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The purpose of this paper is to posit that it is possible to identify contributing factors for “never events,” preventable adverse events in the healthcare setting, and to develop “best practices” to prevent them.

This paper focuses on three specific never events: patient falls, pressure ulcers, and hospital acquired pneumonia. A model is suggested to identify “gold standard best practice” protocols to be used to prevent these events. A literature review identifies two categories of factors: uncontrollable patient‐related factors and controllable environmental related factors. The methodology is to use the Institute for Healthcare Improvement (IHI) Breakthrough Series Collaborative Model to develop best practice protocols for controllable environmental factors.

Controllable environmental variables may be positively impacted by using Theory of Inventive Problem Solving (TRIZ), Value Stream Mapping, Kanban, 5S technique, Reduction of Complexity, Total Production Maintenance, Poke‐Yoke, and Quick Change Overs. Controllable environmental variables may then be positively impacted by these methodologies and tools.

The tools and methods indicated have been used individually in the healthcare sector, but this approach has never been used in an integrated manner. The concept is to work with patient safety organizations in order to reduce never events in healthcare; events that, to date, have significantly increased the costs of healthcare and reduced the quality of processes and outcomes in healthcare.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the determinants of the volume of environmental disclosures and their quality, with particular focus on the role of audit committees (ACs) and the effects of the Smith report recommendations for the UK Corporate Governance Code.

Quantitative large sample analysis of UK FTSE350 companies for the period 2007-2011.

Firms with higher quality ACs make higher quality disclosures. Larger firms with block shareholders have greater volume of disclosures, whilst AC quality does not increase disclosure volume.

Findings are based on evidence from single country and imply further international comparative research.

ACs mitigate the requirement for prescriptive legislation on narrative accounting disclosures relating to environmental issues.

The paper contributes to research that has examined the relationship between corporate governance mechanisms, specifically ACs, and the quality of financial reporting by considering voluntary narrative disclosures on environmental matters.

This study aims to examine the impact of soft law and institutional signalling on voluntary reporting of environmentally sensitive companies in Thailand.

Environmental disclosures in annual reports and sustainability reports of 108 listed companies for the years 2010–2014 were analysed using a checklist of un-weighted scores combined with panel data modelling.

The results show increasing trends of voluntary reporting dominated by disclosures on emissions data. Thai sustainability reporting guidelines released in 2012 were found to have a significant effect on the amount of disclosures of companies in the agriculture and food sector only. Results show that the age of the company and media attention have a significant positive relationship with environmental disclosures. Profitability is found to have a negative relationship with the level of environmental disclosures.

This study adds to existing environmental reporting literature from the perspective of soft law and institutional signalling and their impact on environmental reporting in the context of an economically developing, environmentally sensitive and in a Buddhist cultural setting country, Thailand.

This paper looks at Thai environmental disclosures from the perspective of soft law and institutional signalling, which is an original and unique contribution to CSR literature, considered through the lens of institutional legitimacy.

The purpose of this paper is to provide a selected bibliography of recent resources on library instruction and information literacy.

The paper introduces and annotates periodical articles, monographs, and exhibition catalogues examining library instruction and information literacy.

The paper provides information about each source, discusses the characteristics of current scholarship, and describes sources that contain unique scholarly contributions and quality reproductions.

The information may be used by librarians and interested parties as a quick reference to literature on library instruction and information literacy.

Purpose – This study addresses the great apes' fatal situation in the wild by integrating perspectives from conservation biology, conflict research, and bioethics.

Design/methodology/approach – We introduce the great apes' red list status and describe habitat destruction and bushmeat commerce as main threats to their survival. We analyze the complex context in which great ape extinction takes place in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) and thereby focus on a threatening factor that is interlinked with habitat destruction and bushmeat commerce: armed conflict.

Findings – The study shows that some characteristics of so-called “New Wars” are apparent in the DRC and that they directly or indirectly impact the great apes' situation. Because the human role in the animals' extinction is so severe and so obvious, ethical consequences become apparent. Animal ethics (the welfare as well as the rights approach) has to acknowledge the severity of the situation of the great apes in the wild. Implications for the human–animal relationship and the human identity come into play. After all, we have to ask ourselves what it means for us and for coming generations if our nearest relatives are going to be extinct one day.

Practical implications – It is argued that conservation policy has to include insights from conflict research. Likewise, peacemaking has to address ecological consequences of warfare.

Originality/value – Our findings promote an interdisciplinary approach. Armed conflict as a threatening factor to great ape survival has so far largely been neglected within the literature on conservation biology as well as in conflict research.

This paper reviews the literature concerning the degree to which a universal European business management model exists now and is expected to develop in the future in response to European Union (EU) influences. The experiences of business organizations in Austria, Germany and Poland are presented as case evidence that the EU experience will increase the homogeneity of business management practices. The authors collected case study materials as part of an interdisciplinary project concerning EU enlargement. Outcomes include: a better understanding of business management during a period of EU growth in size and influence; and case materials for college level international business courses which highlight the cases discussed in the article.