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Prior IT productivity research usually assumes constant returns on IT investment. This study suggests that the impact of IT investment on productivity may not be constant but may change with the IT investment scale and over time. Specifically, we divide IT investment into commercial IT and in-house IT and investigate their changing impacts on industry labor productivity.

A model of the productivity impacts of commercial IT and in-house IT with changing effects of scale and over time is developed and empirically tested based on industry-level panel data from the US. Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA).

The returns on commercial IT investment increase with scale but decrease over time, while the returns on in-house IT increase over time.

This study provides a new perspective for IT productivity research by investigating the changing productivity impacts of IT investment. It also suggests that commercial IT and in-house IT should be distinguished, as they have different impacts on productivity.

This paper aims to address issues of law and policy, the potential pitfalls such as fraud, conflict of law and documents discrepancies that are often encountered by the parties in usage and practice of the Letter of Credit (LC). The article has gleaned other forms of payment mechanisms in international commercial trade to demonstrate that despite the upsurge in international payment instruments, the LC has remained a viable commercial product. This article aims to provide an in-depth analysis of the law governing the LC and why it has remained resilient and a viable commercial product for many years.

The author has utilized the current version of UCP 600 (2007) and the legislation such as Brussels Convention (2000) in Europe, litigated cases and secondary data sources in writing the paper. The data generated were then evaluated taking into account the most recent legal and policy changes regarding the usage and practice of the LC in international commercial transactions. The paper straddles many issues but evaluated in a distinctive way to underscore the purpose for writing it.

The findings of the paper have demonstrated that despite a myriad of payment mechanisms as a result of innovation in international trade, the LC is still a viable commercial product. Parties will need to be knowledgeable and skilled enough to keep abreast of dynamic changes on law and policy relating to usage and practice of LCs. Short of that parties could be vulnerable to risk exigencies inherent in international trade they sought to eliminate by subscribing to the LC.

The limitations lie in realm that the paper was largely library-based and the author did not carry out extensive corroborative research studies on issues it was written on. Thus, any future work on the LC will try to corroborate issues of policy and practice and how they are internalized in commercial practice.

The paper has articulated the governing law of the LC and the context in which it is harnessed in commercial practice. It has articulated potential risk areas that the parties ought to watch out for before and during the process of harnessing the LC as a payment mechanism. The paper has demonstrated that risks inherent in international trade are now higher than in past decades because of globalization and its attendant fluid environment. The paper is relevant to banks, regulators, governments and also students because it internalizes most recent changes in the usage and practice of the LCs in international trade.

International trade affects local businesses, banks, ordinary people, national governments and it has far reaching implications for societies as whole. The LC is utilized to mitigate, if not eliminate, potential risks in international trade transactions, and it has far reaching social implications for economies to be overlooked.

The article has gleaned other forms of payment mechanisms in international commercial trade to tease out that despite the upsurge in international payment mechanisms, the LC has remained a viable commercial product. This article is a MUST read because it internalizes recent changes in the usage and practice of documentary credit which have not been addressed in its context. Even though the article has been undertaken by analysis of secondary and primary data sources, the author has done so in a distinctive way to underscore the most recent changes to the usage and practice of the LC and the purpose it was written.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the issue of compliance with a voluntary professional Code of Practice. It aims to take service charge management as its subject and it also to discuss how current notions of “best practice” have evolved in order to explain the poor performance uncovered. From this it seeks to derive an alternative perspective and develop a new framework for managing agents to consider utilising in order to advance the generalised principles within the existing RICS Code of Practice, Service Charges in Commercial Property.

The paper applies an inductive reasoning by applying best practice from other disciplines (the specific) to commercial property (hence arguing for their adoption to the general). It utilises a critical review of the secondary literature on the wider aspects of best practice and original data on commercial service charge management to devise an ideal type framework for accounting for service charge moneys.

It provides an idealised conceptual framework for managing agents to consider applying to their management of the service charge process, specifically with regard to accounting issues therein. The paper is not proposing a definitive adoption of accruals accounting, but provides an analysis of the potential advantages – and problems. The intention of this work is to drive consultation for better practice, rather than provide a de facto template for adoption.

The work relies on data previously generated by the authors, and produces an original template and example for the practitioner. The work's primary value is that it proposes an innovative approach to the occupation of the commercial service charge manager. Within this, it also offers advice to the wider profession on how to better regulate the discipline. While the proposed approach offers advantages over the existing best practice paradigm, it generates its own conceptual problems that will need to be considered by professionals.

The aim of this research is to contribute to the understanding of how commercial diplomats lobby for public procurement contracts. The institutional environment has ramifications for the manner of lobbying and for the practice of commercial diplomacy. This research brings together these streams of literature, and a conceptual model is developed. By means of an in-depth, single-case study, investigating the lobbying activities of EU diplomats in Indonesia, the study aimed to illustrate the model and draw the list of lobbying activities applicable for commercial diplomats. The findings reveal that in a weak institutional development environment, the diplomats focus on informational lobbying and rely heavily on their networks. If the decision-making powers are decentralized, the diplomats target more decision-makers. If diplomats do not have an access to decision-makers then ‘voice’ lobbying is applied. If the decision-makers are not elected, the diplomats do not engage in constituency-building lobbying. The findings illustrate the plausibility of the introduced conceptual model. They also suggest that domestic factors, such as interest in the host country, priority status of the host country and historical bilateral ties can positively influence the lobbying activities of the diplomats as well.

This study aims to uncover in-depth examples of how emergent media affects parents’ views and socialization efforts. The study examines these views and efforts in the context of violent commercials.

The authors collected data for this paper using two studies. In Study 1, they collected data from the internet. Comments related to “violent ads” or “violent commercials” were collated and analyzed. For Study 2, they conducted in-depth interviews with mothers on their views on parental mediation and impact of media on their children.

The internet data helped develop a parental definition of violent ads and identify that parents lie on a continuum regarding their concerns about violent commercials. Further in-depth questioning of parents on the above finding led to the identification of four clusters of parents. “Media managers” attempt to control and restrict their child’s media environment while educating their child about the effects of violent commercials. “Enablers” spend abundant time co-viewing primetime TV while engaging their child in conversations on violence, but not on violent ads. To maintain harmony in the household, “Harmonizers” merely restrict viewing of violent commercials without educating their child about its effects. Finally, “Agent evaluators” are likely to co-view violent commercials, without discussing them with their child.

First, several of the parental segments (media managers, enablers and harmonizers) tend to note some concerns with violence in advertising. Importantly, this concern for violence appears to be limited to gore and use of physical weapon. Second, while parents do not have homogenous views on violent ads, those who are concerned also have differing roots of concern. This influences their mediation efforts. Third, socialization is bi-directional at times.

Many parents do not approve are the use of physical violence, use of weapons and depiction of blood/gore even in ads for movies or videogames. Advertisers might be wise to avoid such content in ads directed to children. Second, if media and marketing managers could plan to sponsor TV shows (vs placing violent ads) that offer ad-free program time, parents might respond positively. Third, as socialization is bi-directional, advertisers could consider using ad scenarios where parents and children engage with the pros and cons of a certain product or content, thus enabling parent-child conversations to make an informed decision.

Many parents notice violence in ads; policymakers could consider developing ratings for ads that consider the amount and type of violence while rating an ad. Second, a focus on increasing parental awareness on the harms of constantly exposing children to violent commercials might change the views of some parents who currently believe that a few or no violent commercials are being aired during children’s programs. Finally, parents envisage a greater role for media in their lives, and policymakers will have to suggest ways to effectively integrate media content in one’s lives rather than just suggest bans or restrictions.

The contributions of this paper include viewers’ (vs researchers’) definition of violent commercials, showcasing that parents are likely to manage media using new media options such as Netflix, and some parents are likely to co-create rules with their children.

Based on six case studies of self-proclaimed social enterprises (SEs) in Kenya, this paper aims to critically assess the “SE” concept in a base of the pyramid (BoP) context.

The paper draws on multiple case studies to challenge traditional notions of SE. Six SEs operating at the BoP in Kenya are analysed. Interviews are conducted with entrepreneurs from each enterprise, during which the enterprises’ business models are mapped and scrutinised.

Based on the six case studies, the paper argues that the SE concept is challenged in a BoP context: the six Kenyan SEs viewed social and commercial orientation as equally important and mutually supportive; viewed social orientation as a competitive advantage; and did not consider social objectives as harmonious. These findings corroborate key claims of the BoP literature, e.g. that it is not possible meaningfully to distinguish social and commercial missions at the BoP as they are intertwined; that any company succeeding at the BoP will have a social impact; and that the pursuit of some social objectives may undermine the achievement of other social objectives. The overall conclusion of the paper is that in BoP environments, the concept of SE becomes illusive.

This paper adds perspective to existing literature on SE at the BoP and provides empirical evidence that can help shape the understanding of social business activities in East Africa. The paper demonstrates that in BoP environments, the boundaries between social and commercial enterprise become illusive.

This paper explores the question of representation within commercial qualitative research in the context of a broader “crisis of representation”. It will be argued that a comparison between academic and commercial qualitative research highlights very different contexts in which to raise and deal with questions of representation. Further, it is suggested that the comparison between commercial and academic qualitative research reveals a tension between virtualism and the iconography of authenticity. The paper ends by arguing that, within commercial qualitative research, virtualism is a key route towards bringing a more pragmatic and insightful approach to research.

The purpose of this paper is to offer an alternative conceptualisation of commercial insurance that is based on service thinking and compares it to the ideas flowing from goods thinking that currently appears to be a dominant mindset.

When deliberating on commercial insurance, Muslim jurists and scholars followed a misleading route of logical reasoning that is based on comparing insurance to other approved commercial contracts within Islamic Law. In this paper, the author questions such reasoning by contrasting the framework of service thinking to that of goods thinking.

The alternative framework proposed in this paper repositions commercial insurance as a unique type of service (rather than a good). It shows that commercial insurance can be seen as a bundle of benefits, which unfold in a gradual, intermittent, sporadic manner depending on the circumstances. This mode of a servicing relationship focuses on harm removal rather than the opportunistic actualisation of unfair monetary gain. Insurance premium is conceptualised as an availability fee, while compensation payout is recast as the restoration of value.

Muslim jurists and marketing practitioners can use this framework to further scrutinise the permissibility of different varieties of commercial insurance in the contexts of both Muslim and non-Muslim majority countries. As service thinking radically repositions the essence and structure of commercial insurance, the views on the relevance of “gharar” and “riba” may undergo significant re-conceptualisation. Moreover, the design of takaful options can be improved on this basis.

Service thinking can better elucidate a positive societal role of commercial insurance that is in accord with the societal and Islamic maxim of harm removal. Some objections to commercial insurance relate to public policy failures. Well-regulated commercial insurance industries can substantially contribute to the economic development of impoverished societies.

This paper exemplifies compelling power as well as potential of the discipline of Islamic marketing in contributing to significant debates concerning the permissibility of modern commercial options.

The purpose of this paper is to develop two hypotheses explaining the role of commercial management in the lean business model: lean construction is a viable choice of commercial strategy; and lean commercial management is an integral part of lean construction system subordinate to the project delivery. This is completed as a part of conceptualisation of the lean commercial management discipline in construction on the abstract level and followed by deriving its main principles.

The research is based on the direct observation of the companies pursuing lean strategy in construction as well as of those following non‐lean business models, review of case studies and literature.

Traditional commercial arrangements do not comply with the lean construction requirements and may hamper the exploration of its full potential. Lean commercial management differs in the way that its primary role is to support the production process thus it is subordinated to it.

This research would benefit from links with the existent field of social and economic studies where deeper reasoning to substantiate the theory might be found. Experiments with lean companies in the construction sector are also necessary for theory validation.

The approach offered in this paper vectors the way of dealing with the commercial decisions within lean enterprise. This potentially can further enhance benefits from lean construction.

The paper builds upon the related research and papers, further advancing the topic of lean construction.

Corporate gift-giving and hospitality are some of the high-risk areas for corruption. This paper aims to see comparisons between the Malaysian Ministerial Guidelines and the UK Guidance and to analyse whether the guideline in Malaysia is adequate in dealing with corporate gift-giving and hospitality.

The methodology used in this paper is qualitative research which is based on data collection through online searches, legal databases, information obtained from articles, books, statutes and related government publications.

The findings show that the statutory guideline in Malaysia is immature, still not adequate, and lacks detailed regulations in determining gifts and hospitality as corruption (unclear boundary), as compared to the UK law which is more detailed.

This paper explains on comparison of corporate gift giving and hospitality practise in Malaysia and the UK based on the statutory guidelines.