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This paper aims to examine whether the audit committee moderates the relationship between audit quality and market reactions.

Using fixed effects and the GMM model for robustness, the study used 472 publicly listed firms on South Africa’s Johannesburg stock exchange spanning a period of six years from 2014 to 2019.

Results obtained show that audit quality impacts market reactions through share price and adjusted market returns. And, that the audit committee moderates the relationship between audit quality and market reactions in South Africa’s publicly listed firms. An effective audit committee is expected to play a crucial role in overseeing the audit process, ensuring the independence of auditors and promoting transparency and accountability which in turn impacts asset prices.

The study implies that governments and regulatory bodies in other developing economies could strengthen regulations about companies’ Acts, how firms regulate themselves and more so audit committees. Firms can also strive to make sure that audit committees are staffed with experts to promote higher audit quality and investor attention to get access to the much-alluded capital.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, the study adds value by being the first to explore the subject matter of the importance of audit committees in defining audit quality and market reactions in publicly listed firms. The research adds to the body of knowledge on corporate governance and audit quality. It provides a case study specific to the South African context, contributing to the global literature on these topics.

This paper aims to provide readers with a comprehensive overview of the current state of the millennial literature, highlighting the significance and challenges of millennial professionals, their reported high turnover and the various recommendations designed to engage and retain them.

An integrated review approach was applied to synthesise contemporary peer-reviewed articles, supplemented by legacy and grey literature and relevant book chapters, to comprehensively explore and construct a cohesive overview of the current research on the millennial workforce.

Within the wealth of available information, examining the various studies on millennial turnover reveals diverse theories, evidence and opportunities for advancement, underscoring the necessity for more robust empirical studies. The investigation identified three overarching retention strategy themes: (1) intergenerational conflict management, (2) workplace adaptations and (3) solutions rooted in a protean career orientation. In alignment with protean career concepts, coaching shows promise as an underexplored option.

This article holds practical significance by offering researchers a comprehensive and cohesive overview of the millennial literature. Additionally, it gives organisations a novel perspective on the crucial role coaching can play in engaging and retaining millennial employees.

The increased focus on retaining millennial workers in recent decades has spurred a proliferation of articles and books on this subject. However, this body of research remains fragmented, lacking an overview that provides a clear picture of its current state. This review aims to bridge this gap.

This study examined the factors influencing willingness-to-repurchase for each class of airline service, and integrate the constructs of service quality, satisfaction and willingness-to-repurchase which were rooted on Engel-Kollat-Blackwell (EKB) model. The study focuses on the domestic and international arrival of passengers at Murtala Muhammed International Airport in Lagos and Nnamdi Azikwe International Airport in Abuja. Information was gathered from domestic and foreign passengers who had post-purchase experience and had used the airline's services more than once. The survey data were obtained concurrently from arrival passengers at two major international airports using an electronic questionnaire through random and purposive sampling techniques. The data was analysed using the ordinal logit model and structural equation model. From the 606 respondents, 524 responses were received but 489 responses were valid for data analysis and reporting and were obtained mostly from economy and business class passengers. The study found that the quality of seat pitch, allowance of 30 kg luggage permission, availability of online check-in 24 hours before the departing flight, quality of space for legroom between seats, and the quality of seats that can be converted into a fully flatbed are the major service factors influencing willingness-to-repurchase economy and business class tickets. Also, it was found that passengers' willingness to repurchase is influenced majorly by service quality, but not necessarily influenced by satisfaction. These results reflect the passengers' consciousness of COVID-19 because the study was conducted during the heat of COVID-19 pandemic. Recommendations were suggested for airline management based on each class.

Consistent with international trends, various policy initiatives have been proposed in South Africa to reform education practices and equip learners with the ability to become critical-thinking citizens. One such reform was the inclusion of Economic and Management Sciences (EMS) as a subject in the curriculum in the late 1990s. EMS, a uniquely South African creation, was introduced to address a particular agenda, enabling learners to understand the wealth creation process and develop entrepreneurial dispositions. Accordingly, the programmed curriculum evident in the EMS textbooks was designed to meet these official curriculum objectives that would create an entrepreneurial culture, which, in turn, would stimulate economic growth. Considering that textbooks are carriers of more than content information and reflect specific values and ideologies, it is of particular importance to examine these textbooks and the messaging communicated to young people about entrepreneurs, as these adolescents themselves start forming their own identities.

The nonmaterial dimension of reality is contrasted with the material, observable and empirically verifiable dimension that rose to dominance with the Enlightenment. The nonmaterial dimension includes orientation, memes, tacit knowledge and spirituality. The orientation of an individual, group, or institution can be towards violence – getting ahead at the expense of the other – or blessing – working in such a way that there is mutual benefit. Orientations can be expressed through memes, cultural or behavioural patterns that are mimetically transmitted broadly within a society and diachronically through generations. If they catch on within a group, they can determine the institutional or group culture. Spirituality can be a source of change of orientation from violence to blessing and of growth in creativity, resilience and empowerment. David Peat and David Bohm posit an implicate order in the universe, thought as a system (in the context of dialogue), and gentle action. Neil Douglas-Klotz points out that the Aramaic words malkuta d'bwashmaya (kingdom of heaven) used by Jesus constituted a nonmaterial reality containing vision, norms and empowerment that exists within and among us – like the implicate order – and is accessed by those who truly wish to ‘see’ it. The emerging spirituality coming out of this engagement has a capacity to replace memes like those of empire, self-interest and grandiose leaders with memes that channel passions and energy towards bio-interest, transnational interest, transpersonal interest, empathy and widespread empowerment. And this could make all the difference in effecting truly sustainable development.

Due to the Coronavirus 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic, education has been disrupted right from kindergarten to University. Globally, states are advocating for online learning. The COVID-19 pandemic had led to the closure of universities and it was not clear how long this would last. e-Learning was crucial. Lecturers were asked to complete their syllabuses and continue to teach and administer tests remotely. So far, there is a dearth of information on how Kenya’s higher education responded to the pandemic through online learning. This qualitative study utilized online platforms (zoom and Skype) for interviews. This study employed a constructivist approach to explore the faculty officials’ perception of online learning in Kenya’s institutions of higher education. Approximately 45 faculty officials from public universities were involved in this study. The study was carried out in three public universities in Western Kenya. The participants argued that online education was beneficial and primarily promoted online research and enabled them to connect with other practitioners in the global community. There were challenges associated with online learning for instance unreliable internet. This study’s results are hoped to inform the ministry of education and higher learning policies on making online effective and efficient to both the students and the lecturers. This will also be a fairer spring-ball for Kenya toward the realization of Vision 2030.

This paper explores the similarities and differences in privacy attitudes, trust and risk beliefs between younger and older adults on social networking sites. The objective of the article is to ascertain whether any notable differences exist between younger (18–25 years old) and older (55+ years old) adults in how trust and risk are influenced by privacy concerns upon personal information disclosure on social media.

A Likert scale instrument validated in previous research was employed to gather the responses of 148 younger and 152 older adults. The scale was distributed through Amazon Mechanical Turk. Data were analyzed through partial least squares structural equation modeling.

No significant differences were found between younger and older adults in how social media privacy concerns related to trust and risk beliefs. Two privacy concern dimensions were found to have a significant influence on perceptions of risk for both populations: collection and control. Predictability and a sense of control are proposed as two conceptual approaches that can explain these findings.

This article is the first one to explore age differences in privacy concerns, trust and risk on social media employing conceptual developments and an instrument specifically tailored to the social media environment. Based on the findings, several strategies are suggested to keep privacy concerns on social media at a minimum, reduce risk perceptions and increase users' trust.

This study proposes a novel method utilising a speech-word pair bipartite network to examine the correlation structure between members of parliament (MPs) in the context of the UK- China relationship.

We construct MP-word pair bipartite networks based on the co-occurrence relationship between MPs and words in their speech content. These networks are then mapped into monopartite MPs correlation networks. Additionally, the study calculates correlation network indicators and identifies MP communities and factions to determine the characteristics of MPs and their interrelation in the UK-China relationship. This includes insights into the distribution of key MPs, their correlation structure and the evolution and development trends of MP factions.

Analysis of the parliamentary speeches on China-related affairs in the British Parliament from 2011 to 2020 reveals that the distribution and interrelationship of MPs engaged in UK-China affairs are centralised and discrete, with a few core MPs playing an integral role in the UK-China relationship. Among them, MPs such as Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon, David Cameron, Lord Hunt of Chesterton and Lord Howell of Guildford formed factions with significant differences; however, the continuity of their evolution exhibits unstableness. The core MP factions, such as those led by Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon and David Cameron, have achieved a level of maturity and exert significant influence.

The research has several limitations that warrant acknowledgement. First, we mapped the MP-word pair bipartite network into the MP correlation network for analysis without directly analysing the structure of MPs based on the bipartite network. In future studies, we aim to explore various types of analysis based on the proposed bipartite networks to provide more comprehensive and accurate references for studying UK-China relations. In addition, we seek to incorporate semantic-level analyses, such as sentiment analysis of MPs, into the MP-word -pair bipartite networks for in-depth analysis. Second, the interpretations of MP structures in the UK-China relationship in this study are limited. Consequently, expertise in UK-China relations should be incorporated to enhance the study and provide more practical recommendations.

Firstly, the findings can contribute to an objective understanding of the characteristics and connotations of UK-China relations, thereby informing adjustments of focus accordingly. The identification of the main factions in the UK-China relationship emphasises the imperative for governments to pay greater attention to these MPs’ speeches and social relationships. Secondly, examining the evolution and development of MP factions aids in identifying a country’s diplomatic focus during different periods. This can assist governments in responding promptly to relevant issues and contribute to the formulation of effective foreign policies.

First, this study expands the research methodology of parliamentary debates analysis in previous studies. To the best of our knowledge, we are the first to study the UK-China relationship through the MP-word-pair bipartite network. This outcome inspires future researchers to apply various knowledge networks in the LIS field to elucidate deeper characteristics and connotations of UK-China relations. Second, this study provides a novel perspective for UK-China relationship analysis, which deepens the research object from keywords to MPs. This finding may offer important implications for researchers to further study the role of MPs in the UK-China relationship.

This study proposes a novel scheme for analysing the correlation structure between MPs based on bipartite networks. This approach offers insights into the development and evolving dynamics of MPs.