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This study on corporate demand for general takāful (Islamic insurance) aims to identify potential growth areas and areas for improvement in takāful business practices in Malaysia.

A survey on corporates’ protection needs, takāful/insurance coverage obtained and awareness on takāful/insurance was conducted for this paper.

The findings from the survey are as follows: There is potential for takāful operators to further penetrate the corporate sector, as the majority of respondents indicated willingness to spend on takāful/insurance. Emphasis on takāful value propositions apart from its Sharīʿah compliance status is needed to attract corporates, as respondents were found to be indifferent on Sharīʿah compliance status of their protection. Strong market presence, expanded product offerings and efficient services were key determinants to attract takāful subscription. Respondents’ heavy reliance on intermediaries warrants strong collaboration with intermediaries to widen market outreach. The small and medium enterprises segment appeared promising, as it is found to be underserved despite having higher propensity to obtain takāful/insurance coverage compared to the overall respondents.

This study is limited to Malaysia’s experience. The findings are indicative (though they may not be conclusive) of the target segment as well as the takāful industry as a whole.

The insights on respondents’ considerations when obtaining takāful/insurance coverage and the correlation of these factors with respondents’ characteristics can assist takāful/insurance providers in structuring products and business strategies to better serve this market segment. The paper may also aid discussions among researchers and regulators on areas for further development of the industry.

The purpose of this paper is to contend that the dominant voluntarism approach to the accountability of transnational corporations (TNCs) is inadequate and not fit-for-purpose. The authors argue for the establishment of an international legal mechanism for securing the accountability of TNCs, particularly in the context of developing countries with notoriously weak governance mechanisms to protect all relevant stakeholders.

The study adopts insights from the fields of management and international law to draw out synergies from particular understandings of corporate governance, corporate social responsibility and international human rights. The challenges to governance in developing countries with regard to securing the accountability of TNCs are illustrated with the Nigerian experience of oil-industry legislation reform.

The specific context of the experiences of developing countries in Africa on the operations of TNCs particularly commends the need and expedience to create an international legal regime for ensuring the accountability of TNCs.

Mainstream research in this area has focused mainly on self and voluntary models of regulation and accountability that have privileged the legal fiction of the corporate status of TNCs. This paper departs from that model to argue for an enforceable model of TNC’s accountability – based on an international mechanism.

The issue of cybersecurity has been cast as the focal point of a fight between two conflicting governance models: the nation-state model of national security and the global governance model of multi-stakeholder collaboration, as seen in forums like IGF, IETF, ICANN, etc. There is a strange disconnect, however, between this supposed fight and the actual control over cybersecurity “on the ground”. This paper aims to reconnect discourse and control via a property rights approach, where control is located first and foremost in ownership.

This paper first conceptualizes current governance mechanisms through ownership and property rights. These concepts locate control over internet resources. They also help us understand ongoing shifts in control. Such shifts in governance are actually happening, security governance is being patched left and right, but these arrangements bear little resemblance to either the national security model of states or the global model of multi-stakeholder collaboration. With the conceptualization in hand, the paper then presents case studies of governance that have emerged around specific security externalities.

While not all mechanisms are equally effective, in each of the studied areas, the author found evidence of private actors partially internalizing the externalities, mostly on a voluntary basis and through network governance mechanisms. No one thinks that this is enough, but it is a starting point. Future research is needed to identify how these mechanisms can be extended or supplemented to further improve the governance of cybersecurity.

This paper bridges together the disconnected research communities on governance and (technical) cybersecurity.

This research examines the relationship between market power and liquidity creation in the specific context of bank profitability in the Vietnamese banking sector.

The study applies the methodology proposed by Berger and Bouwman (2009) to demonstrate the creation of bank liquidity through a three-step procedure for investigating the relationship between market power and liquidity creation. The three steps include non-fat liquidity (NFLC), fat liquidity (FLC) and system generalized method of moments estimation for panel data.

This study finds that liquidity creation increases when a bank has high market power. Further, highly profitable banks positively impact the market power of banks with regard to liquidity creation, relative to less profitable banks. Moreover, bank size, capital, economic growth and interest rate negatively influence bank liquidity creation, while credit risk positively relates to bank liquidity creation.

Measurements used in this study are based on the works of Berger and Bouwman (2009). There are specific variations, relative to Basel III. In addition, other variables significantly impact bank liquidity creation that have not been considered in the models, and a quadratic model should have been considered to measure market power and bank liquidity creation.

This study suggests that managers should control the liquidity of their banks by supervising vulnerable characteristics that have been mentioned herein and emphasizing improvements in profitability. Further, the government may consider encouraging banks to generate more liquidity by modifying regulations concerned with market power or reinforcing policies about improving the transparent business environment.

This study characterizes an attempt to examine the influence of market power on the liquidity creation of banks in Vietnam, which represents one of the most dynamic systems in Asia, with several varied participating banks. The current study also examines the same within the specific context of the modifying impact of the profitability of banks.

This study aims to examine the associations of social networks with the sense of community (SOC) construct and spatial colocation or having an office. The study site was an institute for health-care policy research formed in 2011 by bringing together scientists from more than 20 different university units. Only 30% of the scientists were had an office or physical presence at the institute. Therefore, the institute was an ideal site to examine whether SOC was correlated with different dimensions of network position – connectedness, reachability and brokerage – even when the authors account for the lack of spatial colocation for the off-site scientists.

A two-part (sociometric and workplace) internet survey instrument was administered in 2014 to the institute’s population of 411 individuals. The sociometric data were used to create an undirected interaction network and the following dependent variables (DVs) or network centralities: normalized degree to measure connectedness; average reciprocal distance to capture reachability; and normalized betweenness to proxy brokerage. Separate node-level network regressions were then run with random permutations (N = 10,000) and listwise deletion for each of the DVs with SOC and spatial colocation as the independent variables, and variables that controlled for gender, organizational affiliation and job category.

SOC and spatial colocation are both positively and significantly correlated with network connectedness and reachability. The results suggest that both SOC and spatial colocation have a larger impact on reachability than connectedness. However, neither SOC nor spatial colocation are significantly associated with network brokerage. Finally, the findings show that SOC and spatial colocation are more reliable predictors of network connectedness and reachability than are key individual- and unit-level control variables, specifically the individual’s sex, job category and organizational affiliation. The controls were not significantly associated with any of the three network centralities, namely, connectedness, reachability and brokerage.

This exploratory study used social network analysis and node-level network regressions to examine the associations from SOC and spatial colocation to dimensions of network position. SOC is positively and significantly associated with network connectedness and reachability, suggesting that SOC is an important consideration when individuals are disadvantaged from the absence of spatial colocation. The findings have implications for work in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic as they imply that interventions based on the SOC construct could potentially lessen the negative effects of remote work on workplace social networks due to factors such as the reduction of social contacts.

The service sector is at an inflection point with regard to productivity gains and service industrialization similar to the industrial revolution in manufacturing that started in the eighteenth century. Robotics in combination with rapidly improving technologies like artificial intelligence (AI), mobile, cloud, big data and biometrics will bring opportunities for a wide range of innovations that have the potential to dramatically change service industries. The purpose of this paper is to explore the potential role service robots will play in the future and to advance a research agenda for service researchers.

This paper uses a conceptual approach that is rooted in the service, robotics and AI literature.

The contribution of this paper is threefold. First, it provides a definition of service robots, describes their key attributes, contrasts their features and capabilities with those of frontline employees, and provides an understanding for which types of service tasks robots will dominate and where humans will dominate. Second, this paper examines consumer perceptions, beliefs and behaviors as related to service robots, and advances the service robot acceptance model. Third, it provides an overview of the ethical questions surrounding robot-delivered services at the individual, market and societal level.

This paper helps service organizations and their management, service robot innovators, programmers and developers, and policymakers better understand the implications of a ubiquitous deployment of service robots.

This is the first conceptual paper that systematically examines key dimensions of robot-delivered frontline service and explores how these will differ in the future.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the effects of share repurchase announcements on the stock price of rival firms in the same industry in Vietnam during 2010–2017.

Both event study and t-test are employed to test the effects of share repurchase announcements on rival firms. In addition, cross-sectional analysis by ordinary least square regression is also applied for investigating the heterogeneous effects due to information transfer.

The finding shows that stock repurchase announcements result in a positive and significant valuation effect for both announcing firms and rival firms in Vietnam. Furthermore, the degree of signal to the industry is conditional on the degree of signal about the announcing firms as a contagious effect. Intra-industry effects are more favorable when profit performance of rival firms is good and when leverage of rival firms is low.

Rival firms can seize opportunities surrounding share repurchase announcements in the same industry in Vietnam. However, due to firm characteristics, intra-industry effects of stock repurchases differ among industries.

By examining different methods, the paper attributes valuable results to investigate the stock price behavior of rival firms in the same industry when firms announce stock repurchase in Vietnam.

The COVID-19 pandemic caused global supply disruptions and shortages that resulted in countries battling over desperately needed (medical) supplies. In this mayhem, additive manufacturing (AM) provided relief to the strained healthcare systems and manufacturing environments by offering an alternative way to rapidly produce desired products. This study sheds light on how AM was used globally in response to the COVID-19 pandemic.

The study undertakes a systematic and content-centric review of 289 additively manufactured products made in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. Additionally, quantitative frequency-based text mining and various descriptive analyses were applied that support the investigation of the subject under regard.

Results show that AM was primarily used in the medical domain for the production of standard medical items, such as personal protective equipment (PPE) but also for non-obvious and new applications (e.g. swab simulator, rapid diagnostic kits, etc.). Also, certain paradigm shifts were observed, as the effective move to mass production and the mitigation of problems related to certification and standardization emerged as prominent management prospects. Nevertheless, various obstacles arose and remained in the path of lasting AM success, especially with respect to print quality, raw material supply and technological versatility.

Due to the actuality of the topic under investigation, no comparable study has so far been conducted. The systematic review provides a conclusive and precise foundation for further analysis and subsequent discussions. Additionally, no comparable study mapping such a wide array of different AM products exists today.

In North America, delegated practice “medical direction” models are often used as a proxy for clinical quality and safety in paramedic services. Other developed countries favor a combination of professional regulatory boards and clinical governance frameworks that feature paramedics taking lead clinician roles. The purpose of this paper is to bring together the evidence for medical direction and clinical governance in paramedic services through the prism of paramedic self-regulation.

This narrative synthesis critically examines the long-established North American Emergency Medical Services medical direction model and makes some comparisons with the UK inspired clinical governance approaches that are used to monitor and manage the quality and safety in several other Anglo-American paramedic services. The databases searched were CINAHL and Medline, with Google Scholar used to capture further publications.

Synthesis of the peer-reviewed literature found little high quality evidence supporting the effectiveness of medical direction. The literature on clinical governance within paramedic services described a systems approach with shared responsibility for quality and safety. Contemporary paramedic clinical leadership papers in developed countries focus on paramedic professionalization and the self-regulation of paramedics.

The lack of strong evidence supporting medical direction of the paramedic profession in developed countries challenges the North American model of paramedics practicing as a companion profession to medicine under delegated practice model. This model is inconsistent with the international vision of paramedicine as an autonomous, self-regulated health profession.

Despite 2016 legalization of recreational cannabis cultivation and sale in California with the passage of Proposition 64, many cannabis businesses operate without licenses. Furthermore, federal regulations disincentivize financial institutions from banking and lending to licensed cannabis businesses. The authors explore the impact of legal cannabis business activity on California financial institutions, the barriers to banking faced by cannabis businesses, and the nontraditional sources of financing used by the industry.

The authors use a mixed methods approach. The authors utilize call data for banks and credit unions headquartered in California and state cannabis licensing data to estimate the impact of the extensive and intensive margins of licensed cannabis activity on key banking indicators using difference-and-difference and fixed effects regressions. The qualitative data come from interviews with industry stakeholders in northern California's “Emerald Triangle” and add important context.

The quantitative results show economically and statistically significant impacts of licensed cannabis activity on banking indicators, suggesting both direct and spillover effects from cannabis activity to the financial sector. However, cannabis businesses report substantial barriers to accessing basic financial services and credit, leading to nontraditional financing arrangements.

The results suggest opportunities for cannabis businesses and financial institutions if regulations are eased and important avenues for further study.

The authors contribute to the nascent literature on cannabis economics and the literature on banking regulation and nontraditional finance.