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The purpose of this paper is to examine whether healthcare leaders use evidence-based management (EBMgt) when facing major decisions and what types of evidence healthcare administrators consult during their decision-making. This study also intends to identify any relationship that might exist among adoption of EBMgt in healthcare management, attitudes towards EBMgt, demographic characteristics and organizational characteristics.

A cross-sectional study was conducted among US healthcare leaders. Spearman’s correlation and logistic regression were performed using the Statistical Package for the Social Sciences (SPSS) 23.0.

One hundred and fifty-four healthcare leaders completed the survey. The study results indicated that 90 per cent of the participants self-reported having used an EBMgt approach for decision-making. Professional experiences (87 per cent), organizational data (84 per cent) and stakeholders’ values (63 per cent) were the top three types of evidence consulted daily and weekly for decision-making. Case study (75 per cent) and scientific research findings (75 per cent) were the top two types of evidence consulted monthly or less than once a month. An exploratory, stepwise logistic regression model correctly classified 75.3 per cent of all observations for a dichotomous “use of EBMgt” response variable using three independent variables: attitude towards EBMgt, number of employees in the organization and the job position. Spearman’s correlation indicated statistically significant relationships between healthcare leaders’ use of EBMgt and healthcare organization bed size (r_s = 0.217, n = 152, p < 0.01), attitude towards EBMgt (r_s = 0.517, n = 152, p < 0.01), and the number of organization employees (r_s = 0.195, n = 152, p = 0.016).

This study generated new research findings on the practice of EBMgt in US healthcare administration decision-making.

Aim of the present monograph is the economic analysis of the role of MNEs regarding globalisation and digital economy and in parallel there is a reference and examination of some legal aspects concerning MNEs, cyberspace and e‐commerce as the means of expression of the digital economy. The whole effort of the author is focused on the examination of various aspects of MNEs and their impact upon globalisation and vice versa and how and if we are moving towards a global digital economy.

Treating people with alcohol problems can be very expensive. Hospital‐based community focused treatment has been a traditional response. However, treatment for this client group has developed into a very cost effective treatment option. Alcohol is exacting a heavy financial burden upon the limited resources within health care provision (Royal College of Physicians, 2001). The heavy burden placed upon primary care is reflected in the data. General practitioners make the highest number of referrals to the Specialist Alcohol Service (72%). The link to policy is clear with the Welsh Assembly placing greater focus on a condition specific specialist response (Welsh Assembly, 2001). Comparison with patients presenting to a 24‐hour emergency psychiatric assessment service at the district general hospital help define the alcohol service user group. Data confirms that a community‐focused response by specialist community psychiatric nurses is a cost effective and appropriate alternative to hospital admission.

Exploring the “How?” and “Why?” of children’s agency through the employment of strategies to listen and to participate within parent interviews, this chapter addresses various “agency routes” children used in the effort to contribute their voices to adult conversations. The generational relationship between children and parents is tempered by children’s ownership claims to shared spaces within the home, which allowed them the room to defy parents’ directives to “Go Away!” Children utilized three different tactics of defiance (overt, quiet, and covert) in the attempt to listen and be heard, and in the process were motivated to participate in five distinct ways, which included: (1) informative, (2) corrective, (3) instructive, (4) investigative, and (5) expressive participation. Concluding with a call to recognize children’s voices as more than merely “background noise” when transcribing interviews, I encourage researchers in childhood studies to potentially revisit data collected in the effort to further theorize children’s agency as situated within generationality, contributing to a recontextualized framework of analysis.

In 2010, the National Mediation Board (NMB) decided to base Railway Labor Act representation election outcomes on a simple majority of those voting, rather than on the majority of all eligible voters, as had been required earlier. This was widely expected to make it easier for unions to win rights to recognition in the railway and airline industries. We demonstrate that investors expected that this change would favor unions, just as they earlier had expected rule changes that made voting easier (in 2002 and 2007) to be favorable to unions, affecting stock prices of railway and airline corporations. After the 2010 change in election procedure, between 77% and 91% of all eligible employees returned ballots in NMB elections, demonstrating that a significant portion of nonvoters were not opposed to union representation, but simply were unwilling or were unable to vote. We conclude that the current voting process is fairer than the old one. However, it has not resulted in a tide of union success in these representation elections. Apparently scholars, the parties themselves, and investors all over-estimated the practical consequences of changing NMB representation election procedures.

AT the present time leisure is a subject which does not attract much serious attention. Sporadic discussions break out now and again among small groups; or it provides a topic for the popular press during the ‘silly season’. There is, however, a distinct possibility that in the measurable future an Institute of Leisure Study will be needed.

The hegemony of neoliberal rhetoric in Western societies places an increasing emphasis on an individual’s ability to negotiate risk. The purpose of this chapter is to better understand how – within this cultural context – voluntary risk-takers think about the significance of their potentially dangerous practices. My specific focus is the Chicago parkour community. Parkour is a new lifestyle sport in which practitioners use features of the urban environment (e.g., stairwells and retaining walls) as obstacles on which to climb, jump, run and vault.

Data for this project were derived from four years of participant-observation within the Chicago parkour community and semi-structured interviews with 40 participants.

I argue that the dangers encountered while practicing parkour are given social significance through the interplay of what I call rites of risk and rituals of symbolic safety. These rites and rituals provide a meaningful framework for activities that represent a threat to the self (e.g., performing a jump in which a mistake could be fatal). Further, I contrast my findings with the notion of edgework (which highlights the death-defying aspects of an activity). Members of the Chicago parkour community often downplayed the physical perils involved in their sport to highlight safety protocols. In this sense, parkour practitioners are less like “edgeworkers” and more like “hedgeworkers” – symbolically demonstrating protections taken against uncertainly (i.e., hedging one’s bets).

Like all ethnographic studies of a single field site, there are limits to generalizability. Future research should explore the connections between hedgework and other voluntary risk-taking activities (in and outside of lifestyle sports).

Describes the means by which the performance of property investments can be measured and analysed. Reports on the results of a questionnaire survey looking into the practice of UK independent property portfolio managers. Suggests that a survey of financial institutions, namely insurance companies and pension funds, would reveal more about the objectives of performance measurement.

SEPTEMBER this year will be unique in the history of the librarian in England in that for the first time in nearly sixty years the annual conference of the Library Association has already become a memory only. There are those who profess to believe that the conference should be restored to the autumn months. It may be suggested on the other hand that the attendance at Margate lent no assistance to that point of view; indeed, the Margate conference was one of the most pleasant, one of the most successful, of which we have record. Nevertheless, if it can be proved that any large body of librarians was unable to be present owing to the change of month, it appears to us that the matter should be considered sympathetically. Although no one holds any longer the view that one week's attendance at a conference will teach more than many months' study in hermit‐like seclusion—the words and sentiments are those of James Duff Brown—because to‐day there is much more intimate communication between librarians than there was when that sentiment was expressed, there is enormous value, and the adjective is not an exaggeration, in one large meeting of librarians in body in the year. It is an event to which every young librarian looks forward as the privilege to be his when he reaches a high enough position in the service; attendance is a privilege that no librarian anywhere would forego. And this, in spite of the fact that there is usually a grumble because the day is so full of meetings that there is very little chance of such recreation as a seaside, or indeed any other, place visited, usually provides for the delegates.