Search results

The purpose of this paper is to develop and test theory-driven hypothesis on trade costs’ effect of logistics performance (LP) and bureaucratic efficiency, primarily from SAARC (South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation) perspective.

The paper develops hypothesis based on the review of the literature and theory linking LP, trade costs and institutions. The authors test the hypothesis using secondary data sources: World Bank-UNESCAP trade costs database, World Bank Logistics Performance Index (LPI) and Political Risk Service's Political Risk Rating. Fixed-effect approach is used to test the hypothesis.

The influential role of bureaucratic quality on relationship between LPI and South Asian trade costs (inter-SAARC and intra-SAARC) is evident. The results also point out that bureaucratic quality also conditions the effect of different dimensions of LPI on South Asian trade costs. Further, it is found that bureaucratic inefficiency mitigates the effects of LPI on South Asia's trade costs with its proximate trading partners APEC (Asia–Pacific Economic Cooperation) and ASEAN (Association of Southeast Asia Nations).

The analysis is conducted using short span of data. With the availability of long span of data, the understanding of the relationship studies in this paper will improve.

The results suggests policymakers to improve bureaucratic efficiency for utilizing the full potential effect of LPI in deceasing trade costs. The study inspires businesses to act and advocate in favor of reforms in governance system.

This paper is among the first, which investigates the possibility that the relationship between LPI and trade costs depends on the bureaucratic efficiency. It provides a more detailed description of the LPI-trade costs relationship.

The purpose of this paper is to examine how policy instability is priced in interest rates. Policy instability refers to the likelihood that the current policy will be changed in the future in the absence of political power shifts.

Chinese government’s experimental policy-making approach provides an ideal set of frequent policy flip-flops which allows us to identify the effect of policy changes.

Conditional on the bureaucratic quality of policymaking, a good-quality policy reversal is related to reductions in interest rate term spread and volatility; a bad-quality policy reversal is related to increases in the spread and volatility. The bureaucratic quality is multi-dimensional and the moderating effect is stronger on interest rates when it is measured more precisely.

First, we can use the interest rate dynamics to infer the policy risk premium, which is a more objective market indicator of the bureaucratic quality of the policy change. Second, the study is among the first that documents the pricing of policy instability can be moderated by the bureaucratic quality. The results indicate that it is important for a government to be responsive and consistent in liberalizing the financial market. It will lead to reduced cost of capital and volatility for investors and firms in the economy. Third, given that the bureaucratic quality is multi-dimensional and produces stronger impact jointly, a country shall continue to improve on different aspects of the bureaucratic quality. Although the study is based on the empirical evidence from Chinese policy environment, the results can be broadly applied to any developing economies that intend to liberalize the market to spur economic growth.

This study seeks to investigate empirically the impact of organizational culture (bureaucratic, innovative, and supportive) and quality improvement practices.

Data used in this study were obtained through a questionnaire by random sampling, which took place in four large public hospitals, located in Irbid Governorate, Jordan, involving 271 managers, physicians, and nurses.

Quality improvement practices were measured by 16 statements on a five‐point rating scale. Each of the three types of organizational culture was measured using five items on a five‐point rating scale.

The three types of culture have a significantly positive influence on quality improvement practices, and account for 62 per cent of the variation of quality improvement practices. Compared with bureaucratic and supportive cultures, innovative culture appears to play a stronger role in quality improvement practices. Contrary to expectations, the analysis shows that bureaucratic actions enhance rather than hinder quality improvement practices. Respondents with a bachelor or a higher degree and participating in a training course related to quality reported higher prevalence of each culture and a higher level of quality improvement practices.

Innovative culture has a crucial role in quality improvement practices compared with bureaucratic and supportive cultures.

This study aims to address how and why do formal key account management (KAM) programmes hinder effective KAM management, and how can the problems of formalization in KAM be overcome. Recent empirical studies have reported an unexpected negative relationship between KAM formalization and performance.

An 18-month (340 days) ethnographic investigation was undertaken in the UK-based subsidiary of a major US sports goods manufacturer. This ethnographic evidence was triangulated with 113 in-depth interviews.

This study identifies how and why managerial reflexivity allows a more effectively combining of formal and post-bureaucratic KAM practices. While formal KAM programmes provide a means to initiate, implement and control KAM, they have an unintended consequence of increasing organizational bureaucracy, which may in the long-run hinder the KAM effectiveness. Heightened reflexivity, including “wayfinding”, is identified as a means to overcome many of these challenges, allowing for reflexively combining formal with post-bureaucratic KAM practices.

The thesis of this paper starts a new line of reflexive KAM research, which draws theoretical influences from the post-bureaucratic turn in management studies.

This study seeks to increase KAM implementation success rates and long-term effectiveness of KAM by conceptualizing the new possibilities offered by reflexive KAM. This study demonstrates how reflexive skills (conceptualized as “KAM wayfinding”) can be deployed during KAM implementation and for its continual improvement. Further, the study identifies how KAM programmes can be used to train organizational learning regarding KAM. Furthermore, this study identifies how and why post-bureaucratic KAM can offer additional benefits after an organization has learned key KAM capabilities.

A new line of enquiry is identified: the reflexive-turn in KAM. This theoretical position allows us to identify existing weakness in the extant KAM literature, and to show a practical means to improve the effectiveness of KAM. This concerns, in particular, the importance of managerial reflexivity and KAM wayfinding as a means to balance the strengths and weaknesses of formal and post-bureaucratic KAM.

This paper seeks to analyze the internationalization of quality practices in higher education. In light of insufficient theorization about quality in the global dimension, the paper presents a model for value construction in higher education.

The authors reviewed different models for quality in higher education vis-à-vis emerging international quality practices in higher education.

After reviewing quality models and international quality practices, the authors argue that, in order to evaluate and improve quality in higher education, a model of value in higher education that connects quality with relevance, access, and investment is necessary.

Thus far, quality in higher education has been explored in isolation from access, relevance, and investment. The integrative approach suggested here may prove generative for researchers and help address complex educational interrogations.

Higher education leaders are faced with decisions about quality; these leaders may benefit from connecting quality decisions with the demands on relevance, access, and investment that their local settings dictate.

The concept of value is largely absent from conceptual discussions about quality in higher education; additionally, many discussions about quality in higher education seem to be isolated from their context. This paper addresses both these issues.

The purpose of this paper is to explore theoretically and empirically which institutional factors (including good governance ones) help public-private partnerships (PPP) in providing better infrastructural services, which would then in their turn lead to attracting more private investment for the whole economy.

On the theoretical level, while a focus is put on discussing the institutions that should be responsible for PPP success, reconciliation is being attempted between institutional economics from one side and the new public management and networks management perspectives from the other. Empirically, OLS multivariate panel regressions test the suggestions of the theoretical discussion with emphasis on interaction terms between PPP and the studied institutions.

Evidence is found that good governance institutions, and specifically good regulatory quality, bureaucratic efficiency and independence, help PPP in performing well as evident from their positive effect on investment growth.

The limitations of this paper are mainly empirical. Further results with great policy implications could have been obtained if better proxies were developed for a number of variables. Certainly this is the case for the proxies used for cronyism and public-private dialogues (PPD).

Tackling bureaucratic efficiency and independence and higher regulatory quality should be a top priority if the great positive externalities resulting from PPP in infrastructure are to be realized.

The novelty of this research is attributed to constructing a proxy for PPP, as well as testing empirically the effect of the interactions of PPP with other institutional variables on the performance of infrastructural services (as evident from attracting more investment). The synthesis between the literature on PPP, new public management, networks, good governance, and institutional economics is another aspect of this work. The obtained results suggest important policy recommendations, and, the author hopes to, add to the literature on PPP.

This paper aims to investigate the impact of institutional quality on foreign direct investment (FDI) in Ghana for the period 1985-2016.

The study uses the autoregressive distributed lag (ARDL) approach to examine the relationship between institutional quality along with other controlled variables and FDI.

Evidence from the ARDL framework establishes a positive significant effect of institutional quality on FDI irrespective of the time horizon. The results also reveal a significant impact of inflation on FDI in both short and long run, while GDP per capita growth and trade are significant determinants only in the short run.

The study recommends the instigation of effective policies and strategies that seek to strengthen the quality of institutions, as this provides a conducive investment climate to attract FDI. Specifically, policies that are focused on promoting transparent legal regimes, regulatory reforms, non-corrupt institutions and political stability should be the precedence of policymakers.

In addition to being a pioneering work on the impact of institutional quality on FDI in Ghana, the main contribution of the study lies in its application of the principal component analysis to generate a single measure of institutional quality based on a number of institutional factors.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the determinants of foreign direct investment (FDI) by focusing on institutional and economic factors among South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC), Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN) as well as Central Asian countries over the period 2002-2014.

The generalized method of moments technique is employed for analyzing the impact of institutional quality on FDI inflow by controlling for the effect of market size, domestic investment and labor force.

The authors found large variations in terms of the impact of institutional and economic variables in regards to FDI in the SAARC, Central Asian and ASEAN regions. The results reveal that real GDP, domestic investment and economic freedom index have a positive and significant effect on FDI inflows in the SAARC region, while governance index and labor force have a negative impact on FDI inflows. In Central Asia, the real GDP, domestic investment and governance index are positively associated with FDI inflows, whereas the effect of economic freedom index on FDI is negative as well as insignificant. Apart from the GDP, other variables such as labor force, domestic investment, governance and economic freedom indices influence FDI positively in the ASEAN region. It is worth mentioning here that domestic investment produces positive effect on FDI inflows in all the regions. On the whole, the authors may conclude that institutional factors play an important role in attracting FDI inflows in the ASEAN region as compared to Central Asian and SAARC regions.

A limited research work is available that could help in identifying the role of institutional and economic factors simultaneously in attracting FDI in the SAARC, Central Asian and ASEAN regions.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate which cross-country characteristics influence the going-public decisions and how the cultural values of the countries affect initial public offering (IPO) firms’ profitability and risk of financial distress.

Using a sample of privately held and firms that went public on the European and Asian Stock Exchanges between 2007 and 2011, this paper applies probit model and ordinary least squares regression to examine which cross-country characteristics could affect the decision to go public and how cultural values affect the profitability and risk of IPO firms.[AQ1] In addition, to overcome multicollinearity concerns caused by the use of Global Leadership and Organizational Behavioural Effectiveness culture dimensions, this paper factor analyses the dimensions using principal component analysis.

The results are as follows. First, this paper finds that firms in tradition-oriented countries are less likely to go public, while firms in result-oriented countries are more likely to hold an IPO. Second, this paper finds that country characteristics (i.e. financial deepening and taxation) affect the going-public decision. Third, this paper documents that IPO firms in traditionally and result-oriented countries have positive profitability and less risk of financial distress.

This study is intended for all those European and Asian policymakers and managers who want to improve their knowledge about what different indicators can establish the decision of firms that going-public facing different stages of their lifecycle. Specifically, policymakers wishing to promote IPO-activity in their countries may find it useful to strengthen the set of formal-institutions both to reduce corporate-taxation and to reduce the uncertainty associated with first-time share issuance and investment in such initiatives. This study is also intended for managers of companies that are not yet publicly-traded on their national stock-markets to be helpful to their decision-making processes.

This paper aims to extend the growing literature on the effects of cross-country factors on economic decision-making in finance and particularly adds to research that investigates the influence of these factors on the IPO decision of European and Asian firms.

This paper investigates the impact of institutional factors on financial deepening and its implications on bank credit in Africa.

The paper employs different panel econometric models to examine the heterogeneity of 50 African countries from 2000 to 2019. The estimators include panel corrected standard errors, system generalized method of moments, quantile and threshold regressions.

The results show that rule of law, regulatory quality, government effectiveness, voice and accountability, control of corruption and political stability significantly influence financial deepening in Africa. However, government effectiveness has a higher effect on middle- and high-income countries, while other indicators have a high impact on low-income countries. All institutional indicators have stronger effects, almost double, at higher financial depth levels than for countries with lower levels. Government effectiveness and regulatory quality impact financial deepening more for countries with strong institutions than weak ones. Thus, the relationship between institutional qualities and credit provided by banks is non-monotonic.

The findings suggest that strengthening appropriate institutional factors based on country heterogeneity may effectively stimulate debt financing in Africa, the primary source of financing for small and medium-sized enterprises and entrepreneurs.

The novelty of this paper is that previous studies did not sufficiently scrutinize the heterogeneity of the structure of African economies – i.e. differences in institution, credit and income levels.