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Synopsis

The research problem

Many diversified multinational professional service firms utilize a global professional service network (GPS network or network) to deliver assurance and other types of consulting services worldwide. This research investigates and analyzes the complex interactions between members of such GPS networks and their management in the execution of an international consulting/advisory engagement.

Motivation

Few studies have discussed the nature and characteristics of GPS networks, including the relationships among their members and the management of the network when providing assurance, tax, or consulting services. Also, limited studies have provided insights into the nature, complexity, and challenges associated with referral engagements for such GPS networks’ members. Even though networks serve as a coordinating platform in implementing the network’s policies, member firms who are legally independent may have incentives to deviate from these policies. Thus, evidence is needed on how such GPS networks monitor and ensure appropriate compliance and interpretation of the operating methodologies by disparate member firms, and the effectiveness of such practices to achieve the networks’ global strategies and objectives.

Scope

This study focuses specifically on consulting engagements in GPS networks. It is not intended to describe or research multinational assurance engagements, which are often referred to as group audits.

Research questions

RQ1: To what extent and how do member firms in a GPS network interact to provide their services for international consulting engagement, without giving up their autonomous management of their firms and related decision-making?

RQ2: To what extent and how do member firms and senior global leadership of a GPS network use power to influence member firms’ decisions in the provision of international consulting engagements?

RQ3: To what extent can senior global leadership sacrifice the membership ties in a GPS network to protect and safeguard the network’s interest?

Target population

Stakeholders include the academic community, practitioners, company managers, regulatory authorities, Forum of Firms, audit networks, and investors at large.

Adopted methodology

An interpretive real-life case study was conducted using a triangulation of theories to analyze and assess an actual referral engagement undertaken by member firms in one of the top 10 global professional service firms (with an assurance product offering).

Analyses

The data were composed of narratives from email correspondences and semistructured interviews with local partners, managers, and the regional director of the network.

Findings

The findings illustrate the disagreement and miscommunication among members of the GPS network, a lack of trust, and excessive use of power and authority from the lead partner and the regional director of the network. One member lost a vital consulting engagement when he insisted on asserting and maintaining autonomous management of elements of an engagement referred to him by an affiliated firm. Senior global leadership of the GPS network failed to appropriately intervene between the network and disregarded the autonomous status and welfare of the member firm when it conflicted with the financial benefits of the network.

The history and development of reproductive genetics span centuries of scientific exploration and technological innovation. Today, the importance of offspring health and further understanding of the relevant molecular mechanisms and interdisciplinary knowledge have led to significant advancements, which are gradually appearing in clinical settings. However, whether this rapid progress in reproductive genetics could lead to technical, ethical, and economic problems warrants evaluation. This brief review introduces a range of approaches to reproductive genetics, from the earliest to the most recent, and discusses future concerns regarding the large-scale use of emerging reproductive genetic tools.

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With decreasing cost of biomedical technologies, the scale of the genetic and healthcare data have exponentially increased and become available to wider audiences. Hence, privacy of patients and study participants has garnered the attention of researchers and regulators alike. Availability of genetic and health care information for uses not anticipated at the time of collection gives rise to privacy concerns such that people suffer dignitary harm when their data is used in ways they did not desire or intend, even if no concrete economic damage results. In this workshop, we explore the issues surrounding data use to advance human health from a privacy perspective. Broadly this field can be considered in two encompassing areas: (1) Ethics and regulation of privacy: The ethical and regulatory frames through which we can consider privacy, the existing regulations regarding privacy and what is on the horizon, and implementation of such ethical considerations for data with the new Common Rule. (2) Approaches to ensuring privacy using technology: The technologies that allow responsible use and sharing of data such as encryption and the quantification of privacy leakages in publicly available data through privacy attacks for better risk-assessment tools.

Innovations in human-centered biomedical informatics are often developed with the eventual goal of real-world translation. While biomedical research questions are usually answered in terms of how a method performs in a particular context, we argue that it is equally important to consider and formally evaluate the ethical implications of informatics solutions. Several new research paradigms have arisen as a result of the consideration of ethical issues, including but not limited for privacy-preserving computation and fair machine learning. In the spirit of the Pacific Symposium on Biocomputing, we discuss broad and fundamental principles of ethical biomedical informatics in terms of Olelo Noeau, or Hawaiian proverbs and poetical sayings that capture Hawaiian values. While we emphasize issues related to privacy and fairness in particular, there are a multitude of facets to ethical biomedical informatics that can benefit from a critical analysis grounded in ethics.

Machine learning predictive analytics (MLPA) are utilized increasingly in health care, but can pose harms to patients, clinicians, health systems, and the public. The dynamic nature of this technology creates unique challenges to evaluating safety and efficacy and minimizing harms. In response, regulators have proposed an approach that would shift more responsibility to MLPA developers for mitigating potential harms. To be effective, this approach requires MLPA developers to recognize, accept, and act on responsibility for mitigating harms. In interviews of 40 MLPA developers of health care applications in the United States, we found that a subset of ML developers made statements reflecting moral disengagement, representing several different potential rationales that could create distance between personal accountability and harms. However, we also found a different subset of ML developers who expressed recognition of their role in creating potential hazards, the moral weight of their design decisions, and a sense of responsibility for mitigating harms. We also found evidence of moral conflict and uncertainty about responsibility for averting harms as an individual developer working in a company. These findings suggest possible facilitators and barriers to the development of ethical ML that could act through encouragement of moral engagement or discouragement of moral disengagement. Regulatory approaches that depend on the ability of ML developers to recognize, accept, and act on responsibility for mitigating harms might have limited success without education and guidance for ML developers about the extent of their responsibilities and how to implement them.

Large Language Models (LLMs) are a type of artificial intelligence that has been revolutionizing various fields, including biomedicine. They have the capability to process and analyze large amounts of data, understand natural language, and generate new content, making them highly desirable in many biomedical applications and beyond. In this workshop, we aim to introduce the attendees to an in-depth understanding of the rise of LLMs in biomedicine, and how they are being used to drive innovation and improve outcomes in the field, along with associated challenges and pitfalls.

This report presents an overview about the themes of the Topic Study Group 57 on the diversity of theories in mathematics education. Main topics, which were addressed, are the networking of theories in theories related to the use of technology, to design research and beyond. The program, format, contributions, discussions and the main results as well as some future implications are presented.

Large language models (LLMs) and biomedical annotations have a symbiotic relationship. LLMs rely on high-quality annotations for training and/or fine-tuning for specific biomedical tasks. These annotations are traditionally generated through expensive and time-consuming human curation. Meanwhile LLMs can also be used to accelerate the process of curation, thus simplifying the process, and potentially creating a virtuous feedback loop. However, their use also introduces new limitations and risks, which are as important to consider as the opportunities they offer. In this workshop, we will review the process that has led to the current rise of LLMs in several fields, and in particular in biomedicine, and discuss specifically the opportunities and pitfalls when they are applied to biomedical annotation and curation.