bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025_split huggingface dataset:
Content requirements for narrative reporting in the public sector: a contextual perspective
Authors: Igboke Benson , Raj Razaq 
Published: October 2021

PurposeAccounting literature is definite about the content and presentation of traditional financial statements, but the basic information to be provided in the narrative reports of public sector entities remains unsettled. This paper aims to investigate the needs and expectations of stakeholders (primary users and preparers) regarding the content and presentation of narrative reports in the public sector of Nigeria.Design/methodology/approachThe research used a qualitative approach that draws on stakeholder and contingency theories to collect primary data through in-depth individual interviews using semi-structured questionnaires. Data were analysed by a thematic method using the NVivo 11 Pro software package.FindingsThe study reveals that financial statements constitute the statutory financial reports of public sector entities in Nigeria as narrative reporting is undeveloped, both as a concept and in practice. Stakeholders believe that narrative reporting is required to enhance the accountability usefulness of the annual financial reports published by the government and public agencies. Data analysis further reveals that public perception about the management of government financial resources influences the information needs of stakeholders regarding financial reporting. In addition, stakeholders consider the approved budget as the cornerstone of public financial reporting. Accordingly, users and other stakeholders expect public sector narrative reports to provide budget-based performance information that relates the accounting data presented in the financial statements to the key budgetary provisions, in both financial outlays and service delivery achievements. Stakeholders also expect narrative reports to be presented in plain language and provide information about the impact of financial decisions and actions on the basic socioeconomic variables that signpost citizens’ well-being, such as education, health care, employment and security.Practical implicationsThe study suggests that the inclusion of narrative information in the statutory financial reports of public entities in Nigeria is imperative and should engage the attention of policymakers and relevant regulatory authorities. In addition, a more elaborate systematic investigation of the information needs of stakeholders in Nigeria should be undertaken by relevant units of government.Originality/valueTo the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first documented research on narrative reporting and the information needs of a broad range of stakeholders in the public sector of Nigeria. The paper identifies the approved budget as the focal point of governmental financial reporting, and a clear linkage between budget provisions, accounting results and service delivery achievements as the basic content of a narrative report in developing countries.
Active personalized construction safety training using run-time data collection in physical and virtual reality work environments
Authors: Jacobsen Emil L. , Solberg Alex , Golovina Olga , Teizer Jochen 
Published: October 2021

Purpose
Accidents resulting from poorly planned or setup work environments are a major concern within the construction industry. While traditional education and training of personnel offer well-known approaches for establishing safe work practices, serious games in virtual reality (VR) are increasingly being used as a complementary approach for active learning experiences. By taking full advantage of data collection and the interactions possible in the virtual environment, the education and training of construction personnel improves by using non-biased feedback and immersion.

Design/methodology/approach
This research presents a framework for the generation and automated assessment of VR data. The proposed approach is tested and evaluated in a virtual work environment consisting of multiple hazards. VR requires expensive hardware, technical knowledge and user acceptance to run the games effectively. An effort has been made to transfer the advantages VR gives to a physical setup. This is done using a light detection and ranging sensing system, which collects similar data and enables the same learning experiences.

Findings
Encouraging results on the participants’ experiences are presented and discussed based on actual needs in the Danish construction industry. An outlook presents future avenues towards enhancing existing learning methods.

Practical implications
The proposed method will help develop active learning environments, which could lead to safer construction work stations in the future, either through VR or physical simulations.

Originality/value
The utilization of run-time data collection and automatic analysis allows for better personalized feedback in the construction safety training. Furthermore, this study investigates the possibility of transferring the benefits of this system to a physical setup that is easier to use on construction sites without investing in a full VR setup.
Status demotion in hierarchical loyalty programs and customers’ revenge and avoidance intentions
Authors: Banik Shanta , Gao Yongqiang , Rabbanee Fazlul K. 
Published: October 2021

Purpose
Status demotion in hierarchical loyalty programs (HLPs) has received considerable academic attention. However, little is known about whether status demotion engenders two widely recognised behavioural intentions: revenge and avoidance. This study aims to make up this gap by examining the effects of status demotion on customers’ revenge and avoidance intentions. The underlying mechanism and boundary conditions of these effects are also explored.

Design/methodology/approach
Two studies were conducted to test the hypotheses. Study 1 was conducted using a structured survey from 347 active HLP members/customers of Chinese airlines. Study 2 used an online experiment amongst 268 active HLP airline customers in Australia. Partial least squares-based structural equation modelling and Hayes’ (2013) PROCESS macro were used for data analysis.

Findings
The results of Study 1 show that status demotion increases customers’ revenge and avoidance intentions simultaneously. Meanwhile, these effects are more significant for demoted customers with an external locus of causality than those with an internal locus of causality and demoted customers with higher entitlement tend to possess more revenge intentions than avoidance intentions. Study 2 further identified perceived inequity as a mechanism, which links status demotion to revenge and avoidance intentions of demoted customers.

Research limitations/implications
This study examines demoted customers’ revenge and avoidance intentions amongst Chinese and Australian airline travellers. Future research may focus on actual behaviour and test the current study’s model in cross-cultural and cross-industry settings.

Practical implications
Managers should deal with demotion decisions carefully as the failure to manage outraged customers may weaken customer-company relationships.

Originality/value
This study extends the existing literature on relationship marketing and HLPs by offering a better understanding of how and under what conditions status demotion elicits customers’ intentions for revenge and avoidance.
Understanding students' perceptions and attitude toward learning about internships in a business school
Authors: Ho Henry Wai Leong , Squires Scot 
Published: October 2021

PurposeInternships are an integral part of a college curriculum, yet students are sometimes unaware of how to secure this opportunity. This research aims to determine efficient methods to provide information to students within the given majors, identify barriers on what is stopping students from seeking out internships earlier and identify the appropriate time for students to receive internship information.Design/methodology/approachThis study undertook descriptive research in a preliminary investigation of the undergraduate business students' attitude toward learning about the internship program offered by a business school of a state funded university in Michigan, USA. The data-collection instrument consisted of structured closed-ended questions relevant to undergraduate business students' perceptions and attitude toward learning about the internship program.FindingsThe results of this survey of 631 undergraduate students revealed a relationship between gender and the willingness to gain information about internships. Additional findings revealed that students who received information at the beginning of their schooling were more likely to plan for the internship in advance. Finally, students who preferred to receive information about internships multiple times were most likely to contact their academic advisor or internship director for more resources.Originality/valueTogether, the results of these findings can be used for current institution and other business schools with similar setting to reduce the barriers students face and allow undergraduate business students greater accessibility to internship positions.
Social media and recruitment: examining (counter) productive diversity messages
Authors: Brouer Robyn , Badawy Rebecca , Stefanone Michael 
Published: October 2021

Purpose
This study aims to explore the consequences of inconsistent diversity-related signals for job seekers. Information sources include strategically crafted corporate signals and independent sources. The authors seek to understand the effect of inconsistent diversity signals on job seekers attitudes and behavior during recruitment.

Design/methodology/approach
An experiment was conducted wherein two samples from job-seeking populations were first exposed to a fictitious corporate website and then to LinkedIn profiles of that organization’s employees, with systematically varied diversity signals.

Findings
Results demonstrated that conflicting diversity signals had negative effects on perceived organizational attractiveness in the student sample (N = 427) and on organizational agreeableness in the working sample (N = 243). Negative organizational attraction was related to a lower likelihood of participants applying.

Practical implications
This work provides a stark but an important message to practitioners: signaling diversity-related values on corporate websites may backfire for organizations that actually lack diversity.

Originality/value
Few studies have combined communication theories with recruitment to examine the link between diversity signals and inconsistent information gathered via social media.
A perspective on embracing emerging technologies research for organizational behavior
Authors: Philip Jestine 
Published: October 2021

Purpose
Emerging technologies are capable of enhancing organizational- and individual-level outcomes. The organizational behavior (OB) field is beginning to pursue opportunities for researching emerging technologies. This study aims to describe a framework consisting of white, black and grey boxes to demonstrate the tight coupling of phenomena and paradigms in the field and discusses deconstructing OB’s white box to encourage data-driven phenomena to coexist in the spatial framework.

Design/methodology/approach
A scoping literature review was conducted to offer a preliminary assessment of technology-oriented research currently occurring in OB.

Findings
The literature search revealed two findings. First, the number of published papers on emerging technologies in top management journals has been increasing at a steady pace. Second, various theoretical perspectives at the micro- and macro- organizational level have been used so far for conducting technology-oriented research.

Originality/value
By conducting a scoping review of emerging technologies research in OB literature, this paper reveals a conceptual black box relating to technology-oriented research. The essay advocates for loosening OB’s tightly coupled white box to incorporate emerging technologies both as a phenomenon and as data analytical techniques.
A PZT-based electromechanical impedance method for monitoring the moisture content of wood
Authors: Zhai Quan , Zhang Jicheng , Du Guofeng , Rao Yulong , Liu Xiaoyu 
Published: October 2021

Purpose
At present, piezoelectric impedance technology has been used in the study of wood damage monitoring. However, little effort has been made in the research on the application of piezoelectric impedance system to monitor the change of wood moisture content (MC). The monitoring method of wood MC is used by piezoelectric impedance technique in this study.

Design/methodology/approach
One piezoceramic transducer is bonded to the surface of wood specimens. The MC of the wood specimens increases gradually from 0% to 60% with 10% increments; the mechanical impedance of the wood specimen will change, and the change in the mechanical impedance of the structure is reflected by monitoring the change in the electrical impedance of lead zirconate titanate. Therefore, this paper investigates the relationship between wood MC change and piezoelectric impedance change to verify the feasibility of the piezoelectric impedance method for monitoring wood MC change.

Findings
The experiment verified that the real part of impedance of the wood increased with the increase of wood MC. Besides, the damage index root mean square deviation is introduced to quantify the damage degree of wood under different MC. At the same time, the feasibility and validity of this experiment were verified from the side by finite element simulation. Finally, MC monitoring by piezoelectric impedance technique is feasible.

Originality/value
To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this work is the first to apply piezoelectric ceramics to the monitoring of wood MC, which provides a theoretical basis for the follow-up study of a wide range of wood components and even wood structure MC changes.
Integrating advances in population and evolutionary ecology with conservation strategy through long‐term studies of red‐billed choughs
Authors: Reid Jane M. , Bignal Eric , Bignal Sue , McCracken Davy I. , Fenn Sarah R. , Trask Amanda E. , Monaghan Pat 
Published: October 2021

Abstract

Conceptual and methodological advances in population and evolutionary ecology are often pursued with the ambition that they will help identify demographic, ecological and genetic constraints on population growth rate (λ), and ultimately facilitate evidence‐based conservation. However, such advances are often decoupled from conservation practice, impeding translation of scientific understanding into effective conservation and of conservation‐motivated research into wider conceptual understanding.

We summarise key outcomes from long‐term studies of a red‐billed chough Pyrrhocorax pyrrhocorax population of conservation concern, where we proactively aimed to achieve the dual and interacting objectives of advancing population and evolutionary ecology and advancing effective conservation.

Estimation of means, variances and covariances in key vital rates from individual‐based demographic data identified temporal and spatial variation in subadult survival as key constraints on λ, and simultaneously provided new insights into how vital rates can vary as functions of demographic structure, natal conditions and parental life history.

Targeted analyses showed that first‐year survival increased with prey abundance, implying that food limitation may constrain λ. First‐year survival then decreased dramatically, threatening population viability and prompting emergency supplementary feeding interventions. Detailed evaluations suggested that the interventions successfully increased first‐year survival in some years and additionally increased adult survival and successful reproduction, thereby feeding back to inform intervention refinements and understanding of complex ecological constraints on λ.

Genetic analyses revealed novel evidence of expression of a lethal recessive allele, and demonstrated how critically small effective population size can arise, thereby increasing inbreeding and loss of genetic variation. Population viability analyses parameterised with all available demographic and genetic data showed how ecological and genetic constraints can interact to limit population viability, and identified ecological management as of primacy over genetic management to ensure short‐term persistence of the focal population.

This case study demonstrates a full iteration through the sequence of primary science, evidence‐based intervention, quantitative evaluation and feedback that is advocated in conservation science but still infrequently achieved. It thereby illustrates how pure science advances informed conservation actions to ensure the (short‐term) stability of the target population, and how conservation‐motivated analyses fed back to advance fundamental understanding of population processes.
Functional groups, determinism and the dynamics of a tropical forest
Authors: Rubio Vanessa E. , Swenson Nathan G. 
Published: October 2021

Abstract

Unravelling the drivers of forests dynamics is one of the main challenges in tree community ecology. These drivers include niche differentiation, dispersal limitation and stochasticity. Previous work has demonstrated that these mechanisms likely interact such that no one process is responsible for forest dynamics.

One possibility is that the functional composition in a forest changes in a deterministic fashion, but the abundances of individual species that are functionally similar and have similar life‐history strategies drift in a neutral fashion. This framework aligns with the functional group‐based version of the neutral theory proposed more than 30 years ago, but it has remained poorly understood and is not well‐integrated in tree community ecology.

To investigate the possibility that determinism and neutrality may operate on the functional and species levels, respectively, we studied the long‐term dynamics of trees on Barro Colorado Island, Panama. Specifically, we sorted tree species into functional groups. We defined them as groups of species that cluster together based upon continuous functional trait measurements that are believed to reflect key life‐history trade‐offs. This information was then used to quantify the observed species and functional group dynamics in the forest and to compare them to that expected from neutral simulations.

We found that forest dynamics are likely governed by deterministic processes at the between‐functional group level where species relative abundances change or drift through time within group. Species rank distributions for each functional group remained relatively stable suggesting that these groups may act as broad adaptive zones for both common and rare species that may promote species coexistence. Moreover, we found that these functional groups associate with different habitats in the forest.

Synthesis. The results indicate that deterministic processes control the relative proportion of each functional group in the tropical forest studied and that individual species within groups may have apparently neutral dynamics. Furthermore, the results demonstrate that observed stable functional group relative proportions can be produced by deterministic or neutral dynamics, which underscores the importance of comparing the observed functional dynamics to that expected under neutral dynamics.
Cumulative impact assessments of multiple host species loss from plant diseases show disproportionate reductions in associated biodiversity
Authors: Mitchell Ruth J. , Bellamy Paul E. , Broome Alice , Ellis Chris J. , Hewison Richard L. , Iason Glenn R. , Littlewood Nick A. , Newey Scott , Pozsgai Gabor , Ray Duncan , Stockan Jenni A. , Stokes Victoria , Taylor Andy F. S. 
Published: October 2021

Abstract

Non‐native plant pests and pathogens are increasing exponentially, causing extirpation of foundation species. The impact of large‐scale declines in a single host on associated biodiversity is widely documented. However, the impact of multiple host loss on biodiversity and whether these impacts are multiplicative has not been assessed. Ecological theory suggests that systems with greater functional redundancy (alternative hosts) will be more resilient to the loss of sympatric hosts. We test this theory and show its importance in relation to pest/pathogen impact assessments.

We assessed the potential impact on biodiversity of the loss of two widely occurring sympatric European tree species, Fraxinus excelsior and Quercus petraea/robur, both of which are currently threatened by a range of pests and pathogens.

At the UK scale, the total number of associated species at risk of extirpation from plant diseases affecting these two sympatric hosts is greater than the sum of the associated species at risk from declines in either host alone. F. excelsior hosts 45 obligate species (species only found on that host) and Q. petraea/robur hosts 326. However, a decline in both these trees would impact 512 associated species, across multiple taxon groups, a 38% increase. Assessments at a local scale, 24 mixed F. excelsior–Q. petraea/robur woodlands revealed that these impacts may be even greater due to a lack of functional redundancy. Only 21% of sites were able to provide functional redundancy for F. excelsior and Q. petraea/robur associated species which can use other tree species. In most woodlands, the tree species required to provide functional redundancy were not present, although the site conditions were often suitable for them to grow.

Synthesis. Understanding of functional redundancy should be applied to assessments of pests/pathogens impact on biodiversity. In risk assessments, higher impact scores should be given to pests/pathogens affecting hosts occurring with other host plant species already impacted by pests/pathogens. Current pest/pathogen risk assessment approaches that ignore the cumulative, cascading effects shown in this study may allow an insidious, mostly overlooked, driver of biodiversity loss to continue.
The impact of COVID‐19 lockdown on perceived stress: The role of defence mechanisms and coping strategies
Authors: Gori Alessio , Topino Eleonora , Caretti Vincenzo 
Published: October 2021

AbstractThe COVID‐19 pandemic represents a unique global challenge. To deter its spread, several countries have put lockdown and physical distancing measures in place that could have potentially harmful consequences on people's mental health. Therefore, the aim of this study is to explore the relationship between anxiety and perceived stress in individuals who were experiencing the COVID‐19 lockdown measures, while also analyzing the impact of coping strategies interacting with defence mechanisms. A sample of 1408 individuals (Mage = 34.69; SD = 11.87) completed the Ten Item Perceived Stress Scale, State‐Trait Anxiety Inventory—Form X3, Coping Orientation to Problems Experienced and Forty‐Item Defense Style Questionnaire, after providing written informed consent. Results highlighted the significant impact of state anxiety levels on perceived stress, both directly and indirectly. The indirect pathways have been explored by performing three mixed serial‐parallel mediation analyses, where significant associations between coping strategies (Social Support, Avoidance Strategies, Positive Attitude, Problem‐solving and Turning to Religion) and mature, neurotic, or immature defences have been found. These findings may contribute to orientate prevention and intervention activity during the several management phases of COVID‐19.