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Smart manufacturing is revolutionizing the manufacturing industry by shifting the focus from traditional manufacturing to a more intelligent, interconnected and responsive system. Despite being the backbone of the economy and despite the government’s efforts in supporting and encouraging the transformation to smart manufacturing, small and medium enterprises (SMEs) have been struggling to transform their operations. This study aims to identify the challenges for SMEs’ transformation and the benefits they can get from this transformation, following a systematic review of existing literature.

A systematic review of existing literature has been performed to identify the peer-reviewed journal articles that focus on smart manufacturing for SMEs. First, a comprehensive list of keywords relevant to the review questions are identified. Second, Scopus and Web of Science databases were then used to search for articles, applying filters for English language and peer-reviewed status. Third, after manually assessing abstracts for relevance, 175 articles are considered for further review and analysis.

The benefits and challenges of SMEs’ transformation to smart manufacturing are identified. The identified challenges are categorized using the Smart Industry Readiness Index (SIRI) framework. Further, to address the identified challenges and initiate the SME’s transition toward smart manufacturing, a framework has been proposed that shows how SMEs can start their transition with minimum investment and existing resources.

Several studies have concentrated on understanding how smart manufacturing enhances sustainability, productivity and preventive maintenance. However, there is a lack of studies comprehensively analyzing the challenges for smart manufacturing adoption for SMEs. The originality of this study lies in identifying the challenges and benefits of smart manufacturing transformation and proposing a framework as a roadmap for SMEs' smart manufacturing adoption.

Prior literature on talent management (TM) in the audit setting has suggested several practices that may affect auditors’ performance. However, the study is limited in terms of a measurable set of comprehensive constructs of TM in the audit setting, as well as the impact of comprehensive TM constructs on auditors’ performance. Thus, the purpose of this study is to examine TM practices perceived to be important by auditors for auditors’ performance.

Data were obtained from 307 survey questionnaires received from auditors of large- as well as small- and medium-sized firms.

The study respondents perceived TM attributes related to supervision and review practices as the most vital for auditors’ performance. This category was followed by attributes related to ethics management practices along with training and development. The findings reveal that respondents generally perceived lower significance for attributes pertaining to work–life balance (WLB) and establishing a TM policy for auditors’ performance. While both top management and staff members of audit firms regarded WLB and establishing a TM policy to be of lower significance, top management placed greater importance on attributes related to ethics management, while staff perceived training and development attributes to be more critical.

This study examined a comprehensive set of TM practices (establishing a TM policy, recruitment, ethics management, training and development, supervision and review, remuneration, WLB and succession planning) and assessed the perceptions of audit practitioners on the significance of these practices on auditors’ performance.

Gives a bibliographical review of the finite element methods (FEMs) applied for the linear and nonlinear, static and dynamic analyses of basic structural elements from the theoretical as well as practical points of view. The range of applications of FEMs in this area is wide and cannot be presented in a single paper; therefore aims to give the reader an encyclopaedic view on the subject. The bibliography at the end of the paper contains 2,025 references to papers, conference proceedings and theses/dissertations dealing with the analysis of beams, columns, rods, bars, cables, discs, blades, shafts, membranes, plates and shells that were published in 1992‐1995.

The purpose of this paper is to identify coronavirus contact using internet of things. The disease is said to be highly contagious with the contact of infected persons. Feared to be air-borne, droplets of body fluids can transmit the disease in a matter of hours. The predominant symptoms of the COVID-19 are high fever, cough, breathing problem, etc. Recent studies have demonstrated the evolution of the disease to hide its symptoms. As it is highly transmissible, this disease might spread at an exponential rate costing the lives of thousands of people. The chain of transmission has to be detected with utmost priority through early detection and isolation of infected people. Automated internet of things (IoT) devices can be used in design and implementation of a prediction scheme for reporting the health-care risks of the patients with various parameters such as temperature, humidity and blood pressure.

IoT is a configuration of multiple autonomous and embedded wireless devices for serving a purpose. Every object possesses an individual identity and will serve to register critical events as entries for future learning and decisions. IoT plays an inevitable role in medical industries, detection of vital signs of diseases and monitoring. Among other life-threatening diseases, a new pandemic is on rise among world nations. COVID-19, a novel severe acute respiratory syndrome virus originated from animals in December 2019 and is becoming a serious menace to Governments, despite serious measures of lockdowns.

In this paper, the authors defined an architecture of an IoT system to predict the Covid-19 disease by getting the data from the human through sensors and send the data to the doctor using mobile, computer, etc. The main goal is early health surveillance by predicting COVID-19. Accordingly, the authors are able to identify both symptomatic and asymptomatic patients, which will help in the early prediction of disease.

Using the proposed method, the authors can save the time of both patient and doctor by ensuring timely medical treatment and contribute toward breaking the transmission chain. In so doing, the method also contributes toward avoiding unnecessary expenses and saving human lives.

This paper develops a theoretical understanding of learning during recovery from recurring disasters when humanitarian organizations deploy WASH technologies using examples from 2012–2013 floods in Assam, Northeastern India.

A mixed methods study was conducted in Assam, where Oxfam had responded after 2012 floods and erosion. Two surveys (n₁ = 313; and n₂ = 279) in 2013, along with 38 semi-structured interviews, 18 household interviews and 23 focus group discussions (FGDs) were undertaken. The quantitative data were analysed using descriptive statistics and the qualitative data were interpreted thematically.

One of the product-level innovations included raised platforms with WASH facilities as a preparedness measure for future floods, enabled by a co-learning approach. Social learning within community members provided contextual inputs, while Oxfam learnt through its institutionalized learning mechanisms, namely real-time evaluations, knowledge, attitude and practice (KAP) surveys and strong monitoring mechanisms. Despite these measures, the precarity of such geographies remains a major concern in increasing vulnerability, and hence this study advocates for an approach towards innovation that equally emphasizes and advances learning within community groups as well as organizations so that lessons can be captured and revisited in future programmes and promote wider application.

This study is exploratory, and longitudinal in nature, although the data and findings are fairly representative of the target population, they do not imply causality and attribution. Since the study relies on a case study, there are limitations of how the findings could be generalized in other similar contexts.

This paper offers a new theoretical lens emphasizing context-specific understanding of short-term but rapid onset and cyclical emergencies resulting in local population displacement. It provides a bottom-up perspective on innovations and technologies deployed by external aid agencies as a commentary on recovery of community resilience from recurring disasters.

This paper reframes agency approaches in how they perceive community resilience and enable flood-affected and displaced communities to recover using innovations in WASH technologies.

This paper expands on the key lessons to be gleamed from the many interventions in humanitarian WASH technologies from learning perspective and benefits from reflections as a practitioner in the field.

Firm-specific factors such as size, profitability, growth, risk and complexity, in addition to agency-related issues determine both auditor selection and firm life-cycle stage. This paper aims to examine whether and how the effect of Big-4 auditors (B4As) on client firms’ audit quality varies across firms’ life-cycle stages.

The sample comprises 1,813 firm-year observations in India’s emerging economy from 2011 to 2020. The Modified Jones model and Jones (signed, unsigned) model are used to compute discretionary accruals/audit quality. The authors use Koh et al.’s (2015) methodology to determine the firm life cycle.

The authors’ key findings show that the client firms employing B4As have superior audit quality than those employing non-Big-4 auditors (NB4As). The authors also show that the life-cycle stage significantly impacts the relationship between B4As and a firm’s audit quality. Furthermore, B4A client firms report superior audit quality vis-à-vis NB4A firms only in the birth- and decline-stages. The audit quality of growth- and mature-stage B4A and NB4A client firms is not significantly different.

Implications for managers include the decision to hire B4As. Given that B4As earn a significant fee premium, managers leading birth- and decline-stage firms should hire B4As, while managers of growth- and mature-stage firms should not.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first paper to examine the moderating effect of the firm life-cycle stage on the selection of B4As and their impact on audit quality.

Numerous researchers have developed theories and studies to uncover the issues pertinent to dividend policy dynamics, but it is still one of the unresolved problems of finance. The purpose of this paper is to focus on a new dimension, i.e., financial expertise on the corporate board for explaining the dividend policy dynamics in the emerging equity markets of China and Pakistan.

The study employs static (fixed effect (FE) and random effect (RE)) and dynamic models – two-step generalized method of moments (GMM) estimation techniques by Arellano and Bond (1991) and Arellano and Bover (1995) – during the timespan from 2009 to 2014. Further, this study re-estimated FE, RE and GMM two-step estimation techniques by excluding the non-dividend-paying companies, and also employed instrumental variable regressing by using two instrumental variables – industry average financial expertise of the board and board size – as proxies for board financial expertise to control the possible endogeneity.

The study reveals that Chinese firms having more financial expertise on the board do not take dividends as a control mechanism (substitution hypothesis), while Pakistani firms support the compliment hypothesis and use dividends as a control mechanism to mitigate agency conflict to protect shareholders’ interests and keep additional funds from the manager’s opportunism. Further robustness models also confirm the presence of a significant association between dividend policy and board financial expertise in both equity markets.

This study introduces the financial expertise on a board as a determinant of dividend policy. To the best of the authors’ knowledge, no previous studies have focused on board-level financial expertise as a contributing factor toward dividend policy.

A long-time ethical issue in financial accounting is earnings management. Two popular ways that earnings are managed include use of accruals (Kothari et al., 2016) and real activities management (RM). This study examines the association between RM and short selling and an association between short sellers and RM behavior related to earnings management. Instead of using accruals, RM is accomplished by timing investment or financing decisions and thereby alter reported earnings. Our results show that short sellers avoid targeting firms with a high level of RM, but this only holds for those firms that just meet analysts’ forecasts. This result suggests that short sellers interpret RM as a signal used by companies to convey their “good news” and confidence in their future performance. On the other hand, the authors document that heavily shorted firms engage in a lower amount of RM, which is consistent with the notion that short selling plays an external disciplinary role in constraining firms’ RM behavior for earnings management. This chapter would be of interest to anyone concerned with earnings management, such as financial market analysts, investors, academic researchers, and, in particular, regulators, who are involved in setting rules on short selling.

CavinKare was planning to introduce soaps and detergents product in the market. Owing to the ongoing price war in the detergent segment between Hindustan Lever Limited and P&G, the company's managing director and chief executive officer were weighing the risks and benefits of entering the soaps and detergents market. They had to decide whether to enter the market or delay the entry. Another option was to abandon the entry plan altogether. The case discusses the dilemma faced by the company on market entry due to the changed market conditions.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the association between audit quality and value relevance of representative accounting measures, such as earnings and book value of equity.

The authors estimate the standard value relevance equations and the modified equations by ordinary least square regressions and use two ways to compare the difference in the value relevance of earnings and book value of equity audited by Big 4 auditors and non‐Big 4 auditors, as characterized by the coefficient of determination, R2; and based on previous lines of published research.

Some evidence was found that, in the Taiwan capital market, in general, the earnings and book value of equity audited by Big 4 auditors explain more variations in stock return than those audited by non‐Big 4 auditors. The results are robust to different empirical models and measurements of value relevance and control for risk and growth factors. Consequently, both earnings and book value audited by Big 4 audit firms are generally more relevant than those audited by non‐Big 4 audit firms.

Assuming that the Big 4 audit firms provide a higher level of assurance and credibility, the overall results are generally consistent with the authors' prediction that audit quality, as captured by size of audit firms, improves the value relevance of earnings and book value of equity.