Performance auditing and neoliberal governmentality: future research directions

Purpose This paper aims to interpret the role and professional issues of public sector performance auditing (PA) as a mechanism of neoliberal governmentality in the New Public Management (NPM) era by drawing on a Foucauldian conceptual lens to chart directions for future research. Design/methodology/approach The study uses the Foucauldian concepts of visibility and identity to interpret PA against the background of neoliberal imperatives of public sector management. Findings As the growing emphasis on PA in recent decades can be understood as driven by the concurrent development of neoliberal and NPM rationalities, the relatively underexploited concepts of visibility and identity allow further inquiry into important PA issues. This paper identifies avenues for future research under the following three themes: the issue of visibility in neoliberal governmentality and potential for auditors-general to expand the domain of influence of National Audit Offices through the PA role; the potential for PA as a unified distinct specialisation; and the neoliberal idea of professional identity as the individual expert and its interplay with the potential emergence of PA as a distinct function within the accounting profession. Research limitations/implications This conceptual paper is anticipated to stimulate future PA research. Key areas in this respect include the position and authority afforded to PA and the possibility of transformation in auditors’ conception of their professional worldview. Originality/value This paper charts direction for future research by interpreting PA using Foucauldian concepts of visibility and identity that remain to be exploited in PA research.

Global Industrial Development: Insights From the Distribution Dynamics Approach for the Post Covid Era

The spread of COVID-19 has significantly dampened global economic activity and has also wreaked havoc on the industrial sector. Understanding the disparity and convergence of global industrial outputs is important in assessing the effectiveness of concurrent development policies. This study investigates the spatial distribution of global industrial output to unveil the disparity in industrial development and the feasibility of achieving convergence over time. Stochastic kernel analyses are carried out for national regimes to study the overall pattern of industrialization for all the countries in the world. Countries are then classified into different groups to further analyse the geographical and income effects on industrial development. The results show that disparity between the Global North and the Global South will enlarge further in the future. Industrial development in the Global North will continue to prosper, while the industrial output in many countries in the Global South just cannot reach the global average.

A New Product Development Model for SMEs: Introducing Agility to the Plan-Driven Concurrent Product Development Approach

In order to survive in today’s highly competitive global market, small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) have had to transition from sequential to concurrent product development, which significantly shortens development cycles, reduces costs, and ensures high product quality. Despite its many benefits, concurrent product development is still based on detailed upfront planning and cannot address the challenges related to today’s ever-growing uncertainty, constantly changing environment, and unstable requirements. A potential solution to this problem could be in more flexible and value-driven agile project management (APM) approaches, typical of software development. In this paper, we propose a new product development model specifically appropriate for SMEs that combines concurrent product development principles with APM elements. It is designed as a loop of five repetitive steps (macroplan, microplan, iteration activities, review, and retrospective) that are being executed within individual concurrent development loops. The application of the model is presented on a real case example of process development and small batch manufacture of a complex wiring harness. The study reveals many benefits of the proposed model, such as improved communication, faster detection of discrepancies, more effective problem solving, and greater flexibility. A positive impact on project success is also observed.

Applications of Ultrasound-Mediated Drug Delivery and Gene Therapy

Gene therapy has continuously evolved throughout the years since its first proposal to develop more specific and effective transfection, capable of treating a myriad of health conditions. Viral vectors are some of the most common and most efficient vehicles for gene transfer. However, the safe and effective delivery of gene therapy remains a major obstacle. Ultrasound contrast agents in the form of microbubbles have provided a unique solution to fulfill the need to shield the vectors from the host immune system and the need for site specific targeted therapy. Since the discovery of the biophysical and biological effects of microbubble sonification, multiple developments have been made to enhance its applicability in targeted drug delivery. The concurrent development of viral vectors and recent research on dual vector strategies have shown promising results. This review will explore the mechanisms and recent advancements in the knowledge of ultrasound-mediated microbubbles in targeting gene and drug therapy.

Perspectives on the Development and Significance of Tort Litigation against Multinational Parent Companies

Richard Meeran explains the genesis of tort-based multinational human rights litigation in the United Kingdom, including some striking features, events, and judgments in original cases of Connelly v. Rio Tinto, Ngcobo v. Thor Chemical, and Lubbe v. Cape plc cases and their impact on the development of English law relating parent company liability leading to the precedents in the Chandler v. Cape, Vedanta, and Okpabi v. Shell cases. He offers insights on strategic litigation from these and other multinational cases. He outlines the key legal, procedural, and practical barriers to justice for victims, with particular emphasis on forum non conveniens, funding litigation, and the interrelationship of the barriers in deterring victims’ lawyers. He considers the concurrent development and integration of multinational human rights litigation and business and human rights including in the UN Guiding Principles. He outlines the potential for cross-border collaboration between lawyers to pursue cases in multinational host States.

Camera trapping for conservation

Camera traps use a motion sensor to capture images of passing animals, representing verifiable and non-invasive records of the presence of a given species at a specified place and time. These simple records provide fundamental data on biodiversity that have proven invaluable to conservation. Thanks to the improved (better, smaller, and less expensive) camera technology and the concurrent development of analytical approaches, camera trapping science has grown steadily in the last 15 years and advanced our knowledge of elusive and rare fauna across the planet. Here we review the use and potential of camera trapping in conservation science. We start with an introduction to the importance and challenges of studying reclusive wildlife and discuss the technical aspects of camera traps that make them so efficient and widely used for this purpose. We then review the variety of ways camera trapping has contributed to conservation, first presenting the wildlife metrics camera traps can document and then surveying how these have been applied to conservation through studies of habitat preference, distribution models, threat assessments, monitoring, and evaluations of conservation interventions. We also present case studies showing how camera trapping can effectively contribute to link ecological monitoring to conservation, including how data and images can be used to engage the public and policymakers with conservation issues, and how this work is now being scaled up through citizen science and networks of standardized data collection coupled with cyber-infrastructures for automatized analyses. We conclude by reviewing possible technological improvements of camera traps and how they would aid conservation in the future.

Identitas: Semantics-free and human-readable identifiers

In this article, we present a new approach to identifiers, one that aims to improve the management of ontologies. This approach overcomes some of the main flaws associated with the existing approaches, providing alternative solutions. Ontology identifiers are the key for each entity defined in an ontology, and enable a unique and persistent reference to each term. The form of identifiers has been the subject of discussion, which has resulted in a number of different schemes. It is often recommended that identifiers for ontology terms should be semantics-free or meaningless. One practice is to use numeric identifiers, starting at one and working upwards. However, this has a number of disadvantages: it does not allow for concurrent development, is relatively hard to read, and it is difficult to detect errors when an identifier is misused. From the perspective of development, solving these issues could facilitate the process of building and managing ontologies. Here, we suggest random identifiers to enable concurrent development, while exploiting the proquint library to overcome the problems of memorability and pronounceability. Finally, a checksum is implemented to prevent the occurrence of errors while accessing relatively similar identifiers. Availability and Implementation: The software is available from https://github.com/Nizal-Shammry/identitas-j. It has been integrated into environments for ontology development such as Tawny-OWL and Protégé.

Multinational Human Rights Litigation in the UK: A Retrospective

This article provides an overview of the key features of multinational human rights litigation in the United Kingdom, including the development of a tort-based parent company duty of care, the principles relating to forum non conveniens and applicable law and other key procedural and practical barriers to victims’ access to justice. The article highlights some of the actual and perceived limitations of litigation. It also considers the concurrent development of and mutually reinforcing relationship between MNC tort litigation and the field of Business & Human Rights.

Batch-based agile program management approach for coordinating IT multi-project concurrent development

Software development projects have undergone remarkable changes with the arrival of agile development approaches. Many firms are facing a need to use these approaches to manage entities consisting of multiple projects (i.e. programs) simultaneously and efficiently. New technologies such as big data provide a huge power and rich demand for the IT application system of the commercial bank which has the characteristics of multiple sub-projects, strong inter-project correlation, and numerous project participating teams. Hence, taking the IT program management of a bank in China as a case, we explore the methods to solve the problems in multi-project concurrent development practice through integrating the ideas of program and batch management. First, to coordinate the multi-project development process, this paper presents the batch-based agile program management approach that synthesizes concurrent engineering with agile methods. And we compare the application of batch management between software development projects and manufacturing process. Further, we analyze the concurrent multi-project development practice in the batch-based agile program management, including the overlapping between stages, individual project’s activities, and multiple projects based on common resources and environment to stimulate the knowledge transfer. Third, to facilitate the communication and coordination of batch-based program management, we present the double-level responsibility organizational structure of batch management.