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Readmission to hospital can be distressing, costly for the National Health Service (NHS) and legally it should be a last resort as it entails restriction of liberty. This study aims to develop an understanding of factors leading to readmission for a cohort of service users under the care of a community forensic mental health team (CFMHT) in England to consider how support could be improved to reduce incidence of future readmissions.

Thematic analysis was used to examine case recording relating to 13 service users who were readmitted to hospital within a specified time period. The same service users were invited to complete questionnaires regarding their views of what contributed to the readmission to cross-reference with themes identified.

The analysis of case notes produced eight sub-themes. These were sorted into three overarching themes, illustrating the challenges that service users face upon discharge from hospital, the sense they make of these challenges and the impact upon relational patterns, in particular with the CFMHT. Researchers highlight that the multiple challenges can increase service users’ sense of being under threat which can lead to distrust of professionals.

Practical suggestions arising from the study were fed back to the subject team and are listed at the end of the paper.

Findings from this study parallel those previously reported. This study contributes an inter-relational aspect of the factors and the central role of meaning-making in the path of recovery and building a life in the community.

This paper examines the applicable scope of United States employment discrimination law to “American” employers of U.S. citizens abroad. Through an analysis of the extraterritorial dimension of American anti‐bias, it is demonstrated that over time, it has become accepted that the full‐range of U.S. anti‐bias law applies transnationally. However, just who is considered an “American” firm is an open‐ended question under the Mas Marques test codified in the Civil Rights Act of 1991. The implications of this ambiguity could well lead to potential legal conflicts in the area of employment discrimination for a multitude of firms worldwide who may not consider themselves presently to be bound by United States employment law.

Examine and understand how an informal volunteer’s goals and actions develop from the moment they first learn about a disaster.

We examine informal volunteerism (the activities of people who work outside of formal emergency and disaster management arrangements) through the theoretical lens of entrepreneurial effectuation to explain informal volunteer behavior and cognition and gain insight on how they develop their disaster relief ventures.

We find that informal volunteers follow an effectual logic, relying on available means to take advantage of opportunities as they are recognized or created. Application of effectuation vs causation processes depended on whether the informal volunteers were categorized as traditional, emergent or extended volunteers.

Informal volunteers’ disregard for the Affordable Loss Principle task governments and disaster relief organizations with the important challenge of managing and assuring the safety and well-being of informal volunteers. Their entrepreneurial behavior also invites the establishment of formal processes to counsel and guide informal volunteers, helping them fill out the necessary paperwork and funding applications to develop their efforts.

Through their experimentation and flexibility, informal volunteers accelerate disaster recovery, recognizing opportunities, working around bureaucracy and other roadblocks that hinder the efforts of established organizations. They also demonstrate entrepreneurial behavior that helps revitalize and jumpstart the local economy, making for stronger and more resilient communities

This study borrows from Effectuation Theory from the entrepreneurship field in order to bring a much needed theoretical lens to the topic and greatly assists informal volunteerism research, moving from past efforts that simply define and categorize the concept.

The purpose of this paper is to present the Italian validation of the standards for communities for children and adolescents (SCIA) Questionnaire, an evaluation tool of communities quality standards, based on the “Service Standards for Therapeutic Communities for Children and Young People – 2nd edition” of the Community of Communities (2009), that enables an empirical, multidimensional and complex evaluation of the therapeutic community (TC) “system”. It is a self-report that sets out and measures variables that allow to get an overview of organisational models and the possible development areas to improve the effectiveness of the protection of child and adolescents in community treatment. The validation and a preliminary analysis to develop a short version of the SCIA are presented.

The questionnaire (composed, in the extended form, by 143 items) was administered to 101 community workers, 20 males (19.8 per cent) and 81 females (81.2 per cent) aged between 24 and 61 years (M=36.20, SD=8.4). The analysis of reliability (Cronbach’s α) and a series of exploratory factor analysis allowed to eliminate redundant or less significant items.

The short form of the self-report consists of 67 items, divided into seven subscales, which explore different areas of intervention in TCs. Despite the limitations due to the small sample size, the utility of this tool remains confirmed by its clinical use and the development of good operating practices.

The SCIA Questionnaire responds to the need to adopt empirical variables in the process of evaluation of the communities. The SCIA is also a useful tool for clinical evaluation, as it allows a detailed observation of residential community treatment with children and adolescents that allows to analyse and monitor the structural and organisational aspects and the quality of practices that guide the interventions.

This study aims to build on the well-documented case of the Olympus scandal to dissect how social networks and corporate culture enabled corporate elites to commit fraud across multiple generations of leaders.

A flexible pattern matching approach was used to identify matches and mismatches between behavioural theory in corporate governance and the patterns observed in data from diverse sources.

The study applies the behavioural theory of corporate governance from different perspectives. Social networks and relationships were essential for the execution of the fraud and keeping it secret. The group of corporate elites actively created opportunities for committing misappropriation. This research presents individuals committing embezzlement because the opportunity already exists, and they can enrich themselves. The group of insiders who committed the fraud elaborated the rationalizations to others and asked outside associates to help rationalise the activities, while usually individuals provide rationalizations to themselves only.

The social processes among actors described in this case can inform the design of mechanisms to detect these behaviours in similar contexts.

This study provides both perspectives on the fraud scandal: the one of the whistle-blowers, and the opposing side of the transgressors and their associates. The extant case studies on Olympus presented the timeframe of the scandal right after the exposure. The current study dissects the events during the fraud execution and presents the case in a neutral or a negative light.

Consumer choice theory (CCT) and the law of diminishing marginal utility help to explain shoppers that value less and prioritize needs. Additional units provide a marginal return on investment. Buying more does not mean equivalent gains for additional money spent. The researchers developed and validated the necessity shopper scale (NSS) to study need-focused shoppers.

The researchers followed standard psychometric practices to create and validate the NSS. The researchers performed item development, data collection, exploratory analysis, confirmatory factor analysis, and predictive validity analysis using survey data (N = 1,266).

Discriminant and convergent validity analyses demonstrated that the measure was distinct from existing measures. Predictive validity analysis found necessity shoppers (NS) are more likely to buy one over buy one get one half off (BOGOHO). NS were associated with a higher connection to community/group (CTCG). Higher hyperopia (i.e. disinclination to indulgence) with necessity shopping beliefs heightened this CTCG. A higher CTCG was associated with a greater likelihood to select BOGOHO.

NS (more connected to others) buy more to share with others, while buying just enough for themselves. Social connections are long-term investments involving more people and more needs to fulfill. Brands marketed with communal values and able to enhance social connections are discussed as implications to encourage NS to buy more.

Since the late 1990s, teacher professional development models have shifted from a focus on individual improvement to collaboration as a means to foster support, information, and resource exchange between teachers. Following this shift, researchers began to use social network research methodology in the early 2000s to reveal the ways in which informal relationships affect teachers’ practices. This chapter reviews current literature on teachers’ social networks and teacher quality to describe the ways in which social networks mediate teachers’ practices. It provides detailed examples from two studies on teachers’ social networks and suggests ways that scholars can incorporate the constructs of social capital and social networks into large-scale research on teacher quality.

This study investigates how personality traits influence individuals’ intention to become community group buying (CGB) leaders.

Data include 517 valid questionnaires that are employed to examine the research model and test the hypotheses using partial least squares structural equation modeling.

This study reveals that among the Big Five personality traits, extroversion and neuroticism have more impact on the perceived ease of use and usefulness of social media, and individuals with high levels of these traits are more likely to become CGB leaders. Perceived ease of use only mediates the relationship between agreeableness and CGB leader intention, whereas perceived usefulness mediates the relationships between conscientiousness and CGB leader intention and neuroticism and CGB leader intention.

This study can serve as a catalyst for advancing the exploration of how personality traits and social media affect the intention of being CGB leaders. In addition, the study investigates the mediating effect of social media technology acceptance obtaining valuable insights into how social media affects individuals’ intention to become CGB leaders, expanding the research in this field.

• (1)

  Individuals with extroversion, neuroticism, and conscientiousness personality traits exhibit higher perceived ease of use and usefulness of social media.

• (2)

  Unlike previous research suggested, neurotic individuals appear to be attracted to becoming community group buying (CGB) leaders.

• (3)

  Individuals with high agreeableness are encouraged by ease in pursuing CGB leadership.

• (4)

  Perceived usefulness mediates the relationship between conscientiousness and CGB leadership intention and neuroticism and CGB leader intention.

Individuals with extroversion, neuroticism, and conscientiousness personality traits exhibit higher perceived ease of use and usefulness of social media.

Unlike previous research suggested, neurotic individuals appear to be attracted to becoming community group buying (CGB) leaders.

Individuals with high agreeableness are encouraged by ease in pursuing CGB leadership.

Perceived usefulness mediates the relationship between conscientiousness and CGB leadership intention and neuroticism and CGB leader intention.

This study, an empirical research, aims to construct and validate a new love-hate scale for sports fans and tested its antecedents and consequences.

The scale was designed and validated in three separate empirical survey studies in the context of Israeli professional basketball. In Phase 1, the authors verified the factorial validity of the proposed scale using exploratory factor analysis. In Phase 2, the authors conducted a confirmatory factor analysis using structural equation modeling. In Phase 3, the authors tested the nomological network validity of the scale.

The findings show that fans' involvement, loyalty and fandom significantly predicted their love–hate, which in turn significantly predicted self-reported fan aggression, fans' acceptance of fan aggression, price premium and frequency of watching games.

The model was tested on a relatively small sample of fans within a single country. This lack of generalizability should be addressed in future studies by examining the model in other sports contexts and countries.

This study suggests that understanding the properties of the love–hate measure may assist team sports clubs in identifying, preventing and controlling potential fan aggression.

The study provides three incremental contributions above and beyond existing research: it develops and validates a scale for measuring the phenomenon of sports fans' love and hate as mixed emotions; it makes it possible to capture the variations in the magnitude of fans' love–hate; and it relates fans' love–hate to important attitudinal and behavioral outcomes.

The purpose of this paper is twofold: first, to report results from a quasi-experimental study of outcomes of a leaving care project for youth placed in secure unit care and second, based on the (zero) results, to analyse and discuss the interplay between organisational boundaries, social work and the target group when implementing a project such as the one studied.

The outcome study had a quasi-experimental design. The young people in the leaving care programme were compared with a matched reference group who did not get the special leaving care services. Data were collected (structured Adolescent Drug Abuse Diagnosis-interviews) when the young people entered secure units and on follow-up (registered crime and re-entry into care).

The outcome study showed that the leaving care project had no effect on the young people's situation at follow-up regarding re-offending and re-entry into secure unit care. This is understood and discussed in relation to the poor implementation of the leaving care project along with an inbuilt conflict between state and local municipality that overshadowed the good intentions of the project.

The effect study has a quasi-experimental design, and hence differences between the project group and the comparison group at T1 cannot be fully precluded, although nothing is pointing in such a direction. The unclear content of the intervention makes it difficult to decode how the variation in the support given to the young people eventually impacted the results. The zero-results apply to group level, but that may not be valid for each and every one in the project.

According to earlier research, a key person following young persons through different phases of the care trajectory may be of importance. Learning from the CoC project, one can conclude that such a key person should preferably take the role of advocate for the young person, and not be an administrator mainly concerned with coordinating other professionals. Further, when planning and financing is split between organisations, that split hinders efforts to actually mobilise support for young people leaving secure unit care.

Few leaving care services are designed for youth with severe behavioural problems and hence, the research is scarce. This study contributes with important knowledge about leaving care interventions for the target group.