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Drawing on the international business and IHRM literature, this study investigated the effects that employment regulation and its nature of enforcement have on foreign investment in emerging markets.

Panel regressions with time fixed effects were conducted for the period 2002–2017 using regulatory, human capital, and economic data for 34 developing nations. Robustness checks also were performed by varying the measures for key predictors along with the modes of analysis (i.e., Pooled OLS with clustered standard errors, generalized estimating equations (GEE), and instrumental variable (IV) regression with the generalized method of moments (GMM) approach).

Although the totality of restrictions did not have an impact, FDI inflows were negatively related to the process strength of enforcement. This suggests investors place greater emphasis on de facto exposure than on de jure enactments, favoring nations less willing or able to push for compliance. In addition, while GDP growth had a positive impact on inward investment, the opposite was found for licensing restrictions and labor productivity. The remaining controls failed to display consistent relationships with foreign investment.

Data constraints precluded the inclusion of additional economies and years before 2001. It also was not possible to directly evaluate the influence of labor costs without a standardized measure for developing nations. This entered at best indirectly in GDP per capita, which was tested.

These findings have important implications for social responsibility, suggesting more aggressive monitoring is needed of investment criteria and government relations. At a minimum, social auditing and reporting should better document overt commitments to rights-adherence and compliance-partnering. CSR stakeholders can work in tandem, tracking enforcement more closely and lobbying governments to discourage policies of lax enforcement.

This is the first study to assess how legal stock and its manner of enforcement influence FDI inflows. Improving on earlier studies, employment law was measured with a broad legal scale that was annually adjusted. Enforcement was evaluated in two different forms, both as process strength and administrative capacity – the former drawing investors' attention.

Foreign whistleblowers are foreign citizens who help national enforcement authorities to sanction both foreign-based corporations and home-based corporations that engage in economic crime. This paper aims to investigate the expansion of US law in the area of transnational economic crime by discussing the case of foreign whistleblowers.

This paper has been developed from a literature review carried out as part of a wider study into policing international bribery.

This paper shows that extraterritorial application of US whistleblowing laws is part of a broad trend associated with extraterritorial enforcement of US anti-corruption statutes such as the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA). The extraterritorial reach of the FCPA and other statutes allowed the USA to become the leader in sanctioning US corporations as well as non-US corporations for economic crime. In effect, some US enforcement practices have become the standard that has influenced law and law enforcement in other countries as well as internal compliance of corporations.

In spite of the profound impact foreign whistleblowing has on the effectiveness of national anti-corruption enforcement, this topic has been largely neglected by academic research. To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this paper is the first to provide an overview of the role of foreign whistleblowers and the significant impact foreign whistleblowing has for legal reform in European countries and internal compliance of corporations in Europe and beyond.

This paper aims to examine the roles of quality managers at community colleges, their experiences balancing accountability and improvement and their insights into the future of quality assurance.

This phenomenological, qualitative study used semi-structured interviews with eight community college quality managers to investigate their roles, experiences and perspectives. A reflexive thematic approach was used to analyze the interview data.

Four themes were identified from participant responses: quality managers frame and enable program quality, quality managers drive program change, quality managers cultivate a culture of quality and quality managers seek system change. The findings illustrate the roles played by quality managers as they work to improve college education at program, institution and system-wide levels.

The decision of participants to accept the recruitment invitation might reflect particular attitudes, perspectives or experiences.

Quality assurance has emerged as a key mechanism for ensuring postsecondary programs are current, relevant and meeting the evolving needs of students and employers. This study advances the understanding of how quality assurance processes play out at the operational level and explores the experiences of quality managers as they navigate various quality tensions.

Quality managers play key roles in leading, evaluating and influencing quality assurance processes in postsecondary education yet they are underrepresented in the literature. The findings of this study shed new light on the aspirational and influential roles they play in advancing quality assurance.

The European Union’s Whistleblower Directive (WBD), or formally the “Directive (EU) 2019/1937 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 23 October 2019 on the protection of persons reporting infringements of Union law” seeks to establish a uniform standard for whistleblowing protection across member state jurisdictions. Considering the international reach of the directive, it inevitably confronts divergent national attitudes towards whistleblowing. This paper aims to examine various cultural attitudes which have contributed to the common understanding of whistleblowing, under the directive.

The rhetoric on whistleblowing from a combination of business and national cultures is examined herein. A focus is cast on the information technology sector, which has traditionally protected trade secrecy over whistleblowing, under the guise of protecting of innovation. Moreover, the juxtaposition of American and German employment culture is testimony to the discrepancy in national narratives.

The WBD is both a symptom and a yardstick of modern employment culture in Europe. There are crucial clashes with trade secrecy which the directive has not resolved as well as an acknowledgement of the paradigm of legal thought which the directive pushes.

By reference to both business and national culture, this paper highlights the heterogenous conception of whistleblowing which the directive aims to reconcile. Whilst a vast amount of literature has covered isolated criticism of the WBD, a wider lens has not been cast to consider the pervasive influence of specific aspects on business culture.

This study aims to analyze the impact of corporate governance on firms’ external financing decisions in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region.

The authors analyzed a unique set of panel data comprising 2,425 nonfinancial firms whose shares are traded on stock exchanges in countries in the MENA region. The authors fitted an ordinary least squares model to estimate the regression coefficients. The authors performed a sensitivity analysis using alternative measures of the critical variables and an endogeneity analysis using instrumental variable methods with plausible external instruments.

The results revealed that corporate governance characteristics of firms are strongly associated with their degree of leverage. They also showed that macrofinancial conditions, financial regulations, corporate governance enforcement and social conditions mitigate the impact of corporate governance on firms’ financing decisions.

A larger sample size will further improve the results; however, this is difficult and depends on the extent to which increasing disclosure practices allow more corporate information to reach international databases.

This study provides new evidence on the role of corporate governance on firms’ financing decisions and documents the essential mitigating role of institutions, alerting managers to consider them.

This study is a novel attempt. Based on information from different data sources, this study explored the predictive power of corporate governance, ownership structures and other firm-specific characteristics in explaining corporate leverage in MENA countries. Overall, the analysis provides new evidence of the association between corporate governance and capital structure in the MENA region, highlighting the critical role of institutions.

This study aims to propose a law enforcement strategy for investment fraud through comparative studies in the United States of America (USA), Canada and Indonesia, and to identify the factors that cause weak law enforcement on investment fraud with the object of a binary options case study in Indonesia.

This research is a type of legal research, namely, research based on legal materials (library-based). The legal materials used include primary legal materials and secondary legal materials. The approaches used are the statute approach, the case approach and the comparative approach. The data collection technique used in this research is a literature study. The analysis was carried out qualitatively by using an interactive model.

In 2022, the Indonesian Financial Services Authority (OJK) recorded that the total value of public losses because of investment fraud in Indonesia reached 117.4tn IDR. Weak law enforcement is the reason investment fraud thrives in society. Strategies that can be implemented to prevent investment fraud include early detection of new investment fraud modes through the whistleblower program, mutual legal assistance in criminal matters, criminal restitution and improvement of public financial literacy.

This study examines the problems of law enforcement against investment fraud with a case study of binary options in Indonesia. A law enforcement strategy is built on identifying issues and adopting law enforcement policies against investment fraud in Canada and the USA.

For individuals, the results of this research can be used as reading material to increase their understanding of investment fraud. For the government, the results of this study can be a reference in an effort to eradicate the rise of investment fraud cases more effectively and create a safe digital economic space for investors.

The results of this study are expected to be useful in providing recommendations for strategies to strengthen law enforcement against the problems of investment fraud cases so as to form a conducive investment climate in the sense of being safe, comfortable and profitable.

Legal frameworks to prevent investment fraud are rarely discussed. The rise in binary options cases that occur is an indication of weak law enforcement in the investment sector. Therefore, an in-depth study of law enforcement strategies to prevent investment fraud is needed, with comparative studies in the USA, Canada and Indonesia.

Background: This work is a situation analysis of reported human rights abuses that have characterized the COVID-19 controls and lockdown in some countries of the world. This is as documented by reliable mass media sources, relevant international organizations and human rights non-governmental organizations between January 2020 to April 2020.

Methods: A combined content analysis, critical analysis, and doctrinal method is applied in this study in line with the reproducible research process. It is a secondary-data-based situation analysis study, conducted through a qualitative research approach.

Findings: The findings revealed among other things that: COVID-19 lockdowns and curfews' enforcement by law enforcement officers contravened some people's fundamental human rights within the first month. Security forces employed overt and immoderate forces to implement the orders. The lockdown and curfew enforcements were not significantly respectful of human life and human dignity. The COVID-19 emergency declarations in some countries were discriminatory against minorities and vulnerable groups in some countries.

Research limitations/implications: This report is based on data from investigative journalism and opinions of the United Nations and international human rights organizations, and not on police investigations or reports. The implication of the study is that if social marketing orientations and risk communication and community engagement attitudes were given to the law enforcement officers implementing the COVID-19 lockdowns and or curfews, the human rights and humanitarian rights breaches witnessed would have been avoided or drastically minimized.

Originality: The originality of this review is that it is the first to undertake a situation analysis of the COVID-19 lockdowns and curfews human rights abuses in some countries. The study portrayed the poor level of social marketing orientations and risk communication and community engagement attitudes amongst law enforcement officers, culminating in the frosty police-public relationships.

The rise of cryptocurrencies and other digital assets has triggered concerns about regulation and security. Governments and regulatory bodies are challenged to create frameworks that protect consumers, combat money laundering and address risks linked to digital assets. Conventional approaches to confiscation and anti-money laundering are deemed insufficient in this evolving landscape. The absence of a central authority and the use of encryption hinder the identification of asset owners and the tracking of illicit activities. Moreover, the international and cross-border nature of digital assets complicates matters, demanding global coordination. The purpose of this study is to highlight that the effective combat of money laundering, legislative action, innovative investigative techniques and public–private partnerships are crucial.

The focal point of this paper is Australia’s approach to law enforcement in the realm of digital assets. It underscores the pivotal role of robust confiscation mechanisms in disrupting criminal networks operating through digital means. The paper firmly asserts that staying ahead of the curve and maintaining an agile stance is paramount. Criminals are quick to embrace emerging technologies, necessitating proactive measures from policymakers and law enforcement agencies.

It is argued that an agile and comprehensive approach is vital in countering money laundering, as criminals adapt to new technologies. Policymakers and law enforcement agencies must remain proactively ahead of these developments to efficiently identify, trace and seize digital assets involved in illicit activities, thereby safeguarding the integrity of the global financial system.

This paper provides a distinctive perspective by examining Australia’s legal anti-money laundering and counterterrorism financing framework, along with its law enforcement strategies within the realm of the digital asset landscape. While there is a plethora of literature on both asset confiscation and digital assets, there is a noticeable absence of exploration into their interplay, especially within the Australian context.

The purpose of this paper is to analyse the policy instruments used by the China's Government on prefabricated construction (PC) development, with the aim to clarify the pattern and discover the focus of the policy instruments using the methods of bibliometric analysis and content analysis.

Through a thorough screening by all researchers, 25 policies were identified from 1995 to 2021 were selected and analysed. The external attribute analysis clarified the issuing year, organisation, and the format of each policy. The content analysis was adopted firstly to analyse the policy instrument. An analysis framework including environmental instruments, supply instruments and demand instruments was applied in categorising and counting of each policy instrument. The bibliometric analysis was then carried out to extract keywords of the policy instruments, construct a co-word network and complete the cluster analysis.

The results indicate that the policies lack consistency and had relatively low authority. The results of content analysis show that the policy system relies heavily on environmental and supply instruments, whilst the use of demand instruments seems to be grossly inadequate. The results of the bibliometric analysis identify the core ideas of each policy instrument category, discuss the existing problems and then put forward the corresponding countermeasures.

This study comprehensively and systematically analysed the policy instruments on facilitating the development of PC in China which broaden the research perspectives of the PC development by introducing the methods of political science. The research findings afford helpful information for future policy adjustments and elucidate the effective delivery of policies to facilitate PC development for developing countries.

This study provides an in-depth understanding of policy instruments used by China's Government on PC development. By integrating the policy instrument analysis framework into the mixed methods of content analysis and bibliometric analysis, this study provides an innovative way to conduct policy instrument analysis.

This study examines the interconnected effects of formal, informal, environmental and skill-based institutional barriers on firm performance. The Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) region has implemented various reforms and policy initiatives to support small businesses yet are unsuccessful as formal institutional framework and governance remains a challenge.

The authors employ a sample of 3,515 small and medium enterprises (SMEs) from the ECOWAS and a two-stage instrumental variable approach to control for endogeneity. Additionally, the authors check for robustness using various measures of firm performance such as profitability, productivity and export intensity.

The authors confirm that formal institutions are insignificant for firm profitability and productivity, whilst reducing informal, environmental and skill-based institutional barriers are associated with firm performance. However, when barriers to informal, environmental and skill-based institutions are at the lowest, formal institutions are associated with firm performance.

The major limitation lies in the policy implications. Informal institutions come into play when formal institutions are weak. However, informal practices must be addressed in the form of formal enforcement. This leads to a conundrum.

Policymakers should continue to market-supporting institutions and a conducive business environment to complement the formal institutional framework.

This study provides new empirical evidence on how institutional quality affects firm performance by examining whether other institutional factors, such as the informal, environmental and skill-based institutional barriers, can moderate this effect.