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There appears to be no empirical-based method in the literature for estimating if an engineering change proposal (ECP) will occur or the dollar amount incurred. This paper aims to present an empirically based approach to address this shortfall.

Using the cost assessment data enterprise database, 533 contracts were randomly selected via a stratified sampling plan to build two regression models: one to predict the likelihood of a contract experiencing an ECP and the other to determine the expected median per cent increase in baseline contract cost if an ECP was likely. Both models adopted a stepwise approach. A validation set was placed aside prior to any model building.

Not every contract incurs an ECP; approximately 80 per cent of the contracts in the database did not have an ECP. The likelihood of an ECP and the additional amount incurred appears to be statistically independent of acquisition phase, branch of service, commodity, contract type or any other factor except for the basic contract amount and the number of contract line item numbers; both of these later variables equally affected the contract percentage increase because of an ECP. The combined model overall bested current anecdotal approaches to ECP withhold.

This paper both serves as a published reference point for ECP withholds in the archival forum and presents an empirically based method for determining per cent ECP withhold to use.

In spite of the extensive literature on the regulation of air transport services, until the development of the Quantitative Air Services Agreements Review (QUASAR) methodology no systematic review existed of the degree of liberalization granted through air services agreements. The chapter lays out QUASARs key features, and presents the main results its application has generated. It then elaborates on how the methodology could be further refined and extended to other segments of the air transport industry yet uncovered. Based on QUASAR, the chapter critically evaluates some commonly held beliefs about the liberalization of international passenger transport and then moves on to explore the technical feasibility of creating a liberal multilateral regime for air transport services. QUASAR has demonstrated that, although the air transport sector has experienced some liberalization over the past few years, this has been, overall, rather marginal. The skies are not truly open.

This paper aims to draw on Latour’s (1991) conceptual “performative” framework to investigate the role of management control systems (MCSs) in the establishment of post-acquisition integration. The study adopts a qualitative case study approach, where data are collected and analysed from an Australian company which had recently completed a number of acquisitions. Findings demonstrate the performative powers and effects of MCSs, which contribute to shaping customer and sales integration activities, including the forms some resistance may take. In this case, a bitter betrayal was perceived to have occurred in an early stage of the merger, and this paper argues that the use of a performative theoretical framework has enabled subsequent post-acquisition integration strategies to be rendered more visible and thus actionable.

The study adopts a qualitative approach where data are collected and analysed from an Australian case study company which had recently completed a number of acquisitions. Research methods used include semi-structured interviews, a review of archival documents and observations to capture daily integration activities and practices of actors operating in the company.

Findings demonstrate the performative powers and effects of MCSs, which structure customer and sales integration activities and make post-acquisition integration relations strategy visible and actionable.

Findings are only on one case study, and there is a need to undertake further detailed case studies across a range of industries and timeframes, plus, where possible, revisit such studies post hoc to assess the stability of success of the integration.

Integration strategy and strategic change may be constituted by non-human actants such as MCSs. Practitioners who are engaged in acquisitions and making integration decisions need to recognise that MCSs do not merely play a subordinate role to integration strategies, but rather is an important moderating variable that play an active role in their formulation, configuration and enactment.

A performative approach is taken to provide a broader analytical framework for analysing the construction and sustaining of post‐acquisition integration relations, where there is no distinction between technical and social dimensions of action but, rather, the two are merged. This makes it possible to overcome the limitations inherent in existing theoretical frameworks. Using this approach, integration relations involve construction of a network of entities that are enrolled to support, create and sustain the integration.

The United States has an uncomfortable relationship with pleasure. Cultural ambivalence is evident in discourses surrounding pleasure and the labeling and treatment of those who act on their desires. Pleasure seeking, generally understood in moral terms, is often medicalized and criminalized (as in the case of pregnancy prevention and drug use), placing questions of how to manage pleasure under the purview of medical and legal actors. At the macrolevel, institutions police pleasure via rules, patterns of action, and logics, while at the microlevel, frontline workers police pleasure via daily decisions about resource distribution. This chapter develops a sociolegal framework for understanding the social control of pleasure by analyzing how two institutions – medicine and criminal justice – police pleasure institutionally and interactionally. Conceptualizing medicine and criminal justice as paternalistic institutions acting as arbiters of morality, I demonstrate how these institutions address two cases of pleasure seeking – drug use and sex – by drawing examples from contemporary drug and reproductive health policy. Section one highlights shared institutional mechanisms of policing pleasure across medicine and criminal justice such as categorization, allocation of professional power, and the structuring of legitimate consequences for pleasure seeking. Section two demonstrates how frontline workers in each field act as moral gatekeepers as they interpret and construct institutional imperatives while exercising discretion about resource allocation in daily practice. The chapter concludes with a discussion of how understanding institutional and interactional policing of pleasure informs sociolegal scholarship about the relationships between medicine and criminal justice and the mechanisms by which institutions and frontline workers act as agents of social control.

The purpose of this paper is to critically study the application of beneficial ownership in sukuk ijarah by analysing the fiqh interpretation on the concept of beneficial ownership.

This is a theoretical paper using content analysis approach that delves into the works of Islamic scholars on the concept of ownership and evaluates the concept of beneficial ownership in sukuk ijarah from the Islamic perspective.

The paper concludes that the beneficial ownership should be considered as true ownership because Shari’ah has allowed the transfer of ownership by a sole basis of contract (offer and acceptance). Although the sukuk holders are not registered as the legal owners in the Land Office, the documentations and agreements have clearly specified the owners and their liabilities.

Empirical investigations into how sukuk holders are responsible for the underlying assets in sukuk ijarah.

It is therefore important to develop parameters for beneficial ownership to govern the use of the concept in Islamic finance.

The paper shows the fiqh interpretation on the beneficial ownership in sukuk ijarah while considering all the constraints and challenges in the implementation of sukuk.

Ireland has become one of the main sources of finance for Russian based firms. The purpose of this paper is to quantify and analyse these flows to examine governance and regulatory issues, in particular the possible effect of sanctions.

The paper is based on detailed searches of publicly available filings in Company House, Ireland to identify Russian connected conduits. Data was extracted from available accounts and prospectuses for 106 conduits operating in Ireland for some or all of the period 2005-2017.

The paper shows gross flows from Irish based conduits to Russian firms amounted to €118bn for 2005-2017; flows may be partly explained by round tripping; sanctions have also affected flows; flows are facilitated by close linkages with professional networks both within Ireland, and other offshore financial centres, especially London; The conduits examined have no employees and are mostly owned by a charitable trust or trust. They have become a major part of a largely unregulated shadow banking system.

This paper used searches of publicly available company filings to create a unique database of individual firms. Data on the use of financial centres by individual firms is hard to obtain and the results of this study may be indicative of the use and nature of conduits in other financial centres which form part of the shadow banking sector.

Barriers to employment are a significant issue in the United States and abroad. As civil rights legislation continues to be enforced and as employers seek to diversify their workplaces, it is incumbent upon the management field to offer insights that address obstacles to work. Although barriers to employment have been addressed in various fields such as psychology and economics, management scholars have addressed this issue in a piecemeal fashion. As such, our review will offer a comprehensive, integrative model of barriers to employment that addresses both individual and organizational perspectives. We will also address societal-level concerns involving these barriers. An integrative perspective is necessary for research to progress in this area because many individuals with barriers to employment face multiple challenges that prevent them from obtaining and maintaining full employment. While the additive, or possibly multiplicative, effect of employment barriers have been acknowledged in related fields like rehabilitation counseling and vocational psychology, the Human Resource Management (HRM) literature has virtually ignored this issue. We discuss suggestions for the reduction or elimination of barriers to employment. We also provide an integrative model of employment barriers that addresses the mutable (amenable to change) nature of some barriers, while acknowledging the less mutable nature of others.

This chapter reviews the effects of air transport liberalization, and investigates the roles played by airport-airline vertical arrangements in liberalizing markets. Our investigation concludes that liberalization has led to substantial economic and traffic growth. Such positive outcomes are mainly due to increased competition and efficiency gains in the airline industry, and positive externalities to the overall economy. Liberalization allows airlines to optimize their networks, and thus may introduce substantial demand and financial uncertainty to airports. Vertical arrangements between airlines and airports may offer a wide range of benefits to the parties involved, yet such arrangements could also lead to airline entry barriers which reduce the effects of liberalization. Three approaches have been developed to model the effects of liberalization in complex market conditions, which include the analytical, econometric and computational network methods. These approaches should be selectively utilized in policy studies on liberalization.

WE MAKE no apology for once again returning to the theme we have been expounding of late: that there is no need to fear the mini‐micro revolution.