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The purpose of this article is to evaluate current techniques in capital budget decision making in Canada, including real options, and to integrate the results with similar previous studies.

A mail survey was conducted, which included 88 large firms in Canada.

Trends towards sophisticated techniques have continued; however, even in large firms, 17 percent did not use discounted cash flow (DCF). Of those which did, the majority favoured net present value (NPV) and internal rate of return (IRR). Overall between one in ten to one in three were not correctly applying certain aspects of DCF. Only 8 percent used real options.

One limitation is that the survey does not indicate why managers continue using less advanced capital budgeting decision techniques. A second is that choice of population may bias results to large firms in Canada.

The main area for management focus is real options. Other areas for improvement are administrative procedures, using the weighted average cost of capital (WACC), adjusting the WACC for different projects or divisions, employing target or market values for weights, and not including interest expenses in project cash flows. A small proportion of managers also need to start using DCF.

The evaluation shows there still remains a theory‐practice gap in the detailed elements of DCF capital budgeting decision techniques, and in real options. Further, it is valuable to take stock of a concept that has been developed over a number of years. What this paper offers is a fine‐grained analysis of investment decision making, a synthesis and integration of several studies on DCF where new comparisons are made, advice to managers and thus opportunities to improve investment decision making.

The purpose of this paper is to study the relationship between board attributes and national culture on firms’ investment decisions.

The study used data from listed firms from seven Sub-Saharan Africa countries. Descriptive analysis was performed to provide the background statistics of the variables examined. This was followed by regression analysis, which constitutes the main data analysis.

The multiple regression analysis results indicate a negative relationship between uncertainty avoidance (UAI) and corporate investment decisions. The study also found that there is a negative relationship between the interaction between UAI and the number of independent board members and corporate investment decisions.

This study is one of the few to measure the influence of governance variables and national culture on corporate investment decisions in Sub-Sahara Africa.

As Covid-19 became a pandemic, numerous people were forced to stay at home, leading to increased intimate partner violence (IPV) in many countries, particularly in developing and least-developed ones. This paper aims to highlight the IPV based on 15 different cases formed from the practical evidence of five developing countries.

The authors interviewed 15 women from five countries who were the victims of IPV during the early periods of Covid-19 outbreak. Due to geographical remoteness, the authors conducted informal telephone interviews to collect the participants' personal experiences. The conversations were recorded with participants' permission; afterwards, the authors summarized participants’ experiences into 15 different cases without revealing their original identities (instead, disguised names were used).

It was revealed that the women were the primary victims of such violence, particularly from their intimate partners (husbands). In most cases, such IPV, as reported by the interviewees, originated or increased after the pandemic when they were forced to stay at home, losing their partners’ jobs or income sources.

The authors summarized the causes of IPV and put forward a few action recommendations based on the interviewees’ practical experience and existing literature. This paper will open a new window for research investigations on IPV during emergencies such as Covid-19 outbreak.