomberg.

INFINITI HR was a PEO providing comprehensive human resources to their clients. Co-founders Scott Smrkovski and Mark Schwaiger were at a crossroads at the end of 2015 trying to determine the best course of action to take with their company to grow and prosper. One option was for INFINITI to be acquired by a larger company and the second option was for INFINITI acquire a smaller company. In this case, students have the opportunity to do a financial analysis and evaluation of INFINITI and its competitors to determine which option is the best.

This case is intended for an advanced undergraduate or an MBA corporate finance class.

This paper asks how values and beliefs around gender influence social norms regarding masking. Specifically, the paper explores how the gendered meme “Karen” fits into social media discussions on support for and opposition to the wearing of masks to fight the spread of COVID-19.

The authors analyze tweets containing the hashtags #Masks4All and #NoMasks over a three-week period, using adjacent hashtag analysis to determine the terms most associated with Karen in the pro and anti-mask communities associated with these hashtags.

Anti-maskers reference Karen more often than pro-maskers, although she is presented in negative terms with gendered overtones by those on both sides of the masking debate.

The paper highlights how hypermasculinity rhetoric impedes social change that normalizes mask wearing.

This paper aims to investigate the political cost hypothesis and the effects of political sensitivity-induced governance in the US bond market by using yield spreads from bonds issued by a diverse sample of US government contractors.

Fixed effects regression analysis is used to test the relation between the political sensitivity of government contractor firms and their cost of debt.

Results illustrated that government contractors with greater political sensitivity are associated with larger yield spreads, indicating that bondholders require a premium when firms endure the costs of increased political oversight and the threat of outside intervention, reducing the certainty of future income. However, despite the overall positive impact of political sensitivity on bond yield spreads on average, the authors found that the additional government oversight is associated with lower spreads when the firm is facing greater repayment risk.

Despite the benefits of winning a government contract, this paper identifies a direct financial cost of increased political sensitivity because of additional firm oversight and potential intervention. Importantly, it also finds that this governance is valued by bondholders when faced with increased risk. Firms must balance their desire for government receipts with the costs and benefits of dependence on those expenditures.

This paper contributes to the literature in its exploration of political sensitivity as an important determinant of the cost of debt for corporate government contractors. Specifically, the authors document a significant risk premium in bond pricing because of the joint effects of the visibility and importance of government contracts to the firm.

While placemaking is a multi-disciplinary concern, it is a key focus within the discipline of spatial planning. This paper aims to explore the development of theoretical trends with regard to placemaking in spatial planning since 1975 to identify current emerging theoretical perspectives. Special attention is given to differences in perspectives between the Global North and the Global South.

The study used an integrative literature review (ILR) to analyse placemaking literature over a period of 41 years and five months. The ILR followed the basic review stages: scoping; planning and review protocol; identification/availability; searching; and screening. ILR differs from other reviews as quality appraisal, data gathering, analysis and synthesis rely on coding, thematic content analysis and synthesis.

Initially, the planning/review protocol resulted in 59 contributions on placemaking in various disciplines (excluding publications in other languages that English). Contributions included spatial and design disciplines (29 contributions), social sciences (14 contributions) and other disciplines (16 contributions). The literature review proceeded with a selection of 23 spatial planning contributions (20 from the Global North and three from the Global South). Theoretical trends include placemaking theorised as a physical construct, a social construct, an economic construct (absent in literature from the Global South), a tool for empowerment, a psychological dimension and an environmental management tool.

The most recent theoretical perspectives in literature suggest placemaking as an enabling tool in which people share knowledge and learn new skills to transform their own environment. This empowering process creates a linkage between planning theory and practice.

This paper contributes to the current theories of placemaking in spatial planning. It provides a simplified view of an exhaustive list of existing literature. This paper reports on the current trends and the development of placemaking theory.

As Illinois completes 30 years of library systems and 100 years of the Illinois Library Association, it is appropriate to review “recent” history as a harbinger of what may lie ahead for the Illinois Library and Information Network (ILLINET). The network of libraries in Illinois, formally named in 1975, recognizes the cooperative efforts of library staff members in over 2,700 libraries and the leadership of the Illinois State Library in bringing resources to bear on the needs of all citizens of the state. Libraries of all types (academic, public, school, and special) become members of ILLINET when they join their regional library systems.

This study investigates the relationship between buyer-supplier top management team (TMT) demographic misalignment (defined as differences in TMT composition based on background, age and gender) and environmental performance (EVP).

The empirical setting is publicly held US manufacturing firms that are present in both the Kinder, Lydenberg and Domini’s (KLD's) annual EVP ratings and Bloomberg's supply chain database. The study employs panel data regression methods on an unbalanced panel dataset of 7,493 dyad-year observations comprising 427 unique firms.

The research shows that misalignment in functional background and gender composition between TMTs have a negative outcome on both the buyer's and the suppliers' EVP. However, increasing presence of females across TMTs has a positive influence on EVP. Further, the research shows that misalignment based on age between the TMTs does not impact EVP in any significant way. On the contrary, increasing age across TMTs is a significant predictor of EVP.

This study builds on existing works in TMT heterogeneity and adds context to the heightening belief in the positive linkage between heterogeneity and performance through extension to a boundary spanning interfirm context.