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The purpose of this chapter is to report some initial findings based on the WTO Dispute Settlement Data Set (Ver. 2.0) that the authors have compiled for the World Bank. The data set contains approximately 28 000 observations on the workings of the Dispute Settlement system. It covers all 351 WTO disputes initiated through the official filing of a Request for Consultations from January 1, 1995, until October 25, 2006; and for these disputes it includes events occurring until December 31, 2006. Each dispute is followed through its legal life via the panel stage, the Appellate Body stage, to the implementation stage.

The descriptive statistics in the chapter points to three observations. The first and obvious observation is the almost complete absence of least developed countries. Second, less poor and developing countries are much more active and successful than the authors would have expected. Third, the EU and the United States dominate less than expected, being much more often the subject of complaints, than a complaining party, and they have a very low share of all panelists.

Puts forward a new method for decomposing relational schemas by using semi‐equivalence relations based on pansystems methodology. A necessary and sufficient condition is obtained for determining whether there exists a subschema logically available in a given relational schema decomposition.

This study aims to analyze the alignment between sustainable performance and sustainability planning in higher education, proposing a strategic map that integrates planning with the implementation of performance actions and sustainable performance on campuses.

The literature review development addresses sustainability in higher education institutions (HEIs). Data collection took place in two ways, documentary, through the analysis of documents and through an open interview, guided by a script with 13 questions. For data interpretation, the content analysis technique was applied.

To achieve the objective of this work, this study proposed a sustainable performance strategic map for better management of the university’s green strategies, based on three dimensions: internal processes, educational and sustainable performance.

This study’s main contribution was to propose a sustainable performance strategic map as a strategic management system aimed at HEIs to accelerate the promotion of sustainability in these organizations.

In this paper, I demonstrate an alternative explanation to the development of the American electricity industry. I propose a social embeddedness approach (Granovetter, 1985, 1992) to interpret why the American electricity industry appears the way it does today, and start by addressing the following questions: Why is the generating dynamo located in well‐connected central stations rather than in isolated stations? Why does not every manufacturing firm, hospital, school, or even household operate its own generating equipment? Why do we use incandescent lamps rather than arc lamps or gas lamps for lighting? At the end of the nineteenth century, the first era of the electricity industry, all these technical as well as organizational forms were indeed possible alternatives. The centralized systems we see today comprise integrated, urban, central station firms which produce and sell electricity to users within a monopolized territory. Yet there were visions of a more decentralized electricity industry. For instance, a geographically decentralized system might have dispersed small systems based around an isolated or neighborhood generating dynamo; or a functionally decentralized system which included firms solely generating and transmitting the power, and selling the power to locally‐owned distribution firms (McGuire, Granovetter, and Schwartz, forthcoming). Similarly, the incandescent lamp was not the only illuminating device available at that time. The arc lamp was more suitable for large‐space lighting than incandescent lamps; and the second‐generation gas lamp ‐ Welsbach mantle lamp ‐ was much cheaper than the incandescent electric light and nearly as good in quality (Passer, 1953:196–197).

The purpose of this paper is to examine the effects of institutional factors and the European Union (EU) accounting harmonization on the value‐relevance and comparability of dirty surplus accounting flows (DSFs) in the member countries throughout the period 1993 to 2002.

The returns‐earnings models and fixed‐effect operating income growth models are used to examine the differences in the incremental and relative relevance of DSFs between countries which have a piecemeal system of regulation with significant input from the profession and/or market participants, and the code law countries with the government being the most important institution with regard to accounting regulation. Moreover, the relevance of DSFs in the three sub‐periods is compared, each reflecting quite distinct attitudes in the EU towards international accounting harmonization.

DSFs are incrementally relevant in Denmark, Finland, Ireland, Sweden and the UK, where equity market plays an important role in the country's financing system; and in comparison to comprehensive income, reported income is a dominant measure of performance in most European countries, with the exception of the five afore‐mentioned countries. There is also evidence that cross country differences in the value‐relevance and predictability of DSFs decrease in the later years of this sample period.

Future research focusing upon the specific accounting changes made by companies in the EU is needed for a better understanding of the relative importance of stock market integration and standard setting changes in explaining the characteristics of DSFs.

The results indicate that the convergence in the reporting of DSFs over time is driven by global capital market integration, and more importantly, the accounting harmonization activities carried out via self‐regulation with significant input from the profession and/or market participants at national level.

The paper seeks to explore, firstly, the extent to which differences in the reporting of DSFs across the EU may be explained by institutional differences. Secondly, it explores whether or not differences across the countries have decreased in three phases of the EU harmonization process.

This study aims to demonstrate how pressures (incentives) in the audit environment can lower audit quality because of a breakdown between professionally skeptical (PS) judgment (risk assessment) and PS action (testing).

The authors used a Qualtrics-based experiment with attitude change as a proxy measure of cognitive dissonance (CD). The authors analyze the results using a one-way independent between-group ANOVA with post hoc tests and t-tests.

The authors find that auditors experience CD when they fail to take appropriate high PS action (audit tests) that are in line with high PS judgment (risk assessments). The motivational force to reduce CD drives auditors to revise their assessments upward (rank higher), lower diagnostic audit tests (PS actions) and lower risk assessments (PS judgments). This leads to lower overall professional skepticism, and hence lower audit quality.

This investigation provides an empirical investigation of Nelson’s (2009) model of professional skepticism and demonstrates a specific mechanism for how incentives in the audit environment lower audit quality. Based on the findings, treatments to enhance audit quality can benefit by strengthening the critical link between PS judgments (risk assessments) and PS actions (audit tests).

Your company may find itself traveling down several different paths at once to reach its goals. The secret of success lies in making sure the roads are compatible. At one time, selecting the right options was a matter of chance. Today, finding the winning combination is almost a science.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the motives a person adopts in order to engage in hate-related behaviours within a prison setting. A subsidiary aim of the study was to compare this cohort of prisoners with prisoners who have been convicted for aggravated racism in the community.

In order to gather data, an exploratory research design was adopted, utilising the method of semi-structured interviews. In total, a number of nine interviews were conducted. Qualitative analysis was then employed allowing for an examination of meaning in relation to the motives behind the commission of hate crimes to occur.

The findings revealed the presence of racist beliefs and attitudes in both groups involved in the study. Further similarities between the two groups included the perception of inequality and beliefs about racism. The differences between the two groups included poor emotional regulation and an inability to manage beliefs and subsequent behaviours about people from different ethnic groups, with those in custody seeming to be more reactive.

The findings provide a preliminary insight into enhancing inmate safety. The environmental implications begin to reveal the complexity of hate-related behaviours in custody. There are differences between the context of hate crime committed in a prison environment compared to that committed in the community that require different solutions for addressing such behaviour. Further implications are considered in the final section of the paper.

A large body of research has been conducted on prison violence, seldom does this research examine this issue within the context of hate crime. This preliminary study offers an insight into prison-based hate crime.

The purpose of this paper is to build a new hierarchical intrusion detection system (IDS) based on a binary tree of different types of classifiers. The proposed IDS model must possess the following characteristics: combine a high detection rate and a low false alarm rate, and classify any connection in a specific category of network connection.

To build the binary tree, the authors cluster the different categories of network connections hierarchically based on the proportion of false-positives and false-negatives generated between each of the two categories. The built model is a binary tree with multi-levels. At first, the authors use the best classifier in the classification of the network connections in category A and category G2 that clusters the rest of the categories. Then, in the second level, they use the best classifier in the classification of G2 network connections in category B and category G3 that represents the different categories clustered in G2 without category B. This process is repeated until the last two categories of network connections. Note that one of these categories represents the normal connection, and the rest represent the different types of abnormal connections.

The experimentation on the labeled data set for flow-based intrusion detection, NSL-KDD and KDD’99 shows the high performance of the authors' model compared to the results obtained by some well-known classifiers and recent IDS models. The experiments’ results show that the authors' model gives a low false alarm rate and the highest detection rate. Moreover, the model is more accurate than some well-known classifiers like SVM, C4.5 decision tree, MLP neural network and naïve Bayes with accuracy equal to 83.26 per cent on NSL-KDD and equal to 99.92 per cent on the labeled data set for flow-based intrusion detection. As well, it is more accurate than the best of related works and recent IDS models with accuracy equal to 95.72 per cent on KDD’99.

This paper proposes a novel hierarchical IDS based on a binary tree of classifiers, where different types of classifiers are used to create a high-performance model. Therefore, it confirms the capacity of the hierarchical model to combine a high detection rate and a low false alarm rate.