Search results

The purpose of this study is to assess the performance of fuel blends containing ethanol and gasoline in spark ignition engines. The aim is to explore alternative fuels that can enhance performance while minimizing or eliminating adverse environmental impacts, particularly in the context of limited fossil fuel availability and the need for sustainable alternatives.

The authors used the Ricardo Wave software to evaluate the performance of fuel blends with varying ethanol content (represented as E0, E10, E25, E40, E55, E70, E85 and E100) in comparison to gasoline. The assessment involved different composition percentages and was conducted at various engine speeds (1,500, 3,000, 4,500 and 6,000 rpm). This methodology aims to provide a comprehensive understanding of how different ethanol-gasoline blends perform under different conditions.

The study found that, across all fuel blends, the highest brake power (BP) and the highest brake-specific fuel consumption (BSFC) were observed at 6,000 rpm. Additionally, it was noted that the presence of ethanol in gasoline fuel blends has the potential to increase both the BP and BSFC. These findings suggest that ethanol can positively impact the performance of spark-ignition engines, highlighting its potential as an alternative fuel.

This research contributes to the ongoing efforts in the automotive industry to find sustainable alternative fuels. The use of Ricardo Wave software for performance assessment and the comprehensive exploration of various ethanol-gasoline blends at different engine speeds add to the originality of the study. The emphasis on the potential of ethanol to enhance engine performance provides valuable insights for motor vehicle manufacturers and researchers working on alternative fuel solutions.

This study aims to investigate Bangladesh’s e-commerce regulations in light of the growing criticism that they are insufficient to curb predicate crimes like fraud and money laundering in the online marketplace.

This study used the exploratory design to examine the latest ministerial directives and laws governing e-commerce in Bangladesh to determine why they cannot prevent fraudulent activities in this promising sector and identify potential solutions.

Bangladesh’s regulatory responses to e-commerce fraud prevention and detection are reactive and inadequate. Regulators are unwilling and unable to enforce available legal provisions for various reasons, including a lack of knowledge and coordination among the agencies.

This paper focuses solely on the legal and regulatory framework in place to combat e-commerce fraud. Other critical issues, such as consumer rights, privacy and data protection in e-commerce, are not addressed.

The findings of this study will assist policymakers in revising current regulatory approaches to e-commerce to protect this sector from criminal abuse.

This study looked into the possibility of using a proactive risk-based approach in the e-commerce sector, similar to what the Bangladesh Financial Intelligence Unit does in the financial sector.

This paper aims to examine two types of age-related human resources (HR) practices, i.e. age-specific and age-inclusive HR practices and firm-level (meso-level) factors that foster or hinder the implementation of these two types of practices.

Based on a cross-case analysis of four firms across industries in Thailand, a developing country, the empirical evidence draws on semi-structured interviews with the top managers, HR managers and aging employees of four firms; field visits; nonparticipant observations; and a review of archival documents and Web-based reports and resources.

This paper proposes that age-specific HR practices primarily include those HR practices under the regulation HR bundle and some HR practices under the maintenance and recovery HR bundles. Additionally, the factors fostering the implementation of age-specific HR practices in firms include group corporate culture, nonunionism within the workplace, paternalistic leaders, a focus on the development of internal labor markets within firms and the need for tacit knowledge transfer from aging employees to younger-generation employees, whereas the factors hindering the implementation of age-specific HR practices in firms include age biases within firms. Moreover, age-inclusive HR practices primarily include HR practices under the development HR bundle and some HR practices under the maintenance and recovery HR bundles. Additionally, the factors fostering the implementation of age-inclusive HR practices in firms include the procedural justice climate, the transition from a family ownership structure to a professional ownership structure and result-/output-based corporate culture, whereas the factors hindering the implementation of age-inclusive HR practices in firms include experience-/seniority-based corporate culture. In fact, some of the meso-level factors that foster or hinder the implementation of age-specific and age-inclusive HR practices tend to be influenced by the national institutional and cultural contexts of the developing country where firms that implement such HR practices are located.

This paper aims to fill the research gap by examining both age-specific and age-inclusive HR practices. Additionally, this paper analyzes the factors fostering or hindering the implementation of these two dimensions of age-related HR practices across firms by using a case study of firms in Thailand, a developing country. To date, most studies in this area have focused on one of these dimensions, while comparisons between different HR dimensions are rather scarce. Finally, this paper contributes to the prior literature on strategic HR and comparative institutional perspective on HR strategies and practices as proposed by Batt and Banerjee (2012) and Batt and Hermans (2012) that future research should go beyond the meso-level (organizational) context. In this regard, some of the factors that foster or hinder the implementation of age-specific and age-inclusive HR practices tend to be influenced by the national institutional and cultural contexts of the developing country of Thailand.

This study aimed to know the effect of cross-sectional risk, which comprises business-specific risk and stock market volatility, as a variable for estimating macroeconomic risk in Indonesia. This study observes public companies in Indonesia and Indonesian macroeconomic data from 2004 to 2020. In this study, the author uses term spread as the dependent variable that reflects macroeconomic risk. The cross-sectional risk comprises financial friction (FF), cash flow (CF), debt–service ratio, and stock market volatility as independent variables. By using the Autoregressive Distributed Lag (ARDL) Model method, this study shows that business-specific and stock market risk can estimate macroeconomic risk, so that it becomes an early signal of economic shock, such as recession or high inflation, in the future. The model in this study also examines the cross-sectional risk relationship with other macroeconomic indicators, such as the Consumer Confidence Index (CCI), money supply (M0), and Indonesia’s trade balance (TB).

This qualitative study explores how technologically challenged Indian rural communities adjusted to the tech-driven work system successfully in the post-pandemic era.

Qualitative semi-structured interviews with multiple Indian rural households conducted in the years 2021 and 2022 were employed.

The findings highlight the critical role played by the social capital in addressing the issues that Indian rural communities were facing in their work setting as a direct result of the COVID-19 outbreak. The embedded social network and social values in rural society came to the rescue when other tangible resources were not available for everyone.

This study contributes to Bourdieu's theory of Social Capital by discovering that social capital can be utilized to gain existential advantages in extraordinary circumstances of (work) life.

Policymakers should acknowledge the presence of social capital in societies, especially rural ones. Social capital plays a significant role in the execution of relevant society-level tasks and can further help in dealing with certain materialistic impediments.

Investments in community infrastructure, education and communication strategies can enhance social capital's role in crisis response.

This study is original as it is the first one that studies the significance of social capital in a post-pandemic environment, especially when the availability of required technological resources is rare.

This study aims to convey the understanding of the ecosystem – how “hundi” works on the border trade between Myanmar and northern Thailand, which is an informal transfer system and is widely used as an alternative banking system. Even though the role of hundi is unable to declare the sources of money under the standard settlement of formal banking system, a failure to operate of its official mechanism are carrying using hundi, as a financial platform across the border between Thailand and Myanmar. This study surveys the best practice mechanism for the regional and international cooperation.

This paper draws on relevant literature, open-source reporting, and interviews with more than 30 interviewees on the border between Thailand and Myanmar. Interviewees includes border-trader, money changer, money transfer operators, business leaders, hundi operators, immigrant labors, government officials and commercial banking staffs.

This study provides a unique insight of hundi system, which work as the alternative mode of formal banking. It is an informal fund transfer payment platform used on the border between Thailand and Myanmar in the past five decades. It insists that hundi plays a significant role in both substitution and complementary on the trade and payment across the border of Myanmar–Thailand. Even though confronting with the barriers of financing of terrorism (anti money laundering AML/combating the financing of terrorism CFT) risk, the competition with the expanding and modernizing formal banking sector, and the introduction of Fintech and mobile money services. In the short term, these are unlikely to eliminate the hundi system completely, but may instead push hundi operators towards adopting these networks and technologies in their own operations.

This paper will be a useful source for academics, development professionals, policymakers, law enforcement agencies and business actors who are seeking to understand Myanmar’s informal payment system, hundi.

This is the latest work for border trade payment or trade financing role of hundi which has hidden under the informal market of the border for several decades. It has few research of hundi on border trade and payment, particularly after the military coup in 2021 which made hundi return to be on the spotlight and simultaneous mechanism of border trade and payment ecosystem of Myanmar. This paper will be a useful source for academics, development professionals, policymakers, law enforcement agencies and business actors who are eager to understand Myanmar’s informal payment system, hundi, especially during the hardship.

This study aims to explain the existing adaptation practices in an urbanized sub-region in the lower Chao Phraya River basin (CPRB) across different scales and dimensions. It offers an overview of water hazards in urban areas along the river basin to discover ways to deal with and recover from hazards via understanding the implications of existing and potential practice for the mitigation of hydrological hazards.

First, this study collected current adaptation strategies and measures from interview, focus group discussion, workshop organization, etc. to get the current adaptation strategies/measures for the whole CPRB and each specific area. Second, this study identified a set of criteria for evaluation from review of current publications and official reports. Then, the current adaptation strategies/measures were examined through a set of criteria to obtain the current situation of existing practices. Finally, analysis of key challenges and opportunities was done to propose supporting guidelines to reduce hydrological risks and incorporate further adaptation measures needed to boost resilience in the area.

Adaptation methods should focus on mixed adaptation, which integrates structural, social, organizational and natural adaptation, and to develop multi-dimensional collaboration. The adaption strategy has restricted the usage of some technologies and technical know-how, particularly in the area of climate change. As a result, intentional adaptation to become more inventive is required, to reduce hazards and improve disaster-response capacity. The various adaptation measures should be more integrated or more adaptive and to achieve greater cohesion and mutual benefit of individual measures, such as community-based adaptation or community-driven slum upgrading.

Hydrological risks are wreaking havoc on social, economic and environmental elements, particularly river flood, flash flood and drought in the Asia-Pacific region. Twenty-two existing adaptation options were evaluated with evaluation criteria such as scales of risks/impacts reduction, benefits of environmental and socio-economic and institutional aspects. The findings highlight the current situation of existing practices, key challenges and opportunities, which emphasized on natural-based solutions, raising knowledge and awareness and lessons learned on adaptation of hydrological risks. The existing adaptation measures will be suggested as supporting guidelines and master plans to minimize the hydrological risks.

This study aims to determine the factors influencing employee retention working in construction-related small-medium enterprises (SMEs) in Krung Thep Maha Nakhon. The study contributes to the construction site manager getting insight into employees' desired goals in the workplace. Furthermore, the study provided information about the diversity of generations (age groups), income levels and educational levels of employees working in the construction industry in the Krung Thep area.

The researcher decided to investigate a sample size of 386 respondents based on the target population. A purposive sampling method was selected by giving out questionnaires to the respondents employed in construction-related SMEs in Krung Thep. The questions comprised two major parts, which are demographic questions and measuring variables relevant to the independent variables.

The study's aim of findings is to investigate the factors that retain the employees who are pursuing their careers in construction-related SMEs. The findings of this research are to unveil that task interdependence significantly contributes to agile working. Lastly, employee retention is significantly affected by agile working among employees in an organisation.

This research only studies factors influencing employee retention among those of all ranges of ages, incomes and educational levels working in construction-related SMEs. The researcher collected data on the income level, age group and educational level of employees to use for further study.

The study is about determining the factor that affects agile working and employee retention among those working in construction-related SMEs.

The purpose of this study is the development of sustainable and low-formaldehyde emission wood adhesive formulations.

Three-step urea formaldehyde (UF) resin has been in situ modified with calcium lignosulfonate (LS) and/or 1,4 butanediol diglycidyl ether (GE). The structural, chemical, thermal and morphological characterizations were carried out on resin samples. These resins have been applied for particleboard pressing, and UF, UF-LS and UF-GE were evaluated as P2 classes according to EN 312.

The results show that the improved LS- or diglycidyl ether-modified UF wood adhesives were successful in their adhesive capacity, and the formaldehyde content of the final product was obtained as low as 8 mg/100 g. This paper highlights that the presented adhesive formulations could be a potential eco-friendly and cost-effective alternative to formaldehyde-based wood adhesives for interior particleboard production.

Combination of LS and GE resulted in weaker mechanical properties and fulfilled P1 class particleboards due to temperature and duration conditions. Therefore, in situ usage of LS or GE in UF resins is highly recommended for particleboard pressing. Formaldehyde content of particleboards was determined with the perforator method according to EN 12460-5 and all of the particleboards exhibited E1 class. LS was more efficient in decreasing formaldehyde content than GE.

This study provides the application of particleboards with low formaldehyde emission.

The developed LS- and diglycidyl ether-modified UF resins made it possible to obtain boards with significantly low formaldehyde content compared with commercial resins.

The developed formaldehyde-based resin formulation made it possible to produce laboratory-scale board prototypes using LS or GE without sacrificing of press factors and panel quality.

This study seeks to estimate union wage effect in the public and private sectors of Ghana, respectively. It also seeks to ascertain whether the union wage effect in the two sectors varies.

The authors use data from the Ghana Living Standards Survey 6 (GLSS 6, 2012/2013) and Ghana Labour Force Survey (GLFS, 2015). In terms of estimation technique, the authors employ the Blinder–Oaxaca decomposition technique to estimate union wage effect in public and private sectors, respectively.

The findings indicate that union wage effect in the public sector is positive and higher relative to that of the private sector.

The findings imply that strict enforcement of Section 82 of Labour Act 2003 (Act 651) will curb the political influence of public sector unions over their employer (Government).

This research paper has not been presented to any journal for publication and it is the authors' original work.

The peer review history for this article is available at: https://publons.com/publon/10.1108/IJSE-01-2023-0045