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Quality assurance (QA) in open and distance learning (ODL) has always become universal concerns of stakeholders. The quality of ODL has been confronted with challenges in terms of the diversity of inputs, processes, the complex supply chain management of ODL and recent paradigm shift into online learning. Assuring the quality of ODL are daunting tasks at individual, institution and system levels. Completed before the beginning of the COVID-19 outbreak, this study aims to better understand the implementation of QA system in three Asian open universities (OUs), namely University of the Philippines Open University (UPOU), Universitas Terbuka (UT), Indonesia and Allama Iqbal Open University (AIOU), Pakistan.

A qualitative method was employed involving analysis of documents of the three Asian OUs and focus group discussions and interviews with management and staff. Data collected were then analyzed to draw conclusions and possible recommendations.

Findings of this study presented good practices, challenges and rooms for improvement of the QA system in the three Asian OUs. Focusing on students and stakeholders in their QA effort, this study has revealed that quality begins with inner self and is multidimensional. QA is principally viewed as continuous improvement, as mechanism and assessment and as effort at exceeding expectations of students and stakeholders. The recent challenge for QA is to embrace a delicate process of ODL transformation into online digital system. The recent COVID-19 outbreak has further implications and challenged QA implementation in ODL in higher education into the next level of complexity.

This study revealed the diversities in how OUs met the societal needs of their respective stakeholders and addressed the challenges ahead for QA in ODL.

These findings were expected to enhance the understanding of the theory and practice of QA in ODL and to contribute to quality improvement of ODL programs.

Operations management, purchasing and procurement management, inventory management and supply chain.

Introductory courses in Operations Management; MBA level and final year undergraduates in management. Masters level in purchasing/procurement management, inventory management and supply chain management.

The case deals with strategic purchase decision of a basic raw material used in ketchups. Ketchups represent 15 per cent of annual sales at National Foods. Mohammad Iqbal, Head of Supply Chain at National Foods, is confronted with the decision of buying tomato paste for fiscal year 2007-2008. He needs to decide how much paste to order from National Foods' supplier in China and when. He has the demand forecast for the paste for 2008 available to help him make the decision.

The case will introduce the students to issues in strategic buying of a basic raw material that is crucial to production. The case is not designed to teach just the basic concept of trade-off between inventory holding and stock out cost. The students should bring these basic concepts of operations with them to understand how these concepts are combined with knowledge of other disciplines to tackle a complex raw material planning issue. Students learn how to plan for the purchase of a perishable yet important raw material for an organization.

Teaching note.

This study examined 46 articles in total, which yielded 5 recurring themes: perceived discrimination, language barriers, socioeconomic barriers, cultural barriers and educational/knowledge barriers. The two most dominant themes found were the inability to speak the country's primary language and belonging to a culture with different practices and values from the host country. The review provides vital insights into the numerous challenges that immigrants and refugees encounter as they navigate through the primary care systems of English-speaking (E-S) countries and potential solutions to overcome these barriers.

Access to adequate healthcare plays a central part in ensuring the physical and mental wellbeing of society. However, vulnerable groups such as immigrants and refugees, face numerous challenges when utilizing these healthcare services. To shed further light on the barriers impacting healthcare quality, the authors’ team performed a scoping thematic review of the available literature on immigrant and refugees' experiences in primary healthcare systems across E-S countries. Articles were systematically reviewed while focusing on healthcare perceptions by immigrants, potential barriers and suggestions to improve the quality of primary care.

This work looked at qualitative and quantitative information, attempting to combine both paradigms to give a rich and robust platform with which to devise a further study through focus groups. Qualitative inquiry accounted for 28/46, or 61%, of studies, and quantitative inquiry made up 9/46, or 20%, while 9/46 or 20% combined both qualitative and qualitative. Emerging themes are -perceived ethnic discrimination faced by immigrants accessing primary care, language barriers, socioeconomic barriers, cultural barriers and educational barriers.

Most medical journals rely on quantitative data to relate “results” and cases. The authors set out to change ways in which medical reports can be done. Most of the authors were solely trained in quantitative research; consequently, they had to learn to isolate themes and to use a narrative approach in the article.

Research implications clearly indicated that using a qualitative (phenomenological) approach with quantitative data created a human and reachable discourse around patient comfort and the realities of immigrants and refugees to E-S countries. The use of this research opens medical practitioners (and patients) to a richer understanding within a usually difficult arena.

By understanding the qualitative nature of medical research, practitioners, students and mentors are able to bridge medical quantitivity to the human, widening doors to social science and medical collaboratory research.

As stated above, this work is important as it understands the human/patient element and de-emphasizes the medical obsession with quantifying the lives of patients through hard data. This is a unique collaboration that relies on the qualitative to pinpoint and define the difficulties of newcomers to E-S countries.

The purpose of this paper is to assess the role of governance structure and composition and other institution-specific attributes in disclosure practices of microfinance institutions (MFIs) in an emerging market contest. Bangladesh is a country which is considered to be a pioneer in providing micro-finance to the underprivileged people to improve their entrepreneurial capacity.

The paper utilises a survey of three groups of users to elicit their opinions and the recommendation of the donor and regulatory agencies to construct a disclosure index. Further ordinary least squares regressions, both parametric and non-parametric, are used to analyse the association between disclosure levels and governance mechanisms and other MFI characteristics.

Using a large sample of 564 MFI firm-year reports in Bangladesh, the results show that the overall disclosure levels were around 70 per cent in 2010 and have not improved since 2004. The results also show that the frequency of board meetings, qualifications of MFIs’ board members and MFI size are positively associated with MFIs disclosures. However, board size, board independence, audit firm and other control variables have no such effect on disclosure. This implies that MFIs should focus in board effectiveness rather than its composition.

Using a general purpose financial reporting framework, the paper examines how effective boards can improve financial reporting standards of MFIs for better monitoring by international donor agencies, regulatory bodies and depositors.

This is the first substantive study, to the best of the authors’ knowledge, that uses data based on a questionnaire survey and the annual financial statements of a large sample of MFIs from Bangladesh that has been at the forefront of microfinance in emerging countries. Prior studies only used Web-based information, namely, Mix-Market, which ranks country on the basis of its disclosure criteria supplied voluntarily by MFIs, and thus suffer from selection bias. In this study, an attempt has been made to develop an empirical model to explain the role of governance quality in disclosure practices of MFIs.

Pakistan had never been a place of serious and nuanced debate and contestation of politics of postcolonial critique, that is, the continuity of economic, political, and cultural dependency of newly independent countries (NICs) on ex-colonizers as pointed out by neocolonialism, dependency theory, and postcolonial theory, respectively. Instead, Pakistan is presented by extant liberal academic literature as a “failed nation” and a state dominated by the military and plagued by religious extremism. As opposed to this, through the literary and activists writings of Aziz-ul-Haq, this chapter will try to illustrate how cultural contestation of the nation-building project postindependence from British rule was a lot more complex and interesting in Pakistan. This was so because the nation-building project of Pakistan was, on the one hand, an amalgamation of Indo-Persian, Arab, Indian, and Western colonial and civilizational influences and, on the other hand, entailed suppression of resilient local and national cultures of its constituent nationalities developed over centuries. This was later expressed in ethno-nationalist politics. However, when it came to the politics of the marginalized in the late 1960s, there were important political, theoretical, and literary insights which caused a change in the direction of political practice in Pakistan, which paralleled the politics expressed by writers like Fanon and early Subaltern Studies influenced by the Naxal Movement in India. The contestation and confusion arising from this dialectic also entered Pakistan's literary and cultural sphere. This chapter not only tries to give a different postcolonial critique of the failure of nation-building project in Pakistan but, though at a preliminary level, is an attempt to separate the original postcolonial theory in its radical tradition from contemporary postmodern/poststructuralist postcolonial theory marked with pessimism and resignation.

This research explores the spillovers and portfolio implications for green bonds and environmental, social and governance (ESG) assets in the context of the rapidly expanding trend in green finance investments and the need for a green recovery in the post-COVID-19 era.

This study utilizes Diebold and Yilmaz’s (2014) spillover method and portfolio strategies (hedge ratio, optimal weights and hedging effectiveness) for the data starting from February 29, 2012, to March 14, 2022.

The study’s findings reveal that the lower volatility spillover is evidenced between the green bonds and ESG stocks during tranquil and turbulent periods (e.g. COVID-19 and Russia-Ukraine War). Furthermore, hedging costs are lower both in normal times and during economic slumps. Investing the bulk of the funds in green bonds makes it possible to achieve maximum hedging effectiveness between the S&P green bond (GB) and the S&P 500 ESG.

Both investors and policymakers may use these findings to make wise investment and policy choices to achieve post-COVID environmental sustainability.

Unlike previous research, this is the first to explore the interconnectedness among the major global and country-specific green bonds and ESG assets. The major findings of this study about the lower volatility spillovers and hedging costs between green bonds and ESG assets during the tranquil and turbulent periods may contribute to the post-COVID investment portfolio for environmental sustainability.

This paper aims to examine whether the level of harmonization of accounting measurement practices in three South Asian countries – Bangladesh, India and Pakistan – has improved since 1998 as a result of the changes, in recent years, globally in accounting measurement practices due to the substantial efforts of the International Accounting Standards Board (IASB). South Asian countries have taken a number of steps and made changes in accounting regulations to support the IASB’s harmonization programme.

In all, 370 non-financial companies for the financial years 1997-1998 and 2007-2008 were used, and consistent with Ali et al. (2006), Van der Tas’s (1988) I index and Archer et al.’s (1995) modified C index were used to measure the extent of harmonization.

It was found that the level of measurement harmonization has significantly improved over the years in selected South Asian countries.

The results suggest that the harmonization of accounting will most likely ensure a greater level of transparency and uniformity in corporate reporting practices (measurement) in South Asian countries and throughout the world as promoted by the IASB.

The purpose of this paper is to analyse the shifting nature of governance reforms, both at global and national levels, in the increasingly commercialised game of cricket. The authors explore the inter-relationship and linkages between governance and commercialism, and in the process, question the contemporary reliance placed on governance as a generic counter-commercialist force and accountability aid.

The analysis is based on a comprehensive analysis of cricketing archives, newspapers and online media. The authors specifically utilise a range of review reports, governance and accounting information from annual reports and websites of the International Cricket Council (ICC) as well as different national cricket governing bodies (NCBs).

The paper vividly demonstrates the importance of recognising the specific significance of different cultural traditions and modes of organising – and not presuming a particular form of impact. The findings highlight that the adoption of a dominant market logic by cricket administrators has resulted in a shift in the balance of power in favour of non-western nations. India has emerged as the clear leader and driving force shaping the way cricket is globally governed. The consequences have been profound but not in terms of delivering, enhanced standards of transparency and accountability. Drawing on institutional theory, the paper argues that the scale of the Board of Cricket Control of India’s financial and operational control over the ICC has not only led to an increasingly commercialised game but engendered divergent and highly questionable standards of governance at the level of NCBs.

Unlike other global games, cricket has an imperialistic root, and has gone through the process of globalisation in relatively recent times. Also, the commercialisation of cricket has resulted in the global economic and power base shifting from the West to the East, giving us the opportunity to study the dynamics between commercialisation and governance in a quite different globalisation context that allows an assessment to be made of the culturally contingent nature of governance as a substantive organising force.