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The paper aims to explore the present cheque clearance system in the USA and its possible misuses in the practical sense. Cheque kiting has been a way of creating fictitious cash balances on the balance sheet, which is a fraud. This practice can be prevented by a different accounting treatment.

The paper compares the cheque clearance system in the USA with the author’s own experiences from Turkey. It purports the riskiness of the present cheque clearance system on the financial statements and suggests a practical accounting application to prevent possible financial statement misrepresentations.

The paper explores that if the present accounting treatment is changed both for the banks and the businesses, the possibility of cheque kiting and misrepresentation of cash balances on the balance sheet will end. Basically, cash is the amount that can be used by the customer, the rest is not cash, it is “cheques in collection” and it should be treated as an account receivable until it is collected.

Financial statements are vital for the business world. Based on these statements, banks lend money, governments collect taxes and people buy and sell stocks. They need to be presented fairly. The present accounting application on cheque clearance is not transparent enough in the USA, and this might lead to misrepresentation of financial statements. The paper suggests a practical solution to this problem. By changing the accounting treatment, the companies will only show cash in their cash accounts and not the cheques in the collection process.

Fair treatment is the motto for any situation we face in our daily lives. One may be a poor or rich person but the treatment should be fair unless he/she is a fraudster. A rich person’s cheque is deposited in his/her bank account the next business day, and a poor person’s cheque might take days to be credited. This is not a fair treatment. The paper suggests that there must be a one-way accounting treatment, regardless of the depositor’s financial situation.

This paper has been prepared based on the author’s past business experience in Turkey and his study of the US cheque clearance system, comparing the two. It reflects the real-world examples of cheque kiting and its negative consequences in the USA and proposes a solution.

We empirically assessed the antecedents of subjective well-being at work for French permanent employees.

The methodology includes qualitative and quantitative data analyses. In the first phase, interviews elicited the antecedents of subjective well-being at work among permanent French employees. In the second phase, a questionnaire survey was used to confirm the relevance of the antecedents uncovered in the first phase.

We found 14 distinct elements that influence French employees’ subjective well-being at work: corporate culture, job dissonance, relationships with colleagues, achievement, professional development, relationships with superiors, status, workload, perks, feedback, workspace, diversity and pay. Moreover, we identified discrete antecedents for the three components of subjective well-being at work: work achievement and relationships with superiors and colleagues for positive emotions at work, job dissonance and workload for negative emotions at work and organizational culture and professional development for satisfaction with one’s work.

The original contribution of this study is to have unpacked the black box of the antecedents of subjective well-being in the French workplace and to have uncovered discriminant predictors for each of the three components of subjective well-being at work. Furthermore, we specifically linked each of these three components with their most significant antecedents.

The purpose of this study is to investigate the accumulation process of transfer film formation and dissipation and its effect on friction coefficients in non asbestos organic friction materials with various lubricant FeS₂ contents.

In total, 2.5%, 5% and 10% FeS₂ were added as lubricating components to the friction materials. Friction tests composed of two stages were conducted for these friction materials, and the friction surfaces of the counterpart discs were examined using scanning electron microscopy.

The transfer film formation reduced the friction coefficients, and the transfer film dissipation influenced the recovery of the friction coefficients. The effect of a high content of FeS₂ was to promote the transfer film formation at high temperatures and to hinder the transfer film dissipation at low temperatures, thus resulting in a decrease in the friction coefficients at high temperatures together with recovery retardation at low temperatures.

FeS₂ contributed to the transfer film formation at high temperatures in the fade test but hindered the transfer film removal in the recovery test, resulting in the retardation of friction coefficient recovery. The mechanism by which the FeS₂ lubricant component affected the transfer film formation and dissipation was analyzed and attributed to the different levels of FeS₂ pyrolysis at different temperature levels.

The purpose of the research is to examine the impact of leader humor on employee job crafting. Using the insights from self-determination theory (SDT), we investigate the underlying mechanism of employees’ flow at work and the moderating role of employees’ playfulness trait.

We adopted a three-wave field survey of 306 employees recruited from various industries. The moderated mediation model was examined using latent structural equation model analysis.

Results revealed that leader humor positively affected employees’ flow at work and subsequent job crafting. Moreover, both the direct effect of leader humor on employees’ flow at work and the indirect effect of leader humor on employees’ job crafting via flow at work were amplified by employees’ playfulness trait.

Leaders are encouraged to use jokes and humorous language to facilitate job crafting among playful subordinates. Organizations can create a work environment conducive to flow at work through job redesign, regardless of employees’ levels of playfulness trait.

The paper uncovers the critical role of flow in the relationship between leader humor and employee job crafting and identifies employees’ playfulness trait as a boundary condition in which leader humor works.

The purpose of this study is to estimate the impact of conflict witnessed in Pakistan on the enrolment rates of boys and girls. Pakistan has the world’s second-highest number of out-of-school children, with an estimated 22.8 million children aged 5–16 years not attending school.

By merging data on violence with the data on enrolment rates, this paper finds that exposure to violence is correlated with a decline in overall district-level enrolment rates in the short run at primary-level schools and middle-level schools.

However, for boys, violence is also negatively correlated with enrolment rates at middle-level schools in the medium run. One possible mechanism tested in this paper is the potential substitution of boys into the labour market during a period of conflict.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this paper adds to the existing literature in several ways. Firstly, the effect of conflict on the labour market by impacting schooling for boys and girls is examined for the first time in Pakistan. Secondly, the district-level data set on enrolment rates used for this study is novel and has not been used before for this type of analysis. Thirdly, while this study strengthens the evidence that the short run effects of conflict are stronger than the long-run effects, it also confirms the negative effects of conflict do not fade away immediately. Fourthly, this study emphasizes that each conflict is unique in terms of its heterogeneous effects across different cohorts, such as gender, as these effects are dependent on the mechanism through which conflict impacts each individual.

The existing technology acceptance models have not yet investigated functional and motivational factors impacting trust in and use of conversational artificial intelligence (AI) by integrating the feedback and sequential updating mechanisms. This study challenged the existing models and constructed an integrated longitudinal model. Using a territory-wide two-wave survey of a representative sample, this new model examined the effects of hedonic motivation, social motivation, perceived ease of use, and perceived usefulness on continued trust, intended use, and actual use of conversational AI.

An autoregressive cross-lagged model was adopted to test the structural associations of the seven repeatedly measured constructs.

The results revealed that trust in conversational AI positively affected continued actual use, hedonic motivation increased continued intended use, and social motivation and perceived ease of use enhanced continued trust in conversational AI. While the original technology acceptance model was unable to explain the continued acceptance of conversational AI, the findings showed positive feedback effects of actual use on continued intended use. Except for trust, the sequential updating effects of all the measured factors were significant.

This study intended to contribute to the technology acceptance and human–AI interaction paradigms by developing a longitudinal model of continued acceptance of conversational AI. This new model adds to the literature by considering the feedback and sequential updating mechanisms in understanding continued conversational AI acceptance.

This study examines how assurors make sense of sustainability assurance (SA) work and how interactions with assurance team members and clients shape assurors’ sensemaking and their actual SA work.

To obtain detailed accounts of how SA work occurs on the ground, this study explores three SA engagements by interviewing the main actors involved, both at the client firms and at their Big Four assurance providers.

Individual assurors’ (i.e. partners and other team members) sensemaking of SA work results in the crafting of their logics of action (LoAs), that is, their meanings about the objectives of SA work and how to conduct it. Without organizational socialization, team members may not arrive at shared meanings and deviate from the team-wide assurance approach. To fulfill their objectives for SA work, assurors may engage in socialization with clients or assume a temporary role. Yet, the role negotiations taking place in the shadows of the scope negotiations determine their default role during the engagement.

Two options are available to help SA statement users gauge the relevance of SA work: either displaying the SA work performed or making it more uniform.

This study theoretically grounds how assurors make sense of SA work and documents how (the lack of) professional socialization, organizational socialization and socialization of frequent interaction partners at the client shape actual SA work. Thereby, it unravels the SA work concealed behind SA statements.

Despite the opportunities of digital twins (DTs) for smart buildings, limited research has been conducted regarding the facility management stage, and this is explained by the high complexity of accurately representing and modelling the physics behind the DTs process. This study thus organises and consolidates the fragmented literature on DTs implementation for smart buildings at the facility management stage by exploring the enablers, applications and challenges and examining the interrelationships amongst them.

A systematic literature review approach is adopted to analyse and synthesise the existing literature relating to the subject topic.

The study revealed six main categories of enablers of DTs for smart building at the facility management stage, namely perception technologies, network technologies, storage technologies, application technologies, knowledge-building and design processes. Three substantial categories of DTs application for smart buildings were revealed at the facility management stage: efficient operation and service monitoring, efficient building energy management and effective smart building maintenance. Subsequently, the top four major challenges were identified as being “lack of a systematic and comprehensive reference model”, “real-time data integration”, “the complexity and uncertainty nature of real-time data” and “real-time data visualisation”. An integrative framework is finally proposed by examining the interactive relationship amongst the enablers, the applications and the challenges.

The findings could guide facility managers/engineers to fairly understand the enablers, applications and challenges when DTs are being implemented to improve smart building performance and achieve user satisfaction at the facility management stage.

This study contributes to the knowledge body on DTs by extending the scope of the existing studies to identify the enablers and applications of DTs for smart buildings at the facility management stage and the specific challenges.

This study aims to focus on understanding how different jet angles and Reynolds numbers influence the phase change materials’ (PCMs) melting process and their capacity to store energy. This approach is intended to offer novel insights into enhancing thermal energy storage systems, particularly for applications where heat transfer efficiency and energy storage are critical.

The research involved an experimental and numerical analysis of PCM with a melting temperature range of 22 °C–26°C under various conditions. Three different jet angles (45°, 90° and 135°) and two container angles (45° and 90°) were tested. Additionally, two different Reynolds numbers (2,235 and 4,470) were used to explore the effects of jet outlet velocities on PCM melting behaviour. The study used a circular container and analysed the melting process using the hot air inclined jet impingement (HAIJI) method.

The obtained results showed that the average temperature for the last time step at Ф = 90° and Re = 4,470 is 6.26% higher for Ф = 135° and 14.23% higher for Ф = 90° compared with the 45° jet angle. It is also observed that the jet angle, especially for Ф = 90°, is a much more important factor in energy storage than the Reynolds number. In other words, the jet angle can be used as a passive control parameter for energy storage.

This study offers a novel perspective on the effective storage of waste heat transferred with air, such as exhaust gases. It provides valuable insights into the role of jet inclination angles and Reynolds numbers in optimizing the melting and energy storage performance of PCMs, which can be crucial for enhancing the efficiency of thermal energy storage systems.