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Data are presented on staff dishonesty in the electrical retail sector deriving from a 1991 survey of 55 Dixons stores in the Dixons Stores Group. Two hundred and seventy seven staff were interviewed about their colleagues' involvement in crime. The survey addressed seven interrelated questions: how many staff steal?, which staff steal?, what do staff steal?, why do staff steal?, where do staff steal from?, do staff get caught? and what stops staff theft? The data add an empirical dimension to an important, but neglected and inaccessible area.

This article offers an insight into the experiences of female officers working within the post‐Soviet Ukrainian militia, based on data collected from nearly 500 serving officers in Kyiv, interviews with staff and students at the National Academy of Internal Affairs and with senior members of the Ukrainian Ministry of Interior. It presents data showing that women officers are significantly more dissatisfied with their role, have a poorer relationship with their line managers and perceive that they receive a more authoritarian and directive style of management than their male counterparts. It goes on to propose a three‐tier model of reform designed to address gender discrimination in the Ukrainian militia.

The purpose of the paper is to draw attention to an area of research that has considerable potential for academic researchers in the disciplines of retailing and distribution studies.

The methodology adopted was an overview of existing literature with a view to identifying possible trends in research in the area of loss prevention.

The paper identifies an extensive body of existing literature and provides an indication of areas for future research in loss prevention.

The implications of these key issues are significant to the measurement of shrinkage in terms of the scope across the business from which shrinkage needs to be considered. This finding highlights the need to consider shrinkage as a systemic issue that extends across a business from design, through planning to operational execution. It also identifies the impact of shrinkage on increasing cost and depressing sales and considers the responsibility of management teams in addressing these matters.

This paper is an original discussion on the topic and thus of value to the academic community. It is also of value to the practitioner community as it highlights the importance of developing relationships with the academic community.

This chapter investigates the presence of a difference in the systemic risk level between Islamic and conventional banks in Bangladesh. The authors compare systemic resilience of three types of banks: fully fledged Islamic banks, purely conventional banks (CB), and CB with Islamic windows. The authors use the market-based systemic risk measures of marginal expected shortfall and systemic risk to identify which type is more vulnerable to a systemic event. The authors also use ΔCoVaR to identify which type contributes more to a systemic event. Using a sample of observations on 27 publicly traded banks operating over the 2005–2014 period, the authors find that CB is the least resilient sector to a systemic event, and is the one that has the highest contribution to systemic risk during crisis times.

Throughout April/May of 2009 a new type of virus surfaced in Mexico and the USA, denominated H1N1 or swine flu, that has been immediately disseminated worldwide. Even though the mortality of this virus has been slow, comparing with other antecedents, the mass‐media articulated a troublesome discourse that put the world in tenterhooks waiting for the evolution of the symptoms. Emulating the mythical archetype of what we knew as Spanish flu, which affected more than 50 million people during 1918 and 1920, journalism triggered panic in the four corners of the world. Under such a context, the purpose of this paper is to explore the connection between the coverage of mass‐media and press of swine flu in Buenos Aires (Argentina), and how the principle of resilience in this conjuncture works.

In order to understand this issue in an all‐encompassed manner, the author conducted ethnography in Buenos Aires during April to June of 2009 combining informal with formal interviews and analysis of contents extracted of press coverage. It is important to mention that the role of observer was hidden to capture vividly the social behaviour as long as a context of health emergency.

The findings of this research reveal that fear becomes an efficient instrument to keep the status quo in context of disasters. In addition, it is important to clarify that virtual disasters do not permit societies to learn of their tragedies and affects considerably their abilities for resilience.

Unfortunately, there is no abundant literature to support the outcomes of the present paper in respect to swine flu. Beyond ethical boundaries of journalism, the point of discussion, here, seems to be whether news should be edited or transmitted in rough during a moment of uncertainty. As a whole, the debate is circumscribed to non‐edited news which can result in uncontrollable society response, while edited news jeopardizes the freedom of the press.

This paper provides an original point of view that contrasts the thesis of Baudrillard in respect to the spectacle of disaster. The panic disseminated by media blurs the boundaries between culprit and innocence presenting to the poorest sectors as the main concerns of society. That way, the earlier imbalances that allowed the disasters are replicated once again. In contrast with Baudrillard, this paper considers that Swine flu really took place and was something other than a show. An event like this, elaborated and commercialized is of course, aimed at reinforcing the legitimacy of privileged groups.

Financial distress is a socially and economically important problem that affects companies the world over. Having the power to better understand – and hence aid businesses from failing, has the potential to save not only the company, but also potentially prevent economies from sustained downturn. Although Islamic banks constitute a fraction of total banking assets, their importance have been substantially increasing, as their asset growth rate has surpassed that of conventional banks in recent years. The paper aims to discuss these issues.

This paper uses a data set comprising 101 international publicly listed Islamic banks to work on advancing financial distress prediction (FDP) by utilising cutting-edge stochastic models, namely decision trees, stochastic gradient boosting and random forests. The most important variables pertaining to forecasting corporate failure are determined from an initial set of 18 variables.

The results indicate that the “Working Capital/Total Assets” ratio is the most crucial variable relating to forecasting financial distress using both the traditional “Altman Z-Score” and the “Altman Z-Score for Service Firms” methods. However, using the “Standardised Profits” method, the “Return on Revenue” ratio was found to be the most important variable. This provides empirical evidence to support the recommendations made by Basel Accords for assessing a bank’s capital risks, specifically in relation to the application to Islamic banking.

These findings provide a valuable addition to the limited literature surrounding Islamic banking in general, and FDP pertaining to Islamic banking in particular, by showcasing the most pertinent variables in forecasting financial distress so that appropriate proactive actions can be taken.

Digitalization is revolutionizing the retail sector as today's consumers prefer a seamlessly integrated, fluid and irritation-free shopping experience enhanced with artificial intelligence (AI)-powered technologies. Literature highlights gaps in the understanding of the shopping experience in an omnichannel context, involving aesthetic, cognitive and affective experience dimensions. This research highlights the direct effects and the mechanism triggered in the presence of such device.

A sample of 259 consumers was interviewed at the point of sale. Data have been collected after a shopping experience in two concept stores belonging to the same fashion brand: (1) not equipped with AI-powered technology and (2) equipped with these tools. The measurement scales were validated through ANCOVA analysis and causal relationship analysis with structural equation modeling.

The results show that the presence of an in-store AI-powered technologies in a connected store generates a higher aesthetic reaction when visiting the store, a higher absorption when shopping through the flow and a higher intent to purchase. The authors further investigate the underlying mechanism triggered by the presence of this technology, which enables the authors to outline their consequences regarding purchase intention.

The study, conducted within an actual connected store in France, explores the impact of AI technology in connected retail environments on consumer responses. It is an early research in this field, shedding light on a rarely explored area. The authors’ research addresses a significant gap, providing insights into AI-driven retail experiences.

The authors investigate the factors affecting the decision of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) to do business with either small local banks or large commercial banks.

We combine various data sources on Polish SMEs, including their financial statements, county-level data on SMEs' local environment, information about bank branch locations, as well as a new survey on the specificity of bank–firm relationships. We employ the logit and Tobit models.

SMEs' bank choices and the length of a bank–firm relationship are more strongly associated with trust-related factors, rather than transactional ones. SME managers motivated by trust-related factors are more likely to choose local lenders and maintain long-term relationships with them. However, as firms grow and mature, SME managers lean toward banks adopting transaction-oriented policies.

We could have drawn a more detailed picture of the bank selection process had we been able to compare the traits of a firm's current and previous banks.

The study shows that the features of a bank's offer, including product prices, have limited potential in shaping long-term relationships between banks and SMEs.

The topic of bank selection by SMEs has not been thoroughly investigated in the case of Central European countries. We address this gap by comparing two types of potential drivers of bank selection: trust-related factors and a set of purely economic (transactional) motives.