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Best practice facility management operations share several common traits, and two in particular stand out above the rest: outstanding leadership and clarity of purpose. Achieving the balance between minimum levels of service and minimum cost requires quality information, great planning and, above all, a well‐led, talented and focused team of motivated facilities managers (specialists and generalists) operating from a clear purpose of intent. This paper examines the benefits of taking a ‘high performance business unit’ approach to facility department management using a smarter mixture and application of skill sets and process management which ensures the best value service delivery outcomes are achieved and that clarity of purpose becomes the norm.

Companies that systematically and continuously put the right leaders in the right jobs outperform companies that don’t – by a wide margin. In this article, the authors argue that chief executives must recognize and act on the consequences of how they deploy their best managers.

To provide a reference paper for managers responsible for procuring services, advocating the use of strong relationship models, based on co‐dependency and collaboration between the supplier and purchaser of services.

Based on a combination of research into this topic coupled with the authors empirical knowledge through consulting case studies. The theory, as derived from the research supports, reinforces the authors' findings from dealing with client projects.

Acknowledges that the burden of transaction cost economics encourages aggregation of the services supply chain which in turn, when managed carefully facilitates an improved working/partnering opportunity with a few select suppliers. The suppliers benefit in turn by increasing volumes, allowing them to protect margins and the purchasers benefit through overall lower total cost of service, more attentive suppliers and potentially a much enhanced working relationship.

Practical guide for both practitioners (facilities/property/technology managers) as well students involved in procurement/logistics, supply chain studies.

This paper fulfils an identified area of research and offers practical guidance on how to implement a programme that achieves enhanced service supplier relationships.

There is growing recognition that numerous business drivers contribute to financial performance and investment returns but they are not included in a company's profit and loss statements. In the investment industry, these wider sets of value drivers are known as environment-social- governance (ESG) factors. A small number of specialized ESG rating agencies provide information to investors about the extent to which firms' behaviors are socially responsible. However, a major criticism of these rating agencies is the lack of transparency in their methods. This paper aims to examine the issues of subjectivity, transparency and uniformity of ESG ratings by exploring the methods used to assess ethics performance by an Australian rating agency.

A case study was conducted on an Australian ESG rating provider, Regnan. The data for the analysis were sourced from internal Regnan documents.

The paper found that a level of subjectivity is inevitable in ESG ratings and the call for uniformity may inhibit innovation, but these issues can be addressed by increased transparency of the rating methods.

Further research is required to understand what level and, combination of, uniformity and transparency is sufficient to satisfy stakeholder requirements for ESG information.

The discussion of the factors underlying the ethics performance rating may prompt more open and transparent debate on how to assess ethical performance of companies, and increase investor confidence in ESG ratings. It may also provide more direction to companies on how to strengthen their ethical performance.

There is growing recognition that numerous business drivers contribute to financial performance and investment returns but they are not included in a company's profit and loss statements. These “ESG” factors can account for up to 66 percent of the market value of globally listed companies. In response to calls for more transparency on how ESG factors are assessed, and how ethical performance is appraised, this paper attempts to lift the veil on ESG rating methods.

Response style evaluation is a fundamental component of forensic examinations. This retrospective study aims to evaluate how measures of feigning performed with individuals with intellectual disabilities (ID) who were undergoing competency to proceed to trial evaluations.

Using a known-groups design (ID vs non-ID) with 145 individuals, 37 individuals met diagnostic criteria for ID. The individuals were administered the Miller Forensic Assessment of Symptoms Test (M-FAST; Miller, 2001), the Inventory Legal Knowledge (ILK; Musick and Otto, 2010), the Evaluation Competency to Stand Trial-Revised, atypical presentation scale (ATP; Rogers et al., 2004b) and the Competence Assessment for Standing Trial-Mental Retardation (Everington and Luckasson, 1992).

The total ILK demonstrated differences between groups with a large effect size (Cohen’s d = 1.02). Six items on the ILK had over a 30% difference as a function of group. However, two revised scales from the ILK, the R-ILK-90 and the R-ILK-95 (Rogers et al., 2017), did not demonstrate differences as a function of group membership with small effect sizes (Cohen’s ds = 0.02 and 0.29). The M-FAST total score and ATP scales were not different between groups, although results demonstrated that individuals with ID would be potentially more at risk to for misclassification as feigning on the M-FAST.

This study has several limitations. It is a retrospective study with a relatively small sample size so additional research is needed to substantiate the results. However, this study highlights the potential for individuals with intellectual disabilities to be disadvantaged when undergoing competency to stand trial evaluations.

This manuscript shows that individuals with ID are at-risk for being mislabeled as feigning when employing standard measures of response style testing if appropriate cautions are not used. However, revised measures that take into account baseline information of legal knowledge offer a way forward that may prevent false positives with individuals with ID.

The mislabeling of individuals with ID could lead to significant problems, including harsh sentences and unnecessary incarcerations. This manuscript provides real-world data and encourages clinicians to be mindful when evaluation individuals with ID for court-ordered evaluations.

This manuscript is critical, as it shows that caution is needed when using instruments of feigning with individuals with ID who are undergoing competency evaluations. This has value for clinicians who are tasked with completing these evaluations for the courts.

The Bureau of Economics in the Federal Trade Commission has a three-part role in the Agency and the strength of its functions changed over time depending on the preferences and ideology of the FTC’s leaders, developments in the field of economics, and the tenor of the times. The over-riding current role is to provide well considered, unbiased economic advice regarding antitrust and consumer protection law enforcement cases to the legal staff and the Commission. The second role, which long ago was primary, is to provide reports on investigations of various industries to the public and public officials. This role was more recently called research or “policy R&D”. A third role is to advocate for competition and markets both domestically and internationally. As a practical matter, the provision of economic advice to the FTC and to the legal staff has required that the economists wear “two hats,” helping the legal staff investigate cases and provide evidence to support law enforcement cases while also providing advice to the legal bureaus and to the Commission on which cases to pursue (thus providing “a second set of eyes” to evaluate cases). There is sometimes a tension in those functions because building a case is not the same as evaluating a case. Economists and the Bureau of Economics have provided such services to the FTC for over 100 years proving that a sub-organization can survive while playing roles that sometimes conflict. Such a life is not, however, always easy or fun.

Temporary labor is a widespread phenomenon in the workforce. Motivating the temporary worker (temp) requires a different framework than managing the permanent workforce. This issue appears to have received only scant attention and, paradoxically, applies to 90 percent of all private employers. We have reviewed the issues that surround the motivation of temps and have suggested a research framework and some research issues which may be used to help us gain some insight into this process.