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Recent innovations in payment instruments have fundamentally changed the ways we pay. These innovations, such as mobile/SMS payments and online banking, contain features that are likely to influence how people choose to pay. The purpose of this paper is to understand the factors that impact payers’ choice of payment instruments.

Through in-depth interviews using the repertory grid technique, the authors explored 15 payers’ perceptions of six payment instruments, including coins, banknotes, debit cards, credit cards, mobile payments, and online banking. The approach draws heavily on organizational systematics to better understand payers’ choice of payment instruments.

A four-category taxonomy of payments was developed. The authors refer to the taxonomy as the 4Ps: the purchase, the payer, the payment instrument, and the physical technology. The taxonomy comprises 16 payment characteristics consisting 76 payment features that influence payers’ instrument choice. One characteristic not known in prior research was identified – that is, “cancellation” – a characteristic more frequently associated with digital payment instruments than with cash or checks.

The findings suggest that payers view payment instruments in a much broader sense, including context, control, or cultural beliefs. Consequently, the authors suggest that researchers try to understand the essence of an innovation before assuming any economic rationalism in human or organizational behavior. The authors also urge researchers to understand the underlying meaning behind constructs of interest; as this study has shown that concepts like context and convenience have many different interpretations.

According to McKinsey (2014) there are over 12,000 startups in the payment arena. For them, the taxonomy can function as a template for the design of payment instruments, as well as understanding the various factors that influence payer choice of payment instruments.

The main contribution of this paper is the 4Ps taxonomy of payments. The taxonomy builds on and extends the work by Hirschman (1982). Since this work, and despite recent trends in payments, there has not been a comprehensive investigation that takes into account more recent innovations in payment instruments.

Access to good menstrual products is a human rights concern. It is essential for normalising the life during menstrual cycles by making available all the resources necessary for managing them. Sustainable menstrual products are the novel products which can improve the women menstrual lifestyles and reduce the discomfort associated with menstruation. However, these products are not readily adopted by the women due to their perception resulting from various factors. Hence, this study aims to figure out these perceptions, which can promote and hinder the adoption of these products.

A survey was conducted for the purpose of data collection. The study uses questionnaire as a research instrument to gain an insight on women health beliefs towards sustainable menstrual products. Data was collected from the women respondents through convenience sampling. Structural equation modelling was applied to analyse the data.

The findings suggest that women with appropriate knowledge had a positive perception towards the sustainable menstrual products, further leading to positive behaviour. It was also noted that marketing efforts through cues to action had an impact on their behavioural patterns. The policymakers and the marketers can focus on such prospects to advocate the use of sustainable menstrual products so that healthcare is improved.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first study that provides a comprehensive framework for analysing the impact of women health beliefs towards behaviour of sustainable menstrual products. The study adds meaningful insights to the sustainable menstrual literature.

The purpose of the paper is to theorize how to develop student entrepreneurs' ability to reflect by means of a learning activity called the entrepreneurial diary, which seeks to develop self-regulated learners capable of intelligent entrepreneurial action. The importance of self-regulation in entrepreneurship is linked to the individual's ability to make judgments under conditions of uncertainty, which requires reflective thinking.

The paper builds on a synthesized conceptualization of three main literature strands, reflective thinking, cognitive-load theory and experiential entrepreneurship education. In addition to the synthesized conceptualization, it builds on some empirical insights derived from a venture creation master programme in which the learning activity has been developed and refined for the last seven years.

The main finding from the paper is the theoretical justification for why reflective thinking deserves an important place in the educational process and how the entrepreneurial diary as a learning activity can create a bridge between theory and practice in venture creation programmes that take an experience-based pedagogical approach. Furthermore, the study also provides some empirical insights of how students create self-awareness of their learning through the method and the metareflection reports. Self-awareness is foundational for developing conditional knowledge on why and when to make entrepreneurial decisions to balance the often action-oriented processes seen in venture creation programmes.

The paper provides both a practical learning activity to be used in the entrepreneurial classroom and a theoretical contribution on how entrepreneurial experience is transformed into entrepreneurial knowledge to enhance students' judgmental abilities to make entrepreneurial decisions in future entrepreneurial endeavours.

Income inequality rose in Germany since the 1970s. To quantify the impact of different socio-economic trends on inequality, the author constructs counterfactual distributions of net household income with rich German data from the Microcensus in 1976 and 2011. The procedure allows to study the effect of marital sorting in education and includes indirect effects such as the influence of education on employment. When comparing the income distribution in West Germany for 1976 and 2011, the author finds that the prevalence of singlehood accounts to a large extent for the observed increase in inequality. The inequality increase is also associated with a change of employment among males and single females. When comparing West and East Germany in 2011, the author finds that the stronger labour market attachment of East German married females combined with the high East German unemployment produces even more income inequality than the West German employment structure. Moreover, the smaller household size boosts inequality in East Germany, whereas education works against it. In both comparisons, the author finds no significant impact of positive assortative mating in education or ageing.

Because Pedagogy of the Oppressed has received worldwide acclaim, influenced many, and has uniquely defined Paulo Freire, it is noteworthy to highlight the book’s evolution from concept to publication. What were the contextual factors that prompted Freire to write the book? What was his approach for converting his thoughts to prose? How long did it take him to write the book? To that end, this article examines those and other questions that brought the world Paulo Freire’s seminal text.

Members will have heard with regret of the death, on Friday 6th May, of Miss Irene Shrigley, MA, who had been actively associated with Aslib for the past eighteen years. The following tribute is sent by Mrs Stowell, Chairman of the Economics Group, and a close personal friend of the late Miss Shrigley:

ARIES, PHILIPPE. Un lexique par phrases descriptives. Bulletin de l'A.I.D., vol. 5, no. 4, 1966, p. 99–101.

All items listed may be borrowed from the Aslib Library, except those marked, which may be consulted in the Library.

This paper gives a bibliographical review of the finite element and boundary element parallel processing techniques from the theoretical and application points of view. Topics include: theory – domain decomposition/partitioning, load balancing, parallel solvers/algorithms, parallel mesh generation, adaptive methods, and visualization/graphics; applications – structural mechanics problems, dynamic problems, material/geometrical non‐linear problems, contact problems, fracture mechanics, field problems, coupled problems, sensitivity and optimization, and other problems; hardware and software environments – hardware environments, programming techniques, and software development and presentations. The bibliography at the end of this paper contains 850 references to papers, conference proceedings and theses/dissertations dealing with presented subjects that were published between 1996 and 2002.