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As part of its inquiry on the future growth potential of air traffic in South Africa, the National Institute for Transport and Road Research of the C.S.I.R., asked me at the beginning of 1985 to conduct an inquiry on the local tourist market. The main points to investigate were:

Enterprise resource planning (ERP) is assumed as a commonly used solution in order to provide an integrated view of core business processes, including product planning, manufacturing cost, delivery, marketing, sales, inventory management, shipping and payment. Selection and implementation of a suitable ERP solution are not assumed a trivial project because of the challenging nature of it, high costs, long-duration of installation and customization, as well as lack of successful benchmarking experiences. During the ERP projects, several risk factors threat the successful implementation of the project. These risk factors usually refer to different phases of the ERP projects including purchasing, pilot implementation, teaching, install, synchronizing, and movement from old systems toward new ones, initiation and utilization. These risk factors have dominant effects on each other. The purpose of this paper is to explore the hybrid reliability-based method is proposed to assess the risk factors of ERP solutions.

In this regard, the most important risk factors of ERP solutions are first determined. Then, the interactive relations of these factors are recognized using a graph based method, called interpretive structural modeling. The resultant network of relations between these factors initiates a new viewpoint toward the cause and effect relations among risk factors. Afterwards, a fuzzy fault tree analysis is proposed to calculate Failure Fuzzy Possibility (FFP) for the basic events of the fault tree leading to a quantitative evaluation of risk factors.

The whole proposed method is applied in a well-known Iranian foodservice distributor as a case study. The most impressive risk factors are identified, classified and prioritized. Moreover, the cause and effect diagram between the risk factors are identified. So, the ERP leader can plan a low-risk project and increase the chance of success.

According to the authors’ best knowledge, such approach was not reported before in the literature of ERP risk assessments.

Through the use of both sight and blind‐based quality metrics, the purpose of this paper is to ascertain the extent to which the sighted appreciation of a wine's intrinsic merit is confounded by extrinsic cues such as price and region of origin.

Using a database of sighted and blind tastings of three red South African wines (Cabernet, Merlot and Shiraz) over the period 1993‐2001, a series of multiple linear regression models is developed to explain sighted quality ratings.

The meta‐model, with an adjusted R² of 31 per cent, indicates three statistically significant explicatory factors, namely price, region, and intrinsic quality. The price cue alone explains 84 per cent of sighted quality assessments; the combined effect of both the region and price cue explains 95 per cent. This finding suggests that when quality is measured from a sighted perspective, area becomes a significant explicator, along with price. It is only once the cues of region and price have been factored into the meta‐model that intrinsic merit becomes relevant, and here, only to an extremely limited extent (5 per cent). The lack of correspondence between sighted and blind tasting scores, suggests that for sighted judgements – extrinsic cues appear to be masking the wine's intrinsic merit.

For the first time, blind and sighted tasting results are collated into one database and statistically interrogated. The findings show how we are deleteriously distracted by the apparent efficacy of extrinsic cues.

This study aims to examine the differential impact of ride-hailing services (RHS) on private and commercial vehicle ownership from five metropolitan cities in India.

Using vehicle ownership data from five metropolitan cities over period 1991 to 2020, a panel corrected standard errors model was estimated to model the association between RHS and vehicle ownership.

The results indicate that advent of RHS has led to a significant reduction in private vehicle ownership rates and a corresponding increase in addition of intermediate public transport. The net effects of RHS on road congestion and pollution levels need to be studied in detail.

The findings of this study can potentially assist policymakers and mobility planners in efforts to decarbonise and decongest urban transport.

This study sets precedence in analysing the impact of RHS on private and commercial vehicle independently. Further, to the best of the author’s knowledge, this is the first study to examine this association for the city of Delhi and Kolkata.

The purpose of this paper is to provide a real asset management investment appraisal of the performance of containerships as a primary segment within international shipping, to facilitate Islamic equity investment through a shipping fund. The objectives are to evaluate the risks and returns of shipping under the framework of Islamic equity finance, and to analyze the performance of investing in containerships over the long term, to appeal to retail and institutional clients of Malaysian asset management institutions.

Accordingly, the methodology adopts an investment analysis of a full population of historical data over a period of 20 years, to evaluate performance involving a maritime return on investment (MROI), internal rate of return (IRR), net yield and standard deviation measures of risk and return.

The findings reveal that while earnings are volatile in comparison to capital market expectations, unlevered, tax-free returns on containership investments outperform financial and other real assets.

Shipping is a strong growth industry with about 84 per cent of global trade carried out by the international shipping industry. The problem is that many Islamic asset management institutions and investors have essentially no exposure to Islamic investment in international shipping.

However, shipping is a highly capital-intensive industry, and currently 75 per cent of ship lending has been conducted by European banks and financed on a conventional basis. Post-financial crisis, ship owners, ship lenders and shipyards have all been exposed to the impact of over-levered balance sheets and debt finance. There is a demand for alternative sources of finance.

By communicating risk and reward more effectively, retail and institutional investors, as well as Islamic finance institutions, will realize that the social benefit of equity finance on the basis of profit sharing is more efficient at allocating investible resources than debt finance at interest, thereby increasing investment and economic growth.

The significance is that Islamic equity finance, rather than debt at the time-value of money, should enhance the development of international shipping.

The regulatory framework may be construed as the existence of supporting infrastructure that assists in control, direction/implementation of a proposed course of law, rule or action. The regulatory order is now more formalized, expert-driven, transparent, independent and pervasive across countries and sectors. As a result, regulatory reforms enable markets to function efficiently by providing a supportive environment for increased investment, private sector growth and market-led economic growth. This study aims to review previous literature for understanding the impact of sectoral regulatory framework on sectoral performance.

This paper has adopted a systematic literature review to understand dynamics between the sectoral regulatory framework and sectoral performance. While seven multidisciplinary databases were used to identify 51 research articles, the bibliometric research profiling was executed to broaden academic research.

The results are organized into three broad categories: research context, research area and research methods. The identified articles exhibited association with 12 distinct sectors/industries, with maximum articles belonging to telecom, energy and finance industries. The study has focused on evolution of regulatory studies, impact of regulatory framework on sectoral performance and commonality in regulatory studies. Among the 15 distinct research contexts identified in this systematic literature review (SLR), the highest mapping was registered (from 23 articles) by the research context “impact of regulatory framework on the sector–institutions, infrastructure and performance indicators.”

Public administration researchers are increasingly using mixed methods research approaches to add diverse and novel perspectives on wicked problems. The qualitative approach (grounded theory, action research, phenomenology and participant observations) is appropriate for understanding the native viewpoints of regulatory practitioners and reducing the gap between rigor and relevance.

The study addresses lack of systematic review of articles covering the impact of regulatory framework on sectoral performance encompassing all sectors by, inter alia, collating important bibliometric profiles of the identified articles.

This study aims to explore the scope of consumers’ defective co-creation behaviour in professional service encounters. One of the founding premises of service-dominant logic (Vargo and Lusch, 2004, 2008) is that consumers co-create the value they derive from service encounters. In practice, however, dysfunctional consumer behaviour can obstruct value co-creation. Extant research has not yet investigated consumers’ defective co-creation behaviour in highly relational services, such as professional services, that are heavily reliant on co-creation.

To investigate defective co-creation in professional services, 164 critical incidents were collected from 38 health-care and financial service providers using the critical incident technique within semi-structured, in-depth interviews. Thematic coding was used to identify emergent themes and patterns of consumer behaviour.

Thematic coding resulted in a comprehensive typology of consumers’ defective co-creation behaviour that both confirms the prevalence of previously identified dysfunctional behaviours (e.g. verbal abuse and physical aggression) and identifies two new forms of consumer misbehaviour: underparticipation and overparticipation. Further, these behaviours can vary, escalate and co-occur during service encounters.

Both underparticipation and overparticipation are newly identified forms of defective co-creation that need to be examined within the broader framework of service-dominant logic (SDL).

This article aims to report on the state of employee relations in the Swazi textile industry, based on case study evidence. It focuses on workplace dynamics, employment relations, and the role of the state in shaping and reinforcing these relationships.

The research is based on interviews with employees of Texrey identified through a snowball sampling. Further open‐ended questions for supervisors, management, government representatives and trade union leadership were used. The paper also relies on existing literature on the historical character of employment relations.

The institution of the monarchy has since abandoned the outdated tindvuna system but still retains control in the workplace. It still seeks to perpetrate a thinking that trade unionism is a foreign ideology and that Swazi workers are the king's regiments. There is also an existence of apathy and fatalism from workers arising from their desperate situation and poor prospects.

The textile industry in Swaziland is quite hostile to researchers and therefore access to employees and some crucial information was denied. Second, the study was conducted in one factory, thus it may not be a true reflection of the whole textile industry.

This paper sheds further light on the relationship between political authoritarianism, foreign investment and labour repression in southern Africa.

The Minerals and Petroleum Resources Royalty Act (MPRRA) became effective on 1 March 2010. This legislation may have a significant impact on employment, foreign investment and future exploration in the South African mining industry. This article reports on a critical analysis of the MPRRA prior to its implementation in order to identify aspects that may impact adversely on the South African mining industry and would require further research after the implementation of the MPRRA. Based on the findings, the authors recommend that the impact of the level of royalties levied as well as the mechanism to promote downstream beneficiation be researched to establish whether the legislators ought to reconsider these provisions in the light of their impact on the mining industry.