Developing the next new product or service yourself may not be the right strategy.
The language of resilience is increasingly used by International organizations that seek to respond to contemporary social, economic, and environmental crises. This paper focuses…
Abstract
The language of resilience is increasingly used by International organizations that seek to respond to contemporary social, economic, and environmental crises. This paper focuses on the World Bank’s World Development Reports, and its uses of resilience. By deploying a quantitative critical discourse analysis, this paper shows how in the recent years resilience has gained traction within the Bank’s discourse. It further analyses the evolution of the genre, the style, and the ideational content of the Bank’s discourse related to resilience. Resilience is now depicted as something that can be built and not just observed. Furthermore, it is increasingly reified in these reports and ascribed to a whole gamut of entities. The ontological indistinction of resilience reinforces its fit with contemporary neoliberal governance.
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Monica Murphy, Felicity Kelliher and Denis Harrington
This chapter explores the perceived impact of strategic learning plans on growth-focussed small service firms from the owner-manager’s (OM) perspective. Adopting a social learning…
Abstract
This chapter explores the perceived impact of strategic learning plans on growth-focussed small service firms from the owner-manager’s (OM) perspective. Adopting a social learning lens, the study employs the action research method, involving three cycles performed over a 12-month period wherein the authors studied the co-created design and implementation of a strategic learning plan in each of the three participant firms. Findings present insights into the ways in which firms that wish to grow can be facilitated to learn strategically. A contextualised approach involving OMs in both design and implementation resulted in openness to the formal planning process. Notably, OMs may impede growth depending on their learning orientation, planning perspective, and their ability to delegate tasks. Over time, the OMs honed their reflective skills to the benefit of organic learning strategies. There was a distinct preference for social learning, and a perceived need for external monitoring to sustain plan momentum. The proposed framework offers a process for embedding a strategic learning approach in order to leverage strategic position. It also highlights the value of considering and evaluating OM perceptions of their own learning activities and the impact that these perceptions may have on the enactment of enabling policies to promote growth in their firms.
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Using the case of the Deepwater Horizon blowout in the Gulf of Mexico in 2010, I argue that the catastrophe was less an example of a low probability-high catastrophe event than an…
Abstract
Using the case of the Deepwater Horizon blowout in the Gulf of Mexico in 2010, I argue that the catastrophe was less an example of a low probability-high catastrophe event than an instance of socially produced risks and insecurities associated with deepwater oil and gas production during the neoliberal period after 1980. The disaster exposes the deadly intersection of the aggressive enclosure of a new technologically risky resource frontier (the deepwater continental shelf) with what I call a frontier of neoliberalized risk, a lethal product of cut-throat corporate cost-cutting, the collapse of government oversight and regulatory authority and the deepening financialization and securitization of the oil market. These two local pockets of socially produced risk and wrecklessness have come to exceed the capabilities of what passes as risk management and energy security. In this sense, the Deepwater Horizon disaster was produced by a set of structural conditions, a sort of rogue capitalism, not unlike those which precipitated the financial meltdown of 2008. The forms of accumulation unleashed in the Gulf of Mexico over three decades rendered a high-risk enterprise yet more risky, all the while accumulating insecurities and radical uncertainties which made the likelihood of a Deepwater Horizon type disaster highly overdetermined.
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Laura Senier, Matthew Kearney and Jason Orne
This mixed-methods study reports on an outreach clinics program designed to deliver genetic services to medically underserved communities in Wisconsin.
Abstract
Purpose
This mixed-methods study reports on an outreach clinics program designed to deliver genetic services to medically underserved communities in Wisconsin.
Methodology/approach
We show the geographic distribution, funding patterns, and utilization trends for outreach clinics over a 20-year period. Interviews with program planners and outreach clinic staff show how external and internal constraints limited the program’s capacity. We compare clinic operations to the conceptual models guiding program design.
Findings
Our findings show that state health officials had to scale back financial support for outreach clinic activities while healthcare providers faced increasing pressure from administrators to reduce investments in charity care. These external and internal constraints led to a decline in the overall number of patients served. We also find that redistribution of clinics to the Milwaukee area increased utilization among Hispanics but not among African-Americans. Our interviews suggest that these patterns may be a function of shortcomings embedded in the planning models.
Research/Policy Implications
Planning models have three shortcomings. First, they do not identify the mitigation of health disparities as a specific goal. Second, they fail to acknowledge that partners face escalating profit-seeking mandates that may limit their capacity to provide charity services. Finally, they underemphasize the importance of seeking trusted partners, especially in working with communities that have been historically marginalized.
Originality/Value
There has been little discussion about equitably leveraging genetic advances that improve healthcare quality and efficacy. The role of State Health Agencies in mitigating disparities in access to genetic services has been largely ignored in the sociological literature.
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The management of children′s literature is a search for value andsuitability. Effective policies in library and educational work arebased firmly on knowledge of materials, and on…
Abstract
The management of children′s literature is a search for value and suitability. Effective policies in library and educational work are based firmly on knowledge of materials, and on the bibliographical and critical frame within which the materials appear and might best be selected. Boundaries, like those between quality and popular books, and between children′s and adult materials, present important challenges for selection, and implicit in this process are professional acumen and judgement. Yet also there are attitudes and systems of values, which can powerfully influence selection on grounds of morality and good taste. To guard against undue subjectivity, the knowledge frame should acknowledge the relevance of social and experiential context for all reading materials, how readers think as well as how they read, and what explicit and implicit agendas the authors have. The good professional takes all these factors on board.
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Mahmoud Elmarzouky, Khaled Hussainey and Tarek Abdelfattah
This paper aims to investigate the relationship between key audit matters (KAMs) and audit costs and whether board size and independence affect this relationship. Furthermore…
Abstract
Purpose
This paper aims to investigate the relationship between key audit matters (KAMs) and audit costs and whether board size and independence affect this relationship. Furthermore, this paper examines the moderating effect of corporate governance on the relationship between KAMs and audit costs.
Design/methodology/approach
The authors hypothesise that disclosing more KAMs in the audit report is positively associated with audit costs because of the greater effort. The agency theory suggests that firms with good governance will mitigate the agency conflict of interest and improve financial reporting quality. Thus, good governance might moderate the relationship between reported KAMs and audit costs. The authors use a quantitative approach. The authors are using a sample of the UK FTSE all-share non-financial firms from 2014 to 2018 for the UK Financial Times Stock Exchange all-share non-financial firms.
Findings
The authors provide evidence of a significant positive relationship between KAMs and audit costs. The relationship is relatively higher when considering the independent directors' percentage as a moderating factor. These results came consistent with the agency theory literature. However, the authors found no empirical evidence to support a moderating effect of board size on the relationship between KAMs and audit cost.
Practical implications
The finding benefits the regulatory setters to better understand the consequences of the new auditing standards. This paper has theoretical and practical implications for regulators, standard setters, professional bodies, shareholders and academics.
Originality/value
This paper contributes to the literature assessing the regulatory changes related to audit reform and adds to the debate on the impact on audit costs. This paper underlines governance factors as a moderating role in this relationship between KAMs and audit costs.