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Higher education institutions are required to evaluate program quality through cyclical program review processes. Despite often being considered the “gold standard” of academic review, there persists dissatisfaction with the lack of integration of program review findings into other planning processes, such as budgeting, assessment and strategic planning. As a result, the notion of program review action plans “collecting dust on the shelf” is so ubiquitous that the concept is normalized as an expected outcome. The purpose of this paper is to describe a conceptual model whereby teams of faculty members receive education and training from quality assurance practitioners and educational developers, access to institutional resources, opportunities for cross-departmental collaborations and collective advocacy to increase the capacity of faculty members to implement improvement goals resulting from program reviews.

The authors theorize that a professional learning community is a meaningful approach to program review and present a conceptual model – the Academic Program Review Learning Community (PRLC) – as an antidote to hierarchical, fragmented, compliance-oriented processes. The authors suggest that the PRLC offers a reliable institutional framework for learning through formalized structures and nested support services, including peer learning and external coaching, which can enhance the catalytic capacity of reviews.

The authors argue that postsecondary institutions should create formal structures for incorporating learning communities because, without a reliable infrastructure for collective learning, decision-making may be fragmented oridiosyncratic because of shifting demands, priorities or disconnected faculty.

A learning community model for program review fits well with a new way to think about program review because faculty are most engaged when they feel ownership over the process. Furthermore, few models exist for conducting program review; as a result, chairs and academics often struggle to conduct reviews without a coherent framework to draw upon.

Due to ongoing inequities in the social determinants of health and systemic barriers, homelessness continues to be a significant concern that disproportionately impacts racialized communities. Despite constituting a small proportion of the population, Black individuals are over-represented among people experiencing homelessness in many Canadian cities. However, although Black homelessness in Canada is a pressing issue, it has received limited attention in the academic literature. The purpose of this paper is to examine the reported prevalence of Black homelessness across Canada.

By consulting enumerations from 61 designated communities that participated in the 2018 Nationally Coordinated Point-in-Time Count and two regional repositories – one for homeless counts supported by the government of British Columbia and another from the Rural Development Network – this paper reports on the scale and scope of Black homelessness across Canada.

Significantly, these reports demonstrate that Black people are over-represented among those experiencing homelessness compared to local and national populations. These enumerations also demonstrate significant gaps in the reporting of Black homelessness and inadequate nuance in data collection methods, which limit the ability of respondents to describe their identity beyond “Black.”

This research provides an unprecedented examination of Black homelessness across Canada and concludes with recommendations to expand knowledge on this important and under-researched issue, provide suggestions for future iterations of homeless enumerations and facilitate the development of inclusive housing policy.

The purpose of this paper is to provide some new empirical evidence on the weekend effect (one of the best known anomalies in financial markets) in Ukrainian futures prices. The analysis uses various statistical techniques.

The analysis uses various statistical techniques (average analysis, Student’s t-test, dummy variables, and fractional integration) to test for the presence of this anomaly, and then a trading simulation approach to establish whether it can be exploited to make extra profits.

The statistical evidence points to abnormal positive returns on Fridays, and a trading strategy based on this anomaly is shown to generate annual profits of up to 25 per cent. The implication is that the Ukrainian stock market is inefficient.

This paper provides some new empirical evidence on the weekend effect (one of the best known anomalies in financial markets) in Ukrainian futures prices. The analysis uses various statistical techniques (average analysis, Student’s t-test, dummy variables, and fractional integration) to test for the presence of this anomaly, and then a trading simulation approach to establish whether it can be exploited to make extra profits. The statistical evidence points to abnormal positive returns on Fridays, and a trading strategy based on this anomaly is shown to generate annual profits of up to 25 per cent. The implication is that the Ukrainian stock market is inefficient.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the time series behavior of Greek labor market series by providing an empirical perspective on trend breaks and unit roots. Trend breaks represent aggregate behavior responses to “infrequent” changes in economic fundamentals, including changes in fiscal or labor market conditions, as have been perceived in Greece during the last years. Unit roots reveal whether “regular” shocks have significant effects on the level of the series over a specified finite horizon.

The authors employ recent procedures that deal with the “circular testing problem” between tests on the parameters of the trend function and unit root tests that often arises in empirical applications. These techniques assess trend function stability and are robust regardless of whether the noise component is stationary or having a unit root. Then, conditional on the presence of breaks, the authors test whether the series can be characterized by a stochastic trend.

The analysis provides evidence of “infrequent” trend breaks that appear to coincide with the recent global economic crisis and the implementation of the counteraction (fiscal) measures to the Greek debt crisis. Allowing for trend breaks does not lead to a rejection of the unit root hypothesis, which might reflect the low flexibility of the country’s labor market operation.

The procedures employed can be viewed as new tools that might help empirical researchers to explore more accurately the characteristics of individual time series and to find reasonable approximations to the true processes of the time series examined.

The paper provides new information on the presence of structural changes in the Greek labor market, and on whether the “aggressive” and “occasional” nature of fiscal measures can be approximated by infrequent changes in the slope of the trend function.

Responses to diversity management have resulted in disappointment to many organizations (Cox, 2001). Previous work has situated rational for diversity in deontological ethics by equality scholars, while the business case for diversity has commonly rested on utilitarian ethics (van Dijk et al., 2012). The purpose of this paper is to examine a possible shift in rational for diversity – to explore if and how the ethic of care has been utilized in the diversity statements of companies earning recognition as one of the “100 Best Companies to Work For” in 2012.

This study utilized visual rhetoric analysis and was designed to examine multiple elements of these diversity statements as published in the company web sites, including presence of the ethic of care, visual communication, and logistics.

Of note are the results of the presence of the ethic of care as a primary or secondary rationale in 70 percent of the statements studied. Statistically significant results were found in the number of images of people from diverse backgrounds, as well as levels pleasantness and activation of the tone of the ethics statements.

This study contributes to a better understanding of identifiable characteristics of these diversity statements at organizations which have been identified by their employees and the Great Place to Work Institute.

This study aims to examine the issues and challenges in contemporary affordable public housing schemes and proposes an alternative affordable public housing model for low- and middle-income households in Malaysia.

The paper applied qualitative research method. Semi-structured in-depth interviews with four government officials were conducted to understand the provision, framework and working mechanism of selected affordable public housing schemes. A focus group with nine participants was conducted with low- and middle-income households to validate pertaining residential issues and problems in affordable public housing schemes.

The overall findings reveal that the growing plights of unaffordability, poor maintenance and mismanagement have undermined the performance of affordable public housing schemes in Malaysia. The paper indicates that Islamic Public–Private Housing Co-operative Model (IPHCM) possibly has a comparative advantage in its design and operation and therefore can be implemented as an alternative model to address these issues in contemporary affordable public housing schemes in Malaysia. The findings also offer guidelines to government officials and managers of public housing schemes to implement the IPHCM model that can help in reducing the financial burden on low- and middle-income households, improving maintenance work and enforcing effective management practices with residents’ participation.

The paper is limited to develop a new Shariah-compliant affordable public housing model. The paper presents a design and defines the underlying Shariah concept and contracts and their working mechanisms in the proposed model. The paper has not considered other related areas in the development of IPHCM model including Shariah and subject matter expert’s perspective, consumer behavioural intention, legal and regulatory requirements.

The paper has relevance for policymakers and government institutions offering affordable public housing schemes to ensure successful deliverability of sustainable and affordable public housing for low- and middle-income households in Malaysia.

In describing these projects, the authors hope to encourage academic librarians and archivists to participate in, and even facilitate, similar work at their own institutions. Although both of these projects began in the library and included readings and discussions related to library and archival practices, the most generative conversations rapidly shifted from “how should the library handle these materials?” to “what might this institution do to reckon with its history?” When traditional library practices were de-centered and community perspectives were sought on the college archive, the authors were able to have more inclusive, authentic conversations about the college's history and future.

This case study explores two projects undertaken at a liberal arts college: a working group and a credit-bearing course intended to reckon with racist, xenophobic or otherwise harmful materials in the college archive. Both projects were informed by the authors' engagement with Tema Okun's White Supremacy Culture and guided by inclusive pedagogies and practices that participants had explored in workshops and within the context of the college's Engaged Pluralism Initiative.

The working group and the course underscore the centrality of relationships, trust-building and time to the work of addressing difficult histories. The “campus-wide conversations” the authors had hoped to have about the college archive evolved into smaller spaces developed with intention and care. The diverse perspectives of working group members and students in the course demonstrate the value of bringing together viewpoints from outside the library and beyond institutional or disciplinary silos, to consider far-reaching systemic issues.

Many US colleges and universities have begun, or will begin, to investigate the myriad ways in which racism, racial exclusion, or racial violence have marked their institutions and how these troubled legacies persist in the present day. This case study proposes possible approaches that academic libraries and librarians may take to contribute to this essential work.

These two projects propose that work that typically happens solely within libraries and archives (cataloging and description of potentially harmful materials) or within institutional or disciplinary silos (reckoning with legacies of racism and bias) can be discussed, debated, and shared among the campus community. All of the participants in the working group and the course, regardless of their title, role, or academic credentials, bring necessary expertise and experience to these projects. Inclusive practices, when paired with grassroots energy, suggest ways in which a college archive can be used as a site of evidence, reflection, interrogation, and repair.

This survey of the literature on the convergence of carbon dioxide (CO₂) emissions informs researchers on areas for future research by summarizing the countries examined, the types of convergence tested and the methodological approaches undertaken.

This survey examines peer-reviewed empirical studies of CO₂ emissions convergence with respect to country coverage and alternative approaches to test for various types of convergence.

For large multicountry studies, the support for convergence is quite limited. However, studies focused exclusively on a subset of countries defined by income classification, geographic region or institutional structure reveal the finding of convergence is more prevalent. Studies at the subnational level have primarily been in the cases of the US and China with the exception of two studies across industry sectors in Portugal and Sweden.

This study focuses exclusively on peer-reviewed published studies.

This study is relevant to the design of mitigation strategies to reduce CO₂ emissions and the assumption of convergence underlying climate change models.

As a major component of greenhouse gas emissions, CO₂ emissions is of global importance in its impact on the environment and climate change.

This study provides the most recent and comprehensive survey of the empirical literature on the convergence of CO₂ emissions.

To develop an integrated approach to forecasting spot foreign exchange rates by incorporating some principles underlying long‐term dependence.

The paper utilises the random‐walk framework to develop a stochastic forecast model wherein the sign (positive or negative) and magnitude (strong or weak) of dependence can be separately controlled. The integrated model demonstrates superior forecast performance over a conventional random walk.

Using spot log prices and log price changes (returns) for the USD/AUD exchange rate, the initial outcomes of the study suggest that a priori knowledge of the underlying sign and magnitude of long‐term dependence yields out‐of‐sample forecasts superior to those of a random walk model.

Independent assessment of the contribution to forecast accuracy of controlling for the sign of dependence between successive price changes only shows little additional improvement in out‐of‐sample forecast performance over the random walk null.

The findings of the study have important ramifications for managerial finance as they provide important insights on expected future currency returns with potential advantages in currency hedging and/or timing of international capital flows.

The contribution of this paper is to develop an original forecast model explicitly incorporating the conceptual and theoretical characteristics of long‐term dependent time series. By separating the key characteristics and modelling each individually, the contribution of each to forecast accuracy can be evaluated.