Habitual accountability routines in the boardroom: How boards balance control and collaboration

open3siCorporate accountability is a complex chain of reporting that reaches from external stakeholders into the organization’s management structure. The transition from external to internal accountability mechanisms primarily occurs at the board of directors. Yet outside of incentive mechanisms, we know surprisingly little about how internal actors (management) are held to account by the representatives of external shareholders (the board). This paper explores the process of accountability at this transition point by documenting the routines used by boards to hold the firm’s management to account. In so doing we develop our understanding of the important transition between internal and external firm accountability.embargoed_20190401Nicholson, Gavin; Pugliese, Amedeo; Bezemer, Pieter JanNicholson, Gavin; Pugliese, Amedeo; Bezemer, Pieter Ja

Key emerging and conceptual issues in the development of the RNFE in developing countries and transition economies

The purpose of this paper is to outline key emerging and conceptual issues in the development of the rural non-farm economy in less developed countries (LDCs) and transition economies. It is based on a conceptual framework where the rural non-farm economy (RNFE) is discussed as being either part of a growth strategy for the economy, or as a "defensive" survival strategy for the rural poor. For most rural people in developing and transitional economies, rural non-farm activities are part of a total livelihood activity set that includes farming: that is they are part of a diversified livelihood portfolio. Section 1 considers RNFE definitional and measurement issues. In section 2, the paper provides an overview of the relevance of rural non-farm economy (RNFE) and the key concepts underlying it and livelihood diversification. Section 3 explores the RNFE and local economic growth followed by discussions on the potential for growth of the RNFE, the linkages between the farm and non-farm sectors. Section 4 provides a brief discussion of policy processes

A novel continuous noninvasive estimation of systolic blood pressure

Continuous non-invasive blood pressure (BP) monitoring has been under intensive investigation by the clinical and technical community. The photoplethysmography (PPG) signal, measured unobtrusively at distal sites, serves as a popular surrogate. This is due to the fact that it indicates pulsatile blood volume changes and is morphologically similar to the continuous BP signal. From PPG and ECG, pulse arrival time (PAT) based methods are widely studied. However, PAT is determined not only by BP but also vasoregulation and vascular properties, making it an unstable estimator per se. Multiple features derived from a PPG signal have been used to estimate BP, but they either require calibration, fail to validate its ability to track BP, or ignore the abundant information contained within the PPG waveform [1,2]. In this study, we introduce BP changes in 18 healthy subjects, explore a number of features from various perspectives, and determine the performance of tracking Systolic Blood Pressure (SBP) in the absence of calibration. Besides PAT, we include timing features (time from systolic slope to dicrotic notch), and amplitude features (normalized systolic slope mean, variance and diastolic slope mean

Social Semiotics: Theorising Meaning Making

This chapter outlines a theoretical framework to account for practices of meaning making in health care and sets out an agenda for clinical educational research. It shows how meaning making pervades all aspects of clinical work and how it can be explored and made explicit within a framework derived from social semiotics. The chapter illustrates how the framework produces accounts of the ways in which clinicians make sense of and interact with the world, in situations where they give, review, and imagine care. It explores how clinicians interpret, and communicate through, human bodies, tools, and technologies, giving meaning to, and expressing meaning through, distinct material forms. In so doing, the chapter begins to render visible the semiotic skills that clinicians develop to prepare for, provide, and evaluate clinical care