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The purpose of this article is to challenge the balanced budget practices of U.S. state governments and offer alternatives that may lead to better fiscal, economic and policy outcomes. We contend that the norm of balance may be leading U.S. states to make fiscal decisions that result in less-than-ideal outcomes, especially during economic downturns.

This is a normative article. We examine the scholarly evidence regarding balanced budget practices to assess the appropriateness of balanced budget norms. We also examine the fiscal rules followed by Eurozone countries to draw potential lessons for U.S. states.

We conclude that state governments should move away from strict norms of budget balance and seek more flexible approaches. We suggest that instead of following strict rules and norms of balance, U.S. states should consider implementing escape clauses, debt and deficit ceilings, and fiscal councils. We also suggest that the Federal Reserve be open to lending directly to states during fiscal crises to ensure that states have access to affordable credit.

The balanced budget norm has become ingrained in U.S. state budgeting practices, so much so that public officials and scholars alike rarely question it. The novel contribution of our article is to question this practice in a systematic way and propose alternative approaches.

This chapter challenges middle-class bias in work-life literature by examining work-life balance dynamics through a social class perspective. It reveals class-based disparities in physical, temporal, and psychological outcomes, including the role of economic capital in work-life balance and the challenges encountered by the socially mobile in achieving psychological balance. It emphasizes the need to acknowledge social class implications for work-life balance and urges organizations to address class-based inconsistencies and inequalities in their practices.

Are franking credit balances priced? This paper aims to investigate the valuation of franking credit balances via a determinant analysis and value relevance analysis.

The determinant analysis examines the factors that contribute to the increasing cumulative level of franking credit balances. Value relevance studies explore whether franking credit balances are priced in the market.

The results provide strong evidence of a size effect that the level of franking credit balances increases with firm size and weak evidence of an international focus effect that the level of franking credit balances increases with international ownership. They also find an individual dividend clientele effect that the level of franking credit balances decreases with individual ownership. They find significant evidence that franking credit balances are priced in the market. One dollar of franking credit is worth 1.4 dollars in firm value. That franking balances are capitalized at more than their face value suggests that franking credits signal firms' future dividend policy. They also find that the market valuation of franking balances increases with firm size but decreases with international focus.

This study provides direct evidence that franking credit balances are capitalized into equity prices. In the determinant analysis, this paper improves Heaney's (2009) model by using the percentage of international ownership as the proxy of international focus, thus addressing the limitation of his measure. In the value relevance tests, the study uses a modified model that includes log-transformation to reduce the skewness of variables based on Tanza's (2014) value relevance model. Moreover, the study suggests that the market valuation of franking credit balances increases with firm size, which contradicts Heaney's (2009) findings.

John Kenneth Galbraith’s social balance theory is an important theme in many of his books, particularly The Affluent Society, The New Industrial State, and Economics and the Public Purpose. Galbraith’s social balance theory states that forces driving private consumption in an industrial society will outpace the development and provision of public goods and services with consequences on the well-being of society (Stanfield, 1996, p. 49). The theory leads to several questions: (1) What is the specific relationship between private and public goods and consumption? (2) What is optimized with social balancing? (3) Does the relationship between private and public goods change over time? and (4) How do we evaluate the types of public goods we need? This chapter explores these questions and examines the type of public goods we need today to serve our communities better. For example, police presence and activities in many minority communities are now viewed negatively, as evidenced by the “defund the police” movement. Conversely, some have advocated for greater public spending on community mental health programs and new initiatives to deal with racism in communities.

Purpose of This Chapter: >The study examines the importance and effect of working over office hours and lengthy commutes on work–life balance because both consume time away from the official working hours. The study utilized perceived organizational support to measure the moderating role of working over office hours, lengthy commutes, and work–family balance.

Design / Methodology / Approach: An inferential statistics cross-sectional study collected data from 437 full-time employees of IT-BPM companies in 5 metropolitan cities in India. The study used the PLS-SEM to examine the hypotheses.

Findings: The results show a negative relationship between working over office hours and lengthy commutes on work–family balance. This study also found the moderating effect of perceived organizational support on working over office hours and lengthy commutes on the work–family balance. Also, the study revealed that half of the respondents spend three hours, and one-fourth of the respondents spend four and half hours working over office hours and lengthy commutes.

Research Limitations: This research is limited to IT-BPM companies in India. Nevertheless, the findings highlight the factors associated with IT-BPM employee work–family balance, and only two factors were identified.

Practical Implications: This study enhances the work–family balance’s theoretical and practical effects. The results provide a competitive benchmark for IT-BPM managers, administrators, and governing bodies of employee well-being.

Originality: To the best of the author’s knowledge, this study is the first to adopt extrinsic variables in work–family border theory to measure the work–family balance of IT-BPM employees.

Assembly line is a common production form and has been effectively used in many industries, but the imprecise processing time of each process makes production line balancing and capacity forecasting the most troublesome problems for production managers. In this paper, uncertain man-hours are represented as interval grey numbers, and the optimization problem of production line balance in the case of interval grey man-hours is studied to better evaluate the production line capacity.

First, this paper constructs the basic model of assembly line balance optimization for the single-product scenario, and on this basis constructs an assembly line balance optimization model under the multi-product scenario with the objective function of maximizing the weighted greyscale production line balance rate, second, this paper designs a simulated annealing algorithm to solve problem. A neighborhood search strategy is proposed, based on assembly line balance optimization, an assembly line capacity evaluation method with interval grey man-hour characteristics is designed.

This paper provides a production line balance optimization scheme with uncertain processing time for multi-product scenarios and designs a capacity evaluation method to provide managers with scientific management strategies so that decision-makers can scientifically solve the problems that the company's design production line is quite different from the actual production situation.

There are few literary studies on combining interval grey number with assembly line balance optimization. Therefore, this paper makes an important contribution in this regard.

Biofeedback is used for regulating vestibular adaptation and balance by providing real-time stimulus to the individual during physical activities. This study aimed at (1) developing a wearable device, which tracks balance, counts the number and the direction of balance losses and provides haptic biofeedback through real-time vibration stimulus (2) investigating device efficacy on an adolescent medulloblastoma patient during static and dynamic tasks.

A 16-year-old medulloblastoma patient used the device during 10-m walking and single-leg stance tests. The knee joint kinematics and the number and direction of balance losses were recorded for “with” and “without” biofeedback conditions.

The device helped regulate the knee joint kinematics and reduce the number of balance losses of the medulloblastoma patient. The knee joint movement pattern similarity of the control subject was highly correlated (R² = 0.997, RMSE = 1.232). Conversely, medulloblastoma patient knee joint movement pattern similarity was relatively weak (R² = 0.359, RMSE = 18.6) when “with” and “without” biofeedback conditions were compared. The number of balance losses decreased when the medulloblastoma patient was guided with biofeedback.

The major limitation of this pilot study is the lack of a large and homogeneous number of participants. The medulloblastoma patient used the device while walking after she was given enough time to get used to the tactile biological feedback, so the long-term effect of the device and biofeedback guidance were not investigated. Additionally, the potential desensitization with prolonged use of the device was not evaluated.

Biofeedback reduced the number of balance losses; additionally, the knee joint movement pattern was regulated during static and dynamic tasks. This device can be integrated into the physical therapy of patients with balance, vestibular and postural control impairments.

This is compact and has an easy-to-wear design, patients, who have balance and postural control impairments, can practically use the device during their activities of daily living.

The device promotes physical activity adaptation and regulates gait through continuous and real-time balance control. Its design makes it simple for the user to wear it beneath clothing while using the sensor.

This paper aims to explore the impacts of remote auditing on auditors’ work and work-life balance.

This paper adopted a qualitative online survey approach using open-ended reflections from 98 highly experienced auditors. The survey design aligns with a “Big Q” approach to qualitative data. The reflections were interpreted through the theoretical lens of the social presence theory.

Auditors underscore that remote auditing has improved their work-life balance since it offers flexibility, greater autonomy and efficient use of time. However, they believe less social contact due to remote auditing can hurt their work.

This study aimed to holistically comprehend the concept of work-life balance in a remote auditing setting. Therefore, the study refrained from making comparisons based on demographic information (e.g. gender, experience and type of audit firm).

The findings highlight the need for adopting flexible work arrangements that prioritise auditors’ well-being. This is critical for making the audit profession attractive and enhancing overall audit quality. Updated regulatory guidance and controls are needed concerning the use of technologies in remote auditing to ensure high-quality audits.

The findings of this study can positively reshape public perception of the audit profession. Firstly, enhanced work-life balance can improve audit quality. Secondly, incorporating emerging technologies in auditing can result in society perceiving auditors as adaptive to innovation and technological advancement that has been touted for their potential for enhancing the efficiency and effectiveness of audit and audit quality, potentially enhancing societal trust in auditing.

The findings of this study complement the auditing literature that has mainly focused on the traditional work paradigm, requiring in-person presence. The authors identify potential challenges emanating from auditors’ remote work and propose solutions for audit firms to improve work-life balance in a remote work setting.

This paper investigates the effect of state-society relations on the industrially-related growth paths of developed countries.

It introduces a novel theoretical framework, the state-business-labor relations (SBLR) framework, where four main actors are identified: the state, big businesspersons or tycoons, owners and managers of small and medium enterprises (SMEs) or Entrepreneurs and labor. Different SBLR categories or modes are introduced depending on levels of coordination and power relations between the studied actors. The paper then investigates how these SBLR modes, through adopting various policies targeting the industrial sector, lead to different growth paths. Rather than focusing only on economic growth, this research regards a growth path as a matrix of the performance in long-run growth and equality of distribution.

Using regression analysis and statistical data, the results suggest that the Co-Balanced mode, having higher levels of coordination and lower favoritism, leads to the best growth path among the four introduced modes, especially with its emphasis on high levels of venture capital availability and easiness of starting business. while the Lib-Capture mode, characterized by lower coordination and higher favoritism, seems to have the worst growth path and the best implemented policy for this mode is suggested to be high profit taxes that seem to counter the negative impact of the existing high levels of favoritism.

Despite the important findings that this research has reached, this paper is mainly meant to open a further investigation into this topic and open this dimension that the research on VoC and political economy have under-researched. A deeper investigation of SBLR typologies that could only be possible by having richer datasets with more data on coordination for the whole world, rather than only the advanced economies, would further our understanding of the dynamics that shape the growth paths of different countries of the world.

To realize the best industrial growth path, fighting favoritism should be an important objective. The negative impact of favoritism on innovation could not be disregarded in the eve of the fourth industrial revolution, where innovation is increasingly pivotal to future industrial development. Actively engaging societal groups in the policymaking process is important in addressing their concerns and balancing them at the same time. This should lead to the double benefit of formulating better policies that should foster growth as well as provide better distribution of this growth. High levels of coordination should help in realizing this objective. Yet, this could only be possible if societal groups are free to associate and aggregate their power and when there are means of preventing one actor from gaining more favorite treatment and exclusive influence over policymakers. The presence of both powerful and broadly represented business associations and labor unions and the existence of a government interested in coordinating their efforts-rather than letting itself be controlled by one group at the expense of the others-should help in the realization of the best growth path. Thus, institutional reform that empowers societal groups and enables them to defend their interests as well as fights all forms of corruption should lead to the realization of a more prosperous and equitable industrial development, with the “re-industrialization” of the developed world being no exception. The technological and social challenges of intensive automation and digitalization accompanying the fourth industrial revolution make the envisaged institutional reform more urgent.

This paper is introducing a novel theoretical framework for studying the effect of state-society relations, particularly SBLR, on the industrial growth paths of developed countries. It integrates three important bodies of literature in order to build a more comprehensive understanding of the dynamics of state-society relations and their economic consequences. These are the Varieties of Capitalism (VoC), State-Business Relations (SBR) and Industrial Relations. The SBLR framework differentiates between tycoons and entrepreneurs, an important distinction that often goes unnoticed. Different SBLR categories or modes are introduced, depending on levels of coordination and power relations between the actors. It is proposed in this research that the effect on growth paths goes beyond the simple dichotomy between CMEs and LMEs usually present in the literature of VoC and that power relations provide an essential complementary dimension in explaining this causality.

This paper aims at explore the intervening role of servant leadership in tourism businesses' outcomes, in the context of travel agencies. Drawing on servant leadership theory, the authors develop a multimediation model exploring the relationships between servant leadership and person–job fit, work–life balance, work engagement, innovative work behavior and job crafting.

Using SmartPLS3, data collected from 942 travel agencies operating in Egypt, a questionnaire was used to obtain data on how travel agency employees envisage their organization’s adoption of servant leadership, person–job fit, job crafting, work–life balance, work engagement and innovative work behavior.

The authors show that servant leadership correlates positively with person–job fit, work–life balance, work engagement, innovative work behavior and job crafting, while job crafting correlates positively with work–life balance, work engagement and innovative work behaviors. The partial mediating roles of both job crafting and person–job fit in the link between servant leadership and work–life balance, and the partial mediating role of work engagement in the link between servant leadership and innovative work behaviors.

Up to date, research on the effects of servant leadership on person–job fit, job crafting, work–life balance, work engagement and innovative work behavior has been inadequate. In terms of contextual applicability, an empirical investigation of the relationship between these factors in travel agencies is not available. By empirically examining these relationships in the context of Egyptian travel agencies, the current study has bridged a gap in the tourism and hospitality literature, human resources management and organizational behavior literature.

本文旨在探讨仆人式领导在旅行社背景下对旅游企业成果的干预作用。借鉴仆人式领导理论, 我们开发了一个多重中介模型, 探索仆人式领导与人-工作契合度、工作-生活平衡、工作投入、创新工作行为和工作重塑之间的关系。

使用 SmartPLS3, 从在埃及运营的 942 家旅行社收集的数据, 使用问卷调查获取有关旅行社员工如何设想他们的组织采用仆人式领导、人-工作匹配、工作重塑、工作与生活平衡、工作参与和和 创新工作行为。

我们表明, 仆人式领导与人-工作契合度、工作-生活平衡、工作投入、创新工作行为和工作重塑呈正相关, 而工作重塑与工作-生活平衡、工作投入和创新工作行为呈正相关。工作重塑和个人-工作在仆人式领导与工作-生活平衡之间的联系中起部分中介作用, 工作投入在仆人式领导与创新工作行为之间的联系中起部分中介作用。

该研究进行了一些开创性的检查。迄今为止, 关于仆人式领导对人-工作契合度、工作重塑、工作-生活平衡、工作投入和创新工作行为的影响的研究还不够充分。就情境适用性而言, 尚无对旅行社中这些因素之间关系的实证研究。通过在埃及旅行社的背景下对这些关系进行实证检验, 当前的研究弥合了旅游和酒店文献、人力资源管理和组织行为文献中的空白。

El objetivo de este artículo es explorar el papel que desempeña el liderazgo de servicio en los resultados de las empresas turísticas, en el contexto de las agencias de viajes. Basándonos en la teoría del liderazgo de servicio, desarrollamos un modelo de mediación múltiple que explora las relaciones entre el liderazgo de servicio y la adecuación de la persona al trabajo, el equilibrio entre el trabajo y la vida personal, el compromiso laboral, el comportamiento laboral innovador y el diseño proactivo del puesto de trabajo.

Con SmartPLS3 se analizaron datos recopilados de 942 agencias de viajes que operan en Egipto mediante un cuestionario con el que se obtuvo información sobre cómo los empleados de agencias de viajes prevén que su organización adopte el liderazgo de servicio, el ajuste persona-trabajo, el diseño proactivo del puesto de trabajo, el equilibrio entre el trabajo y la vida personal, el compromiso laboral y el comportamiento laboral innovador.

Mostramos que el liderazgo de servicio se correlaciona positivamente con el ajuste persona-trabajo, el equilibrio entre el trabajo y la vida personal, el compromiso laboral, el comportamiento laboral innovador y el diseño proactivo del puesto de trabajo, mientras que el diseño del puesto de trabajo se correlaciona positivamente con el equilibrio entre la vida laboral y personal, el compromiso laboral y los comportamientos laborales innovadores. Mostramos también el papel mediador parcial del diseño proactivo del puesto de trabajo y del ajuste persona-trabajo, en el vínculo entre el liderazgo de servicio y el equilibrio entre el trabajo y la vida personal, asi como el papel mediador parcial del compromiso laboral en el vínculo entre el liderazgo de servicio y los comportamientos laborales innovadores.

Hasta la fecha, la investigación sobre los efectos del liderazgo de servicio en la adecuación de la persona al trabajo, el diseño proactivo del puesto de trabajo, el equilibrio entre el trabajo y la vida personal, el compromiso laboral y el comportamiento laboral innovador ha sido insuficiente. En términos de aplicabilidad contextual, no se disponía de una investigación empírica de la relación entre estos factores en las agencias de viajes. Al examinar empíricamente estas relaciones en el contexto de las agencias de viajes egipcias, el presente estudio cubre un vacío en la literatura sobre turismo y hostelería, gestión de recursos humanos y comportamiento organizacional.