Evaluation of pseudoephedrine pharmacy sales before and after mandatory recording requirements in Western Australia: a case study

Background: A community pharmacy real-time electronic recording program, ProjectSTOP, enables Australian community pharmacists to verify pseudoephedrine requests. In Western Australia the program was available for voluntary use from April 2007 and became mandatory November 2010. This case study explores the effectiveness of the program by reviewing the total requests for pseudoephedrine products, and the proportion of requests which were classified as ‘denied sales’ before and after mandatory implementation. Seasonal and annual trends in these measures are also evaluated. Methods: ProjectSTOP data recordings for Western Australia pharmacies between 1 December 2007 and 28 February 2014 were analysed. Data included a de-identified pharmacy number and date of each pseudoephedrine product request. The total number of requests and sale classification (allowed, denied, safety, or not recorded) were calculated for each month/pharmacy. The potential influence of mandatory reporting using ProjectSTOP was investigated using a Regression Discontinuity Design. Correlations between sales from the same pharmacy were taken into account by classifying the pharmacy number as a random effect. The main effects of year (continuous variable), and season (categorical variable) were also included in the model. Results: There was a small but steady decline in the total requests for pseudoephedrine per month per 100,000 population (per pharmacy) from the time of mandatory reporting. The number of denied sales showed a steady increase up until mandatory reporting, after which it showed a significant decline over time. Total sales were heavily influenced by season, as expected (highest in winter, least in summer). The seasonal pattern was less pronounced for denied sales, which were highest in winter and similar across other seasons. The pattern over time for safety sales was similar to that for denied sales, with a clear change occurring around the time of mandatory reporting. Conclusion: Results indicate a decrease in pseudoephedrine product requests in Western Australia community pharmacies. Findings suggest ProjectSTOP has been successful in addressing suspicious sales and potential diversion however ongoing data review is recommended

Workplace incivility and work outcomes:Cross-cultural comparison between Australian and Singaporean employees

Workplace incivility is a common issue experienced by employees around the globe. However, research has found cultural variability in how workplace incivility is perceived and interpreted. Studies have shown that employees from high power distance societies tend to be more accepting of workplace mistreatment than employees from low power distance societies. Adopting Conservation of Resources (COR) theory and national culture as theoretical frameworks, we tested a moderated mediation model that linked the experience of workplace incivility, burnout/exhaustion, job satisfaction and work withdrawal between Australian and Singaporean white‐collar employees. Data were collected through an online survey of 301 Australian and 303 Singaporean employees. Results indicated that workplace incivility contributed to burnout/exhaustion, which in turn predicted employees’ job dissatisfaction and work withdrawal. Specifically, Australians were more negatively affected by workplace incivility than Singaporeans. The findings suggest the need to consider employees’ national culture/ethnicity when examining relationships between mistreatment in different workplaces and the outcomes

Metacognition, entrepreneurial orientation, and firm performance : An upper echelons view

Upper echelons theory suggests that cognitive diversity in top management teams (TMTs) affects firms’ operation and performance. Prior research in this stream has focused primarily on lower-order cognitive factors, such as beliefs, perceptions, and preferences, rather than higher-order ones, known as metacognitive abilities. This study is an early, perhaps the first, attempt to begin this line of enquiry. Adopting a multidimensional view of entrepreneurial orientation, we propose that diversity in the metacognitive ability of top teams has different impacts on each dimension of the team’s entrepreneurial behavior and through this firm performance. Our empirical analysis, based on data from 105 TMTs of Australian small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), partially supports our theorization. We found that while metacognitive diversity is positively associated with the innovative endeavors of TMTs, it has no significant effects on their risk-taking and proactive behaviors. We found additional evidence that each aspect of the TMT’s entrepreneurial orientation has a different implication for firm performance. Overall, our research offers novel and more nuanced insights into how and when diversity in the metacognitive ability of TMTs matters for the performance of the firm