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This paper aims to highlight a limitation of the understanding of agility within organizations, while providing the reasoning and anecdotal example of an effective setting where agility exists, and how this affects firms’ productivity through focusing on the principle of ownership motivation.

The contemporary thoughts and historical research with anecdotal evidence are gathered from small business owners in the insurance industry.

Agility implementation in firms today is mainly top-down team focused. While bottom-up input approaches are prescribed for firm organizational agility implementation, the mantle of ownership and drive are not imparted to employees. The example of a service industry highlights the possibilities of having agility within the organization implemented by direct ownership of most if not all the operations and functions.

This paper shares a working example of implemented agility and proposes the application within the broader scope of firm operations, particularly for smaller firms looking for sustainable advantages.

It re-looks at actual implementable agile practices by re-imaging the role of employees into functional business units from the bottom-up, rather than from the top-down, as a different perspective of agility.

Examines the extent to which social policy adopted by the colonial government in Hong Kong (prior to its hand‐over China in 1997) has set the agenda for the government of the newly formed Special Administrative Region (SAR). Chronicles the historical development of social policy in Hong Kong since the inception of the colonial government in 1842; identifies that, with the exception of a short‐lived period of expansionism (stimulated by social unrest in the mid‐1960’s) social welfare provision appears to have been low on the government’s agenda and incremental in nature ‐ the emphasis being on economic growth, rather than public spending on welfare programmes. Examines the strengths and weaknesses of this incremental approach; outlines the commitment of the SAR government to the market economy and its proposals for a modest increase in welfare provision, essentially building on the legacy left behind by the colonial government.

Presents over sixty abstracts summarising the 1999 Employment Research Unit annual conference held at the University of Cardiff. Explores the multiple impacts of globalization on work and employment in contemporary organizations. Covers the human resource management implications of organizational responses to globalization. Examines the theoretical, methodological, empirical and comparative issues pertaining to competitiveness and the management of human resources, the impact of organisational strategies and international production on the workplace, the organization of labour markets, human resource development, cultural change in organisations, trade union responses, and trans‐national corporations. Cites many case studies showing how globalization has brought a lot of opportunities together with much change both to the employee and the employer. Considers the threats to existing cultures, structures and systems.

Medicine prices are increasing globally, including in Malaysia where previous studies show prices higher than international averages. Patient Access Scheme (PAS) is a mechanism adopted by Malaysia in 2018 to facilitate access to expensive medicines, similarly used by Italy since 2005. This study aims to compare the implementation of PAS in Malaysia and Italy.

This review systematically searched for peer-reviewed articles in PubMed, Scopus and ScienceDirect on how Italy implemented PAS system from 2012 to 2022 using the related keywords. The systematic review is reported according to Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses guidelines.

The search identified 363 articles. A total of eight studies were included. Most of the studies found that PAS is able to control the expenditure on expensive drugs. PAS has also had several challenges, such as high administrative burden, high upfront cost and the need for good data infrastructure.

This study’s unique focus on Italy’s adoption of managed entry agreements (MEA) can provide valuable insights for Malaysia’s pricing mechanisms and access to expensive drugs. Notably, this research addresses a gap in the literature regarding the practical implications of MEA implementation in developing countries. The findings have the potential to improve access to essential medicines for Malaysian citizens while offering a fresh perspective on MEA utilization in emerging markets.

The purpose of this paper is to draw upon social information processing theory and its purpose is twofold. First, it aims to examine the relationship among five brand personality traits (responsibility, activity, simplicity, emotionality and aggressiveness) as to brand equity created on social media in the banking industry of Latvia. Second, it aims to unveil the indirect effects of brand personality on brand loyalty, treating brand equity as a mediating variable.

A questionnaire was designed and a survey method was employed in line with the above-mentioned purposes. Data were collected from 404 customers who followed retail banks on social media. A series of hypotheses were developed and tested using structural equation modeling.

The results show that aggressiveness, followed by responsibility and activeness, form positive brand equity on social media. In contrast, emotionality and simplicity do not contribute to the brand equity of banks on social media. The results also reveal that brand equity positively impacts brand loyalty and partially mediates brand personality and brand loyalty relationship. The theoretical model is thus validated and can be used in future research.

The current study is cross-sectional and has a limited sample size and representativeness. Nevertheless, the results of the present study bring valuable implications for marketing managers who value the role of social media in creating long-term company–customer relationships.

Over the past 20 years, the literature has been dominated by studies that mainly focus on the definition of brand personality and its traits. Unlike the aforementioned efforts, the current study brings new insight into the subject by focusing on brand personality created on social media and linking it to the actual consumer outcomes and exploring the mediating role of brand equity in the banking industry of Latvia.

The non-existence of the corporate governance (CG) concept for practices by non-financial medium-sized firms (MSFs) in Nigeria informed. This study aims to determine whether CG practices influence firms’ performance and whether sustainability initiative (SI) mediates the relationship between CG and MSFs’ performance in Nigeria.

A total of 300 firms were selected on convenience sampling basis from South Western Nigeria using a structured questionnaire. The authors used Statistical Package for Social Sciences for exploratory data analysis and hypotheses were tested using covariance-based structural equation modelling.

The results show that CG has a significant positive effect on performance [financial performance (FNP) and non-financial performance (NFP)] and SI. SI has a mixed impact on performance, e.g. a significant positive impact on NFP but insignificant negative impact on FNP. Similarly, SI has a combined mediating effect in the relationship between CG and performance, e.g. fully mediates CG → NFP and does not mediate CG → FNP. Firms are to invest in social and environmental initiatives substantially. CG codes will complement the International Financial Reporting Standards for MSFs.

This study supports the assumptions of theories (institutional, stakeholder and agency) as the basis for the usage of multiple approaches to determine the outcome of hypotheses, especially in developing climes.

The study contributes to CG and performance literature by examining the mediating effects of SI. The paper also shows the necessity to emphasise NFP aspect. Policymakers should evolve CG codes to encourage stakeholders to believe more in the corporate existence of MSFs for strengthening capital-base and quality personnel engagement.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is one of the first empirical attempts showing the evidence on the relationship between CG and NFP in Nigeria.

Increasing overhang of serviced apartments poses a serious concern to the national property market. This study aims to examine the impacts of macroeconomic determinants, namely, gross domestic product (GDP), consumer confidence index (CF), existing stocks (ES), incoming supply (IS) and completed project (CP) on serviced apartment price changes.

To achieve more accurate, quality price changes, a serviced apartment price index (SAPI) was constructed through a self-developed hedonic price index model. This study has collected 1,567 transaction data in Kuala Lumpur, covering 2009Q1–2018Q4 for price index construction and data were analysed using the vector autoregressive model, the vector error correction model and the fully modified ordinary least squares (OLS) (FMOLS).

Results of the regression model show that only GDP, ES and IS were significantly associated with SAPI, with an R² of 0.7, where both ES and IS have inverse relationships with SAPI. More precisely, it is predicted that the price of serviced apartments will be reduced by 0.56% and 0.21% for every 1% increase in ES and IS, respectively.

Therefore, government monitoring of serviced apartments’ future supply is crucial by enforcing land use-planning regulations via stricter development approval of serviced apartments to safeguard and achieve more stable property prices.

By adopting an innovative approach to estimating the response of price change to supply and demand in a situation where there is no price indicator for serviced apartments, the study addresses the knowledge gap, especially in terms of understanding what are the key determinants of, and to what extent they influence, the SAPI.

The purpose of this study is to empirically examine the factors influencing consumer behavioral intention (BI) to use cryptocurrency as a medium of transaction. Constructs from the unified theory of acceptance and use of technology model and an added variable, perceived risk (PR), are examined to predict BI. Age and gender as moderators are retained in this model.

An online survey was used to gather the respondents’ responses on a five-point Likert scale. G * Power was used to calculate the required minimum sample size. A non-probability sampling technique was used to gather data from the 290 respondents based in Malaysia. The final data set was analyzed using the statistical package for the social sciences and SmartPLS software using structural equation modeling.

The results show that three of the five proposed factors (performance expectancy, effort expectancy and facilitating condition) are significant predictors of BI to adopt cryptocurrency as a medium of transaction. Interestingly, PR is not a significant predictor even though prior research studies showed otherwise. Likewise, the relationship between BI and social influence became significant only when age is added as a moderator.

Malaysians are still wary of cryptocurrency, even though global tech firms such as Amazon and Microsoft are already accepting Bitcoin as a payment method. This study aims to provide relevant authorities and businesses (i.e. central bank, retail merchants and cryptocurrency exchangers) insights toward understanding the factors consumers focus on if they were to use cryptocurrency as a medium of transaction.

Most cryptocurrency research are done in developed countries (i.e. USA, UK and EU) perspective. This research addresses the lack of quantitative literature on significant factors influencing BI to use cryptocurrency in developing country context while taking a PR, age and gender into consideration.

The unstable money demand function over the recent decades may explain the unsatisfactory performance of the exchange rate model. Numerous studies have shown that Divisia money serves as a better variable for a stable money demand function. In this study, Divisia money is used as an alternative money supply in MYR/USD exchange rate determination. This study finds that Divisia money differential, real income differential, relative short-term interest rate and real stock prices affect the MYR/USD exchange rate in the long run. The major implication of this study is that policy-makers could monitor the MYR/USD exchange rate via the money supplies following the principle of Divisia monetary aggregate, which assigns higher weightage to more frequently traded monetary assets.