Search results

The Fourth Industrial Revolution is increasing the use of digital technologies for delivering products and services. A performance measurement and management system (PMMS) is recognised as a useful system to guide era 4.0; however, the literature has not adequately addressed this challenge in public government and not-for-profit organisations (NPOs). This research aims to investigate the evolution of the PMMS adopted by a local government for the control of investee NPOs in era 4.0.

Through action research, the authors investigate an Italian municipality and its main investee NPOs. The project involved 4 researchers and 25 managers of the local government and NPOs.

This paper describes the design of a PMMS developed for a local government to control its investee NPOs. Considering the regulations and managerial needs, the designed system evolved from a fragmented set of indicators based on legitimacy and economic perspectives to a holistic set of indicators based on a comprehensive set of perspectives to consider the changing business environment.

This study sheds light on the design of a PMMS adopted by local governments for controlling investee NPOs in era 4.0. The paper contributes (1) to identify the main control needs for the design of a PMMS in a public network and (2) to capture the evolution of a PMMS in light of era 4.0 by developing two conceptual propositions.

Political science and public administration have seen significant transformations as a result of digitalization. The literature depicts the transformation brought about by digitalization at various stages. In the literature, these periods are termed as Public Administration 1.0 (Cameralism), Public Administration 2.0 (Weberian Bureaucracy), Public Administration 3.0 (New Public Administration), Public Administration 4.0 (Digital Public Administration) and Public Administration 5.0 (Super Smart Society). Not only has digitalization contributed to a more effective, efficient and accountable service understanding, but it has also contributed to the dissolution of the rigid understanding between voters and politicians. However, digitalization has brought both problems and benefits to the field. By creating a fast world, unconfirmed information reaches a greater number of people, bringing negative situations with it. Aside from the societal benefits of digitalization, the methods to be considered will also be discussed in this study.

This research aims to investigate the impact of the collaborative governance mechanism on the implementation of rural governance information systems in developing countries. By integrating institutional logic theory, affordance theory and social identity theory, the authors propose modeling grassroots officials' affordance perception process and exploring the importance of multi-identities’ information technology (IT) goals in affordance perception.

Through an exploratory case study, the authors identified three affordances of rural governance information systems and investigated the mechanisms influencing the perception of these affordances among grassroots officials. Next, the authors established a research model and collected 490 valid questionnaires from grassroots officials in China and analyzed the data using structural equation modeling (SEM).

The authors' study challenges previous assumptions by integrating institutional logic, affordance and social identity theories. The authors establish a perceived affordance path for rural governance information systems, recognize substitute effects among technological affordances and extend the theory to explain social factors influencing IT perception. The authors' findings suggest providing technical training for grassroots officials to enhance IT capabilities, and governments should prioritize essential functionalities in rural governance information systems to optimize resources. Training on collaborative governance mechanisms can improve IT affordance perception, enhancing digital platform utilization in governance processes.

The study was conducted mainly in China, and therefore, the findings may not be universal to other developing countries. Researchers are therefore encouraged to test the proposal in locations with different rural cultures.

The paper includes implications for the development of IT perception in rural governance, the development of affordance perception theory and studying the relationship between IT goals and affordance perception.

Overall, this paper addresses the need to understand how grassroots officials perceive IT affordances in rural governance and study the relationship between multi-identities’ goals and affordance perception.

The informal sector is expanding in the developing countries while the formal sector is shrinking. The loss of employees through workforce reduction strategies has adversely affected trade union membership in Ghana. To make up for the loss of members, the trade unions recruit the informal workers into their fold. Using in-depth interviews, this study explores trade union organization of informal workers and the suitability of these forms of organization within the informal sector in Ghana. The results indicate that formal trade unions are desperately adopting traditional methods and structures to organize informal workers into their fold without success. There is therefore the need for the informal workers to self-organize and for the trade unions to create streams of membership for affiliation.

International Journal of Lean Six Sigma (IJLSS) has completed a decade. To celebrate the same, this study aims to review the articles published in IJLSS from its inception to the year 2020. The journal’s trends and professional impact over the years are investigated and potential future research directions are proposed.

A bibliometric analysis comprising of citation, co-citation and keyword co-occurrence methods is used on all the articles published in IJLSS till the year 2020. Content analysis is further done to analyse the type of research, type of industry studied and the articles’ target audience.

The journal has improved its reputation, productivity and impact over the years. Currently, studies published in IJLSS have been cited more than 5,000 times, with the most prominent themes being Six Sigma, Lean Six Sigma (LSS) and Lean in manufacturing and services. Researchers from India, the USA and the UK have contributed a significant number of publications. Most of the work published is case-based. There is a need for more empirical or survey-based research having high generalizability. Future studies should also focus on integrating LSS with emerging topics such as sustainability, Industry 4.0 and the like.

The study provides evidence of the impact of IJLSS and highlights the trend in the domain of LSS. It can be of use for the editorial board members to identify potential areas to focus on in the future. Researchers can use it to further their research by working on the research gaps identified.

This paper is the first to trace the progress of IJLSS from its inception till the year 2020.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate whether the probability of deal success/failure in mergers and acquisitions (M&As) transactions is influenced by a range of deal, firm and country-specific characteristics which tend to affect acquirers’ shareholder returns. The specific hypotheses under investigation relate to the method of payment (cash versus stock), target status (listed versus non-listed), diversification (domestic versus cross-border and industry-wide) and acquirers’ prior bidding experience. Additionally, the authors also investigate whether announced deals reflect an expectation about likelihood of deal completion.

The authors analyse the probability of deal success/failure in M&As by combining event study and probit regression-based methods. The authors use the standard event study methodology to calculate acquirers’ abnormal returns for up to 10 days before and after the announcement date. In the probit model, the dependent variable is the probability of deal i being failure depending on four sets of explanatory variables: method of payment, target status, diversification and acquirer bidding experience, along with a set of control variables.

The findings from event study confirm that market reaction is indifferent to whether announced deals are likely to be successfully completed or not, consistent with the efficient markets hypothesis. However, the results from cross-sectional, cross-country regressions confirm that the aforementioned deal characteristics, as well as certain firm and country level attributes do influence the likelihood of whether an announced deal is subsequently completed or terminated.

In examining whether the specific characteristics affecting the likelihood that M&A transactions, once announced, will ultimately succeed or fail, it seems natural to ask whether the market reaction at the time of deal announcement reflects an expectation regarding deal completion. This could be associated with specific deal or firm-level characteristics influencing shareholder returns or risk, and represents a unique contribution of this study, over and above the use of a global sample of M&A data. The empirical analysis investigates these issues by using an extensive, global sample of 46,758 M&A transactions from 180 countries and 80 industries, which took place between the years 1977 and 2012.

The purpose of this study was to investigate occupational and non-occupational mortality among Mexican immigrants in the South Eastern United States. The construction industry has the highest burden of occupational fatalities in the USA of all industries, and foreign-born Hispanic workers are disproportionately affected.

Data were obtained from 3,093 death certificates maintained by the Consulate General of Mexico in Atlanta, Georgia. Standardized mortality ratios (SMR) were used to compare occupational-related deaths among construction industry occupations, and logistic regression models were used to examine the relationship between manners of death not related to occupation and employment in the construction industry.

The proportion of Mexican immigrants who died from occupational injuries is higher among all construction workers (SMR = 1.31), roofers (SMR = 2.32) and carpenters (SMR = 2.25) than other workers. Among the population in this analysis suicide [adjusted odds ratio (aOR) = 0.63] and death from natural causes (aOR = 0.70) were inversely related to work in the construction industry.

Interventions to reduce occupational fatalities among Mexican migrant construction workers should target roofers and carpenters. Future research should further investigate the industry’s association with suicide and natural death.

This is one of the first analyzes that investigated associations between construction industry employment and non-occupational fatalities among immigrants. The analysis provides evidence that a large portion of the Mexican immigrant population is used in the construction industry (38%) and face elevated risks for occupational fatalities and the results of this investigation should encourage greater surveillance of occupational illness and injury among foreign-born immigrants who work in construction, as well as other high-risk industries.

This paper aims to examine the characteristics of firms that voluntary disclose generally accepted accounting principals (GAAP)-compliant statements of income, statement of cash flows (SCF) and balance sheet (BS) concurrently with quarterly earnings releases. Cardinal motivation of the paper stems from the increasing demand over the past decade by professional analysts and the Securities and Exchange Commission for concurrent disclosure of GAAP-compliant financial statements with earnings’ announcements.

Using hand-collected archival data, a random sample was identified as disclosing GAAP-compliant SCF and BS with their quarterly earnings releases compared to a control sample identified as non-GAAP-compliant disclosing firms during the 36-month period of 2009-2011, and several hypotheses are tested to determine managements’ incentives to disclose GAAP-compliant versus non-GAAP financials with their earnings releases.

The results in this paper suggest that debt financing, corporate governance, operating performance, earnings volatility, industry membership (such as technology and more research and development-intensive) and complexity of operations (number of segments) are significant characteristics of firms electing to concurrently disclose GAAP-compliant SCF and BS with earnings releases.

The findings discussed in this paper are of special interest to financial reporting policymakers, financial analysts, firm managers and stakeholders and academics.

The voluntary disclosure literature on quarterly earnings releases is extended by differentiating between GAAP-compliant and non-GAAP-compliant voluntary disclosers. The specific findings of this study may provide valuable input to policymakers as they study prevailing voluntary disclosure rules and practices.

During the 1930s Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal created a wide range of spending and loan programs. Brief descriptions are provided for the programs created by the New Deal and loan and spending programs that were in place before the New Deal. I worked with others to create a panel data set with estimates of the spending and lending by the programs each year from 1930 through 1940. The data aggregated to broad categories are reported here and the methods and sources used to construct the estimates of the spending and lending for the categories are discussed.