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This study investigates the presence of a productivity–quality trade-off in judicial decisions from an organisational standpoint, focusing on the courts as bureaucracies. Applied to the Italian context and focusing on criminal courts, the main question addressed is whether or not increasing productivity diminishes decision quality.

Directional distance function (DDF) models were utilised to assess productivity. Two-sample t-tests are then used to compare the quality of efficient and inefficient units in first instance and appeal, with the aim to determine whether a productivity–quality trade-off exists.

The study’s approach yields results that differ from previous studies. (1) The Italian judicial system is found less efficient. (2) The efficiency of the courts of first instance is relatively uniform. In contrast, there is a difference in efficiency between northern and southern courts of appeal, with northern courts on average being more efficient. (3) The analysis reveals a statistically significant productivity–quality trade-off when the courts of appeal are considered.

New evidence of a judicial system is presented, suggesting reforms regarding “reasonable time” as the optimal balance between quality and productivity.

The organisational framework leads to evaluating the efficiency of the courts by considering the various types of proceedings based on the gravity/complexity of the cases. In light of the pyramidal structure of the justice system, the quality is then defined in terms of hierarchical control expressed as review rate.

Many national retailers have complained about increases in business rates tax bills since the 2017 revaluation. What impact has the 2017 business rates revaluation had on independent high street retailers in market towns in the north of England? The paper aims to discuss these issues.

The study uses Valuation Office Agency rating list data to determine rateable value and business rates payable for independent high street retailers in eight northern market towns either side of the 2017 rating revaluation. The data were analysed using business rates matrices to reveal the impact of the new rating list on independent retailers in the eight locations.

Analysis reveals that the majority of independent retailers in the northern market towns sampled have experienced reductions in both the rateable value of their premises and business rates payable. Increase in the rates relief threshold has extended relief to almost half of the independent retailers in the study, most of whom receive 100 per cent relief.

Charity shops receive at least 80 per cent rates relief which means they are able to afford to pay higher rents. This “sets the tone” for landlords setting market rents in that location which are then used as comparable evidence by the VOA when determining rateable values at revaluation further polarising the gap between rate payers and those to are exempt.

Focussing on independent retailers on high streets in markets towns in north of England, this study provides an alternative perspective to the orthodox view of business rates revaluations having a negative impact on retailers.

This study aims to explore the relationship between the objectives of Islamic banking, customer satisfaction and customer loyalty in the South African context. Diving deep, this study also explores the relationship between customer satisfaction and customer loyalty.

Purposive and snowball sampling techniques were used, resulting in 163 respondents participating in this study. The data was collected using an online survey and analysed using a structural equation model based on the partial least squares method.

The results indicate that the construct related to the objectives of Islamic banking influences both customer satisfaction and customer loyalty. In addition, customer satisfaction is also found to influence a customer’s loyalty to the Islamic bank.

In South Africa, to the best of the authors’ knowledge, this study is the first of its kind; thus, the results provide context-specific insights into the extant literature on Islamic banking for Muslims residing in a non-Muslim majority country.

The purpose of this paper is to shed light on the remarkable trend of multisided platforms (MSPs) in the travel industry with the help of which travel agencies (TAs) and global distribution systems (GDSs) can reinforce their intermediary roles. Orthodox TAs face the threats of disintermediation because of the ever faster-changing developments in information and communication technologies, such as the emergence of metasearch engines, online travel agencies, direct bookings on airline websites and the widespread of mobile applications for travel related bookings. GDSs face similar threats of disintermediation from low-cost carriers and legacy carriers, as these carriers promote and encourage direct bookings via their official websites or via the new distribution capability.

This is a casestudy-oriented research, and the case selected is a MSP based in Turkey. The data are gathered using semi-structured interviews conducted from 15 international representatives of this MSP in different countries. Interviews were conducted either physically at the MSP’s headquarters in Antalya, Turkey, or virtually using Zoom application from January to October 2019.

The paper portrays the significance of MSPs in terms of their contributions toward the reintermediation of the two important intermediaries, namely, TAs and GDSs in the travel industry supply chain. Both of them are prone to the dangers of disintermediation because of the developments in technology, networking and communication channels; the worldwide accessibility of the stakeholders to the internet; and the direct reach of suppliers to consumers. The deteriorating role of TAs and GDSs is reignited by the successful launch, deployment and adoption of MSPs in the ecosystem of the travel industry.

This paper offers an insight into the prevailing trend of MSPs in business to business (B2B) trading from the perspective of two main intermediaries, TAs and GDSs, in the supply chain of the travel industry. The paper in a novel way compiles the data from the interviews to shed light on the adoption of MSPs by intermediaries in their business models to reintermediate themselves because the sole reliance of intermediaries on orthodox business models is pushing them on to the verge of disintermediation.

Ensuring quality is one of the most significant challenges in microtask crowdsourcing tasks. Aggregation of the collected data from the crowd is one of the important steps to infer the correct answer, but the existing study seems to be limited to the single-step task. This study aims to look at multiple-step classification tasks and understand aggregation in such cases; hence, it is useful for assessing the classification quality.

The authors present a model to capture the information of the workflow, questions and answers for both single- and multiple-question classification tasks. They propose an adapted approach on top of the classic approach so that the model can handle tasks with several multiple-choice questions in general instead of a specific domain or any specific hierarchical classifications. They evaluate their approach with three representative tasks from existing citizen science projects in which they have the gold standard created by experts.

The results show that the approach can provide significant improvements to the overall classification accuracy. The authors’ analysis also demonstrates that all algorithms can achieve higher accuracy for the volunteer- versus paid-generated data sets for the same task. Furthermore, the authors observed interesting patterns in the relationship between the performance of different algorithms and workflow-specific factors including the number of steps and the number of available options in each step.

Due to the nature of crowdsourcing, aggregating the collected data is an important process to understand the quality of crowdsourcing results. Different inference algorithms have been studied for simple microtasks consisting of single questions with two or more answers. However, as classification tasks typically contain many questions, the proposed method can be applied to a wide range of tasks including both single- and multiple-question classification tasks.

Non-technical skills are of increasing importance for safety engineers to perform their job. In their position as expert consultants, they work closely with managers. Thus, gaining management support is oftentimes crucial for safety engineers to successfully improve occupational health and safety. Drawing on organizational support theory (OST), this study investigates how safety engineers’ non-technical skills in communication and persuasion (i.e. rational and hard influence tactics) are related with their management support, and how management support is related with their individual task proficiency (ITP). The purpose of this paper is to examine the moderating role of safety engineers’ expert power in this context.

Using an online questionnaire, survey data were collected from 251 safety engineers working in Austria.

Rational influence tactics are positively related to ITP via management support, whereas hard influence tactics are not. Safety engineers’ expert power moderates the relationship between influence tactics and management support and, consequently ITP. High (vs low) expert status strengthens the positive relationship of rational influence tactics on ITP via management support. For hard influence tactics, high (vs low) expert power buffered the negative relationship of upward appeal and pressure on ITP via management support.

Safety engineers should rely on rational persuasion when cooperating with management to obtain support and improve their own performance.

This study connects the effect of influence tactics in the context of safety engineers’ work performance with OST. It demonstrates that safety engineers’ influence tactics are related to work role performance through management support and that these relationships are moderated by expert power.

This research aims to compare consumer responses to pro-environmental communication and appeals to recycle packaging when these messages come from a high-familiarity versus a low-familiarity brand.

Two online between-subjects experimental studies evaluate consumer perceptions and the willingness to comply with recycling appeals in response to pro-environmental communications from a high-familiarity versus a low-familiarity brand. To test the hypotheses, the studies examine the moderating role of sustainability habits and the mediating role of shared environmental responsibility.

Findings show that communicating a brand’s adoption of sustainable packaging is more salient to consumers when the appeal comes from a low-familiarity rather than a high-familiarity brand, especially when sustainability habits are weaker. The mediating role of shared environmental responsibility partly explains consumers’ commitment to act pro-environmentally.

Sustainability officials and policymakers should consider the impact of pro-environmental interventions that encourage collective recycling between brands and consumers. Practitioners are encouraged to examine revised waste management schemes such as extended producer responsibility programs to elicit the collaboration of consumers in initiatives that boost recycling and stimulate pro-environmental behaviors.

Using the diagnosticity–accessibility framework and habit theory, to the best of the author’s knowledge, this research is among the first to empirically examine the role of sustainability habits in consumer responses to pro-environmental brand communications. It also highlights consumers’ willingness to comply with brands’ take-back programs in a shared effort to reduce plastic waste and encourage a circular economy.

Customization by segmenting within human–computer interaction is an emerging phenomenon. Appealing graphical elements that cater to user needs are considered progressively important, as the way a graphic is visually represented can greatly contribute to the interaction. However, aesthetic perceptions are subjective and may differ by target group. Understanding variations in user perceptions may aid in design processes; therefore, we set out to investigate the effects of demographic differences relating to perceptions of graphical user interface (GUI) element (i.e. game app icon) aesthetics.

The authors employed a vignette experiment with random participant (n = 513) assignment to evaluate 4 icons from a total of 68 pre-selected mobile game icons using semantic differential scales. This resulted in a total of 2052 individual icon evaluations. Regression analyses were performed with the effects of age, gender and time using graphical user interfaces (i.e. app stores) and the interactions of these variables relating to perceptions of GUI element aesthetics.

The results indicate that, overall, demographic factors have relatively little effect on how icons are perceived. Significant relations suggest that experienced users, younger audiences and women are more critical in their perception of aesthetic excellence, and that perceptions change for younger women. The implications of the findings are discussed via adaptive decision-making theory.

In the context of graphical user interface element aesthetics, demographic differences have received minimal attention as moderating variables regardless of their relevance in design and development. Hence, it merits further research.

Drug sales facilitated through digital communication on the surface web and on darknet cryptomarkets have increased during the past two decades. This has resulted in an increase in drug law enforcement efforts to combat these markets and a subsequent increase in judicial sentencing of people selling drugs online. The aim of this study was to analyze how Swedish courts describe sentenced sellers and how the courts apply case law.

The empirical material consists of 71 sentencing documents produced by Swedish courts in cases of online drug selling between January 1, 2010 and January 1, 2020. In total, 99 sentenced persons occur in the documents. Using a qualitative research design, the authors analyzed the material through thematic text analysis.

Overall, in their descriptions of online drug sale operations, the courts’ characterizations of the concepts of street capital and digital capital show a dichotomy. These forms of capital are situationally described as both aggravating and mitigating aspects in the application of case law, indicating that it may be fruitful to view both street and digital capital as resources used on contemporary drug markets in general.

Very little research exists into how judicial systems describe and perceive the developing phenomenon of online drug sales. Using a relatively large sample from a decade of sentencing, the authors provide an analysis of how Swedish courts view and valuate capital forms in the online drugs trade.

Patronage of local footwear have not been encouraging in Nigeria despite recent investments. The purpose of the study is to evaluate celebrity endorsement and customer patronage of small and medium-scale enterprises (SMEs) products in African context, with focus on trustworthiness, expertise, attractiveness, respect and similarity (TEARS) model.

The research was designed as a descriptive survey. An online structured questionnaire was applied for data collection. Cronbach Alpha and content validity were used for reliability and validity, respectively. TEARS model was used to ascertain key dimensions, and Pearson correlation coefficient and logistic regression were applied into the analysis.

The findings reveal that celebrity endorsement is not associated with patronage of local footwears, though TEARS model analysis indicates the direction of consumers rating on celebrity endorsement. Factors such as recommendation and quality impact the consumer willingness to buy local footwear.

The small sample size calls for caution in generalization.

The study suggests that although the TEARs model is viable, all the dimensions are mutually exclusive. However, this depends on the characteristics of the brand. In driving patronage, managers must pay attention to personal and non-personal cues such as price, quality and source of information about their brand.

The originality is buttressed from the value it provides for local product production and patronage. The significant factors are indicated as key to addressing low patronage.