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Management soundness is essential for the effectiveness of any industry, most especially in any Islamic financial sector, whereby fairness and justice are the key factors to be observed. This paper aims to examine the management soundness of the takaful industry regarding their asset quality, re-takaful and actuarial and earning and profitability.

This study obtained quarterly data from 2019Q1 to 2021Q4 from the Islamic Financial Services Board across Malaysia, Brunei, Saudi Arabia, Jordan and the United Arab Emirates. The panel data modelling with random-effect and fixed-effect estimators were used for the analysis.

The finding revealed a strong relationship between re-takaful and earnings with management soundness and a weak relationship between asset quality and management soundness. In addition, the result established a significant and strong association between management soundness and earnings and profitability. Therefore, re-takaful and profitability contributed more to the management soundness of the takaful industry than asset quality during the study. An increase in earnings and profitability to enable the takaful industry to pay the claims, especially in calamity, and more focus on the quality of the asset they invested in could enable the smooth running of their day-to-day business affairs.

More attention is required on the quality of assets in their portfolio for the sustainability of the takaful industry to fulfil their underlying objectives. Management soundness in the takaful industry should address the challenges of managerial lathery, which some studies linked with operational inefficiency because of unskilled personnel in the takaful industry. This could benefit takaful clients, irrespective of religion, to attain their associated share of benefits from the Islamic insurance industry.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first empirical study that examined the effectiveness of takaful management across Malaysia, Brunei, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, and the United Arab Emirates.

This paper aims to draw on historical conceptions of true and false prudence within the broader context of virtue ethics ideas, to create a prudence framework for developing risk-and-ethics cultures in organisations.

The authors use a theoretical analytical approach as a means of examining plausible representations of risk as ethical practice.

While the ethical ideal of true prudence is explained primarily with reference to psychological theories of generativity, false prudence is explained as undesirable, primarily with reference to psychological problems of narcissism and the broader dark triad. True and false prudence are represented as centring upon very different motivations for foresight, each of which might set the cultural tone for organisational risk management.

This paper’s main contribution is therefore to call attention to the benefits for organisations of reflecting upon differences between true and false prudence when planning the risk management they want.

Overconfidence bias is considered to be a very influential decision-making bias in the business environment. This paper aims to identify the susceptibility of management accountants to overconfidence-related overplacement bias and to determine its pervasiveness among these professionals.

Two international samples of management accountants were surveyed using overplacement bias elicitation questions. The hypothesis that bias susceptibility varies between management accountants in different hierarchical employment positions was tested employing binary logistic regression.

Management accountants are found to be susceptible to overplacement bias, yet its pervasiveness among the samples is similar to other sample populations in comparable studies. Management accountants in the position of Chief Financial Officer (CFO) were found to be more susceptible to overplacement bias than their colleagues in other management accountant and business management positions.

The use of convenience sampling represents a limitation of the research.

The findings confirm that there is a need for syllabi and continual professional development projects to educate management accountants on this bias. CFOs are especially at risk of being overconfident, which may not be in the best interest of the business.

This is the first paper to assess overplacement bias in management accountants as a group of decision-makers, especially within the context of their increasing involvement in business decision-making.

This paper aims to systematically analyze the weaknesses of public procurement in Malaysia as reported in the Auditor General’s Reports from 2011 until 2018. Specifically, the study examines the types of weaknesses, the modes of public procurement involved with the weaknesses, the procurement categories involved with the weaknesses and the key recommendations to mitigate the weaknesses in public procurement.

A document analysis was adopted in achieving the objective. The Auditor General’s reports and the reports of activities of federal ministries/departments published by the National Audit Department, Malaysia from the year 2011 until 2018 are the main documents used in this study. The data gathered were analyzed using frequency distribution and displayed with descriptive statistics and relevant graphs.

The findings of the study revealed that the top five reported are non-compliance to scope, specifications and terms of contracts; delayed completion/non-completion of project; poor documentation; low quality of products, service and work; and little or no prior planning. It is also found that direct negotiation mode was reported with the highest issues of public procurement, while the procurement mode with the least public procurement weaknesses is direct purchase. Moreover, it was found that work category is the highest with public procurement issues reported compared to supplies and services. The top recommendations given by the Auditor General were to improve internal control, to enhance monitoring, to establish planning in details, to improve assets management and to take appropriate actions toward contractors and procurement officers when needed.

This is among a few studies that attempted to systematically examine the main issues regarding the public procurement activities in Malaysia. This study highlighted pertinent aspects of the public procurement activities, which need close attention by the relevant authorities to ensure efficient and effective public procurement.

This study aims to identify the risks, the risk agents, and the mitigation steps and then propose a halal supply chain risk management framework for frozen food halal industries, especially for the milkfish brain product.

Following the quantitative research design, semi-interviews with the owner of the milkfish brain company and data were analyzed using the supply chain operations reference model and the House of Risk method. The development of halal supply chain risk management framework involves several phases. First, to map the supply chain activities. Next is identifying the risk and risk agent. Then measurements of mitigations are based on the company’s resources that have a profound effect on risks such as employee activity, machinery and work environment.

The findings in this study are the prioritized mitigations for the frozen food companies, especially the milkfish brain products, are training of good manufacturing practice, making and applying halal standard operating procedure, the creation of clean-up watch schedules, halal use of raw materials and additional materials, and additional purses and facility.

This study may further use various perspectives in supply chains such as suppliers, distributors, agents and consumers.

The risks, risk agents, and mitigation steps are used to develop a general framework for halal supply chain risk management which can be used by all frozen food companies, especially for milkfish brain products.

This study is one of few studies about halal supply chain risk management for frozen food industries. The study contributes to the effort of halal supply chain risk management by proposing general framework for milkfish brain halal supply chain risk management. The risks, risk agents and mitigation efforts are established based on impact and intensity that affect risk occurrence.

This study examines how the strong emphasis placed on the purposes of budgeting, referring to a comprehensive focus on budgeting, is related to top managers' education and tenure while controlling for their functional positions in their respective firms and ages, as well as several company-specific predictors (information quality, firm size, information technology, importance of profit and strategy).

Survey data were collected from senior managers of large manufacturing firms in Finland and Sweden.

The results suggest that academic business education is positively associated with a comprehensive focus on budgeting, but tenure as well as functional position in the company (Chief Financial Officer (CFO) or not) and age are not. Overall, the company-specific control variables in general and information quality in particular are shown to have greater explanatory power than the top management characteristics analyzed.

This study identifies several empirically supported factors that seem to contribute to a comprehensive focus on budgeting. The effects of information quality, business education, the importance of profit and firm size could be considered in future research.

Academic business education matters more than the other top management characteristics analyzed. If organizations want to make comprehensive use of budgets, they should employ business graduates and be mindful of company-specific variables.

This study is the first to address a comprehensive focus on budgeting and some of its determinants. Future research could investigate a broader set of such determinants in different contexts.

The case was devised using both primary and secondary data sources. Primary sources of data consisted of in-depth interviews with individuals using the cycle hire project. The researcher also had first-hand experiences of using the cycles. The case study has been tested with undergraduate and graduate students taking management information systems courses.

This teaching case study charts the London cycle hire project, mostly from its first inception in July 2010, right through to the planned expansion of electric cycles from Summer 2022. The main aim of the case is to introduce students to project management challenges which are part of the London cycle hire project. While the project was filled with enthusiasm from its early beginnings, various challenges were encountered including issues associated with the project procurement/sourcing process, software and technical problems, as well as other project management issues. Problems became so severe in 2011 that the service provider was hit with a penalty and had to make critical project improvements. Would these accountability measures prompt the service provider to resolve these issues? How would the service provider go about undertaking a fact-finding exercise to verify the existence of the challenges and address them to ensure renewed project success?

The case was written for classes at both the undergraduate and graduate levels. The focus of the case is particularly well suited for exploring topics and issues relating to types of information systems, project management and accountability, multiple global supplier procurement, as well as challenges associated with hardware integration and software design. While the case was targeted at MIS students, the case study would also be effective for an introductory level project management course or a general management course. The subject of the case, the bicycle rental program, is likely to appeal to students, and the basic underlying business issues, processes and objectives of the project are easily understood.

This study aims to examine internal and external factors as well as main obstacles to managers’/owners’ participation in education and training.

The sample comprises managers of 151 Bulgarian predominantly micro- and small-size enterprises. The data was gathered in 2020 through direct standardized interviews at the respondent’s workplace. This study uses quantitative estimation methods including binominal and multinominal logistic regression as well as nonparametric testing.

Regarding the findings in the relevant studies, the results confirm that the larger firm's size, the existence of human resource management strategy and practices as well as learning-oriented culture stimulate employer-financed management training. The lack of trainers with relevant need-specific expertise appears to be a major barrier. Additionally, the outputs highlight the role of other important determinants not being extensively discussed so far such as the level of development of the region in which the company operates, involvement in R&D and innovation activity as well as the issue of trust in trainer.

This study provides insights into (under)investments in continuing vocational training which might lead to practical implications for businesses, education and government policy in lifelong learning. Moreover, this study focuses on a country with one of the lowest participation rates in adult education across Europe which allows for a better understanding of similar examples.

To the best of the author’s knowledge, this is the first paper examining determinants of management training in Bulgaria and one of the few in the European context. It gives support to the existing literature but adds new findings as well.

This paper aims to understand the current development situation of scientific data management policy in China, analyze the content structure of the policy and provide a theoretical basis for the improvement and optimization of the policy system.

China's scientific data management policies were obtained through various channels such as searching government websites and policy and legal database, and 209 policies were finally identified as the sample for analysis after being screened and integrated. A three-dimensional framework was constructed based on the perspective of policy tools, combining stakeholder and lifecycle theories. And the content of policy texts was coded and quantitatively analyzed according to this framework.

China's scientific data management policies can be divided into four stages according to the time sequence: infancy, preliminary exploration, comprehensive promotion and key implementation. The policies use a combination of three types of policy tools: supply-side, environmental-side and demand-side, involving multiple stakeholders and covering all stages of the lifecycle. But policy tools and their application to stakeholders and lifecycle stages are imbalanced. The development of future scientific data management policy should strengthen the balance of policy tools, promote the participation of multiple subjects and focus on the supervision of the whole lifecycle.

This paper constructs a three-dimensional analytical framework and uses content analysis to quantitatively analyze scientific data management policy texts, extending the research perspective and research content in the field of scientific data management. The study identifies policy focuses and proposes several strategies that will help optimize the scientific data management policy.

This study aims to expose the challenges associated with theory development and its implementation, as it relates to services marketing and hospitality management. The author summarizes the literature, creates a conceptual model and proposes directions to bridge the theory–practice divide.

The author synthesizes and extends the literatures of services marketing, general marketing and hospitality management through a systematic literature review. A conceptual model is created to illustrate the challenges related to theory development and implementation.

Four types of theory challenges and three contemporary practical challenges are presented. The challenges for theory development include a communications gap, difficulties in applying universal theories into idiosyncratic organizations, researchers disconnected from practice and practitioners disconnected from research. Contemporary practical concerns include: human resource constraints, customer behavior and misbehavior and the organizational and business environment.

Managers can bring contemporary business challenges to the forefront by collaborating and writing with scholars. Similarly, keeping abreast of the latest advances in customer service, applying best practices in human resource management, educating and cocreating with customers are among several recommendations proposed to managers and marketers. Internal and external scanning can assure that managers engage in efforts to reduce barriers to implementation and improve services in their organizations.

Despite the decades-long study of customer service, organizations still struggle to deliver exceptional service. This study informs scholars on developing and communicating theories and managers on how to better access and interpret the latest research. In order for research to be successfully generated and implemented, scholars can engage in efforts aimed at joint (researchers and managers) idea generation, publication in multiple outlets, sampling that resembles real life, adoption of contingency theories and reconsidering journal editorial and institutional policies.