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Purpose The purpose of this paper is to present findings from face-to-face interviews undertaken with 16 care and nursing home managers employed in homes situated in two English local authorities. The research sought to explore managers’ perceptions of the role of contract monitoring in the prevention of abuse. Design/methodology/approach Semi-structured interviews were undertaken with 16 care and nursing home managers. Findings Though personnel employed by the local authority who conducted contract monitoring were generally thought of positively by care home managers on a personal level, their effectiveness was perceived to be limited as a result of their lack of experience and knowledge of providing care, and the methods that they were required to use. Research limitations/implications Though the research draws upon the experiences of only 16 care and nursing home managers in two local authorities, data suggest that current contract monitoring activity is of limited utility in determining the true nature of care and the presence of abuse. Originality/value Unusually, the paper explores care and nursing home managers’ perceptions of contract monitoring processes in terms of how they perceive their effectiveness in preventing abuse.

Blockchain technology has transformed modern digital ecosystems by enabling secure, transparent, and automated transactions through smart contracts. However, the increasing complexity of these contracts introduces significant challenges, including high computational costs, scalability limitations, and difficulties in detecting anomalous behavior. In this study, we propose an AI-based optimization framework that enhances the efficiency and security of blockchain smart contracts. The framework integrates Neural Architecture Search (NAS) to automatically design optimal Convolutional Neural Network (CNN) architectures tailored to blockchain data, enabling effective anomaly detection. To address the challenge of limited labeled data, transfer learning is employed to adapt pre-trained CNN models to smart contract patterns, improving model generalization and reducing training time. Furthermore, Model Compression techniques, including filter pruning and quantization, are applied to minimize the computational load, making the framework suitable for deployment in resource-constrained blockchain environments. Experimental results on Ethereum transaction datasets demonstrate that the proposed method achieves significant improvements in anomaly detection accuracy and computational efficiency compared to conventional approaches, offering a practical and scalable solution for smart contract monitoring and optimization.

Purpose>This research examines what key performance indicators (KPIs) and drivers should be applied at the post-contract phase of construction development to monitor and drive project outcomes in sustainable design and construction. It supplements the previous research which focuses on pre-contract sustainable procurement of competent professionals. Consequently, optimal sustainability can be achieved for the overall sustainable development process.Design/methodology/approach>A review of empirical work was conducted to consolidate the holistic aspects of sustainability that should be considered for design and construction and their project outcome KPI measures. Based on a country-wide questionnaire survey of the university estate sector in the UK, a quantitative hierarchical regression analysis was conducted to identify the performance drivers for those KPIs.Findings>The empirical work review demonstrates that holistic sustainability for development can be measured by project outcome KPIs: economic sustainability by cost KPIs; functional, social and environmental sustainability by quality KPIs. The quantitative hierarchical regression analysis confirmed that these four aspects of sustainability could be significantly driven by task performance and contextual performance drivers, as supported by the job performance theory.Research limitations/implications>The investigation was undertaken within the context of university estates forming a unique public sector in the UK. The findings form a baseline upon which further research can be conducted in other organisations in the wider public and private sectors. Ultimately, holistic sustainability can be fully driven by construction professionals to achieve government and corporate construction strategy for the benefits of sustainable built environment.Practical implications>The findings inform project managers and construction professionals that they should apply clear, measurable cost and quality KPIs and focus on significant performance drivers in tandem to drive holistic sustainability for design and construction. Project staff should have a high commitment, technical expertise and experience, execute the project with proper design and management methods and provide a high level of trust and collaboration to the client. Clients, designers and contractors are key stakeholders in the development process so they should be consulted for forming the contract KPIs to monitor the sustainable project outcomes.Social implications>The generalised results confirm that task and contextual performance drivers can be applied as project management tools for managing the professional team members to achieve sustainability deliverables in terms of KPIs. Such findings will enhance the government or corporate construction strategy for managing and achieving holistic sustainability for construction developments.Originality/value>This research identifies post-contract performance monitoring measures (cost and quality KPIs as well as task and contextual performance drivers) that can be adopted for driving sustainable design and construction for sustainable development.

What is the effect of contractors' nonprofit andfor-profit ownership on the scope and nature of performance measurement used by government agencies? Quantitative and qualitative data were generated through semistructured interviews administered to a sample of state and local public agencies and private contractors across five jurisdictions. The findings of this study suggest that monitoring officers working with nonprofit rather than for-profit contractors are more likely to rely on qualitative performance data and examine equitable access to services, contractors' reputation, and compliance with industry rules and regulations. Although organizational ownership may not be well understood by practitioners, performance appears to be conceptualized differently across sectors. The author calls for a better understanding of the impact of the identified differences in performance measurement on the effectiveness of contract monitoring.

Government contracts and grants constitute the largest funding source for the majority of nonprofit organizations. Contracts for complex services, such as those involved in delivering human services, pose substantial challenges for public and nonprofit managers. In this context, concerns have been raised about contract management capacity, including challenges related to proposal and contract development, implementation, and performance reporting, as well as the impact of contract monitoring tools on contractor performance. Relatively few studies have provided a cross-sectoral perspective on the concrete managerial skill sets needed to engage in the interpersonal and technical processes involved in effective contract management. This study reports qualitative findings from a survey of county and nonprofit human service managers regarding approaches to managing challenges that arise in contractual relationships. The results identify the important role played by communication in the relationships between contract managers, illustrate the content of formal and informal exchanges, and identify common perspectives on the characteristics of effective communications, including transparency, a balance of flexibility and consistency, and timeliness. Practice implications for contract management relate to enhancing communication strategies in order to promote stronger contract relationships.

Economic Norms Theory (ENT) implies that anti-modernist and anti-market values flourish in countries where the central authority poorly monitors contracts that bind economic transactions. Decades of research show that ENT astutely predicts civil war and interstate war incidents, as well as peoples support for war, and suicide bombing in defense of Islam. This paper investigates the association between contract enforcement and anti-Americanism, which is the ENT core, yet is a statistically under-evaluated implication. Accordingly, in countries with poor economic contract monitoring, power-contending elites can attribute the resultant loss of prosperity to the USA and relatedly spread antiAmerican values among citizens. It is the urban poor who are cognitively most available to adopt such elite-driven anti-Americanism since they tend to be hurt most socially and economically by unfulfilled market contracts. To investigate this argument, I statistically estimate random intercept models on a sample of Pew Global Attitudes Projects 2013 survey results. I observe that a three-way interaction among individuals' urbanity, poverty, and their nations' poor contract enforcement indicators increase anti-Americanism.

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to introduce the concept of the assumption of altruism argued by the author to be a tendency among both the lay public, professionals and politicians, a generalised assumption that contributes to the long standing and obstinate presence of abuse of adults who are at risk throughout England, particularly older people living in care and nursing homes. Design/methodology/approach By examining available figures that depict the continuing abuse of vulnerable adults, and by drawing on research, the author offers a partial explanation for the longevity of abuse in English society. Findings The paper demonstrates how the concept of the assumption of altruism can explain to a degree the apparent enduring levels of abuse of adults who are at risk. Practical implications The paper offers the opportunity for the reader to consider some of the fundamental, higher order reasons for the persistent levels of abuse in England, abuse that endures despite the oversight by government of care provided to adults who maybe at risk by virtue of the activities of the statutory regulator and health and social care commissioners. Originality/value By presenting the incontrovertible evidence of enduring abuse, the paper introduces the concept of the assumption of altruism as a partial explanation for its continuing occurrence despite decades of policy and practice guidance designed to overcome it.

In this paper, the authors develop a comprehensive framework for QoS management based on soft probabilistic contracts. The authors approach also encompasses general QoS parameters, with “response time” as a particular case. In addition, the authors support composite QoS parameters, for example, combining timing aspects with “quality of data” or security level. They also study contract composition (how to derive QoS contracts for an orchestration from the QoS contracts with its called services), and contract monitoring.

Contracting services in the public sector with private for-profit and non-profit firms is one of the most prevalent types of alternative service-delivering arrangements. Concerning the positive potential of contracting, the relevant literature proposes that contracting may, but need not, improve individual choice, cost-effectiveness and the quality of delivery, equity and to some extent also expenditure control. On the other hand, many authors provide important arguments describing weak points of contracting and some risks connected with contracting services in the public sector. The main \"internal\" reason why contracting does not produce the expected results and even creates perverse effects in the effectiveness and quality of contracted services, is the improper implementation of contract management. This paper seeks to answer the question of what factors account for success in contracting for services in the public sector by testing the relationship between contracting performance and selected factors connected with contract management such as competition, exante evaluation of bidders, contract monitoring, contract duration, contract payment and joint problem solving and communication between the principal and the agent. This study uses a quantitative approach to investigate the research question and to analyze the original collected survey data from our own research. The research was supported by the Czech Grant Agency projects P403 / 12 / 0366 and P403 / 10 / 1892

The roots signify the origins and initial steps taken to build a coalition and the associated teething problems; the trunk represents efforts toward sustaining the organization s existence and growth; and the branches highlight the collective actions undertaken by the coalition in fulfillment of its aims and objectives. In preparing this book, and based on their unique experiences, Tanzania, Kenya, and Uganda respectively focus their chapters on the roots, trunk, and branches. To further the tree analogy, each country s chapter draws parallels or makes comparisons with what pertains in the other two countries, to show how they benefit from each other in an ongoing knowledge exchange. Chapter two (Putting Down Roots, Tanzania) has three main sections: an overview of the country context and health reform agenda; a discussion of the experiences of MSG-Pharma, Tanzania s multi-stakeholder body, in setting up a coalition, and lessons learned. These outline the reasons leading to the establishment of the multi-stakeholder group and describe how challenges met during its formation stages were overcome. Chapter three (growing a strong trunk, Kenya) provides insights into the approaches employed by Kenya s multi-stakeholder coalition, the Forum for Transparency and Accountability in Pharmaceutical Procurement (FoTAPP), in order to sustain the interest and commitment of key stakeholders. It presents a brief description of the Kenyan context in relation to the pharmaceutical sector, highlighting challenges in the sector, and the importance of a multi-stakeholder coalition amid other reform platforms. Chapter four (branching out and bearing fruits, Uganda) describes the opportunities, challenges, and rewards associated with designing and implementing a joint intervention in furtherance of the goals of the Medicines Transparency Alliance (MeTA), the coalition in Uganda. It also illustrates how the coalition has been Able to inform policy dialogue and reform efforts in the health sector.