Report on the 3rd Dutch Accounting Research Conference

One of the best protected secrets of the Dutch accounting community is that the Netherlands is among the best European countries when it comes to accounting research and that Dutch universities also perform excellent when making worldwide comparisons. The current situation is the result of the hard work of many people at the different Dutch universities during the last three decades. Despite the fact that accounting research flourishes in the Netherlands and despite the geographic concentration of the different universities, initiatives to bring accounting researchers together were lacking. The Dutch Accounting Research Conference (DARC) aims at filling this gap

Opening the 'black box' of efficiency measurement: input allocation in multi-output settings

We develop a new Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA)-based methodology for measuring the efficiency of Decision Making Units (DMUs) characterized by multiple inputs and multiple outputs. The distinguishing feature of our method is that it explicitly includes information about output-specific inputs and joint inputs in the efficiency evaluation. This contributes to opening the „black box? of efficiency measurement in two different ways. First, including information on the input allocation substantially increases the discriminatory power of the efficiency measurement. Second, it allows to decompose the efficiency value of a DMU into output-specific efficiency values which facilitates the identification of the outputs the manager should focus on to remedy the observed inefficiency. We demonstrate the usefulness and managerial implications of our methodology by means of a unique dataset collected from the Activity Based Costing (ABC) system of a large service company with 290 DMUs.

Opening the 'black box' of efficiency measurement: input allocation in multi-output settings.

We develop a new Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA)-based methodology for measuring the efficiency of Decision Making Units (DMUs) characterized by multiple inputs and multiple outputs. The distinguishing feature of our method is that it explicitly includes information about output-specific inputs and joint inputs in the efficiency evaluation. This contributes to opening the „black box‟ of efficiency measurement in two different ways. First, including information on the input allocation substantially increases the discriminatory power of the efficiency measurement. Second, it allows to decompose the efficiency value of a DMU into output-specific efficiency values which facilitates the identification of the outputs the manager should focus on to remedy the observed inefficiency. We demonstrate the usefulness and managerial implications of our methodology by means of a unique dataset collected from the Activity Based Costing (ABC) system of a large service company with 290 DMUs.

Behavioral integrity for safety, priority of safety, psychological safety, and patient safety: a team-level study

This article clarifies how leader behavioral integrity for safety helps solve follower's double bind between adhering to safety protocols and speaking up about mistakes against protocols. Path modeling of survey data in 54 nursing teams showed that head nurse behavioral integrity for safety positively relates to both team priority of safety and psychological safety. In turn, team priority of safety and team psychological safety were, respectively, negatively and positively related with the number of treatment errors that were reported to head nurses. We further demonstrated an interaction effect between team priority of safety and psychological safety on reported errors such that the relationship between team priority of safety and the number of errors was stronger for higher levels of team psychological safety. Finally, we showed that both team priority of safety and team psychological safety mediated the relationship between leader behavioral integrity for safety and reported treatment errors. These results suggest that although adhering to safety protocols and admitting mistakes against those protocols show opposite relations to reported treatment errors, both are important to improving patient safety and both are fostered by leaders who walk their safety talk

Hepatitis C viral evolution in genotype 1 treatment-naïve and treatment-experienced patients receiving telaprevir-based therapy in clinical trials

Background: In patients with genotype 1 chronic hepatitis C infection, telaprevir (TVR) in combination with peginterferon and ribavirin (PR) significantly increased sustained virologic response (SVR) rates compared with PR alone. However, genotypic changes could be observed in TVR-treated patients who did not achieve an SVR. Methods: Population sequence analysis of the NS3•4A region was performed in patients who did not achieve SVR with TVR-based treatment. Results: Resistant variants were observed after treatment with a telaprevir-based regimen in 12% of treatment-naïve patients (ADVANCE; T12PR arm), 6% of prior relapsers, 24% of prior partial responders, and 51% of prior null responder patients (REALIZE, T12PR48 arms). NS3 protease variants V36M, R155K, and V36M+R155K emerged frequently in patients with genotype 1a and V36A, T54A, and A156S/T in patients with genotype 1b. Lower-level resistance to telaprevir was conferred by V36A/M, T54A/S, R155K/T, and A156S variants; and higher-level resistance to telaprevir was conferred by A156T and V36M+R155K variants. Virologic failure during telaprevir treatment was more common in patients with genotype 1a and in prior PR nonresponder patients and was associated with higher-level telaprevir-resistant variants. Relapse was usually associated with wild-type or lower-level resistant variants. After treatment, viral populations were wild-type with a median time of 10 months for genotype 1a and 3 weeks for genotype 1b patients. Conclusions: A consistent, subtype-dependent resistance profile was observed in patients who did not achieve an SVR with telaprevir-based treatment. The primary role of TVR is to inhibit wild-type virus and variants with lower-levels of resistance to telaprevir. The complementary role of PR is to clear any remaining telaprevir-resistant variants, especially higher-level telaprevir-resistant variants. Resistant variants are detectable in most patients who fail to achieve SVR, but their levels decline over time after treatment

Current and Novel Inhibitors of HIV Protease

The design, development and clinical success of HIV protease inhibitors represent one of the most remarkable achievements of molecular medicine. This review describes all nine currently available FDA-approved protease inhibitors, discusses their pharmacokinetic properties, off-target activities, side-effects, and resistance profiles. The compounds in the various stages of clinical development are also introduced, as well as alternative approaches, aiming at other functional domains of HIV PR. The potential of these novel compounds to open new way to the rational drug design of human viruses is critically assessed