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The purpose of this paper is to demonstrate that both the processes and outcomes of advocacy can be evaluated in ways that can help with learning and accountability. The paper reviews the literature on evaluating advocacy, with a particular focus on development work, and describes an example of the systematic evaluation of the Business Environment Strengthening in Tanzania-Advocacy Component business advocacy programme in Tanzania.

The evaluation uses a Scientific Realist methodology to give a disaggregated, contextual analysis of advocacy, asking the typically Scientific Realist question: “What works for whom in what circumstances?” Complementary methods are being applied longitudinally over a five-year period and include stakeholder interviews, business surveys, diagnostic tools and learning seminars.

The paper argues that advocacy evaluation is no more complex or difficult than other aspects of development. Rigorous, cost-effective methods can be developed, so long as clear conceptualisation is carried out as an initial step. Systematic analysis of influencing tactics and capacity building demonstrates the relative skill of the advocacy organisations and allows the funder to see intermediate indicators of progress which are otherwise invisible.

Consistent conceptualisation and measurement allow comparison over time, and between different types of projects and organisations. Integrating methods with the operation of campaigns or programmes allows the evaluator to give feedback in real time and minimise the burden on evaluands.

The paper is based on original research/evaluation. The field is heavily concentrated on social change. The paper makes a contribution by providing an example of advocacy evaluation in the field of business advocacy and economic development. In addition, the example extends the field of advocacy evaluation by considering the systematic evaluation of a whole programme of individual advocacy projects.

This paper aims to investigate the nature of the public–private dialogue (PPD) initiatives and how PPDs are being used in the tourism and hospitality sector as the tool for reforming the business environment (e.g. set policy priorities, inform policy design, improve legislative proposals and incorporate feedback into regulatory implementation).

The study adapted a descriptive-qualitative method through desk research and in-depth interviews based on the explorative research design. The respondents included tourism and hospitality stakeholders from the public and private sectors in the Arusha, Kilimanjaro and Dar es Salaam tourist destinations in Tanzania.

The findings revealed numerous PPD initiatives which various actors in the tourism value chain rely on to address their matters. While some initiatives are not regular forums, few have been institutionalized in the Tourism Act of 2008, while others have been prescribed from the global level (UNWTO). The well-known PPD platforms include the Tourism Facilitation Committee, Technical Advisory Committee to the Minister, Tanzania National Business Council (the Tourism Task Force) and Public–Private Partnership in Tourism under the Ministry. However, most of the existing platforms overlap in terms of subject matter, mandates, participants and timing. The key success stories and factors of the PPD initiatives and the associated challenges have been discussed.

The study provides insight to the conclusion that public policies that are designed through PPD are better conceived and more effectively implemented because they result from mutual understanding between government and the business community. This knowledge is important to the least developed countries (LDCs), like Tanzania, as research has shown that stronger and more constructive dialogue between government and the private sector leads to better business environment, and countries with better business environments grow faster, attract more investment and reduce poverty more than the opposite.

Although several PPD initiatives are taking place in the tourism sector in most developing countries, little about them has been documented in the tourism literature. Hence, this study, which focuses on Tanzania, aims to fill this knowledge gap.

Among the many pressing social issues facing today's urban areas is how to provide adequate and efficient transportation facilities while maintaining a healthy economic and social environment. In light of this problem the federal government is spending billions of dollars in improving existing transit systems and in developing new ones in major cities across the United States. There is considerable debate over how this funding could best be utilized. During the past few years there has been an increasing amount of literature published by leading government, private, and academic research centers in the areas of transportation policy, economics, and technological innovations. Libraries, particularly public libraries in those cities directly affected by these new transit programs, are likely to face an increasing number of reference questions from citizens concerned with how these new systems will affect their lives and the life of their city.

This study aims to test empirically the differences between Islamic and conventional banks in terms of impacts of the audit committees' quality on financial performance between Subprime and Corona crises.

The variables are articulated in four hypotheses tested by the GLS analysis. The data were collected via DATASTREAM and from banks' annual reports. The collected data covered four continents: America, Asia, Africa and Europe. The financial performance measures and audit committee's determinants of the conventional and Islamic banks concerned 112 banks of each type after the Subprime crisis and before the Corona crisis (2010–2019).

Results showed that the audit committee reduced the profitability of two bank types. Moreover, it harmed the conventional banks' efficiency, but reported an unclear effect within Islamic banks. Even so, the authors noticed that the audit committee had a positive impact for the conventional banks' liquidity, while the same effect was apparently ambiguous on the Islamic banks' liquidity. For solvency, the audit committee positively influenced conventional banks, while it affected that of Islamic banks.

Empirically, the authors’ results can serve as a reference for decision-makers allowing to clarify the data on the financial competitiveness of two bank types to facilitate the planning of strategic performance programs based on the audit committee quality. Theoretically, researchers found that the differences between the results are due to the audit committee quality of each bank type or to the financial performance evaluation method. However, there are further factors that are related to the research peculiarities, the methodology, the data and the interpretation.

Based on the comparative literature review between conventional and Islamic banks, this study is the first conditional and comparative research between the audit committee quality and the financial performance of conventional and Islamic banks in a specific period (after Subprime and before Corona crises).

The study compares the quality of indexing in library and information science databases (Library Literature (LL), Library and Information Science Abstracts (LISA), and Information Science Abstracts (ISA)). An alternative method to traditional retrieval effectiveness tests, suggested by White and Griffith in their paper ‘Quality of indexing in online databases’ [13], is adopted to measure the quality of the controlled vocabulary of each database. The method involves identifying clusters of documents that are similar in content, searching for each document from a given cluster in a database, identifying the terms used by the databases to index each document, and calculating certain measures to determine the quality of indexing. Problems found with the White and Griffith discrimination index led the authors to propose an alternative discrimination index which takes into consideration the collection size of a database. Our analysis shows that LISA has the best quality of indexing out of the three databases.

The Nature of Business Policy Business policy — or general management — is concerned with the following six major functions:

There are times when I wonder how University Schools of Business ever got involved in offering “general management programmes”. I wonder even more when I hear colleagues tell me: “We're a General Management School.” I think my puzzlement stems from a lack of understanding of what others might mean by general management anyway.

Traditionally, corporate planning was, and sometimes still is, a curious blend of aspiration, perspiration, and inspiration. In this age of Future Shock these virtues are admirable but not sufficient. Nor do simple trend projections deal effectively with external conditions related to consumer behavior, federal reserve policies, energy uncertainties, stock market fluctuations, and technical innovations such as computer networks and time‐sharing. Fortunately, a relatively new tool, made possible through electronic computers, improves the planner's capability to cope with accelerated change and the increasing risks associated with planning for such change.

Since the Second World War, public pension plans have played an increasingly important role in providing retirement income for older people in most industrial societies. The leading factor that led to the development of public pension systems is the failure of private inter‐generational and inter‐temporal transfers to make adequate provision for old age.