Search results

The purpose of this paper is to contrast the historical rise of the managerial function and its reception in law. It thus contributes to the debates on the separation of ownership and control, by showing that managers were never recognized in law. As a result, the managerial function was not protected in law.

This paper brings together management history and the history of UK company law to study the emergence of management in the early twentieth century and the law’s response. The authors bring new historical evidence to bear on the company law reforms of the second half of the twentieth century and, in particular, on the changes inspired by the Cohen Committee report of 1945.

Scientific progress and innovation were important rationales for the emergence of managerial authority. They implied new economic models, new competencies and wider social responsibilities. The analysis of this paper shows that these rationales have been overlooked by company law. The lack of conceptualization of the management in law allowed reforms after 1945 that gave shareholders greater influence over corporate strategy, reducing managerial discretion and the scope for innovation.

This paper focuses on the UK. Further research is needed to confirm whether other countries followed a similar path, both in terms of the emergence of management and in terms of the law’s approach.

This paper is the first, to the authors’ knowledge, to examine the law’s historical approach to management. It calls for a reappraisal of the status of managers and the way corporate governance organizes the separation of ownership and control.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the adoption of Islamic finance products (murabaha, musharakah, mudarabah, salam, ijara, istisna and Qard Hassan) by small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in Cameroon, a non-Islamic Sub-Saharan African country.

It used primary data collected from a cross-section of 1,358 SMEs in eight regions of Cameroon using self-administered structured questionnaires. To facilitate the analyses and interpretation, these products are grouped into four groups based on certain characteristics. A multivariate probit model is estimated to take into account the interaction between these different Islamic finance products.

This study revealed that the desire to comply with Sharia law, awareness, attitude and intention were critical determinants of the decision to adopt Islamic finance products by Cameroonian SMEs. The least influential factors were perceived behavioral control, subjective norms, enterprise characteristics (size, age and location) and socio-demographic characteristics of the entrepreneur (gender, age and marital status). The extension of the multivariate approach permitted us to compute for predicted probabilities which revealed that there exists a synergy effect between the different Islamic finance products. That is, Cameroonian SMEs combine different Islamic finance products at the same time based on their needs. This is especially the case between the partnership-based products (musharakah and mudarabah) and manufacture/rent products (istisna and ijara).

Policymakers are encouraged to develop stakeholder-oriented strategies to promote effective consumer education in Islamic finance products which will boost awareness. Also, Islamic finance institutions should endeavor to develop innovative financial products that are Sharia-compliant and economically beneficial to the individual and business needs of SMEs. Moreover, policymakers and management of Islamic finance institutions should ensure the putting in place of effective governance structures to guide Islamic finance operations. Finally, policymakers should endeavor to take into account the possible synergy between the different Islamic finance products in their quest to develop this activity.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first study that analyses the adoption of different Islamic finance products while taking into account the possible synergy that exists between these products.

The purpose of this paper is to study the industrial separation of granular mixture by approximation of combined corona‐electrostatic electric field with feeder and inductive electrostatic electrode.

The original numerical method developed in Caron's Kybernetes paper is used and extended to an industrial construction. The method gives a mathematical model of an industrial process and converts the non‐linear partial derivative system into an iterative system of linear equations. Using the well‐known finite difference approximation, a numerical solution is computed very quickly.

In order to really obtain a computer‐aided numerical solution, it is necessary to define a really manageable approximation method. The new simulation results are detailed and show better results for the steady state in time processing and finally, to imagine improvements of the industrial processes.

The paper shows the fast numerical solution, which leads to confidence in the numerical approximations to imagine improvements of the industrial processes easily.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the effects of Islamic finance on women empowerment in Africa between the periods of 1975 and 2021.

This paper uses secondary data for 27 African countries obtained from the World Development Indicators, World Population Review and the Varieties of Democracy databases. Four dimensions of women empowerment, namely, economic, social, political and household, are considered while Islamic finance is proxied by a binary variable with 1 and 0 representing the presence and the absence of Islamic finance, respectively. The two-staged least square estimation technique is used to control for the problem of endogeneity.

This study revealed that Islamic finance positively affects women empowerment in Africa. Specifically, Islamic finance has positive and significant effects on women political empowerment, women economic empowerment and women social empowerment in Africa but nonsignificant effect on home empowerment. These effects are more pronounced in middle-income than in low-income countries and in countries with higher penetration rate of Islamic finance.

Policymakers should put in place the necessary mechanisms for the promotion of Islamic finance such as the enacting of laws that ensures the creation of full-fledged Islamic banks, encouraging research in Islamic finance and Islamic economics. These policies should equally be backed by the creation of some accompanying measures such as the abolition of social norms that limit women’s ability to take part in decision-making.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first study involving an Africa continent-wide analysis of the effects of Islamic finance on women empowerment.

Cantilever plates subject to axial flow can lose stability by flutter and properties such as viscoelasticity and laminar friction affect dynamic stability. The purpose of the present study is to investigate the dynamic stability of viscoelastic cantilever plates subject to axial flow by using the differential quadrature method.

Equation of motion of the viscoelastic plate is derived by implementing Kelvin-Voigt model of viscoelasticity and applying inverse Laplace transformation. The differential quadrature method is employed to discretize the equation of motion and the boundary conditions leading to a generalized eigenvalue problem. The solution is verified using the existing results in the literature and numerical results are given for critical flow velocities

It is observed that higher aspect ratios lead to imaginary part of third frequency becoming negative and causing single-mode flutter instability. It was found that flutter instability does not occur at low aspect ratios. Moreover the friction coefficient is found to affect the magnitude of critical flow velocity, however, its effect on the stability behaviour is minor.

The effects of various problem parameters on the dynamic stability of a viscoelastic plate subject to axial flow were established. It was shown that laminar friction coefficient of the flowing fluid increases the critical fluid velocity and higher aspect ratios lead to single-mode flutter instability. The effect of increasing damping of viscoelastic material on the flutter instability was quantified and it was found that increasing viscoelasticity can lead to divergence instability.

This study aims to discuss climate change, by modifying the timing of several agricultural operations, reduce the efficiency and yield of inputs leading to a lower production level. The reduction of the effects of climate change on production yields and on farmers' technical efficiency (TE) requires the adoption of adaptation strategies. This paper analyses the impact of climate change adaptation strategies adopted on maize farmers' TE in Benin.

This paper uses an endogeneity-corrected stochastic production frontier approach based on data randomly collected from 354 farmers located in three different agro-ecological zones of Benin.

Estimation results revealed that the adoption of adaptation strategies improve maize farmers' TE by 1.28%. Therefore, polices to improve farmers' access to climate change adaptation strategies are necessarily for the improvement of farmers' TE and yield.

The results of this study contribute to the policy debate on the enhancement of food security by increasing farmers' TE through easy access to climate change adaptation strategies. The improvement of farmers' TE will in turn improve the livelihoods of the communities and therefore contribute to the achievement of Sustainable Development Goals 1, 2 and 13.

This study contributes to theoretical and empirical debate on the relationship between adaptation to climate change and farmers' TE. It also adapts a new methodology (endogeneity-corrected stochastic production frontier approach) to correct the endogeneity problem due to the farmers' adaptation decision.

The aim of this chapter is to show how new players in an emerging market, through their multinationals, have strategized and operationalised their international interests. This international context consists of various stakeholders: states, civil society organisations, multinationals, local communities and institutions which define and regulate the power relations. This study highlights how CNPCIC, a Chinese multinational owned by the state, designs and implements its proclaimed ‘win-win’ cooperation strategy with its host country and the local community for an oil extraction project – called the Rônier Project – in southern Chad.

The analysis is based on a case study approach, especially concerning the town of Koudalwa, the oil-producing area in southern Chad. The author conducted qualitative research to collect the data, using ethnographic strategies consisting of field research, interviews with stakeholders.

Negative externalities as consequences of practices from CNPCIC underlie environmental degradation, socio-economic conflicts and governance problems, despite the existence of an alleged regulatory framework, the role of which is to avert the ‘resource curse’.

Organisations of local and international civil society oscillate between the logic of cooperation, alliance and confrontation with their main stakeholders, CNPCIC and the government.

The ‘win-win’ cooperation advocated by China is implemented in the form of commercial cooperation with full mercantilism where CNPCIC benefits from oil, the Chadian state benefits from oil revenue in the form of royalties and other stakeholders, such as the local communities, only benefit from a fraction of the revenues. The chapter concludes that, within this oil project, CNPCIC developed a corporate diplomacy stance within which, according to the circumstances, predation, philanthropy and strategic alliance are valued at the expense of corporate responsibility despite civil society advocacy for a responsible extraction.

Some stakeholders of the project declined the invitation to participate in the research. This may have influenced its findings.

The value of this chapter resides in the use of various theories (corporate diplomacy, stakeholder theory, resource curse) to explain the practices and interests of stakeholders within an oil project at different scales, both local and international.