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Quality improvement collaboratives (QICs) are a popular approach to improving healthcare services and patient outcomes. This paper evaluates a QIC implemented by a large, integrated healthcare organisation in Wales in the UK.

This evaluation study draws on two well-established evaluation frameworks: Kirkpatrick's approach to gather data on participant satisfaction and learning and Stake's approach to gather data and form judgements about the impact of the intervention. A mixed methods approach was taken which included documentary analysis, surveys, semi-structured interviews, and observation of the QIC programme.

Together the two frameworks provide a rounded interpretation of the extent to which the QIC intervention was fit-for-purpose. Broadly the evaluation of the QIC was positive with some areas of improvement identified.

This study is limited to a QIC conducted within one organisation. Further testing of the hybrid framework is needed that extends to different designs of QICs.

A hybrid framework is provided to assist those charged with designing and evaluating QICs.

Evaluation studies are limited on QICs and if present tend to adopt one framework. Given the complexities of undertaking quality improvement within healthcare, this study uniquely takes a hybrid approach.

Suggests that female funeral service practitioners (FSPs), in particular, may be exposed to a combination of classic healthcare stressors (e.g. shift work, work/family balance), unique funeral industry stressors, and stresses associated with working in non‐traditional occupations. Explores the relationships betweeen the stressors, perceived stress and two m ental health outcomes: anxiety and depression. Suggests that there needs to be both direct and indirect relationships between these. Expands the knowledge regarding the types of work and non‐work stressor that can affect mental health outcomes among women working in onn‐traditional occupations. Comments that this information should be particularly useful as women are increasingly entering historically male‐dominated fields.

This paper seeks to examine the social construction of the racialised, colonial subaltern accountant in the British imperial centre in the early twentieth century..

Primary sources are used to provide an historical analysis of the British accountancy arena in the 1920s, this being the period when “race thinking” first became explicit. Secondary histories of race and empire are used to contextualise this analysis by highlighting: the growth of “race thinking” in the latter part of the nineteenth and the early decades of the twentieth centuries; and the American challenge to British imperial hegemony after the First World War.

This paper tracks the struggles of British accountants in the imperial centre in the 1920s to find a path between racialist attitudes in the imperial centre, their own included and countervailing discourses of non‐discrimination. For the Scottish chartered bodies, this involved the development of a de facto barrier to entry when a proposed de jure one aroused, surprisingly enough, the prospect of retaliation from American accountants.

Limitations in the primary sources preclude detailed examination of the attitudes of individuals or for all variations in the positions adopted by particular bodies.

The troubling thing about the demise of explicit race talk by the end of the 1920s is that de facto barriers to the entry of the racialised, subordinated Other remained in place.

This paper shows that the rise of race thinking in Britain did not leave British accountancy untouched; largely through the pressure it placed upon the identity of British accountants qua Britons and the consequential issue of inclusion/exclusion of non‐Britons.

Singapore devotes less than 4% of its GDP to healthcare in part because its average citizen is young. As the country has become developed, the birth rate has fallen, life‐expectancy has lengthened and the cost of care has shown signs of escalation. This has occurred despite the extensive cost‐control measures built into the mandatory system of medical savings and the opt‐in supplement of medical insurance. The threat of care inflation is that much greater because of Singapore’s attempt to position itself as a regional treatment hub, because of rising incomes and expectations, and because of a shortage of doctors and nurses which is driving wages up. Old age is contributing to the problem but, the article shows, is not the only cause.

The purpose of this paper is to revisit the special issue of Accounting, Auditing & Accountability Journal published in 1996 on the theme “Accounting history into the twenty‐first century”, in order to identify and assess the impact of the special issue in shaping developments in the accounting history literature, and to consider issues for future historical research in accounting.

A retrospective and prospective essay focusing on developments in the historical accounting literature.

The special issue's advocacy of critical and interpretive histories of accounting's past has influenced subsequent research, particularly within the various research themes identified in the issue. The most significant aspect of this influence has been the engagement of increasing numbers of accounting historians with theoretical perspectives and analytical frameworks.

The present study examines the content and impact of a single journal issue. It explores future research possibilities, which inevitably involves speculation.

In addressing recent developments in the literature through the lens of the special issue, the paper emphasises the unifying power of history and offers ideas, insights and reflections that may assist in stimulating originality in future studies of accounting's past.

Diversified trading networks have recently drawn a great deal of attention. In the process, the importance of diversity has perhaps been overemphasized. Using the trade in port wine from Portugal to Britain as an example, this essay attempts to show how a market once dominated by general, diversified traders was taken over by dedicated specialists whose success might almost be measured by the degree to which they rejected diversification to form a dedicated “commodity chain.” The essay suggests that this strategy was better able to handle matters of quality and the specialized knowledge that port wine required. The essay also highlights the question of power in such a chain. Endemic commodity-chain struggles are clearest in the vertical brand war that broke out in the nineteenth century, which, by concentrating power, marked the final stage in the transformation of the trade from network to vertical integration.

Over the last decade, several innovative business‐community partnerships have emerged to address simultaneously two pressing development issues: poverty reduction and biodiversity conservation. The purpose of this paper is to identify relevant models and to propose a first evaluation of these models in relation to development.

The models were identified following a literature review and were evaluated using Amartya Sen's definition of poverty.

The paper identifies two models: the local enterprise model and the global investment model. While the local model relies mainly on local resources, the global investment model includes local and global organizations and institutions. The paper has analyzed the respective impacts of these new business‐community partnerships, including their governance schemes, on communities and ecosystems through the lens of Amartya Sen's definition of poverty and development. The key finding is double. First, both these models are still in their very early stages. Second, the paper has identified the strengths and weaknesses of each of these models: while the global investment model provides access to solid and important financial resources and markets, the local enterprise model emphasizes local empowerment.

This paper reports innovative initiatives and models of governance that could inspire future private sector based approaches to biodiversity conservation and poverty reduction and help build the theoretical bases for such approaches.

Governments across the globe appear to identify and tout technology as a way to transform how they govern. Public procurement is at the forefront of most reform efforts given that it plays a significant role in promoting accountability and transparency. This study relies on survey data of procurement professionals to delineate the current status of eprocurement implementation in United States and Canada. Findings suggest that digitalized public procurement has not yet led to significant transformative changes. Unsuitability of software platforms, organizational resistance, lack of strategic systemsʼ integration and failure to involve public procurement professionals in the design of e-procurement systems were identified as the primary obstacles of effectively implementing digital procurement. These findings suggest that in order to capitalize on the potentially transformative nature of ICT in procurement, policymakers, system designers, and procurement professionals must take an active role in both the design of the software and its adoption across political, institutional and behavioral domains.