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A methodology of structuring a garment production simulation model using a spreadsheet is described to minimize the average daily production cost through the investigation of various man‐machine combinations. The capability and usability of an easily available modern spreadsheet Excel 7.0 to simulate a simple garment production system is accessed with an attempt to demonstrate the simulation model building in a user friendly environment rather than learning and using costly simulation programming languages or simulation software packages. Simulation has evaluated the resource utilization and measured the system performance and developed strategies for taking operational decisions in a logical and better way to minimize the garment production cost. It may also assist and benefit the garment production managers to plan, design and operate their systems in an efficient manner in a competitive environment.

The purpose of this paper is to develop and subsequently validate a Maqasid al-Shari’ah-based performance evaluation model for Islamic banks.

Initially, a comprehensive review of the existing and relevant literature is carried out and a prototype evaluation model has been developed. This has been augmented and refined through in-depth interviews of Shari’ah scholars and banking experts. Afterwards, the modified model has been validated by taking inputs from academics and Islamic banking practitioners through a focus group discussion.

The major outcome of the present work is a Maqasid al-Shari’ah-based performance evaluation model for Islamic banks. At the inception of the work, the Maqasid frameworks of Imam al-Ghazali and Abu Zahrah were combined. The combined model incorporates various dimensions, elements and the corresponding measures of three components, namely, justice, education and maslahah.

Not being able to test the model statistically or empirically can be considered as a limitation.

The comprehensive theoretical framework of the developed model addresses all aspects of human well-being. Thus, if implemented the model will ensure welfare for all the stakeholders. It will also encourage the regulators to introduce new reporting standards which will be more reflective of Maqasid al-Shari’ah.

Fulfilling Maqasid will create a positive brand image for Islamic banks, which will attract more customers both Muslims and non-Muslims. Thus, this will create a wider scope for earning more revenues.

There has been concern that Islamic banks are converging towards conventional banking systems and the same performance measure instrument is being used to evaluate the performance of both Islamic and conventional banks. The present work has developed a Maqasid al-Shari’ah-based performance evaluation model for Islamic banks.

This paper employs three months of observations sampled at 60‐second intervals to analyze the behavior of two basket indices from the emerging Athens Stock Exchange: the General Index of the Main (Listed) Securities Market and the Index of the Secondary (Unlisted) Securities Market. The empirical analysis employs robust regression using dummy variables to uncover a rich variety of time‐of‐day regularities in the first four moments of the distribution of returns, the tail behavior, and the dynamic and cross‐dynamic behavior of the two markets. Markets tend to behave differently during their opening and closing, while results are invariably sensitive to outliers. Overall, the results are comparable to those reported for developed equity markets. However, in contrast to other studies, we find no conclusive evidence of long‐memory in either the mean or variance process. ARMA models of seasonally differenced absolute returns were used as a simple but effective way of dealing with the strong regularity in volatility.

In existing information retrieval models there are three different ways documents are represented for retrieval purposes: vectors of weights, collections of sentences and artificial neurons. Accordingly, retrieval depends on a similarity function, or means an inference, or is a spreading of activation. Relevancy is considered to be a critical modelling parameter which is either a priori or it is not treated at all. Assuming that relevancy may equally be an emergent entity, thus not requiring any a priori modelling, the paper proposes the Interaction Information Retrieval model in which documents are interconnected, queries and documents are treated in the same way, and in which retrieval is the result of the interconnection between query and documents. Algorithms and experiences gained with practical applications are presented. A theoretical mathematical formulation of this type of retrieval is also given.

The purpose of this paper is to explore performance management in four UK trade unions. Specifically, the extent to which managers in the four unions accept or dismiss the unitarist, disciplinary and performative values that arguably characterise performance management practices.

A qualitative research design was adopted to investigate trade union managers’ interpretations of performance management. Managers were targeted because they held the power to shape performance management practices in their specific areas. The research employed qualitative semi-structured interviews.

Performance management in trade unions is linked to the structure, purpose and orientation of different types of trade union. It is also linked to the wider environmental context. The trade union managers’ interpretations of performance management are linked to disciplinary and performative values. As such they are comparable to the unitarist forms of performance management described in the literature. There are moreover, similarities and differences between the approaches to performance management between trade unions and for profit or public sector organisations.

The paper adds to the emerging literature on internal trade union management by highlighting a particular aspect of human resource management.

This paper draws on data from a research project that examined the professional relationships that existed between teachers of different generations within an educational setting, including both those inside and outside school.

A qualitative approach was adopted to better understand participants' intergenerational relationships. Data were collected via semi-structured interviews conducted online. Data analysis was carried out using Atlas.ti 22 software. This focused on participants' professional relationships, generationally-inflected professional relationships, links to the school and connections with their environment.

The paper shows that commitment to the profession and work climate were among the key aspects referred to by the interviewees. The different age groups agreed that they had experienced intergenerational feedback and that there was closer contact between peers of the same generation, which led to greater levels of affinity. The shared responsibility that comes with teaching and the sense of belonging were essential links to the school. The generational groups underlined the importance of building bridges and participating in collaborative networks to form connections with their environment.

Although several studies have considered various factors influencing professional relationships from an intergenerational perspective, this paper adds value to the existing literature by providing new data and analyzing the barriers and opportunities experienced by teachers of different generations (novice, veteran and retired) in their professional work within and beyond the educational setting.

The literature dealing with the firm's financing decisions in developing capital markets is limited. This paper aims to contribute to the published research by documenting the perceptions of managers of Omani firms listed on the Muscat Securities Market with regards to the capital structure of their firms. Survey responses show that financial decision‐making behavior of Omani firms can be explained by the “pecking order” view of capital structure. The effect of tax and bankruptcy on capital structure is not clear. Firms' relationships with banks and government shareholdings minimize the effect of financial distress. Further, managers tend not to release information to the suppliers of funds even though this might reduce the cost of funds required. Most firms seem to maintain spare borrowing policy. The conclusion is that executives of Omani firms are not less sophisticated than their American, Australian, British, Korean, Hong Kong, or Singapore counterparts in terms of their decision‐making process related to financial leverage.

It is often the case that policy makers are slow to adopt the results of economic analysis in their policy formulation. Shiftworking is one of those rare cases where policymakers have seized upon something as having particular significance which economists have on the whole neglected. Robin Marris published a seminal work, The Economics of Capital Utilisation, in 1964, but it was not until the later 1970s that further substantial work was undertaken by economists and shiftworking appears to be regarded as hardly worth a mention in the standard labour economics texts. This relative neglect by economists is surprising given the significance and growth of shiftworking in a number of countries. Where data are available it is estimated for instance that, as a rough approximation, the number of workers engaged on shiftwork doubled between 1950 and the mid‐1970s. For the UK one estimate is that between 1954 and 1964 the proportion of manual employees working shifts in manufacturing industry increased from 12 to 20 per cent, and that by 1978 the figure was 34 per cent (that is approximately 1.5 out of 4.27 million employees). Shiftworking has in fact reflected a conflict of goals for the policymakers. On the one hand in both the International Labour Organisation (ILO) and the European Commission (EC) concern has been expressed at the possible harmful effects on workers of particular shiftworking patterns and proposals have been made to limit its incidence and control its form (this being particularly the case with nightwork and with the hours of women and young persons). On the other hand, concern with the growing problem of unemployment has led policymakers in other sections of these same bodies to propose an extension of shiftworking, as one particular form of work‐sharing, in order to generate jobs. The purpose of this paper is to examine the development of shiftworking for male manual workers in British manufacturing industry in order to cast some light on these issues. In particular supply equations are estimated in order to understand what factors lead workers to select this particular form of work and demand equations to determine the nature of the employer's demand for labour. These structural equations form the basis of a simultaneous system in which plant size (measured in terms of employment) is estimated as a function of shiftworking and a vector of other explanatory variables in order to determine whether in fact it is reasonable to conclude that an extension of shiftworking will generate additional jobs in Britain. Before presenting the regression results it is however necessary to examine in more detail these socio‐economic policy aspects of shiftwork, to clarify the theoretical framework and to discuss some of the problems of estimation which stem largely from data deficiencies, but also involve problems of simultaneity notably in the relationships between shiftworking, capital intensity and plant size.

The purpose of this paper is to estimate Google search engine’s ranking function from a search engine optimization (SEO) perspective.

The paper proposed an estimation function that defines the query match score of a search result as the weighted sum of scores from a limited set of factors. The search results for a query are re-ranked according to the query match scores. The effectiveness was measured by comparing the new ranks with the original ranks of search results.

The proposed method achieved the best SEO effectiveness when using the top 20 search results for a query. The empirical results reveal that PageRank (PR) is the dominant factor in Google ranking function. The title follows as the second most important, and the snippet and the URL have roughly equal importance with variations among queries.

This study considered a limited set of ranking factors. The empirical results reveal that SEO effectiveness can be assessed by a simple estimation of ranking function even when the ranks of the new and original result sets are quite dissimilar.

The findings indicate that web marketers should pay particular attention to a webpage’s PR, and then place the keyword in URL, the page title, and snippet.

There have been ongoing concerns about how to formulate a simple strategy that can help a website get ranked higher in search engines. This study provides web marketers much needed empirical evidence about a simple way to foresee the ranking success of an SEO effort.