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A number of entropy models of social systems have been developed recently. Unfortunately, the complementarity of these approaches remains largely unanalysed, due to terminological and conceptual differences among them. There is an urgent need for a meta‐theoretical framework that will facilitate the analysis and comparison of all social entropy models. System entropy analysis (SEA), as presented here, is designed to fill this need. It is a second‐order, meta‐analytic tool which analyses each approach in terms of its major concepts, its basic units of analysis, its definition and measurement of entropy, and its specification of microstates and macrostates. First discusses the need for SEA, and then specifies its structure. Concludes with an application of SEA to the comparison and integration of three entropy approaches: synergetics, complexity theory and social entropy theory (SET).

To present the contributions of sociocybernetics, particularly as developed by Felix Geyer, and to compare sociocybernetics with social entropy theory (SET).

This paper first outlines the problems with earlier approaches, and then briefly discusses the four approaches constituting the “new” social systems theory: sociocybernetics, social‐autopoiesis theory, living systems theory (LST), and SET. Next the six chief contributions of sociocybernetics are discussed. Then sociocybernetics is compared with SET. The paper ends with a brief comparison of Geyer's sociocybernetics with the other two new approaches, social autopoiesis and LST.

Sociocybernetics is found to be a context‐specific, observer‐dependent approach that relies heavily on second‐order cybernetics. The comparison of sociocybernetics with SET also finds that the latter complements the former in valuable ways. Geyer's approach to sociocybernetics is also found to be compatible with both social autopoiesis and LST.

A very useful source of information for scholars interested in the comparative analysis of the new social‐systems theory.

This paper provides the first comparison of sociocybernetics with the other new social‐systems theories – SET, social autopoiesis, and LST. It clearly shows the value of Geyer's approach to sociocybernetics. It is valuable to all scholars interested in modern social‐systems theory. Sociocybernetics will be recognized as one of the great theoretical contributions of twentieth century sociology. It will also be forever linked with the names of its principal founders, Geyer and van der Zouwen. The numerous contributions of sociocybernetics are all the more impressive when it is recognized that they were made against a backdrop of widespread misunderstanding, mistrust, and outright rejection of its precursor approaches in social systems theory.

Reports on a survey conducted to investigate acute respiratory infections (ARI) in children in developing countries, looking particularly at the Philippines. Explores the role of the National Committee for Acute Respiratory Infections and states its objectives and responsibilities. Asserts that state of health is associated with community structure, environmental factors, and social and psychological conditions. Finds also that maternal factors are important determinants in the incidence of ARI episodes, for example, the mother’s characteristics, level of health knowledge, her illness control activities, age, level of education, number of children, smoking behaviour, and the extent to which she has to fulfil other tasks. Explains the methodology used in the survey, the sampling procedure and research instruments used. Indicates that poor housing and living conditions should become the focal point of developmental efforts, and that better nipping in the bud health management should be encouraged through health education programmes.

Communications regarding this column should be addressed to Mrs. Cheney, Peabody Library School, Nashville, Term. 37203. Mrs. Cheney does not sell the books listed here. They are available through normal trade sources. Mrs. Cheney, being a member of the editorial board of Pierian Press, will not review Pierian Press reference books in this column. Descriptions of Pierian Press reference books will be included elsewhere in this publication.

Aim of the present monograph is the economic analysis of the role of MNEs regarding globalisation and digital economy and in parallel there is a reference and examination of some legal aspects concerning MNEs, cyberspace and e‐commerce as the means of expression of the digital economy. The whole effort of the author is focused on the examination of various aspects of MNEs and their impact upon globalisation and vice versa and how and if we are moving towards a global digital economy.

Purpose: To explore how families respond to the death and dying of their loved ones in a hospital setting, archival research was conducted using eight qualitative articles describing next-of-kins’ perceptions of end-of-life care in Veterans Affairs Medical Centers (VAMCs). The articles were based on the qualitative arm of the VA Health Services Research and Development (HSR&D) study entitled, “Best Practices for End-of-life Care and Comfort Care Order Sets for our Nation’s Veterans” (BEACON).

Design: The archival research consisted of an interactive methodological process of data immersion, analysis, and interpretation which resulted in the emergence of two overarching thematic frameworks called “losing control” and “holding on.”

Findings: “Losing control” is the process that occurs when the patient experiences a cascading sequence of deleterious biological events and situations rendering the caregiver no longer able to direct the timing or setting of the dying trajectory. The notion of “holding on” captures family member’s responses to the need to maintain control after relinquishing the patient’s care to the institutional setting. During the patient’s hospitalization, the dual dynamics of “losing control” and “holding on” unfolded in the spatial, temporal, and life narrative domains.

Originality: The findings not only contribute to better overall understanding of family members’ responses to death in the pre-COVID-19 hospital setting but also heighten the awareness of the complex spatial, temporal, and narrative issues faced by family members who lost a hospitalized loved one during the COVID-19 pandemic.

This study aims to examine why Ghana has English legal origins (hypothesised as a legal framework that promotes financial development) but has not developed a well-functioning mortgage finance market.

The authors adopt the institutional autopsy approach developed by Milhaupt and Pistor (2008). This study is not a cross-country study but a historical examination of Ghana’s mortgage finance regulatory framework. The institutional autopsy framework considers the iterative process of change in a system and allows for context-specific system analysis.

The authors note that for a long period of about 68 years (1940-2008), some of the legal rules regulating mortgage finance were not typical of the hypothesised characteristics of the English common law tradition. These rules, including, interest rate controls, excessive entry barriers, loan default guarantee discriminations and complex foreclosure procedures, tended to inadequately protect creditors. In the context of the history of military rule and law-making, judicial discretion that could have promoted legal efficiency and strengthened contract enforcement was also limited. During this period, the legal system demonstrated a concentrated and coordinative character. New legislation in the form of the Home Mortgage Finance Act 2008 (Act 770) attempts to resolve some of these bottlenecks and improve creditor rights protection.

The study focuses solely on how the legal institution affects creditor protection and mortgage finance in Ghana.

Policy-wise, the study deepens the understanding of the channels through which the law affects the development of mortgage finance.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, the methodology used (institutional autopsy) is novel in the context of analysing mortgage finance.

This research provides accounting-ethics authors and administrators with a benchmark for accounting-ethics research. While Bernardi and Bean (2010) considered publications in business-ethics and accounting’s top-40 journals this study considers research in eight accounting-ethics and public-interest journals, as well as, 34 business-ethics journals. We analyzed the contents of our 42 journals for the 25-year period between 1991 through 2015. This research documents the continued growth (Bernardi & Bean, 2007) of accounting-ethics research in both accounting-ethics and business-ethics journals. We provide data on the top-10 ethics authors in each doctoral year group, the top-50 ethics authors over the most recent 10, 20, and 25 years, and a distribution among ethics scholars for these periods. For the 25-year timeframe, our data indicate that only 665 (274) of the 5,125 accounting PhDs/DBAs (13.0% and 5.4% respectively) in Canada and the United States had authored or co-authored one (more than one) ethics article.

Physician lateness and service interruptions are a significant problem in many health care environments but have received little attention in the literature. The purpose of this paper is to design appointment systems that reduce waiting times of the patient while maintaining utilization of the physician at a high level.

Empirical data from time studies and surveys of medical professionals from multiple outpatient clinics are used to motivate the study. Simulation optimization is used to simultaneously account for uncertainty and to determine (near) optimal scheduling solutions.

As lateness increases, it is shown that, in general, appointment slots should be shorter and pushed later in the session. Conversely, as interruptions rise, appointments in the middle of the session should be longer. These findings are fairly consistent over a variety of environmental conditions, including clinic sizes, service time variance, and costs of physician time compared to patients' time.

This paper demonstrates that the dome/plateau‐dome scheduling patterns that have been found in prior studies work well under many of the new factors modeled here. This is encouraging because it suggests that a generalizable pattern is emerging in the literature for the range of environments studied in these papers and this research provides guidance as to how to adjust the pattern to account for the factors studied here. In addition, it is shown that some environments will perform better with a different pattern, which the authors denote a “descending step” pattern.

This paper differs from most prior studies in that the complexity of environmental variables and stochastic elements of the model are simultaneously accounted for by the simulation optimization algorithm. The (very few) prior papers that have used simulation optimization have not addressed the factors studied here.