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AIRCRAFT CLEANING was originally a function carried out by the catering or engineering departments of airlines, but following the pattern of commercial and industrial cleaning, the trend in recent years has been to move away from direct labour and to employ a specialist contractor. Cleaning in almost every field has become a sophisticated business, employing the use of specialised chemicals, materials and equipment, with the added need to thoroughly train and supervise staff, to keep pace with the growth in technology and the public demand for cleanliness. There are of course other advantages of employing a specialist contractor, not the least being the question of cost saving. In a labour intensive industry it is essential to achieve maximum labour utilisation. Aircraft Cleaning Services Ltd have gone a long way towards this end and rationalised their airfield operations by offering a comprehensive service to all airlines or handling agents.

Due to the difficulties organisations face in implementing process improvement initiatives (PIIs), this research explores how visualisation and standardisation of business processes help organisations achieve PIIs to improve organisational performance.

A multi-staged case study strategy that analyse qualitative data and performs a process modelling analysis of quantitative data.

The paper makes two main contributions to existing knowledge. Firstly, it explains how taking the visualised and standardised methods on PIIs can reduce service delivery times and enhance organisational performance. Secondly, it demonstrates how adopting these dual methods offers a better chance of increasing organisational performance than using only a single method.

Although the paper considers the flexibility in the standardisation of business processes as it gives scope for innovation and creativity on the part of the process, it did not consider if flexibility is possible without breaking the standardised working way. Hence, future research can consider this. Also, future research can hypothesise the BPM model and test for statistical generalisability.

The research offers new insight into how and when both visualisation and standardisation of PIIs can benefit organisations.

In an intertemporal decision framework, borrowing and wealth holding decisions will incorporate information relevant to future income realizations. One channel for monetary and real disturbances to influence real activity is through revised anticipations of future income. In this study, evidence was uncovered for contemporaneous nominal shock effects on changes in household leverage with nominal and real shock effects uncovered for the growth of nondurables and services consumption and real financial wealth holdings. Evidence was found for potential opportunities to use short‐run monetary policy to offset the impact of sectoral production shocks on the growth rate or the volatility of the growth rate in consumption. The monetary shock would have to be opposite in sign to the sectoral production shock. A similar feature was found for the financial asset holdings. Evidence was uncovered for volatility and growth rate trade‐offs.

The following classified, annotated list of titles is intended to provide reference librarians with a current checklist of new reference books, and is designed to supplement the RSR review column, “Recent Reference Books,” by Frances Neel Cheney. “Reference Books in Print” includes all additional books received prior to the inclusion deadline established for this issue. Appearance in this column does not preclude a later review in RSR. Publishers are urged to send a copy of all new reference books directly to RSR as soon as published, for immediate listing in “Reference Books in Print.” Reference books with imprints older than two years will not be included (with the exception of current reprints or older books newly acquired for distribution by another publisher). The column shall also occasionally include library science or other library related publications of other than a reference character.

This paper seeks to examine whether or not divident policy is influenced by the firm's corporate control structure, investigating the relationship between the dynamics of earnings payout and the voting power enjoyed by different types of shareholders. This allows one to test a set of hypotheses derived from agency and pecking order theories.

A large panel of UK firms for the 1990s and is analyzed that the payout policy is significantly related to control concentration. The problem of control measurement is addressed and the use of Banzhaf indices advocated as a relevant measure of voting power in the analysis of corporate policy choices. The traditional framework proposed by Linter is extended and an econometrically sound approach to modeling the dynamics of the total payout suggested. Where most – even recent – studies on payout policy show some methodological flaws, state‐of‐the‐art dynamic panel data estimation procedures are applied.

Expectedly, profitability is a crucial determinant of payout decisions, but the presence of strong block holders or block holder coalitions weakens the relationship between the corporate earnings and the payout dynamics. Block holders appear to realize that an overly generous payout may render the company liquidity constrained, and, consequently, result in suboptimal investment policy.

The results challenge some of the implications of the agency theories of payout, and favor a pecking‐order explanation for the observed patterns. The analysis of payout dynamics reveals also that companies adjust payout policies to changes in earnings only gradually, which is consistent with “dividend smoothing”. In fact, the results suggest a presence of a more general phenomenon of the “total payout smoothing”.

According to one's bet knowledge, this is the first study employing those game theory‐based concepts in the context of corporate payout policies.

The treatment of tax incidence in most principles textbooks is incomplete and misleading. This anomaly results from treating tax incidence as a short‐run phenomenon. This paper briefly reviews the theory regarding tax incidence and surveys the leading textbooks in regard to their treatment of this issue. A strong recommendation is made that tax incidence—if covered in a principles text—be treated only in a long‐run context.

The primary purpose of this article is to investigate empirically for the US the potential impact of monetary and fiscal policy upon real economic activity using the “St. Louis equation” approach. Only lagged values of the policy variables are included in the estimation to ensure their statistical exogeneity. Hsiao's (1981) multivariate technique is employed to determine the model lag specification. The empirical results suggest that only fiscal policy as measured by high‐employment tax changes can exert a significant lasting impact upon real GNP. Monetary policy, on the other hand, has only a temporary effect on real GNP. The results also show that both monetary and fiscal policy have significant and permanent effects on nominal GNP, the former via its permanent effect on prices and the latter through its permanent effect on real GNP.

This article investigates empirically the determinants of inflation in Saudi Arabia using the quarterly time‐series data over the period 1962:1 to 1981:IV. The basis of this investigation is the monetary approach whereby the roles of both the money‐supply growth and the money‐demand growth are taken into account. Moreover, the potential effect of external monetary factors on the Saudi inflation is genuinely incorporated through the underlying money‐demand function. The proposed monetary model provides an adequate explanation of the Saudi inflationary process. Furthermore, the empirical results exhibit structural stability over time and do not suffer from simultaneous‐equation bias. The empirical results show that external monetary factors (particularly foreign interest rates) and inflationary expectations exert significant positive effects on inflation in Saudi Arabia. Importantly, the results also indicate that money‐supply growth has a quick and powerful positive impact upon the Saudi inflation with a unitary elasticity. Therefore, control over money‐supply growth appears an essential ingredient in any anti‐inflation policy in Saudi Arabia. Such monetary control can only be achieved in Saudi Arabia (and other oil‐exporting countries) through control over domestic government expenditures that have escalated particularly during the past decade.

The purpose of this paper is to discuss briefly the types of research that have been undertaken, to reference a number of American and British studies and to summarise some work in this general area that has been completed by the author whilst at Bradford University and subsequently at Stirling University.

The purpose of this paper is to appraise the effectiveness of monetary policy actions in variant market conditions for Islamic stocks. These stocks offer ground for a natural experiment as they have restrictions on the line of business and their distinguished capital structure does not allow them to combat the liquidity crisis through the use of leverage.

The paper uses the quantile regression approach for a multi-country sample of Islamic stock indices to assess the impact of domestic as well as US expansionary monetary policy on stock returns of Islamic indices at various locations of distribution of returns.

It is found that, at lower return levels, an expansionary monetary policy has a negative effect on the returns. In other cases, there is no significant impact of policy rate change on index returns.

It is more appropriate to use firm level data of Islamic stocks instead of stock indices. However, the information regarding index constituents is not publicly available.

The paper offers useful information to investors and policy makers. It shows that central banks should improve their credibility for monetary policy to be effective and their policies must be designed keeping in view the strong impact of US rate on global monetary environment.

This paper provides first empirical evidence of the impact of discount rates on the returns of Islamic stocks in different market conditions.