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The purpose of this paper is to develop an integrated patient-focused analytical framework to improve quality of care in accident and emergency (A & E) unit of a Maltese hospital.

The study adopts a case study approach. First, a thorough literature review has been undertaken to study the various methods of healthcare quality management. Second, a healthcare quality management framework is developed using combined quality function deployment (QFD) and logical framework approach (LFA). Third, the proposed framework is applied to a Maltese hospital to demonstrate its effectiveness. The proposed framework has six steps, commencing with identifying patients’ requirements and concluding with implementing improvement projects. All the steps have been undertaken with the involvement of the concerned stakeholders in the A & E unit of the hospital.

The major and related problems being faced by the hospital under study were overcrowding at A & E and shortage of beds, respectively. The combined framework ensures better A & E services and patient flow. QFD identifies and analyses the issues and challenges of A & E and LFA helps develop project plans for healthcare quality improvement. The important outcomes of implementing the proposed quality improvement programme are fewer hospital admissions, faster patient flow, expert triage and shorter waiting times at the A & E unit. Increased emergency consultant cover and faster first significant medical encounter were required to start addressing the problems effectively. Overall, the combined QFD and LFA method is effective to address quality of care in A & E unit.

The proposed framework can be easily integrated within any healthcare unit, as well as within entire healthcare systems, due to its flexible and user-friendly approach. It could be part of Six Sigma and other quality initiatives.

Although QFD has been extensively deployed in healthcare setup to improve quality of care, very little has been researched on combining QFD and LFA in order to identify issues, prioritise them, derive improvement measures and implement improvement projects. Additionally, there is no research on QFD application in A & E. This paper bridges these gaps. Moreover, very little has been written on the Maltese health care system. Therefore, this study contributes demonstration of quality of emergency care in Malta.

This issue is a selected bibliography covering the subject of leadership.

Worldwide multimedia market: explosive growth forecast. The worldwide market for multimedia products and services will grow forty‐fold from $0.4 billion in 1989 to $16.6 billion in 1994, forecasts John Gale's Information Workstation Group.

Creating our built environment is largely the responsibility of the dynamic and complex construction industry. This business is made up of a wide range of people who work together to construct buildings and infrastructure projects, from contractors and labourers to architects and engineers. Aside from its observable results, the construction sector has a particular culture and atmosphere that are formed by a special fusion of history, creativity and teamwork. The culture and environment in which the construction industry functions are the main topics of this section of the book.

There exists no detailed account of the 40 Australian women teachers employed within the “concentration camps” established by British forces in the Orange River and Transvaal colonies during the Boer War. The purpose of this paper is to critically respond to this dearth in historiography.

A large corpus of newspaper accounts represents the richest, most accessible and relatively idiosyncratic source of data concerning this contingent of women. The research paper therefore interprets concomitant print-based media reports of the period as a resource for educational and historiographical data.

Towards the end of the Boer War in South Africa (1899-1902) a total of 40 Australian female teachers – four from Queensland, six from South Australia, 14 from Victoria and 16 from New South Wales – successfully answered the imperial call conscripting educators for schools within “concentration camps” established by British forces in the Orange River and Transvaal colonies. Women’s exclusive participation in this initiative, while ostensibly to teach the Boer children detained within these camps, also exerted an influential effect on the popular consciousness in reimagining cultural ideals about female teachers’ professionalism in ideological terms.

One limitation of the study relates to the dearth in official records about Australian women teachers in concentration camps given that; not only are Boer War-related records generally difficult to source; but also that even the existent data is incomplete with many chapters missing completely from record. Therefore, while the data about these women is far from complete, the account in terms of newspaper reports relies on the existent accounts of them typically in cases where their school and community observe their contributions to this military campaign and thus credit them with media publicity.

The paper’s originality lies in recovering the involvement of a previously underrepresented contingent of Australian women teachers while simultaneously offering a primary reading of the ideological work this involvement played in influencing the political narrative of Australia’s educational involvement in the Boer War.

This paper aims to explore marketing practices related to online halal maternity wear by examining the characteristics of halal maternity wear promoted to Muslim women (Muslimah) and how these differ between sponsoring websites.

A qualitative content analysis of 24 websites promoting halal maternity wear to pregnant customers was undertaken.

Several issues related to the availability and promotion of halal maternity wear online, particularly when addressing the needs of Western Muslim women, were found. Successful marketing solutions to the problems of halal maternity wear require solving a number of tensions arising at the intersections of the following distinctions: mahram versus non-mahram settings, crude versus stylish fashion and the normative perceptions of immodesty versus modesty.

Careful research and attention need to be taken before promoting and targeting products as appropriate for Muslimah maternity wear. Those brands that display the requisite skills and knowledge necessary to determine whether a product meets the needs of modesty, fashionability and local climate/weather conditions in their maternity lines have much to gain from the Muslimah maternity market.

The availability of maternity wear that makes Muslimah feel comfortable and satisfied with their appearance will contribute to a positive pregnancy body image. Positive pregnancy body image is associated with positive pre and postnatal infant attachment by the mother, which in turn leads to beneficial outcomes for mother and baby.

Research to date has focused on Islamic fashion in general, with a dearth of research on Islamic maternity wear. This paper addresses the gap by focusing on maternity wear and associated marketing practices, from the Islamic point of view.

Worldwide multimedia market: explosive growth forecast. The worldwide market for multimedia products and services will grow forty‐fold from $0.4 billion in 1989 to $16.6 billion in 1994, forecasts John Gale's Information Workstation Group.

This paper aims to explain the fundraising and valuation processes of startups and discuss the conflicts of interest between entrepreneurs, venture capital (VC) firms and stakeholders in the context of startup corporate governance. Further, this paper uses the examples of WeWork and Zenefits to explain how a failure of stakeholders to demand an external audit from an independent accounting firm in early stages of funding led to an opportunity for fraud.

The methodology used is a literature review and analysis of startup valuation combined with the Fraud Triangle Theory. This paper also provides a discussion of WeWork and Zenefits, both highly visible examples of startup fraud, and explores an increased role for independent external auditors in fraud risk mitigation on behalf of stakeholders prior to an initial public offering (IPO).

This paper documents a number of fraud risks posed by the “fake it till you make it” ethos and investor behavior and pricing in the world of entrepreneurial finance and VC, which could be mitigated by a greater awareness of startup stakeholders of the value of an external audit performed by an independent accounting firm prior to an IPO.

An implication of this paper is that regulators should consider greater oversight of the startup financing process and potentially take steps to facilitate greater independence of participants in the IPO process.

Given the potential conflicts of interest between VC firms, investment banks and startup founders, the investors at the time of an IPO may be exposed to the risk that the shares of the IPO firms are overvalued at offering.

This study demonstrates how startup practices can be extended to the Fraud Triangle and issue a call to action for the accounting profession to take a greater role in protecting the public from startup fraud. This study then offers recommendations for regulators and standards entities.

There are few academic papers in the financial crime literature that link the valuation and culture of startup firms with fraud risk. This study provides a concise explanation of the process of valuation for startups and highlights the considerations for stakeholders in assessing fraud risk. In addition, this study documents an emerging role for auditors as stewards of proper valuation for pre-IPO firms.