bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025_split huggingface dataset:
Disclosure practices and governance quality: evidence from micro finance institutions
Authors: Ahmed Kamran , Khan Rakib 
Published: September 2016

Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to assess the role of governance structure and composition and other institution-specific attributes in disclosure practices of microfinance institutions (MFIs) in an emerging market contest. Bangladesh is a country which is considered to be a pioneer in providing micro-finance to the underprivileged people to improve their entrepreneurial capacity.

Design/methodology/approach
The paper utilises a survey of three groups of users to elicit their opinions and the recommendation of the donor and regulatory agencies to construct a disclosure index. Further ordinary least squares regressions, both parametric and non-parametric, are used to analyse the association between disclosure levels and governance mechanisms and other MFI characteristics.

Findings
Using a large sample of 564 MFI firm-year reports in Bangladesh, the results show that the overall disclosure levels were around 70 per cent in 2010 and have not improved since 2004. The results also show that the frequency of board meetings, qualifications of MFIs’ board members and MFI size are positively associated with MFIs disclosures. However, board size, board independence, audit firm and other control variables have no such effect on disclosure. This implies that MFIs should focus in board effectiveness rather than its composition.

Research limitations/implications
Using a general purpose financial reporting framework, the paper examines how effective boards can improve financial reporting standards of MFIs for better monitoring by international donor agencies, regulatory bodies and depositors.

Originality/value
This is the first substantive study, to the best of the authors’ knowledge, that uses data based on a questionnaire survey and the annual financial statements of a large sample of MFIs from Bangladesh that has been at the forefront of microfinance in emerging countries. Prior studies only used Web-based information, namely, Mix-Market, which ranks country on the basis of its disclosure criteria supplied voluntarily by MFIs, and thus suffer from selection bias. In this study, an attempt has been made to develop an empirical model to explain the role of governance quality in disclosure practices of MFIs.
The valuation of fixed assets in Norwegian health care: an account of change agent struggle
Authors: Kaarbøe Katarina , Robbestad Anne 
Published: September 2016

PurposeThis paper aims to explore how accrual accounting is translated into new accounting norms and what role change agents have had in that process. The main research question is: How were private sector accounting norms translated within the Norwegian public health sector?Design/methodology/approachThis study uses framing theory to understand how the different actors involved in the translation frame their arguments. The field study considers the specific case of public health care. The main data sources are archival data combined with semi-structured interviews.FindingsThe empirical study uses framing theory to show how the Big Four consultants worked as change agents to impose a valuation based on a full accrual accounting logic. The first finding shows that there are two framing processes to valuate fixed assets. The central government has a pragmatic framing trying to get the budget in balance, while the Big Four consultants together with private sector accounting experts have an accrual accounting ideology framing. The second finding shows how the Big Four consultants become a change agent by forming alliances with accounting experts, health enterprises and politicians. These findings point to the need to focus explicitly on the role of change agents as drivers of public sector organizational change and the important role accounting as a tool can have.Practical implicationsThe paper is likely to be useful for governments, practitioners and researchers to gain knowledge about the implementation of accrual accounting.Originality/valueThis paper contributes to our understanding of change agent's role in successfully introducing a new accounting logic in the public sector, especially within an inter-organizational setting.
Management controls for minimising risk in public-private partnerships in a developing country
Authors: Appuhami Ranjith , Perera Sujatha 
Published: September 2016

Purpose
The purpose of the study is to examine the use of management controls by a public partner to minimise risks associated with a public-private partnership (PPP) in a developing country.

Design/methodology/approach
Using case study method, management controls used in a power project formed as a PPP are examined based on data gathered from semi-structured interviews and documentary analysis.

Findings
The study reveals that the public partner of the PPP used multiple controls depending on the nature of risks in different phases of the project. While bureaucratic control was the predominantly used control pattern throughout the three phases (namely, selecting, building and operating) of the PPP, trust-based controls also played an important role. Market controls on the other hand played, somewhat, a nominal role, particularly in the selecting phase of the project. The study also highlights the problematic nature of forming PPPs in developing countries despite the various benefits associated with such organisational arrangements. Additionally, the study provides insights into how certain contextual features of developing countries affect the way in which controls are applied.

Practical implications
The insights provided in this paper would be beneficial to policy makers, in developing countries in particular, when making decisions in relation to implementation, management and risk control of PPPs.

Originality/value
This study makes an original contribution to the existing literature on PPPs by examining the way in which management controls are used to minimise risk in a PPP in a developing country.
Autism, sexual offending, and the criminal justice system
Authors: Mogavero Melanie Clark 
Published: September 2016

PurposeThere has been growing concern among stakeholders about individuals with autism spectrum disorders (ASD) and sex offending as research supports an indirect association. The purpose of this paper is threefold: first, bring more awareness of the sexuality and deviant/criminal sexual behavior among those with ASD to stakeholders in the criminal justice system (CJS); second, demonstrate that much of the deviant or sexual offending behavior exhibited among those with ASD is often a manifestation of their ASD symptoms and not malice; and third, demonstrate the necessity to address specific needs of individuals with ASD who enter the CJS due to criminal sexual behavior.Design/methodology/approachThis paper provides an overview of the ASD symptomology, including the diagnostic changes, a review of the literature on ASD and sexuality, which includes deviant sexual behavior and sexual offending.FindingsThe author linked examples of deviant or sexual behavior in the research literature to the ASD symptomology and described how the symptomology explains such behavior.Originality/valueSexual offending among those with ASD has received little research outside the mental health field. This review is of particular importance to those in the CJS unfamiliar with ASD, as they should handle them differently with regard to formal interviewing, measures of competency, capacity, and sentencing.
Developing involvement during a programme of recovery research
Authors: Slade Mike , Trivedi Premila , Chandler Ruth , Leamy Mary 
Published: September 2016

Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to consider the process of working with a Lived Experience Advisory Group (LEAP) and its outcomes in REFOCUS, a large five-year programme of recovery research.

Design/methodology/approach
Narrative reflections on the experience of working with LEAP were collected from five members and the chair of LEAP, two REFOCUS researchers and the principal investigator. These were synthesised to show both the process and outcomes of LEAP involvement in REFOCUS, and how involvement evolved organically over time.

Findings
Individual reflective accounts showed how working with LEAP impacted (to a greater or lesser extent) on each individual involved in the process, providing new insights and influencing, to varying degrees, the way in which they then worked with LEAP. Synthesis of the reflections showed how these changes impacted organically on LEAP’s process of involvement, with a shift in LEAP’s role from being purely consultative/advisory towards one which was much more about co-production, with LEAP pro-actively contributing to some aspects of REFOCUS in the later stages of the study.

Practical implications
The authors stress the importance of considering process as well as outcomes in patient and public involvement, and make practical recommendations for improving both in future programmes of research.

Originality/value
This is the first empirical evaluation of user and carer involvement and its development during a large recovery research programme.
Aims for service user involvement in mental health training: staying human
Authors: Lea Laura , Holttum Sue , Cooke Anne , Riley Linda 
Published: September 2016

Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to examine the impact of service user involvement in mental health training but little is known about what staff, trainees and service users themselves want to achieve.

Design/methodology/approach
Three separate focus groups were held with service users, training staff and trainees associated with a clinical psychology training programme. Thematic analysis was used to identify aims for involvement.

Findings
All groups wanted to ensure that future professionals “remained human” in the way they relate to people who use services. Service user and carer involvement was seen as a way of achieving this and mitigating the problem of “them and us thinking”. The authors found that groups had some aims in common and others that were unique. Service users highlighted the aim of achieving equality with mental health professionals as an outcome of their involvement in teaching.

Research limitations/implications
The samples were small and from one programme.

Practical implications
Common aims can be highlighted to foster collaborative working. However, the findings suggest that service users and carers, staff and trainees may also have different priorities for learning. These need to be recognised and addressed by mental health educators.

Originality/value
This was the first study to explore in depth the differing aims of different stakeholder groups for service user involvement. Clarification of aims is a vital first step in developing any future measure of the impact of service user involvement on mental health practice.
Learning from stories of mental distress in occupational therapy education
Authors: Walsh Susan 
Published: September 2016

Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to describe processes of learning from personal experiences of mental distress when mental health service users participate in occupational therapy education with tutors and students who have also had experiences of mental distress.

Design/methodology/approach
A post-structural theoretical perspective was applied to stories which emerged from the research process. Semi-structured group and individual interviews were used with three service users, three students and three tutors (including the author) who had all had, at some time in their lives, experiences of mental distress.

Findings
Stories based on previously hidden personal experiences of mental distress began to shift dominant understandings. Further, as educators, service users challenged whose authority it is to speak about mental distress and permitted different narrative positions for students and tutors. However, technologies of power and technologies of self of powerful discourses in professional education continued to disqualify and exclude personal knowledges. Learning from stories requires a critical approach to storytelling to expose how hidden power relations maintain some knowledges as dominant. Further, learning requires narrative work, which was often hidden and unaccounted for, to navigate complex and contradictory positions in learning.

Social implications
Although storytelling based on personal experience can help develop a skilled and healthy mental health workforce, its impact will be limited without changes in classrooms, courses and higher education which support learning at the margins of personal/professional and personal/political learning.

Originality/value
Learning from stories of mental distress requires conditions which take account of the hidden practices which operate in mental health professional education.
Why do firms adopt enterprise risk management (ERM)? Empirical evidence from France
Authors: Khan Majid Jamal , Hussain Dildar , Mehmood Waqar 
Published: September 2016

Purpose
Enterprise risk management (ERM) is a risk management approach that calls for integrating all the organization-wide risks and takes a portfolio view point of managing organizational risks. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the factor that influence a firm’s decision to adopt ERM.

Design/methodology/approach
The authors employ a particular technique of survival data analysis, the Cox proportional hazards model, to investigate the factors that lead towards the decision of initiating an ERM programme. The authors constructed a unique sample of French firms derived from the information in 315 corporate news announcements for the hiring of a chief risk officer and information retrieved from publicly available annual reports to identify firms that initiated an ERM programme, over the period from year 1999 to 2008.

Findings
The results suggest that besides the growing international and local regulatory pressure, factors that are internal to the organizations like the expected probability of financial distress and its explicit and implicit costs, poor earnings performance and the existence of growth opportunities play vital role in motivating firms to adopt ERM. It was also found that corporate governance practices such as the independence of the board may also lead towards an initiation of the ERM.

Originality/value
This study makes theoretical and methodological contribution the ERM literature by employing a novel methodology and presenting empirical evidence based on data form French firms.
Effects of trust and distrust on effort and budgetary slack: an experiment
Authors: Gago-Rodríguez Susana , Naranjo-Gil David 
Published: September 2016

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to evaluate whether trust and distrust in upper-level managers exert different influences on the budgetary proposals of middle managers. Such proposals involve different levels of managerial effort that impact overall budgetary slack.Design/methodology/approachThis paper is based on a laboratory experiment with 160 business managers.FindingsThe results show that the more (less) middle managers trust (distrust) their upper-level managers, the more (the less) effort they commit to budgetary proposals. The authors also find that middle managers with low trust are prone to invest more effort and thus create less budgetary slack than managers with high distrust. The results also show that the introduction of suspicion does not vary this initial choice of effort and budgetary slack.Research limitations/implicationsThis paper shows the importance of trust and distrust as informal control systems in organizations. The findings support the importance of extrinsic motivation for enhancing effort and reducing budgetary slack. There are a wide range of exogenous variables that have an effect on the development of trust and distrust.Practical implicationsPractitioners may improve their management control by facilitating trust and preventing distrust in interpersonal relationships because both are informal controls that can reduce and increase, respectively, dysfunctional behaviors in organizations, such as budgetary slack.Originality/valueThis paper is among the first to show the distinct effects of trust and distrust (high and low) in the efforts of middle managers. This study provides a dynamic viewpoint of trust through the introduction of suspicion in a budget negotiation.
A holistic fuzzy approach to create competitive advantage via quality management in services industry (case study: life-insurance services)
Authors: Vaziri Jalil , Beheshtinia Mohammad Ali 
Published: September 2016

Purpose
In today’s highly competitive business environment, the main approach of all businesses is to optimally provide customers’ requirements and gain their satisfaction and trust. The process of value creation for customers consists of value chain activities which are concentrated on providing maximum level of customers’ needs. The purpose of this paper is to propose a holistic model by which the quality, the transferred value to customers and the firm’s competitive advantage would be improved simultaneously under budget constraint.

Design/methodology/approach
This study uses a combination of several quality management (QM) tools including SERVQUAL, Kano’s model, quality function deployment and knapsack problem. Moreover, the triangular fuzzy logic is used throughout the model to address data uncertainty and increase the model flexibility. The proposed model includes five steps which are implemented in the case study of life-insurance services.

Findings
The lack of coordination and cooperation between the people working in the inherently related sections leads to incorrect decisions and also the failure in implementation of adopted decisions. Hence, the interface between quality and strategic management should be well considered in organizations. The model generates an integrated vision to the process of decision making in this interface. The framework has several significant outcomes which would be used by both researchers and practitioners.

Research limitations/implications
The study shows that the individual elements of decision-making process in the interface between quality and strategic management are related to each other, recommending the need to coordinated and consistent effort between different parts of a firm. The results are limited by the sample size and geography of the survey.

Originality/value
This paper is among the few in the literature that have presented a holistic and step-by-step approach to the decisions on the intersection between two areas of quality and strategic management, recommending the managers to not have insular look to the issues and try to make a sufficient and efficient relationship between the different sections. This study is an important step in reflecting these relations and the need to create an integrated decision model.
Simulating surface tension of Sn-based lead free solder using an artificial neural network
Authors: Wu Min , Su Xiangyu 
Published: September 2016

PurposeBecause of the complexity of relationship between surface tension and its decisive factors, such as temperature, concentration, electronic density, molar atomic volume and electro-negativity, a reasonable predicting model of surface tension of Sn-based solder alloys has not been developed yet. The paper aims to address the surface tension issue that has to be considered if the new lead free solder will be applied for electronics.Design/methodology/approachUsing an artificial neural network (ANN) model with back-propagation (BP) algorithm, the surface tension for Sn-based binary solder alloys was simulated, and the comparison between the simulating results and data from experiments and literatures was analyzed as well. In addition, the relationship between surface tension and its decisive factors would be discussed based on the ANN and orthogonal design methods.FindingsIt is shown that the predicting model of surface tension of Sn-based solder alloys is constructed according to the BP–ANN theory, and the predicted value from the BP–ANN is in excellent agreement with the experimental results. The surface tension of Sn-based solders is determined by five factors, i.e. temperature, concentration, electronic density, molar atomic volume and electro-negativity. Among of the factors, molar atomic volume is major factor, and the order of degree of influence on surface tension is molar atomic volume > electro-negativity > electronic > density > concentration > temperature. Moreover, a simply reasonable equation is proposed to estimate the surface tension for Sn-based solders.Originality/valueThe five decisive factors of surface tension for Sn-based binary solder alloys have been analyzed theoretically, and a reasonable model of surface tension for Sn-based binary solder alloys is proposed as well. It is shown that ANN theory will be applied well to simulate the surface tension of Sn-based lead free solder.
Effect of P and Ge doping on microstructure of Sn-0.3Ag-0.7Cu/Ni-P solder joints
Authors: Yan Xingchen , Xu Kexin , Wang Junjie , Wei Xicheng , Wang Wurong 
Published: September 2016

Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to comparatively investigate the microstructure and interfacial intermetallic compound (IMC) layer of Cu/SACPG/Ni and Cu/SAC0307/Ni solder joints after thermal aging.

Design/methodology/approach
The specimens were thermally aged at 150°C for 0, 24, 168 and 500 h. The microstructure and morphology of the interface IMC layer were observed by means of scanning electron microscope. The IMCs and the solder bump surface were analyzed by EDS. Moreover, the thickness of IMC layer was measured by using the image analysis software.

Findings
The morphology of IMC of Cu/SAC0307/Ni solder joint was consistent with that of the Cu/SACPG/Ni joint, which indicates that the addition of P and Ge had little effect on the IMC formation. The needle-like (Cu,Ni)6Sn5 was formed at the interface of solder/Ni solder joints. Meanwhile, the tiny particles inferred as Ag3Sn phase attached to the surface of (Cu,Ni)6Sn5. The growth rate of IMC layer of the Cu/SACPG/Ni joint was smaller than that of Cu/SAC0307/Ni joint with aging time increasing, which means the addition of trace P and Ge can slightly suppress the diffusion rate of the interfacial IMC.

Originality/value
There are no previous studies on the formation mechanism of the IMC layer of SAC0307 solder alloys with P and Ge addition.