Strategic Prioritization Research Articles

Analysis of the Role of Internal Audit in Enhancing Company's Internal Control

This study aims to explore the role of internal audit in enhancing a company's internal control system by examining internal audit practices, perceptions of internal control effectiveness, and the impact of internal audit recommendations. The research employs a qualitative approach, utilizing interviews and document analysis to gather data from participants representing various organizations. Results reveal significant variations in internal audit practices influenced by organizational size, industry dynamics, and regulatory frameworks. Despite these variations, internal audit functions universally serve as guardians of organizational integrity, providing independent assurance regarding internal control effectiveness. Participants expressed diverse perceptions of internal control effectiveness, citing resource constraints, inadequate training, and communication gaps as common challenges. However, internal audit was unanimously recognized as crucial in enhancing internal controls, offering independent assurance and promoting a culture of compliance and ethical behavior. Internal audit recommendations often led to tangible improvements in internal control systems, although challenges related to resource allocation and change management were reported. Theoretical implications highlight the multifaceted nature of internal audit functions and their critical role in organizational governance, while managerial implications emphasize the need for strategic resource allocation, prioritization, and change management initiatives. This research contributes to the understanding of internal audit practices and their impact on organizational effectiveness.

Asia-Pacific International Center of Excellence in Malaria Research: Maximizing Impact on Malaria Control Policy and Public Health in Cambodia and Papua New Guinea.

The Asia-Pacific International Center of Excellence in Malaria Research (ICEMR) was funded in 2016 to conduct a coordinated set of field and in-depth biological studies in Cambodia and Papua New Guinea (PNG), in sites that span the range of transmission intensities currently found in the Asia-Pacific regions. The overall objective is to gain an understanding of key parasite, human host, and vector factors involved in maintaining transmission in the face of intensified control and elimination programs, and to develop novel approaches to identify and target residual transmission foci. In this article, we will describe how the ICEMR program was designed to address key knowledge gaps and priority areas for the malaria control programs in each country. In PNG, partners have worked together on two consecutive ICEMR grants (2009-2016 and 2017-2024) and we present a case study of the partnership and engagement approach that has led to stronger coordination of research activities and integration with program, informing country-level strategic planning and prioritization of control activities. In both settings, the ICEMR program has generated insights into transmission foci, risk factors for ongoing transmission, highlighting the hidden burden of vivax malaria, and the need for additional complementary vector control tools. Finally, we will summarize the emerging research questions and priority areas-namely surveillance, vivax malaria, new vector control tools, and community/health systems-oriented approaches-where further tool development and implementation research have been identified as being needed to guide policy.

Public health genomics capacity assessment: readiness for large-scale pathogen genomic surveillance in Canada’s public health laboratories

BackgroundAlong with rapid diagnostic testing, contact tracing, and public health measures, an effective pandemic response incorporates genomics-based surveillance. Large-scale SARS-CoV-2 genome sequencing is a crucial component of the global response to COVID-19. Characterizing the state of genomics readiness among Canada’s public health laboratories was necessary to inform strategic planning and deployment of capacity-building resources in the early stages of the pandemic.MethodsWe used a qualitative study design and focus group discussions, encompassing both technical and leadership perspectives, to perform an in-depth evaluation of the state of pathogen genomics readiness in Canada.ResultsWe found substantial diversity in the state of readiness for SARS-CoV-2 genomic surveillance across Canada. Despite this variability, we identified common barriers and needs in the areas of specimen access, data flow and sharing, computing infrastructure, and access to highly qualified bioinformatics personnel.ConclusionsThese findings enable the strategic prioritization and deployment of resources to increase Canada’s ability to perform effective public health genomic surveillance for COVID-19 and prepare for future emerging infectious diseases. They also provide a unique qualitative research model for use in capacity building.

A national fish passage barrier inventory to support fish passage policy implementation and estimate river connectivity in New Zealand

Fragmentation of river systems is a key driver of freshwater biodiversity loss. Instream structure inventories are an essential component of delivering a strategic approach to restoring river connectivity. We used a range of data sources to collate the best available information on fish passage barriers and instream structures across the whole of New Zealand. To support implementation of new national policy objectives to maintain and improve river connectivity, the structure inventory has been integrated with a new fish passage assessment mobile application that allows river managers and asset owners to ground-truth, update and add records to the database. The data are provided open access and are being used for environmental reporting and to support strategic prioritisation of barrier mitigation actions. We used these data to quantify river connectivity at regional and national scales and demonstrated that at least half of New Zealand's river network is upstream of fish migration barriers. Limitations to our calculation of upstream river connectivity included the unknown influence of unrecorded structures, particularly on private land, missing information within recorded data, the large number of instream structures that have been identified but not yet assessed for their risk to fish passage, and spatial errors in the automated pairing of structures to a digital river network. A critical challenge for river managers is understanding the consequences of these uncertainties in the data for prioritisation and decision-making regarding barrier removal or mitigation.

Advancing faculty diversity in nursing education: Strategies for success.

Despite the established value of diversity, equity, and inclusion as critical components to achieving academic excellence, building diversity within nursing education remains a challenge. Institutional gatekeeping, overt racism, and implicit biases are barriers that perpetuate a low percentage of nursing faculty of color. From pre-search strategic prioritization to submission of the search committee report, a multi-prong, just, transparent, systematic, and strategic approach to hiring is needed to advance opportunities for hiring a diverse faculty. This article provides nursing administration leaders, search committee members, and faculty engaged in hiring practices with a stepwise review of specific strategies. Evidence and tools to mitigate bias, attract excellent and diverse applicant pools, conduct fair evaluations, and support ongoing reflection and improvement of hiring practices are described. An overview of types of implicit bias in hiring practices, descriptive evaluation rubrics, and self-reflection questions are included.

Prioritization of public and private land to protect species at risk habitat

AbstractConservation budgets are limited, requiring strategic prioritization among actions to efficiently protect species. Systematic prioritization approaches typically determine locations for conservation that most effectively balance species protection with cost. Proxies for cost are frequently used in prioritizing land for protection. Here, we combine financial cost estimates for private land acquisition and species habitat models into a spatial prioritization to explore cost‐effective habitat protection, using a case study of species at risk in Ontario, Canada. Our findings suggest a key trade‐off, whereby protecting the areas with the greatest concentration of species at risk may not be the best strategy for protecting these species. Instead, protecting species at risk may be most cost effective in areas where species‐at‐risk richness is still relatively high, but land costs are relatively low, such as in central Ontario. However, the budget required to adequately protect species at risk through land purchase would be much larger than is currently available for conservation efforts, even if public lands are preferentially protected. Therefore, to effectively protect all species at risk in Ontario, we recommend the use of alternative conservation measures, such as easements and incentives for restoration on private land, to supplement already protected areas.

Prioritizing sites for terrestrial invasive alien plant management in urban ecosystems

Abstract Rapid urbanization is placing increased pressure on natural, restored and designed ecosystems to provide services to growing human populations. The establishment and spread of invasive alien species within and around urban areas threaten biodiversity and ecosystem functioning, and the services they provide. Consequently, there is a need to protect and manage areas where invasions will have the greatest socio‐ecological impact. Limited resources call for the strategic prioritization of these areas, yet there are few widely adopted, standardized approaches for prioritizing sites vulnerable to species invasions in urban areas. We applied multi‐criteria decision analyses in a geographic information system to develop a strategic, spatial prioritization approach for identifying those sites most sensitive to terrestrial alien plant invasions. To test this approach, we use the Toronto region as a case study, the most populous metropolitan area in Canada and one of the fastest growing urban centres in North America. Through consultation with local conservation authorities, we developed an objective, hierarchical set of 19 criteria grouped into two categories: biodiversity and ecosystem functioning, and ecosystem services. Spatial data layers were assigned to each criterion and used to map areas most important for biodiversity and ecosystem functioning and providing ecosystem services. We overlayed these priority areas with distribution data of Vincetoxicum rossicum, one of the Toronto region's most widespread and damaging invasive alien plant species (IAPs) to determine the potential threat species’ invasions pose to these important areas. High‐priority sites identified by our prioritization model include areas of significant biodiversity conservation value such as intact forests, meadows and wetlands which are crucial for providing regulating and supporting services. Our IAPs distribution map showed that these high‐priority sites are heavily invaded (92.9% of the area occupied by V. rossicum comprises medium‐high‐priority sites) and should be prioritized for management to ensure biodiversity and ecosystem functioning and the provision of ecosystem services are maximized. The approach applied in this study can be useful for conservation practitioners in guiding the selection of high‐priority, socio‐ecologically significant sites for management action in urban landscapes across different geographic regions and spatial scales.

Strategic Prioritization of Action Plan Towards De-Carbonization and Sustainable Energy Transition for Developing Nations

The strategic prioritization in policy synergies heterogeneous stakeholders and opportunities that facilitates developing nations to game for betterment of society in limited resources. The strategic prioritization methodology was presented to frame long and short-term actions with available resources. The theme is to develop inherently de-carbonize economies with minimum spending, efforts, adopting best practices, exploit regional potential, optimize asset efficiency, recycling/reuse, technology and innovation, etc. However, trickle down global climate change regulations require level of awareness for regional energy dynamics, politics, bureaucratic structure, training and education, infrastructural weaknesses, financial barriers, etc. Several conflicting, non-measurable and inconsistency in policies destroy efforts towards net carbon zero and hindering de-carbonizing objectives in the developing world. No doubt, societal factors and their interest’s influences political systems engaged in energy transition policymaking, implementation and enforcement. Therefore, it’s time to organize energy transition efforts/planning in a way that it has minimum financial impact and keep developing economies on momentum. The article highlights sustainable policy instruments, initiatives, best practices, opportunities, innovation areas and identify stating steps those will inherently lead climate change ambitious targets of de-carburization in developing economies with minimum financial investment.

Response-code conflict in dual-task interference and its modulation by age

Difficulties in performing two tasks at once can arise from several sources and usually increase in advanced age. Tasks with concurrent bimodal (e.g., manual and oculomotor) responding to single stimuli consistently revealed crosstalk between conflicting response codes as a relevant source. However, how this finding translates to unimodal (i.e., manual only) response settings and how it is affected by age remains open. To address this issue, we had young and older adults respond to high- or low-pitched tones with one (single task) or both hands concurrently (dual task). Responses were either compatible or incompatible with the pitch. When responses with the same level of compatibility were combined in dual-task conditions, their response codes were congruent to each other, whereas combining a compatible and an incompatible response created mutually incongruent (i.e., conflicting) response codes, potentially inducing detrimental crosstalk. Across age groups, dual-task costs indeed were overall highest with response-code incongruency. In these trials, compatible responses exhibited higher costs than incompatible ones, even after removing trials with strongly synchronized responses. This underadditive cost asymmetry argues against mutual crosstalk as the sole source of interference and corroborates notions of strategic prioritization of limited processing capacity based on mapping-selection difficulty. As expected, the effects of incongruent response codes were found to be especially deleterious in older adults, supporting assumptions of age-related deficits in multiple-action control at the level of task-shielding. Overall, our results suggest that aging is linked to higher response confusability and less efficient flexibility for capacity sharing in dual-task settings.

S3 and Recovery and Resilience Funds: A Case Study Built on the Experience of 10 Spanish Regions.

The EU's response to the COVID-19 crisis, namely the approval of the Next Generation package, provides an opportunity to explore to what extent the existing Smart Specialisation regional strategies and related ecosystems have been taken into account in the highly relevant territorial context in which the national Recovery Plans have been designed. According to our results the potential of the Smart Specialisation approach (S3) in relation with its place-based strategic prioritisation may have been overlooked in the process. The research is based on a desk review of relevant documents and recent literature in this field; followed by semi-structured interviews with regional planners and practitioners from 10 Spanish regions (autonomous communities); complemented, in a second phase, by the organisation of a focus group to validate the initial results. During our research we identified the main contributions that the Smart Specialisation approach has so far made to the regions (mainly in terms of participative governance and creation of regional ecosystems); and the unanimous perception shared by all the practitioners interviewed that the S3 approach has led to a change of vision in public intervention. However, all of the interviewed regions have confirmed that the drafting of the national recovery and resilience plan lacked an ex-ante alignment with the regional S3 strategies, and failed to consider the existing regional S3 ecosystems. The separation of the recovery logic (based on the operation of public consultations at national level to identify strategic projects) from the S3 logic (based on a strategic prioritisation exercise conducted by each regional ecosystem) confirms that an opportunity may have been missed in the recovery planning process to consolidate the multi-actor, multilevel and place-based S3 approach. Although there is a certain degree of disappointment among regional practitioners as a result of this misalignment, the majority of them believe in the possibility of an ex-post alignment between the two processes, that can protect existing regional shared visions. However, without clear recognition of the S3 ecosystems and the S3 managing bodies, the significant role that Smart Specialisation could play in the recovery process may be at risk.

Configural learning by cleaner fish in a complex biological market task

Individuals engaged in cooperative or mutualistic interactions can benefit from adjusting their strategic behaviour according to the bargaining positions of their partners. In interaction networks in which individuals cooperate with a variety of partners, assessing partners' options and expected interaction payoffs might be crucial for such behavioural optimization to occur. However, the cognitive challenges involved in this assessment and the constraints they may pose for strategic behaviour are currently poorly understood. Here, we investigated whether cleaner fish, Labroides dimidiatus, can learn to optimally prioritize partners, when faced with an ecologically relevant challenge that requires them to distinguish between interaction contexts. We expanded on a relatively well-studied problem that cleaners face in nature: choosing between client fish that simultaneously seek service. In such situations, cleaners should give priority to visitor client species as these tend to leave if not serviced immediately, while resident species will readily await inspection. In laboratory ‘biological market’ experiments simulating this choice using ephemeral and permanent food-offering plates, cleaners could learn to prefer visitors. However, the actual challenge cleaners face is more complex: interactions in the reef form a ‘complex market’ whereby clients appear in all possible configurations. In homogeneous configurations (visitor–visitor and resident–resident), the payoffs received from tending residents are higher which may slow down or even prevent learning to prioritize visitors. Adjusting the plate paradigm to this more complex scenario, we found that exposure to homogeneous configurations indeed posed a challenge to cleaners' strategic prioritization, diverting their preferences towards residents. Our results also revealed individual differences in performance, as some cleaners still learned to prefer visitors. This suggests that cleaners may not only learn about each client type separately, and that learning about cue configurations, a precursor of learning complex structures, may play a role in shaping their strategic behaviour in cooperative interactions.

Tropomyosin receptor kinases in sarcomas - of joy and despair.

The relatively recent discovery of neurotrophic tropomyosin receptor kinase (NTRK) gene arrangements as pan-tumor predictive biomarkers has led to impressive novel treatments for patients with TRK fusions. Although the number of patients who qualify for treatment is vanishingly small for cancer patients in general, a few histological subsets of sarcomas exhibit NTRK fusions more commonly leading to large expectations within the sarcoma community. Larotrectenib and entrectenib have recently been approved based on durable responses in TRK positive cancers with nonresectable or metastatic disease, including many sarcomas. Identification of resistance mutations to TRKi has led to the development of novel salvage therapies which may soon further expand the armamentarium of treatments. The greatest barrier and frustration to date is the actual identification of patients who harbor the fusion. The dimension of rarity in sarcomas remains difficult to comprehend for both patients and caregivers. Diagnosis of NTRK fusions is complex, particularly in the context of sarcomas and can involve immunohistochemistry as a screening tool but frequently requires fluorescence-in-situ hybridization or next-generation sequencing (NGS) to confirm the diagnosis. The growing evidence on subtype-specific incidence of NTRK fusions will help to improve strategic prioritization or exclusion of subtypes to reduce the burden of negative testing. Next-generation inhibitors provide potential salvage treatment options for patients failing first-line therapy.

Overseas Medical Referral: the health system challenges for Pacific Island Countries

The delivery of specialised clinical services in the small Island nations of the Pacific region is an increasing challenge in the context of a rising burden of non-communicable diseases. Resources are limited and case-loads too low to support local specialists. This article focuses on the common practice of Overseas Medical Referral (OMR), which is an increasing challenge in the region. We collected interview and secondary data across 16 Pacific Island Countries. We found that OMR policies are often weak or incomplete, systems inadequate and reforms needed. Integrating OMR fully into national health referral systems and national strategic planning and prioritisation processes is needed. There is an additional need for collection of routine data on OMR service providers in the recipient countries and the outcomes of clinical care. With these reforms, a move towards increased regional cooperation and some form of strategic purchasing is possible.

Disruptive Resilience: Harnessing Leadership to Build a More Equitable Health Care System After COVID-19.

Disruptive Resilience: Harnessing Leadership to Build a More Equitable Health Care System After COVID-19.

Fitness and Research Complexity Among Research-Active Universities in the World

In addition to knowledge transfer through higher education, universities play an important role in exploring new concepts and innovation by research. While most research-active universities cover a wide range of academic disciplines, strategic research prioritisation becomes an important task of senior management and research leaders. This paper investigates research-active institutes in the world according to the Academic Ranking of World Universities. Revealed symmetric comparative advantage analysis is applied on the research publications extracted from the Microsoft Academic Graph data set, and the correlations between research institutes and research fields are analysed. This paper also investigates the fitness of research institutes and analyses the nicheness of research disciplines. The relationship between opportunity value, research complexity index and the fitness level are explored.

Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion: A strategic priority for the American Pediatric Surgical Association

Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion: A strategic priority for the American Pediatric Surgical Association

Integrating the social sciences in epidemic preparedness and response: A strategic framework to strengthen capacities and improve Global Health security

BackgroundThe importance of integrating the social sciences in epidemic preparedness and response has become a common feature of infectious disease policy and practice debates. However to date, this integration remains inadequate, fragmented and under-funded, with limited reach and small initial investments. Based on data collected prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, in this paper we analysed the variety of knowledge, infrastructure and funding gaps that hinder the full integration of the social sciences in epidemics and present a strategic framework for addressing them.MethodsSenior social scientists with expertise in public health emergencies facilitated expert deliberations, and conducted 75 key informant interviews, a consultation with 20 expert social scientists from Africa, Asia and Europe, 2 focus groups and a literature review of 128 identified high-priority peer reviewed articles. We also analysed 56 interviews from the Ebola 100 project, collected just after the West African Ebola epidemic. Analysis was conducted on gaps and recommendations. These were inductively classified according to various themes during two group prioritization exercises. The project was conducted between February and May 2019. Findings from the report were used to inform strategic prioritization of global investments in social science capacities for health emergencies.FindingsOur analysis consolidated 12 knowledge and infrastructure gaps and 38 recommendations from an initial list of 600 gaps and 220 recommendations. In developing our framework, we clustered these into three areas: 1) Recommendations to improve core social science response capacities, including investments in: human resources within response agencies; the creation of social science data analysis capacities at field and global level; mechanisms for operationalizing knowledge; and a set of rapid deployment infrastructures; 2) Recommendations to strengthen applied and basic social sciences, including the need to: better define the social science agenda and core competencies; support innovative interdisciplinary science; make concerted investments in developing field ready tools and building the evidence-base; and develop codes of conduct; and 3) Recommendations for a supportive social science ecosystem, including: the essential foundational investments in institutional development; training and capacity building; awareness-raising activities with allied disciplines; and lastly, support for a community of practice.InterpretationComprehensively integrating social science into the epidemic preparedness and response architecture demands multifaceted investments on par with allied disciplines, such as epidemiology and virology. Building core capacities and competencies should occur at multiple levels, grounded in country-led capacity building. Social science should not be a parallel system, nor should it be “siloed” into risk communication and community engagement. Rather, it should be integrated across existing systems and networks, and deploy interdisciplinary knowledge “transversally” across all preparedness and response sectors and pillars. Future work should update this framework to account for the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the institutional landscape.

Strategic prioritisation enhances young and older adults' visual feature binding in working memory.

Visual working memory for features and bindings is susceptible to age-related decline. Two experiments were used to examine whether older adults are able to strategically prioritise more valuable information in working memory and whether this could reduce age-related impairments. Younger (18–33 years) and older (60–90 years) adults were presented with coloured shapes and, following a brief delay, asked to recall the feature that had accompanied the probe item. In Experiment 1, participants were either asked to prioritise a more valuable object in the array (serial position 1, 2, or 3) or to treat them all equally. Older adults exhibited worse overall memory performance but were as able as younger adults to prioritise objects. In both groups, this ability was particularly apparent at the middle serial position. Experiment 2 then explored whether younger and older adults’ prioritisation is affected by presentation time. Replicating Experiment 1, older adults were able to prioritise the more valuable object in working memory, showing equivalent benefits and costs as younger adults. However, processing speed, as indexed by presentation time, was shown not to limit strategic prioritisation in either age group. Taken together, these findings demonstrate that, although older adults have poorer visual working memory overall, the ability to strategically direct attention to more valuable items in working memory is preserved across ageing.

Advancing the genetic counseling profession through research: Identification of priorities by the National Society of Genetic Counselors research task force.

To help advance research critical to the achievement of the National Society of Genetic Counselors' (NSGC) strategic objectives, coordination and prioritization of society resources are needed. NSGC convened a task force to advance research necessary for the achievement of our strategic objectives by reviewing existing society-supported research efforts identifying gaps in current research, and coordinating society resources, the task force was formed in order to coordinate and prioritize society resources to advance research critical to the achievement of our strategic objectives. The task force developed a research agenda outlining high-priority research questions for the next 5years. The questions are organized into four domains: (a) Genetic Counseling Clients; (b) Genetic Counseling Process and Outcomes; (c) Value of Genetic Counseling Services; and (d) Access to Genetic Counseling Services. This framework can be used to advocate for research and funding priorities within NSGC and with other key research entities to stimulate the growth and advancement of the genetic counseling profession.

Conservation planning for the Ganga River: a policy conundrum

ABSTRACT River conservation planning is complicated by its inherent connectivity, variations in habitat features and difficulties in conserving entire rivers. Economic and social constraints in human-dominated river systems, such as the Ganga, further complicate planning. A multistage systemic analysis was performed to identify policy gaps and recommend the most suitable conservation strategy for the Ganga. A critical review of Indian legislation impacting the Ganga was carried out to examine conservation issues from a policy perspective. Thereafter, existing conservation planning approaches were reviewed to identify the most strategic option. The analysis suggests that the disregard for river connectivity, lack of protection, and incoherent sectoral policies hinder river conservation in India. Strategic prioritisation and zonation of the Ganga along the principles of prohibition, restriction and regulated resource use and creation of ‘optimal sites’ for biodiversity conservation under multiple management zones was recommended. Improving institutional design and capacity would enhance sectoral coordination and policy integration.