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Open Access
Article
Publication date: 12 October 2023

Mashford Zenda, Paul Malan and Antonie Geyer

South Africa’s wool industry plays an important role in the agricultural sector. The wool industry provides a valuable source of income for farmers who practice sustainable…

Abstract

Purpose

South Africa’s wool industry plays an important role in the agricultural sector. The wool industry provides a valuable source of income for farmers who practice sustainable farming practices. However, wool farmers face numerous challenges, such as wool contamination, dirty wool and producing good-quality wool. Good-quality wool is determined by fibre diameter, clean yield, vegetable matter and staple length. This study aims to address these challenges.

Design/methodology/approach

A multiple regression analysis of price (R/kg) of White wool and Merino wool was applied to four variables fibre diameter: vegetable matter, clean yield and staple length. The analysis was based on the data for the 2009–2019 data from Cape Wools auctions.

Findings

Fibre diameter, clean yield and staple length, with exception of vegetable matter, made a statistically significant contribution to the determination of wool price after all other independent variables were controlled for (p < 0.05). A one-unit (micron) increase in fibre diameter resulted in a 0.404-unit decrease in wool price (R/kg). A one-unit (mm) increase in staple length resulted in a 0.022-unit increase in wool price (R/kg). There was no statistically significant association between vegetable matter and wool price. A one-unit increase in clean yield was associated with a 0.111-unit increase in wool price (R/kg).

Research limitations/implications

Since wool fleeces consist of the largest portion of wool shorn from sheep, it is important for wool farmers to focus on wool with low fibre diameter, high clean yield percentage, low percentage of vegetable matter content and good length of the wool.

Practical implications

Since wool fleeces consist of the largest portion of wool shorn from sheep, it is important for wool farmers to focus on wool with low fibre diameter, high clean yield percentage, low percentage of vegetable matter content and good length of the wool.

Social implications

In a developing country such as South Africa, this study is important for the following reason. It is understanding the wool characteristics that have the most significance influence on the determination of wool price for Merino wool and White wool might effectively help the wool farmers to adapt their production systems to improve the wool characteristics that determine wool price.

Originality/value

This study identified a need for a study to be conducted on all wool classes.

Details

Research Journal of Textile and Apparel, vol. ahead-of-print no. ahead-of-print
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 1560-6074

Keywords

Open Access
Article
Publication date: 8 April 2021

Janne J. Salovaara and Katriina Soini

The purpose of this paper is to expand the competence-led structuring and understanding of sustainability education by analysing the practices of professional individuals who have…

2317

Abstract

Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to expand the competence-led structuring and understanding of sustainability education by analysing the practices of professional individuals who have completed university education geared to the development of sustainability change-makers.

Design/methodology/approach

The research scope was initially on examining professional practices following the boundary work theory. Social practice theory was used as a methodological approach in conducting and analysing thematic interviews with 19 sustainability-focused master’s programme alumni. The interviews were analysed against the theoretical framework while also noting findings that fell outside of this framework.

Findings

A framework for understanding materials, competences and meanings of practices connected to the professional field of sustainability was introduced. The framework suggests that in the practices of sustainability-educated professionals, meanings emerge as a top priority and are conveyed using position-based materials and various complexes of competency.

Research limitations/implications

The authors suggest that boundary theory informs well the emergence of the professional field of sustainability, and the utilisation of a practice theory furthers the understanding of sustainability professionalism and its education.

Practical implications

The authors’ suggest that practice theory could thus provide deeper insights on how sustainability science alumni use their education after graduation, how they practice their profession and in return offer applicable reflections to sustainability education.

Originality/value

Research using practice theory in reflection on sustainability education and the professional practice of sustainability has not been widely conducted and in the authors’ opinion brings value to the education and practice of sustainability and to the research of sustainability education.

Details

International Journal of Sustainability in Higher Education, vol. 22 no. 8
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 1467-6370

Keywords

Open Access
Article
Publication date: 9 August 2021

Erose Sthapit, Peter Björk and Senthilkumaran Piramanayagam

This study aims to explore non-Muslim tourists’ general halal food preferences, motivations for tasting halal food during their recent trips, positive and negative emotions and…

4533

Abstract

Purpose

This study aims to explore non-Muslim tourists’ general halal food preferences, motivations for tasting halal food during their recent trips, positive and negative emotions and memorable dimensions associated with their recent halal food experiences after returning from holiday.

Design/methodology/approach

Data were collected using the authors’ personal networks and Amazon Mechanical Turk (MTurk) using a questionnaire. An email containing a link to the questionnaire was sent to the authors’ personal networks and posted on MTurk in January 2021.

Findings

Of the 311 non-Muslim respondents, more than half considered themselves as food neophiliacs and considered halal food experiences as imperative whilst travelling. However, tasting halal food was not a major travel motivation. Novelty and taste were the two main motivations for tasting halal food whilst at a tourism destination. Emotions elicited by halal food experiences focussed on “joy” and “love”. The proposed conceptual framework for memorable halal food experiences comprises several dimensions: taste, spending time with family and friends, novelty, quality and safety, hospitality, ambience (setting/servicescape) and experiencing others’ culture through food.

Originality/value

This is one of the first studies to explore non-Muslim tourists’ motives, emotions and memorable dimensions of halal food experiences.

Details

Journal of Islamic Marketing, vol. 14 no. 1
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 1759-0833

Keywords

Open Access
Article
Publication date: 19 September 2023

Rebecca West Burns, Bernard Badiali, Cynthia Coler, Michael Cosenza, Krystal Goree, Drew Polly, Donnan Stoicovy and Kristien Zenkov

The purpose of this article is to unpack more deeply Essential 2: Clinical Preparation. This article offers a comparison of the first and second editions of Essential 2 and also…

Abstract

Purpose

The purpose of this article is to unpack more deeply Essential 2: Clinical Preparation. This article offers a comparison of the first and second editions of Essential 2 and also provides resources and activities partners can use and engage in to deepen their work on the clinical preparation of teachers.

Originality/value

This article is being resubmitted so that it can be reprinted with the other Nine Essential articles.

Details

PDS Partners: Bridging Research to Practice, vol. 18 no. 2
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 2833-2040

Keywords

Open Access
Article
Publication date: 28 June 2022

Jon S.T. Quah

This paper analyses the role of Lee Kuan Yew, Singapore’s first prime minister from June 1959 to November 1990, in minimising corruption by implementing a zero-tolerance policy…

9029

Abstract

Purpose

This paper analyses the role of Lee Kuan Yew, Singapore’s first prime minister from June 1959 to November 1990, in minimising corruption by implementing a zero-tolerance policy toward corruption in Singapore.

Design/methodology/approach

This paper is based on the analysis of Lee’s beliefs and the policies he introduced to curb corruption in Singapore.

Findings

Lee’s disdain for corruption and his beliefs in meritocracy and the importance of good leadership shaped his commitment to a zero-tolerance policy against corruption, which was enforced impartially and sustained in Singapore for the past 62 years.

Originality/value

This analysis of how Lee transformed Singapore into one of the least corrupt countries in the world would be of interest to policy-makers, practitioners and scholars concerned with minimising corruption in their own countries.

Details

Public Administration and Policy, vol. 25 no. 2
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 1727-2645

Keywords

Open Access
Article
Publication date: 11 July 2017

Barbara Harriss-White

The purpose of this paper is to contribute original evidence about the conditions for formal and informal contracts for commodities and labour in the waste economy of a South…

5285

Abstract

Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to contribute original evidence about the conditions for formal and informal contracts for commodities and labour in the waste economy of a South Indian town.

Design/methodology/approach

Field research was exploratory, based on snowball sampling and urban traversing. The analysis follows capital and labour in the sub-circuits of capital generating waste in production, distribution, consumption, the production of labour and the reproduction of society.

Findings

Regardless of legal regulation, which is selectively enforced, formal contracts are limited to active inspection regimes; direct transactions with or within the state; and long-distance transactions. Formal labour contracts are least incomplete for state employment, and for relatively scarce skilled labour in the private sector.

Research limitations/implications

The research design does not permit quantified generalisations.

Practical implications

Waste management technology evaluations neglect the social costs of displacing a large informal labour force.

Social implications

While slowly dissolving occupational barriers of untouchability, the waste economy is a low-status labour absorber of last resort, exit from which is extremely difficult.

Originality/value

The first systematic exploration of formal and informal contracts in an Indian small-town waste economy.

Details

International Journal of Sociology and Social Policy, vol. 37 no. 7/8
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 0144-333X

Keywords

Open Access
Article
Publication date: 11 October 2018

Yanwen Tan and Huasheng Zeng

The purpose of this paper is to examine whether Chinese pork reserve regulation policy fulfills its function in stabilizing market prices and simultaneously to theoretically and…

2446

Abstract

Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to examine whether Chinese pork reserve regulation policy fulfills its function in stabilizing market prices and simultaneously to theoretically and empirically analyze the causes leading to the failure of Chinese Government’s intervention in the market, especially in the context of asymmetric pork and hog price information transmission.

Design/methodology/approach

A modified Reserve-Cobweb model based on the competitive storage model developed by Muth in 1961 is employed to examine the transmission effect of hog and pork prices under the setting of Chinese Government’s pork reserve regulation policy, using the data on Chinese hog and pork prices from June 2009 to June 2015.

Findings

While the Reserve-Cobweb model provides theoretical insights, suggesting that the implementation of the government’s reserve policy tool to control price volatility actually leads to increased price volatility, the empirical results indicate that the policy induces hypercorrection and impels greater price volatility, especially in the context of existence of asymmetric price information transmission.

Social implications

The Chinese Government should reduce excessive pork price intervention and instead allow the market to play its role in the hog and pork markets.

Originality/value

This paper develops a modified Reserve-Cobweb model based on the price transmission effect on different links within the agricultural products supply chain, which is used to empirically validate the existence of asymmetric price information transmission between pork and hog price in China.

Details

China Agricultural Economic Review, vol. 11 no. 2
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 1756-137X

Keywords

Open Access
Article
Publication date: 14 March 2023

Rocco Palumbo, Elena Casprini and Mohammad Fakhar Manesh

Institutional, economic, social and technological advancements enable openness to cope with wicked public management issues. Although open innovation (OI) is becoming a new…

2606

Abstract

Purpose

Institutional, economic, social and technological advancements enable openness to cope with wicked public management issues. Although open innovation (OI) is becoming a new normality for public sector entities, scholarly knowledge on this topic is not fully systematized. The article fills this gap, providing a thick and integrative account of OI to inspire public management decisions.

Design/methodology/approach

Following the SPAR-4-SLR protocol, a domain-based literature review has been accomplished. Consistently with the study purpose, a hybrid methodology has been designed. Bibliographic coupling permitted us to discover the research streams populating the scientific debate. The core arguments addressed within and across the streams were reported through an interpretive approach.

Findings

Starting from an intellectual core of 94 contributions, 5 research streams were spotted. OI in the public sector unfolds through an evolutionary path. Public sector entities conventionally acted as “senior partners” of privately-owned companies, providing funding (yellow cluster) and data (purple cluster) to nurture OI. An advanced perspective envisages OI as a public management model purposefully enacted by public sector entities to co-create value with relevant stakeholders (red cluster). Fitting architectures (green cluster) and mechanisms (blue cluster) should be arranged to release the potential of OI in the public sector.

Research limitations/implications

The role of public sector entities in enacting OI should be revised embracing a value co-creation perspective. Tailored organizational interventions and management decisions are required to make OI a reliable and dependable public value generation model.

Originality/value

The article originally systematizes the scholarly knowledge about OI, presenting it as a new normality for public value generation.

Details

Management Decision, vol. 61 no. 13
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 0025-1747

Keywords

Open Access
Article
Publication date: 30 March 2020

Javier Cantillo, Juan Carlos Martin and Concepción Román

The purpose of this investigation is to develop a hybrid fuzzy TOPSIS methodology in order to understand in a practical and integrated way, the consuming and buying behavior of EU…

1114

Abstract

Purpose

The purpose of this investigation is to develop a hybrid fuzzy TOPSIS methodology in order to understand in a practical and integrated way, the consuming and buying behavior of EU residents towards Fishery and Aquaculture Products (FAPs), with an emphasis in the consumption and buying frequency.

Design/methodology/approach

Data were obtained from the Special Eurobarometer Survey (European Union, 2018b), which is a survey of 27,732 EU residents with different socio-demographic characteristics that represent the 28 EU countries. A hybrid fuzzy TOPSIS methodology that synthesizes the consuming and buying behavior of the EU residents toward FAPs was developed.

Findings

The results show that among the countries, Spain has the highest consumption and buying patterns of FAPs, while among the generations it corresponds to the residents born between 1928 and 1945. In addition, there are important differences that depend on the country of residence as well as the generation of the residents. The elasticity analysis evidenced that marketing strategies would have the biggest impact in the countries located in the Central-Eastern zone of the EU and on the generation formed by the people born after 1980.

Originality/value

Although in the literature there are many studies that aimed to understand the behavior of consumers for FAPs, few investigations have focused on analyzing and integrating both the consumption and buying behavior, and to our best knowledge, there are no studies providing a methodology that allow making comparisons between different countries regarding the consumption and buying behavior of FAPs.

Details

British Food Journal, vol. 122 no. 11
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 0007-070X

Keywords

Open Access
Article
Publication date: 21 January 2020

Abid Haleem, Mohd Imran Khan, Shahbaz Khan and Abdur Rahman Jami

Halal is an emerging business sector and is steadily gaining popularity among scholars and practitioners. The purpose of this paper is to critically evaluate and review the…

5173

Abstract

Purpose

Halal is an emerging business sector and is steadily gaining popularity among scholars and practitioners. The purpose of this paper is to critically evaluate and review the reported literature in the broad area of Halal using bibliometric technique and network analysis tools. Moreover, this paper also proposes future research directions in the field of Halal.

Design/methodology/approach

This paper employed a systematic review technique followed by bibliometric analysis to gain insight and to evaluate the research area associated with Halal. Furthermore, data mining techniques are used for analysing the concerned article title, keywords and abstract of 946 research articles obtained through the Scopus database. Finally, network analysis is used to identify significant research clusters.

Findings

This study reports top authors contributing to this area, the key sub-research areas and the influential works based on citations and PageRank. We identified from the citation analysis that major influential works of Halal are from the subject area of biological science and related areas. Further, this study reports established and emerging research clusters, which provide future research directions.

Research limitations/implications

Scopus database is used to conduct a systematic review and corresponding bibliometric study; the authors might have missed some peer-reviewed studies not reported in Scopus. The selection of keywords for article search may not be accurate for the multi-disciplinary Halal area. Also, the authors have not considered the banking/financial aspects of Halal. The proposed four research clusters may inform potential researcher towards supporting the industry.

Originality/value

The novelty of the study is that no published study has reported the bibliometric study and network analysis techniques in the area of Halal.

Details

Modern Supply Chain Research and Applications, vol. 2 no. 1
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 2631-3871

Keywords

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