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The Centre for Reviews and Dissemination was commissioned to conduct a systmatic review of clinical audits undertaken to assess the implementation and effectiveness of the National Health Service (NHS) two‐week waiting time policy for cancer referrals in England and Wales. This paper highlights the logistical difficulties experienced by the review team in trying to obtain information from the NHS, and discusses what needs to be done in order to improve the reporting and usefulness of clinical audit reports.

A total of 650 key individuals within NHS Trusts and Strategic Health Authorities were contacted for copies of relevant audits. Other key individuals and organisations across the NHS were also contacted, web sites of key organisations searched, requests for audits on relevant e‐mail discussion lists posted and electronic databases and conference proceedings searched.

Finds that many trusts do not appear to hold a centralised record of what clinical audits have been performed within the trust. In many instances several follow‐up contacts were necessary. The majority of included audits were poorly reported, with fewer than half providing sufficient detail on methodological aspects for the audit to be reproducible.

There should be a system of recording ongoing and completed audits conducted within the NHS, to ensure that audit reports are produced and accessible. The NHS needs to make sure that not only are appropriate audit methods used but that audit reports are written up in sufficient detail to allow the reader to ascertain how the audit was conducted and to assess the validity of the results. Documentary evidence of action plans would make it easier for those not directly involved in the audit to assess if, and in what ways, the audit findings are being acted upon to improve existing practices and procedures.

This paper discusses what needs to be done in order to improve the reporting and usefulness of clinical audit reports.

Even more than 50 years after the Civil Rights Act of 1964 prohibited discrimination toward a number of groups in employment settings in the United States, workplace discrimination remains a persistent problem in organizations. This chapter provides a comprehensive review and analysis of contemporary theory and evidence on the nature, causes, and consequences of discrimination before synthesizing potential methods for its reduction. We note the strengths and weaknesses of this scholarship and highlight meaningful future directions. In so doing, we hope to both inform and inspire organizational and scholarly efforts to understand and eliminate workplace discrimination.

This study establishes a baseline for the mortgage industry's beliefs and attitudes about race, culture, and discrimination in mortgage banking and determines if these attitudes vary by race. Through survey research, the data reveals that race matters in the lending arena.

The author examines key factors which affect intangible asset holdings of foreign subsidiaries of multinational enterprises (MNEs). The author developes the hypotheses by drawing upon the pecking order theory in the finance literature and the institution theory. The author theorizes that MNE foreign subsidiaries combine and utilize their cash holdings (finance-based firm-specific advantages [FSAs]) with host country economic freedom (host country-specific advantages [CSAs]) in their holdings of intangible assets which are internally created and/or purchased. The author empirically tests the hypotheses using a new original dataset of European subsidiaries of US MNEs. The author finds that cash holdings and host country economic freedom share a significant and positive relationship with intangible asset holdings. The author discusses the implications of the findings for theory and practice.

This research has the purpose of examining whether personality preferences and type from the Myers‐Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) are related to managerial derailment.

This study is within the context of field research, using 6,124 managers undergoing leadership development processes. Survey methodology was used to assess a manager's self‐ratings of MBTI type and preference, and observer ratings (peer, boss, direct report) of managerial derailment characteristics.

Different MBTI preferences of managers are likely to display derailment characteristics as judged by observer perspectives. In an exploratory manner, the MBTI preferences and types are also examined in accordance with different managerial derailment clusters.

The MBTI's conceptual foundation and psychometrics may be viewed as a limitation, and other personality theories like “The Big Five” could be used. Limitations of the study also include the fact that managers going through a leadership development process may be different to managers in general, and derailment characteristics do not necessarily mean actual managerial derailment.

Regardless of MBTI type or preference, managers can decrease their chances of managerial derailment through examining job fit, increasing self‐awareness, and through other mechanisms mentioned in the paper.

This study is unique, since MBTI preferences and types could signal whether managers display derailment characteristics to their co‐workers. Additionally, this paper gives insight into how managers can prevent derailment, regardless of their MBTI type and preference, thereby having special value for managers and those who study managerial development.

We extend theories of the firm to the entrepreneurial finance setting and argue that R&D-focused start-up firms will have a greater likelihood of financing themselves with equity rather than debt. We argue that mechanisms which reduce information asymmetry, including owner work experience and financier reputation, will increase the probability of funding with more debt. We also argue that start-ups that correctly align their financing mix to their R&D focus will perform better than firms that are misaligned. We study these ideas using a large nationally representative dataset on start-up firms in the United States.

In the face of growing demand for care and tightening resource constraints, hospitals need to ensure access to care that is affordable and effective. Yet, the multiplicity of objectives is a key challenge in this industry. An understanding of the interrelationships (tradeoffs) between the multiple outcome objectives of care (throughput, experiential and financial performance) and returns to operational inputs (diversification of care) is fundamental to improving access to care that is effective and affordable. This study serves to address this need.

The empirical analysis in the study builds on an output-oriented distance function model and uses a longitudinal panel dataset from 153 hospitals in California.

This study results point to key insights related to output–output tradeoffs along the production frontier. Specifically, the authors find that higher throughput rates may lead to significantly lower levels of experiential quality, and net revenue from operations, accounting for the clinical quality of care. Similarly, the authors’ findings highlight the resource intensity and operational challenges of improving experiential quality of care. In regards to input–output relationships, this study finds diversification of care is associated with increased throughput, improvements in service satisfaction and a corresponding increase in the net revenue from operations.

Highlighting the tradeoffs along the production frontier among the various outcomes of interest (throughput, experiential quality and net revenue from operations), and highlighting the link between diversification of care and care delivery outcomes at the hospital level are key contributions of this study. An understanding of the tradeoffs and returns in healthcare delivery serves to inform policy-making with key managerial implications in the delivery of care.

The study aims to discover influences on the career intentions of millennials in the United Arab Emirates (UAE).

Qualitative data about career intentions were collected from a sample group (#50) of students at an international university in the UAE. Participant's responses were recorded in five groups, composed of undergraduates, males and females, expatriates and citizens. Transcripts were formed of these data, which were thematically analysed to identify influences on career intentions.

Four emergent themes were identified of influences on career intentions: (1) influenced by societal obligations, (2) influenced by a traditional approach to career plans; (3) influenced by own aspirations; (4) influenced by country considerations. Findings recognised career intentions for this sample group resulted from cultural orientation and millennial's characteristics.

The study was limited by the one country/one university context and a direction is to replicate for an expanded sample group and/or to extend this research scope to other countries.

These findings have implications for university career advising, and the recruitment and retention of millennials in the UAE by international companies.

This is an original study in its exploration of influences on millennial's career intentions in the UAE. Research value lies in the addition of academic knowledge about those millennials' future career intentions.

Despite formal ethics education and ethics-related continuing professional education (CPE) requirements, professional accountants continue to play a central role in enabling corporations to make unethical business decisions and take unethical business actions. Several jurisdictions in the United States require ethics education for licensure, but often the focus is on memorizing rules and regulations, rather than on providing tools to improve the moral practice of professionals and to help them resolve ethical dilemmas. The authors analyzed recent state Certified Public Accountant (CPA) society course offerings and found much more emphasis on memorization than on ethical reasoning to satisfy State CPA CPE requirements. To improve accountants’ ethical awareness and behavior, CPE providers should stress ethical reasoning rather than merely memorizing rules. Such changes will make future and present accountants and auditors more ethically aware, and thus more likely to improve their ethical decision-making. Nonetheless, the authors suggest that effective ethics education and training should start in the classroom with help from departmental advisory councils. Ethics courses offered in accounting programs as well as those offered by CPE providers can leverage the experience of members of advisory councils to create programs that resonate with professionals and foster lifelong ethical awareness and ethical reasoning skills.