Search results

Multilingual user guides, manuals and thesauri, and more linguistically universal classification schemes need to be produced to help overcome the language barrier when searching for references. Such developments however would be of only limited value unless the full document can be made available in a language known to the user. In some countries centres have been founded to provide help with the identification of existing translations, these centres include the International Translation Centre. Published translations include translated books reports and journals while unpublished translations are those which are completed on an ad hoc basis. Bibliographic control is achieved by listing in abstracting/indexing journals or on bibliographic data bases. Publications including Journals in Translation for translated journals and World Transindex for ad hoc translations, can be used to trace the existence of a translation. The availability of the translated document itself varies according to the two types of translations. Published translations are reasonably accessible while ad hoc translations are scattered over many libraries and translating agencies. Libraries can help at both the stage of acquiring the reference and identifying and obtaining the documents.

While working in a rural district library system, the question of planning library/information services to meet the needs of the population was always of foremost importance. Community profiles of the region had been conducted continuously for ten years, and during the eleventh year it was decided to survey the entire area in a methodical way to search for the information needs of the population. The purpose of the study was to identify information needs in a specific rural area in Israel in order to design a plan for library/information provision to meet those needs. The study consisted of a literature search of relevant material on information needs in rural areas and less developed countries and a multi‐level field survey in one specific rural area of Israel.

This article examines the role of BLDSC's Translations Section as a focal point in the national and international availability of translations. BLDSC's collection of translations into English is amongst the largest in the world (the Translations Index has over half a million entries) and the Centre is the principal source both of translations and of information about them in the UK. Translations are acquired from all over the world, covering most languages, with the main source languages emerging as Russian, German, French and Japanese. On average, 40,000 requests are received by the Translations Section each year, the majority treating BLDSC as the first and only resort. 11% of these requests are from overseas. The Centre also publishes several major bibliographical tools in this field, and has close links with other national and international translations centres. It acts not only as a document supplier but also as an information provider in this specialized area.

The study aims to examine the joint effects of foreign ownership (FO) and involvement in global value chains (GVCs) on the productivity performance of firms from a catching-up country (Poland) and a leader economy (Germany).

The authors use micro-level data on firms combined with several sector-level GVC participation measures. The authors investigate whether the link between productivity and the overall sectoral degree of involvement in global production structures depends on a firm's ownership. The authors verify the robustness of the obtained results by using an instrumental variables approach and weighted regression.

The results show that domestically owned firms are less productive than foreign ones, which is particularly true at low GVC participation levels. However, as GVC involvement increases, the FO productivity premium decreases, leading to productivity catching up between foreign and domestically owned firms. This mechanism is similar in Poland and Germany. However, in the leader country (Germany), the productivity performance of domestically owned firms is more stable along the distribution of GVC involvement.

This study contributes to the foreign direct investment (FDI)–productivity literature by comparing the catching-up and developed countries' perspectives and incorporating the productivity–GVC relationship into the FDI analysis. The authors show that the FO premium is not confined to the developing context but is also present in a leader country. Moreover, the link between productivity and the overall sectoral degree of involvement in global production structures depends on a firm's ownership.

This paper aims to conduct a systematic meta-analysis on emerging economies to summarize these effects and throw light on the strength and heterogeneity of these conditionalities.

This paper proposes a new methodological framework that allows country- and firm-level effects to be combined. The authors hand collected information from 175 studies and around 1,100 estimates in Eastern Europe, Asia, Latin America and Africa from 1940 to 2008.

The two main findings indicate that “macro” effects are much larger than enterprise-level ones, by a factor of at least six and the benefits from foreign direct investment (FDI) into emerging economies are substantially less “conditional” than commonly thought.

The empirical literature has not reached a conclusion as to whether FDI yields spillovers when the host economies are emerging. Instead, the results are often viewed as conditional. For macro studies, this means that the existence and scale of spillover effects are contingent on the levels of institutional, financial or human capital development attained by the host economies. For enterprise-level studies, conditionality relates to the type of inter-firm linkages, namely, forwards, backwards or horizontal.

The study attempts to explore the determinants of financial inclusion. Subsequently, it examines the effect of financial inclusion on financial well-being of marginalized street vendors in India.

The demand-side analysis of measuring financial inclusion with a sample of 371 marginalized street vendors is adopted. Both exploratory and descriptive research designs are employed in this study. The primary data collection is done by administering the structured interview schedule by using a convenience sampling technique. Confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) and structural equation modeling (SEM) are performed to describe the latent constructs and their hypothetical relationships with adequate empirical evidence.

Out of five dimensions of financial inclusion considered for the study, accessibility, availability, usage and affordability are found to be significant determinants of financial inclusion; however, the financial literacy dimension is found statistically insignificant. Further, the study results confirm that financial inclusion contributes substantially to the well-being of marginalized street vendors.

The outcome of the study will facilitate all the stakeholders including policymakers and financial institutions to enact policy guidelines to ensure financial well-being of the marginalized street vendors through financial inclusion initiatives.

Financial well-being through financial inclusion is possible even without the effect of financial literacy from the unorganized sector perspective specifically marglianized street vendors. Thus, it adds new dimension to the existing literature on demand side analysis of measuring financial inclusion.

Information technology is a new interdisciplinary field combining information science, computing, telecommunications and electronics. As it establishes links across national and linguistic boundaries it also acquires a multilingual dimension requiring translators as links in the interlingual communication process. The translator thus can no longer be considered in isolation; he is simply another mediator, generally between natural languages, similar in function to information scientists who mediate between natural and artificial languages, be they documentation languages or command languages to access databases, and similar also to those computational linguists who mediate between natural languages and computer languages. Interlingual communication is expanding and its means and methods are changing. This is not only reflected in two major Aslib Conferences on this topic in two years, but in Action Plans of the Commission of the EC, the activities of INFOTERM in Vienna, ISO, FID, and UNESCO involvement in this work, the growth of terminological data banks, as well as new organizations and studies in every developed country, some of which were mentioned during this conference.

Although corporate social responsibility–corporate financial performance (CSR-CFP) research topics have been widely investigated, previous research has yet to examine the relationship between the specific dimension of CSR and CFP among Malaysian public-listed companies. Through literature review, it has been found that the CSR-CFP studies conducted in Malaysia have omitted the role of workplace diversity dimension in contribution to CFP. Failure to consider this variable may risk misrepresenting the relationship between CSR and CFP, thereby preclude consensus on the direction of the relationship between the variables. The purpose of this study is to investigate the relationship between individual CSR dimensions and CFP.

By using the CSR dimension disclosure-scoring method and cross-sectional data analysis, this research has conducted a content analysis on annual reports of the sample companies to evaluate the influence of CSR practices on companies’ profitability during 2015.

The results show that companies displaying CSR behavior are associated with higher CFP. That is to say, there is a positive relationship between CSR and CFP. However, the result has further revealed that the five CSR dimensions in isolation would differently associate with the two proxies of CFP.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first study in Malaysia that considers workplace diversity issues as one of the dimensions of CSR. The findings will thus bring new insights into CSR application in Malaysia and its association with the CFP.

This study has a dual purpose. The first is constructing a financial inclusion index to investigate if the reforms implemented during the last decades at the macroeconomic and sectoral levels have contributed to increase the financial inclusion level in Morocco. The second is to deepen the investigation to explore the impact of these reforms at the microeconomic level, by focusing on six major issues: determinants of financial inclusion, links between individual characteristics and barriers to financial inclusion, determinants of mobile banking use, motivations for saving, credit objectives and determinants of resorting to informal finance.

First, the principal component analysis methodology is mobilized to construct a financial inclusion index for Morocco. Second, the probit model methodology on a micro-level database of 5,110 Moroccan adults is used.

First, the financial inclusion index shows that financial inclusion in Morocco over the last two decades has followed different trends. The first period (1999–2004) was characterized by a slight upswing in the level of financial inclusion. In the second period (2004–2012), the level of financial inclusion increased significantly. During the third period (2012–2019), the financial inclusion maintained almost the same level. Second, empirical results showed that the determinants of formal finance and mobile banking are different from those of informal finance. Having a high educational attainment and being a participant in the labor market fosters financial inclusion. Concerning financial exclusion determinants, the results emphasized that a high educational attainment reduces the barriers leading to voluntary exclusion. As income level increases, barriers of involuntary exclusion such as “lack of money” become surmountable. Although "remoteness" and "high cost" are the major barriers to financial inclusion of all Moroccan social classes, the development of mobile banking allows to eliminate, smoothen and/or loosen all barriers sources of involuntary exclusion. As for the barriers causing voluntary exclusion, the Islamic finance model constitutes a lever for the inclusion of population segments excluded for religious reasons. As for the determinants of the recourse to informal finance, being a woman, an older person and having a low educational level (no more than secondary education) increase the probability to turn to informal finance.

The main limitation of this study is the non-availability of data on the two dimensions (quality and welfare) of financial inclusion. The composite index is constructed on the basis of two dimensions (access and use) for which data are available.

This study has three main implications. In practice, with the launching of the National Strategy for Financial Inclusion, this work provides empirical grounded evidence that contributes to design financial inclusion policies in Morocco. In research, while the debate on financial inclusion, mobile banking and informal finance has been raging in recent years, Morocco, like many other African countries, has not received coverage on these topics at the household level.

For society, this study provides considerable insight about the segments of population that are financially excluded and the main reasons for their exclusion.

This study enriches the existing literature with four essential contributions. First, it analyzes the evolution of the level of financial inclusion in the Moroccan economy through the development of a synthetic index. Second, it is the first to study the Moroccan population's financial behavior on the basis of micro-level data, which will help understand more precisely their financial behavior and the main obstacles to their inclusion. Third, this study explores the determinants of the use of mobile banking. Fourth, it sheds some light on the main determinants of the recourse to informal finance.

This paper seeks to examine the motivating factors that propel people to use mobile money in the Greater Accra Region (GAR) of Ghana. The authors posit that the behaviour of a person, in terms of the choice and means of transaction, cannot be explained solely by utility-maximizing assumptions or rationality. Thus, other socio-cultural and psychological factors are crucial in determining whether a person will use mobile money.

This study uses a cross-sectional design to obtain primary data on 733 households from the GAR of Ghana to determine the drivers of mobile money use. Given the binary nature of the dependent variable, a logit model and its marginal effects are estimated. Furthermore, parametric and non-parametric statistical tests are used to examine gender effect and mobile money use.

The study finds that technology savvy cohorts (youthful age cohorts), available services such as phone credit recharge, education and income are among the key determinants of mobile money use in Ghana. Furthermore, parametric and non-parametric tests of mobile money use on gender show a statistically significant difference in gender use of mobile money, albeit, marginal. The findings imply that consistent use of mobile money to access social and economic services can go a long way in promoting financial inclusion, financial empowerment and general wellbeing of people.

Households in developing countries especially Ghana have rapidly embraced mobile money technology. However, what determines the household level of adoption, to the best of our knowledge, is unknown and yet to be tested. This study bridges that gap in the empirical literature as well as contributes to policy decisions.

The peer review history for this article is available at: https://publons.com/publon/10.1108/IJSE-05-2020-0271