Community Acknowledgment

Volunteers in non-profit groups are a valuable workforce that contributes to economic development and supports people in need in the U.S. However, many non-profit groups face challenges including engaging and sustaining volunteer participation, as well as increasing visibility of their work in the community. To support non-profit groups' service, we explored how engaging community members in the volunteer-acknowledgment process may have an impact. We set up workstations and invited community members to write thank-you cards to volunteers in non-profit groups. We conducted 14 interviews with volunteers and community members, collected and analyzed 25 thank-you cards. We found that the acknowledgment activity can help circulate social goods through multiple stakeholders, that authenticity was valued in the acknowledgment process, and that non-profit groups intended to distribute, reuse, and publicize the acknowledgments to utilize them to a fuller extent. Our contributions include expanding knowledge on experiences, needs, and impact of community acknowledgment from different stakeholders, as well as presenting design opportunities.

Towards responsible science and technology: How nanotechnology research and development is shaping risk governance practices in Australia

Incorporating perspectives of multiple stakeholders concerning the appropriate balance of risks and benefits of new and potentially disruptive technologies is thought to be a way of enhancing the societal relevance and positive impacts of those technologies. A risk governance approach can be instrumental in achieving balance among diverse stakeholders, as it enables decision-making processes informed by multiple dimensions of risk. This paper applies a risk governance approach to retrospectively examine the development of nanotechnology research and development (R&D) in Australia to identify how risk governance is reflected in the practices of a range of stakeholders. We identify ten risk-related challenges specific to nanotechnology R&D based on a review of the international literature, which provided the foundation for documenting how those working in the Australian nanotechnology sector responded to these global risk-related challenges. This case study research draws on a range of sources including literature review, semi-structured interviews, and a combination of qualitative and quantitative approaches for data analysis to identify key themes and generate visualisations of the interconnections that exist between risk governance practices. The ability to visualise these interconnections from the qualitative data is a key contribution of this research. Our findings show how the qualitative insights and professional experiences of nanotechnologists provide evidence of how risk governance approaches have been operationalised in the Australian nanotechnology R&D sector. The findings generate three important insights. First, the risk research undertaken by Australian nanotechnologists is interdisciplinary and involves multiple stakeholders from various disciplines and sectors. Unlike traditional risk governance approaches, our findings document efforts to assess, not only physical risks, but also social and ethical risks. Second, nanotechnology risk governance is a non-linear process and practices undertaken to address specific challenges occurred concurrently with and contributed to addressing other challenges. Third, our findings indicate that applying a risk governance approach enables greater intersection and collaboration, potentially bridging any disconnect between scientists, policymakers, and the public to realise transdisciplinary outcomes. This research highlights opportunities for developing systematic methodologies to enable more robust risk governance of other new and emerging technologies.

Auditing integrated stroke care to support quality improvement activities: development of a peer-to-peer audit framework

PurposeTo organize stroke care, multiple stakeholders work closely together in integrated stroke care services (ISCS). However, even a well-developed integrated care program needs a continuous quality improvement (CQI) cycle. The current paper aims to describe the development of a unique peer-to-peer audit framework, the development model for integrated care (DMIC), the Dutch stroke care standard and benchmark indicators for stroke.Design/methodology/approachA group of experts was brought together in 2016 to discuss the aims and principles of a national audit framework. The steering group quality assurance (SGQA) consisted of representatives of a diversity of professions in the field of stroke care in the Netherlands, including managers, nurses, medical specialists and paramedics.FindingsAuditors, coordinators and professionals evaluated the framework, agreed on that the framework was easy to use and valued the interesting and enjoyable audits, the compliments, feedback and fruitful insights. Participants consider that a quality label may help to overcome necessity issues and have health care insurers on board. Finally, a structured improvement plan after the audit is needed.Originality/valueAn audit offers fruitful insights into the functioning of an ISCS and the collaboration therein. Best practices and points of improvement are revealed and can fuel collaboration and the development of partnerships. Innovative cure and care may lead to an increasing area of support among professionals in the ISCS and consequently lead to improved quality of delivered stroke care.

Multi-Keyword Searchable Encryption for E-Health System With Multiple Data Writers and Readers

E-health is a cloud-based system to store and share medical data with the stakeholders. From a security perspective, the stored data are in encrypted form that could further be searched by the stakeholders through searchable encryption (SE). Practically, an e-health system with support of multiple stakeholders (that may work as either data owner [writer] or user [reader]) along with the provision of multi-keyword search is desirable. However, the existing SE schemes either support multi-keyword search in multi-reader setting or offer multi-writer, multi-reader mechanism along with single-keyword search only. This chapter proposes a multi-keyword SE for an e-health system in multi-writer multi-reader setting. With this scheme, any registered writer could share data with any registered reader with optimal storage-computational overhead on writer. The proposed scheme offers conjunctive search with optimal search complexity at server. It also ensures security to medical records and privacy of keywords. The theoretical and empirical analysis demonstrates the effectiveness of the proposed work.

Succession in Family Business Through Authentic Leadership

Family businesses are the kind of organizations that are characterized by overlapping systems of ownership, management, governance, and family values. In family firms, the family is the main asset of the business, and family members are strictly bound to the firm. Due to the dominance of a specific family, the success of the company is closely linked to the proper administration of the duality in the industry, the existence of family and business simultaneously. This fact distinguishes family firms from other companies. Furthermore, managerial and ownership priorities of the owner family are maintained through intergenerational succession. And, the existence of multiple stakeholders and their conflicting demands necessitate a transparent and authentic leadership approach in this delicate process. In this chapter, it is proposed that in family firms, intergenerational succession is more convenient and less painful, in case an authentic leader who gives importance to high levels of awareness, transparency, and morality is in power.

Importance-Performance Analysis of Tourism Destination Attractiveness

This chapter presents an importance-performance analysis to evaluate the ability of a destination's attributes to attract tourists through tourism stakeholder perceptions. In this case, one of Europe's larger destination cities, Lisbon, was considered. It departs from the proposition that tourists are not the most knowledgeable about a destination while the evaluation of a destination's competitiveness from the supply side perspective is scarce. This stakeholder feedback approach to identifying a destination's attributes to attract tourists showed that only 7 of the 40 attributes (five of them related to accessibility and technological infrastructures as municipality responsibility) fall in the IPA grid Concentrate Here quadrant, results that are consistent with the recently received Best City Destination and Best City Break World Travel Awards. This research shows the relevance of multiple stakeholders' feedback to evaluate a city's attributes, including the feedback about the city's need to improve its technological offer through an integrated digital strategy.

A Milk Blockchain-Enabled Supply Chain

Blockchain is proven to support businesses in traceability, data reliability, and data retrieval in all the steps of the supply chain, but still has limited use in the food sector. Through the EU-Horizon 2020-backed example of an Italian regional milk value chain, the chapter describes a real case toward the implementation of such technology in the food sector for the benefit of multiple stakeholders. The case sheds light on the gathering of information concerning the milk production through a network of advanced internet of things sensors, the output of which is employed both for data-driven decision-making and for information certification through blockchain. This trustable and certified information could be shared and employed by other stakeholders to get informed about the status of the production process and, in turn, to potentially deliver an enlarged set of details about the product, progressively up to the end consumers, with implications of technology adoption for food tech-firms and on related impacts on a circular economy.

The Effects of the COVID-19 Pandemic on the Hospitality Industry

As the hospitality industry is one of the industries most drastically affected by the COVID-19 pandemic, it is essential that managers of this industry develop effective strategies to reduce the damage of the pandemic and be better prepared for possible future crises. In this respect, this chapter discusses the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on the hospitality industry and highlights preventive measures, employee support, service innovations, and CSR activities as the key strategic areas for enhancing resilience and recovery of hospitality firms during and even after the COVID-19 pandemic. This chapter also underlines the significance of adopting a holistic stakeholder approach that discusses the effects of the pandemic and proposed strategies from the perspective of multiple stakeholders, as the COVID-19 pandemic has affected them all.