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To explain the January 6, 2016 written guidance (the “New Guidance”) issued by the Securities and Exchange Commission’s Division of Investment Management on payments made by mutual funds to intermediaries for distribution and non-distribution-related services.

Explains the SEC’s earlier guidance in the 1998 “Supermarket Letter,” the provisions of Rule 12b-1, the practice termed “distribution in guise,” the emphasis in the “New Guidance” on the role of a fund board’s business judgment, how Rule 12b-1 compliance fits into Rule 38a-1 compliance programs, specific fund activities and arrangements with intermediaries that are of concern to the SEC staff, and the focus of the New Guidance on an adviser’s fiduciary duty to mitigate or eliminate conflicts of interest.

The New Guidance articulates clear expectations that fund boards will have a process to evaluate the nature of intermediary payments and that fund advisers will provide boards with information in the advisers’ possession that the boards need to carry out that evaluation. Another intent of the New Guidance is apparently to give the SEC a clearer basis to bring enforcement actions concerning the use of fund assets to pay intermediaries for distribution-related activities.

Practical guidance from experienced investment management lawyers.

Increases in video game use have led to mental health concerns, citing greater risk for depressive symptoms (DS) and reduced “in-real-life” (IRL) social involvement. However, recent studies have uncovered potential social benefits for online gaming. Many games provide avenues to extend real life relationships and make new online friendships. The purpose of this pilot study is to use social network analysis to determine associations between connections and DS in a gaming community.

As a pilot study, members of an online gaming site were asked to report demographic characteristics, DS, IRL social support, online social support and IRL people and members of the online community with whom they spoke to about important life matters. Multi-level modeling was used to parse variance described by demographic characteristics, IRL measures and online measures. Linear network autocorrelation modeling (LNAM) was used to determine relationships between network connections and DS.

Members (n = 37; µ = 24.76 years old, SD = 6.55; 100% male; 89.2% white) on average felt DS’ “not at all” to “several days” over the past two weeks. Multi-level modeling including online network measures explained 50% of variance (R² = 0.50, F (9,27) = 2.98, p = 0.01); online connections were associated with DS (ß = 0.46). LNAM indicated DS were associated with IRL support (ß = −2.66), IRL connections (ß = 1.81), online support (ß = 2.40) and network effects (ß = 0.06), which indicates that a gamer’s DS were similar to those of their online connections.

Members with more DS may be seeking help via online channels. This may be important for future research to consider alternative forms of help-seeking behavior.

This study applies theoretical perspectives from urban, environmental, and organization studies to examine if “smart growth” represents an ecological restructuring of the political economy of conventional urban development, long theorized as a “growth machine” (Molotch, H. (1976) The city as growth machine: Toward a political economy of place. American Journal of Sociology, 82, 309–332; Logan & Molotch, 2007); the purpose is to determine if there is a “smart growth machine.”

Nine smart growth projects (SGPs) in four cities in California and Oregon were identified and semistructured interviews were held with the respective developers, architects, and civic officials involved in their implementation process. Comparative, descriptive, and grounded approaches were used to generate themes from interviews and other data sources.

The findings suggest that an ecological modernization of urban political economy occurs through the coordination of entrepreneurial action, technical expertise, and “smart” regulation. Individual and institutional entrepreneurs shift the organizational field of urban development. Technical expertise is needed to make projects sustainable and financially feasible. Finally, a “smart” regulatory framework that balances regulations and incentives is needed to forge cooperative relationships between local governments and developers. This constellation of actors and institutions represents a smart growth machine.

The author questions whether urban growth can become “smart” using an original study of nine SGPs in four cities across California and Oregon.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the role of collective teacher efficacy, academic press and faculty trust, all of which are components of academic optimism (AO), in predicting school innovation. In addition, the authors explored the extent to which faculty trust mediates the association between collective teacher efficacy and academic press with school innovation.

In all, 1,009 teachers from 79 schools in Northern Israel completed anonymous questionnaires about AO and innovation. Aggregation, descriptive statistics, bivariate correlation analyses and mediation analysis were performed to analyze the data.

Results showed that the components of AO, i.e., collective teacher efficacy, academic press and trust, were positively correlated to school innovation, and that trust mediated the relationship between collective teacher efficacy and school innovation. The study results confirmed that AO holds a significant predictive value in school innovation and highlights the importance of trust in supporting innovation.

As school leaders are challenged to foster innovative new practices in their schools, the findings suggest that they will need to know how to cultivate collective teacher efficacy, academic press and faculty trust.

This is the first study to examine the role of the components of AO in predicting innovation. By using a robust sample, the authors were able to examine the proposed school-level model with respect to the factors that affect school innovation. Originality also lies in the organizational approach to educational innovation in relation to faculty’s beliefs and behaviors.

Informed by acoustic design standards, the built environments are designed with single reverberation times (RTs), a trade-off between long and short RTs needed for different space functions. A range of RTs should be achievable in spaces to optimise the acoustic comfort in different aural situations. This paper proclaims a novel concept: Intelligent passive room acoustic technology (IPRAT), which achieves real-time room acoustic optimisation through the integration of passive variable acoustic technology (PVAT) and acoustic scene classification (ASC). ASC can intelligently identify changing aural situations, and PVAT can physically vary the RT.

A qualitative best-evidence synthesis method is used to review the available literature on PVAT and ASC.

First, it is highlighted that dynamic spaces should be designed with varying RTs. The review then exposes a gap of intelligently adjusting RT according to changing building function. A solution is found: IPRAT, which integrates PVAT and ASC to uniquely fill this literature gap.

The development, functionality, benefits and challenges of IPRAT offer a holistic understanding of the state-of-the-art IPRAT, and a use case example is provided. Going forward, it is concluded that IPRAT can be prototyped and its impact on acoustic comfort can be quantified.

Outside influences affect the progression of research in any discipline, including accounting. These influences offer one explanation for problems of replicability or comparability to previous studies, a common concern today. This article examines “who” participates in behavioral experiments and surveys involving accountants. This issue is important because of nontrivial differences in the composition of those in the accounting profession (and thus, participants in subject pools) over approximately 50 years of behavioral accounting research. Based on the theory of individual differences, we explore whether differences in the population of accounting research participants through the years could impact the replication or comparability of current-day research to earlier studies.

Our reading of available literature suggests that our profession has become more diverse in terms of gender and country of origin and that the oft-referenced characteristics of the millennial generation may also represent a distinct difference from previous generations of accountants. We discuss instances in which this changing nature of our profession, and thus our research population, could have implications for current-day behavioral accounting research.

Scholars such as Hebblethwaite (2012) argue that societal elements like the pressure for students to learn French in Haiti are deeply rooted in colonial traditions which were originally intended to hinder long-term development and continue to do so within the country. The purpose of this paper is to widen the scope of Hebblethwaite’s discussion on language and question other social norms within educational institutions, which are having a negative impact on educational attainment. This purpose is accomplished by way of an empirical study of primary school education reform efforts in Haiti through a lens of de-coloniality as defined by Walter Mignolo (2005).

Given that this is an empirical study on education reform in Haiti, I have conducted this study solely through the analysis of literature and evidence from past work on education reform in Haiti and other countries with similar challenges. The body of the research is separated into two parts, and the first is a critical historical analysis of the context. The second is a comparative analysis of two different case studies on education reform projects that have occurred in Haiti. This will also be followed by a conclusive analysis of similar efforts in communities around the world.

This study demonstrates that primary school students, teachers and their communities in Haiti respond better to education development projects that place mother-tongue learning, grassroots community participation and culturally relevant pedagogy at the forefront of daily operational planning. These factors would play a key role in setting the foundation for students to be both productive Haitian citizens first and global citizens second. The literature reviewed also demonstrates that historically, education has focused far too heavily on models that work for or originate from the global north and not enough on building an education system tailored to Haiti.

Since barriers such as societal norms need to be addressed through organic grassroots movements, which take time to be effective, reform from this perspective is better suited for the longer term than the shorter term. In the conclusion, this is considered to be a limitation when it comes to identifying short-term solutions to education, especially given that grassroots projects such as Buiga-Sunrise take time to establish winning practices that support self-sufficiency.

Literacy rates in Haiti for the year 2012 were around 48% for adults and 72% for youth (UNESCO Institute for Statistics, 2012). Not to mention that only 50% of children attend primary schools and 20% attend secondary schools (UNICEF Haiti, 2011, as cited in Jean-Marie and Sider, 2014). Such low educational attainment shows a need for greater access to education, and as much as the privatisation of schools is a significant barrier, as argued by Sider and Jean Marie, there are other impactful factors that remain to be addressed.

To maximise acoustic comfort in a classroom, the acoustic conditions of the space should be variable. So, the optimal acoustic state also changes when the classroom changes from a study environment into a lecture environment. Passive Variable Acoustic Technology (PVAT) alters a room’s Reverberation Time (RT) by changing the total sound absorption in a room. The purpose of this paper is to evaluate the improvements to classroom acoustic comfort when using PVAT.

The study is conducted in an existing tertiary classroom at Auckland University of Technology, New Zealand. The PVAT is prototyped, and the RTs are measured according to international standards before and after classroom installation. The acoustic measurement method used is a cost-effective application tool where pre- and post-conditions are of primary concern.

PVAT is found to offer statistically significant improvements in RT, but the key benefits are realised in its’ ability to vary RT for different classroom situations. It is predicted that the RT recommendations for two room types outlined in the acoustic standard AS/NZS 2107:2016 are satisfied when using PVAT in a single classroom space. By optimising RT, the acoustic comfort during both study and lecture is significantly improved.

When PVAT is combined with an intelligent system – Intelligent Passive Room Acoustic Technology (IPRAT) – it can detect sound waves in real time to identify the optimal RT. This paper details a pilot case study that works towards quantifying the benefits of IPRAT, by prototyping and testing the PVAT component of the system.

1. A pilot case study outlines the development and test of a variable acoustic prototype in a tertiary classroom

2. A method is adopted to measure acoustic conditions, using three under-researched Android applications

3. The benefits of PVAT are realised in its ability to vary RT by adjusting the prototypes’ sound absorption

4. By using PVAT in a single space, the recommended RTs for two room types outlined in the acoustic standard AS/NZS 2107:2016 can be satisfied

5. The improvements in acoustic comfort due to PVAT are statistically significant

A pilot case study outlines the development and test of a variable acoustic prototype in a tertiary classroom

A method is adopted to measure acoustic conditions, using three under-researched Android applications

The benefits of PVAT are realised in its ability to vary RT by adjusting the prototypes’ sound absorption

By using PVAT in a single space, the recommended RTs for two room types outlined in the acoustic standard AS/NZS 2107:2016 can be satisfied

The improvements in acoustic comfort due to PVAT are statistically significant

Knowledge sharing is an important individual behavior that benefits teams and organizations. However, little is known about environments with both team and individual rewards. The purpose of this study is to investigate high-ability team members’ knowledge sharing in an environment with both team and individual rewards. The motivation, opportunity and ability framework was specifically applied to a work situation with face-to-face interaction and objective performance measures.

Survey data were gathered from college baseball players in varied regions of the USA.

Unexpectedly, individual ability was negatively related to individual knowledge sharing. However, as pro-sharing norms increased, all players reported higher knowledge sharing, especially the highest-ability players.

Limitations include that the sample is small and team members were not from the same teams, prohibiting aggregation to a higher level of analysis. The study is cross-sectional and self-reported, as well. The sample was homogeneous and young.

In work environments where rewards are both individual- and team-based, the high performers may ignore team knowledge sharing because they are more successful working as individuals.

In work environments where rewards are both individual- and team-based, the high performers may ignore team knowledge sharing because they are more successful working as individuals. Development of pro-sharing norms can be critical for encouraging these team members with the potential to have a strong impact on the lower-performing team members, as well as to inspire further knowledge sharing.

The baseball team member sample is unique because of the team and individual performance aspects that include objective ability measures.

Some of the best information for preventing accounting violations is received from employees who have observed the unethical behavior (Henning, 2016). However, receiving information about accounting violations or other unethical behavior in organizations requires employees to voluntarily report the behavior. Employees may be particularly hesitant to report unethical behavior when the behavior benefits them. Employees may also justify their own unethical behavior as morally appropriate when their moral identity allows the behavior. The authors draw on psychology and ethics literature to examine the relationships among moral identity, moral disengagement, and unethical behavior. In the exploration of behavior, the authors examine both commissions and omissions. While unethical commissions are violations directly committed by an individual without cooperation from others, unethical omissions are violations resulting from an individual failing to take steps necessary to correct another's unethical behavior.

The authors conduct a survey about cheating with a sample of college students. Using structural equation modeling, the authors find that intentions to engage in unethical commissions are positively associated with moral disengagement, while unethical omissions do not appear to create the moral disengagement that can arise from cognitive dissonance. The authors also find a feedback loop from moral disengagement to future intentions, which suggests moral disengagement created from one unethical act increases intentions for future unethical behavior. Finally, the authors find a simple intervention that can help to increase the moral intensity of observed unethical behavior.