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1 – 10 of 851Anna Herculina Anculien Schoeman, Christopher C. Evans and Hanneke Du Preez
Correct registration for the value-added tax (VAT) is a key aspect of tax compliance; it is vital in ensuring adequate tax revenue collection in all countries but particularly in…
Abstract
Purpose
Correct registration for the value-added tax (VAT) is a key aspect of tax compliance; it is vital in ensuring adequate tax revenue collection in all countries but particularly in developing countries such as South Africa. Non-registration hinders sufficient tax revenue collection, stifles economic growth and causes unfair competition with formal businesses. The purpose of this study is to determine whether changes in the VAT rate affect the registration decisions of businesses, ultimately impacting upon tax compliance behaviour and tax revenue collection.
Design/methodology/approach
An online 2 × 2 between-subjects field experiment was conducted, as part of a broader study, to consider compliance with registration requirements by small business entities in South Africa, specifically when there are changes in the VAT rate.
Findings
Although the study establishes that changes in the VAT rate tend not to have a significant impact on the registration decisions of such taxpayers, it nonetheless indicates that the magnitude of the change in the VAT rate may be influential on registration decisions, whether relating to compulsory or voluntary registration. More particularly, the greater the magnitude of the VAT rate decrease (increase), the more likely it is that taxpayers will register (deregister) for VAT purposes, indicating that the magnitude of changes in the VAT rate do have an impact on VAT registration decisions and therefore on tax compliance more generally.
Research limitations/implications
Not only does the study add to the limited knowledge available on registration decisions of small businesses, but also gives valuable guidance to policymakers in terms of determining the VAT rate for the country.
Originality/value
Not only does the study add to the limited knowledge available on registration decisions of small businesses, but it also gives valuable guidance to policymakers in terms of determining the VAT rate for the country.
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This study aims to investigate the factors that affect the likelihood of formalizing informal sector activities in 13 Sub-Saharan African countries, using World Bank enterprise…
Abstract
Purpose
This study aims to investigate the factors that affect the likelihood of formalizing informal sector activities in 13 Sub-Saharan African countries, using World Bank enterprise survey data collected between the periods 2009 and 2018. Notwithstanding the great contribution of the informal economy in Africa, developing countries may stand to gain more if they make inroads in formalizing the informal sector.
Design/methodology/approach
Since the dependent variable is binary taking the value of one if the firm is willing to formalize and zero otherwise, the study will employ a discrete choice probit model.
Findings
Results inter alia show that firms that are more likely to formalize are young, owned by individuals with high levels of education and, have registered before. Governments should therefore target firms that are young and provide them with information about the benefits of registration, and if these firms are owned by experienced and educated individuals, the likelihood for them to register would be high.
Research limitations/implications
The study uses cross sectional data and therefore cannot capture time variant factors affecting the probability to register and also cannot correct effectively for endogeneity.
Practical implications
Governments should therefore target firms that are young and provide them with as much information as possible about the benefits of registration, and if these firms are owned by experienced and educated individuals, the likelihood to convince them to register would be high. They should also reduce the cost of registration so as to improve net benefits in line with the rational exit view.
Social implications
Formalizing informal activities will help improve the performance of these firms, reduce vulnerable employment as well as crime, poverty and inequality. Providing decent operating and working conditions to informal players will reduce social and political unrest.
Originality/value
The African continent is home to many informal firms accounting for roughly 55% of economic activity with 90% of workers eking out a living in a sector that does not respect worker rights, provide decent working conditions and where changes in growth have done little to reduce its size. Regulatory reforms have also been implemented resulting in the number of start-up registration procedures falling from 11 in 2003 to seven in 2019. The uniqueness of Sub Saharan Africa in terms of entrepreneurial culture, political, institutional and economic conditions as well as lack of consensus in the extant empirical literature make this study pertinent.
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Youseline Garavito Hernández and Javier Francisco Rueda Galvis
The purpose of this paper is to expose the impact of innovation and patent registration, as a strategy that contributes to business success in the current competitive and…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to expose the impact of innovation and patent registration, as a strategy that contributes to business success in the current competitive and globalized market conditions.
Design/methodology/approach
This paper presents a study on the innovation and contribution of the patent registry in the growth of economic sales of 1,746 companies in the Colombian manufacturing sector, whose applied methodology was a statistical correlation analysis and a binary logistic regression.
Findings
The results reveal a positive relationship among incremental product innovations with the achievement of sales success, although it is evident that patent registration negatively influences business success as a factor in innovation.
Originality/value
This study allows organizations to understand the importance of developing innovation processes and patent registration as a competitive factor that drives sales growth and success.
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Martin Ahlenius, Björn Berggren, Tommy Gerdemark, Jonas Kågström and Lars-Johan Åge
The purpose of this article is to describe and analyze the occupational life cycle of Swedish real estate brokers.
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this article is to describe and analyze the occupational life cycle of Swedish real estate brokers.
Design/methodology/approach
Voluntary turnover among real estate brokers could lead to occupational turnover and/or employee turnover and has been described as problematic by both practitioners and researchers alike. Most previous studies focusing on this issue have explored connections between real estate brokers' personality, economic and market conditions and turnover. Employee turnover involves shifting jobs within the profession (real estate brokerage), whereas occupational turnover concerns movement to a job not related to the real estate brokerage profession. Both perspectives on turnover are however lacking data about the average time spent as a broker. This study fills this gap by exploring real estate brokers' life cycle through data analysis using a cohort study consisting of a sample of 5,304 real estate brokers registered and/or deregistered over a ten-year period from 2010 to 2019.
Findings
The analysis show that the decline is almost linear, resulting in 50% of the newly registered real estate brokers remain in the occupation eight years after registration. These findings are not in line with previous assumptions as the real estate brokers' life cycle is substantially longer. The results also reveal that there are differences in life cycles due to gender and year of registration.
Originality/value
The analysis of longitudinal, aggregated data on the life cycle of real estate brokers is highly relevant as it serves as a point of reference for future longitudinal studies analyzing the motives for leaving the occupation.
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Linh Truong-Hong, Roderik Lindenbergh and Thu Anh Nguyen
Terrestrial laser scanning (TLS) point clouds have been widely used in deformation measurement for structures. However, reliability and accuracy of resulting deformation…
Abstract
Purpose
Terrestrial laser scanning (TLS) point clouds have been widely used in deformation measurement for structures. However, reliability and accuracy of resulting deformation estimation strongly depends on quality of each step of a workflow, which are not fully addressed. This study aims to give insight error of these steps, and results of the study would be guidelines for a practical community to either develop a new workflow or refine an existing one of deformation estimation based on TLS point clouds. Thus, the main contributions of the paper are investigating point cloud registration error affecting resulting deformation estimation, identifying an appropriate segmentation method used to extract data points of a deformed surface, investigating a methodology to determine an un-deformed or a reference surface for estimating deformation, and proposing a methodology to minimize the impact of outlier, noisy data and/or mixed pixels on deformation estimation.
Design/methodology/approach
In practice, the quality of data point clouds and of surface extraction strongly impacts on resulting deformation estimation based on laser scanning point clouds, which can cause an incorrect decision on the state of the structure if uncertainty is available. In an effort to have more comprehensive insight into those impacts, this study addresses four issues: data errors due to data registration from multiple scanning stations (Issue 1), methods used to extract point clouds of structure surfaces (Issue 2), selection of the reference surface Sref to measure deformation (Issue 3), and available outlier and/or mixed pixels (Issue 4). This investigation demonstrates through estimating deformation of the bridge abutment, building and an oil storage tank.
Findings
The study shows that both random sample consensus (RANSAC) and region growing–based methods [a cell-based/voxel-based region growing (CRG/VRG)] can be extracted data points of surfaces, but RANSAC is only applicable for a primary primitive surface (e.g. a plane in this study) subjected to a small deformation (case study 2 and 3) and cannot eliminate mixed pixels. On another hand, CRG and VRG impose a suitable method applied for deformed, free-form surfaces. In addition, in practice, a reference surface of a structure is mostly not available. The use of a fitting plane based on a point cloud of a current surface would cause unrealistic and inaccurate deformation because outlier data points and data points of damaged areas affect an accuracy of the fitting plane. This study would recommend the use of a reference surface determined based on a design concept/specification. A smoothing method with a spatial interval can be effectively minimize, negative impact of outlier, noisy data and/or mixed pixels on deformation estimation.
Research limitations/implications
Due to difficulty in logistics, an independent measurement cannot be established to assess the deformation accuracy based on TLS data point cloud in the case studies of this research. However, common laser scanners using the time-of-flight or phase-shift principle provide point clouds with accuracy in the order of 1–6 mm, while the point clouds of triangulation scanners have sub-millimetre accuracy.
Practical implications
This study aims to give insight error of these steps, and the results of the study would be guidelines for a practical community to either develop a new workflow or refine an existing one of deformation estimation based on TLS point clouds.
Social implications
The results of this study would provide guidelines for a practical community to either develop a new workflow or refine an existing one of deformation estimation based on TLS point clouds. A low-cost method can be applied for deformation analysis of the structure.
Originality/value
Although a large amount of the studies used laser scanning to measure structure deformation in the last two decades, the methods mainly applied were to measure change between two states (or epochs) of the structure surface and focused on quantifying deformation-based TLS point clouds. Those studies proved that a laser scanner could be an alternative unit to acquire spatial information for deformation monitoring. However, there are still challenges in establishing an appropriate procedure to collect a high quality of point clouds and develop methods to interpret the point clouds to obtain reliable and accurate deformation, when uncertainty, including data quality and reference information, is available. Therefore, this study demonstrates the impact of data quality in a term of point cloud registration error, selected methods for extracting point clouds of surfaces, identifying reference information, and available outlier, noisy data and/or mixed pixels on deformation estimation.
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Jiming Cai, Du Guonan and Liu Yuan
The purpose of this paper is to estimate the real urbanization level in China so as to provide a measurement that can be compared with the international level.
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to estimate the real urbanization level in China so as to provide a measurement that can be compared with the international level.
Design/methodology/approach
Taking into consideration 300m residents living in the administrative towns (300m residents here are referred to the population in administrative towns, including those in all counties), the gap between the urbanization rate of China and that of the world average becomes much wider.
Findings
China, however, implements the administrative system of government at the central, provincial, municipal, county and township levels. By city, it means the jurisdiction at and above the level of county, which includes the municipality directly under the central government, prefecture-level municipal and county. By town, it means the jurisdiction below the level of county (including the Chengguan Town, or capital town, where the county government is located) and exclusive of rural townships.
Originality/value
China has witnessed rapid development for 40 years since the reform and opening up in 1978. Nowadays, China has already stepped into the period of post-industrialization, with its urbanization rate (UR) of permanent population reaching 58.58 percent. However, on the basis of registered population, the UR is 43.37 percent, which is not only far below the average level of 81.3 percent in high-income countries, but also lower than the average of 65.8 percent in upper middle-income countries which are comparable to China in terms of per capita income. (The classification of state income level is based on the data of national income per capita and division standards in 2016 from the World Bank, in which annual revenue per capita in high-income countries reaches over US$12,736 and that in upper middle-income countries between US$4,126 and US$12,735.)
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Tawanda Machingura, Gurjeet Kaur, Chris Lloyd, Sharon Mickan, David Shum, Evelyne Rathbone and Heather Green
Previous research has provided limited evidence on whether and how demographic factors associate with sensory processing patterns (SPP) in adults. This paper aims to examine…
Abstract
Purpose
Previous research has provided limited evidence on whether and how demographic factors associate with sensory processing patterns (SPP) in adults. This paper aims to examine relationships between SPPs and sociodemographic factors of age, sex, education and ethnicity in healthy adults.
Design/methodology/approach
A cross-sectional study design was used. A total of 71 adult participants was recruited from the community, using convenience sampling. Each participant completed the Adolescent/Adult Sensory Profile (AASP) and the Depression Anxiety Stress Scales – short version (DASS-21). Demographic information on age, sex, education and ethnicity was collected. Results were analysed using descriptive statistics and multivariate analyses of covariance (MANCOVA).
Findings
SPPs, as measured by the AASP, were significantly correlated to demographic factors of age and education after controlling for emotional distress using the DASS-21. A statistically significant multivariate effect was found across the four dependent variables (low registration, seeking, sensitivity and avoiding) for the age category, F = 6.922, p = 0.009,
Research limitations/implications
This was a cross-sectional study with limitations including that the study used a relatively small sample and was based on self-reported healthy participants.
Practical implications
SPPs may correlate with healthy adults’ age and to a lesser extent education. This suggests that it might be helpful to consider such demographic factors when interpreting SPPs in clinical populations, although further research in larger samples is needed to reach firmer conclusions about possible implications of demographic variables.
Originality/value
The findings in this paper add to the growing evidence that suggest that SPPs vary with sociodemographic factors.
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K.A.J.M. Kuruppuarachchi and K.O.L.C Karunanayake
The purpose of this paper is to identify socio-economic/demographic characteristics and to evaluate the knowledge on different open distance learning (ODL) concepts of BSc…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to identify socio-economic/demographic characteristics and to evaluate the knowledge on different open distance learning (ODL) concepts of BSc undergraduates of The Open University of Sri Lanka (OUSL) at first registration.
Design/methodology/approach
The surveying technique was adapted with a piloted structured questionnaire consisting of two components. The structured component was used to evaluate personal, socio-economic and demographic data. The open ended component evaluated the student’s perception on ODL concepts. The questionnaire was randomly adapted to 456 (35 percent Colombo Regional Centre (CRC) registrants) prospective BSc undergraduates at first registration time at the CRC in 2014. Data collected from the structured component were frequency tabulated and cross-tabulated with the SPSS computer software. Responses of the open ended part were examined, categorized and the frequency percentages of each response category were calculated.
Findings
The structured component recognized that the majority of BSc undergraduates of the OUSL represent employed (53 percent), late adolescents (92 percent below age 27) who reside in rural or semi-urban areas (75 percent). They belong mostly to the lower middle class and 69 percent are from families which have a monthly family income below SLR30,000/(USD208). Answers of the open ended component on ODL concepts recognized that, prior knowledge on ODL concepts were developed by most BSc undergraduates. Approximately 50 percent of respondents perceived OUSL as an institute which facilitates working people by conducting part time-based or distance mode education with self-learning features. In total, 56.9 percent students perceived the role of an ODL teacher correctly as a facilitator or a guide. The educational process was perceived correctly as an ODL system by 52 percent, while the remainder also identified the system to be a more self-study and student centered flexible learning system. However, the role of a BSc student at OUSL was recognized as self-independent learners by only 36.7 percent and the majority had no clear perception of the role they have to play as an ODL student. Hence, more attention should be paid to make students recognize the role they have to play in an ODL system in order to succeed at OUSL.
Originality/value
Although research has been carried out periodically on the process of ODL education system at OUSL, on the graduate (output) and dropouts, etc., not many have focused on the nature of input such as characteristic features of first registrant and their prior knowledge on ODL. As the output invariably depends on the input and the process, this type of survey is timely and novel.
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Kasimu Sendawula, Shamirah Najjinda, Marion Nanyanzi, Saadat Nakyejwe Lubowa Kimuli and Ahmad Walugembe
The purpose of this study is to explore how the personal traits of the informal entrepreneurs influence their formalization decisions.
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this study is to explore how the personal traits of the informal entrepreneurs influence their formalization decisions.
Design/methodology/approach
This study adopted a qualitative approach using a multicase design in which 28 informal entrepreneurs situated in Kampala district, Uganda, were engaged. An interview guide, recorders and note books were used in data collection.
Findings
The results indicate that the traits of informal and semiformal entrepreneurs are distinct. Informal entrepreneurs have been noted to be more courageous and resilient, while their semiformal counterparts have greater passion for their businesses. It is thus observed that the formalization prospects are higher for the semiformal entrepreneurs than for their informal counterparts. Entrepreneurs that would be willing to formalize their businesses are discouraged by distance, technology and the cost of involving middlemen. Whereas the resilient entrepreneurs are noted to work through these challenges, the passive ones in both the informal and semiformal categories will not formalize their businesses by giving such excuses.
Originality/value
This study contributes to the extant literature on informal entrepreneurship by providing initial empirical evidence on how the personal traits of the entrepreneurs influence their formalization decisions specifically.
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Grace Branjerdporn, Pamela Meredith, Trish Wilson and Jenny Strong
This paper aims to investigate infant sensory patterns and their associations with previous perinatal loss, maternal-foetal attachment and postnatal maternal sensory patterns.
Abstract
Purpose
This paper aims to investigate infant sensory patterns and their associations with previous perinatal loss, maternal-foetal attachment and postnatal maternal sensory patterns.
Design/methodology/approach
In a prospective cohort study, women with and without perinatal loss (N = 57) were recruited from an Australian public hospital. Participants were surveyed during pregnancy (maternal-foetal attachment, loss) and again postnatally (maternal/infant sensory patterns). Chi-square tests and logistic regression analyses controlling for previous perinatal loss were conducted with infant sensory patterns as outcome variables.
Findings
“More than typical” infant low registration was associated with poorer quality of maternal-foetal attachment. “More than typical” infant sensory seeking was associated with previous perinatal loss and higher levels of maternal sensory seeking. “More than typical” infant sensory sensitivity was linked with previous perinatal loss, poorer quality of maternal-foetal attachment and higher maternal low registration. “More than typical” infant sensory avoidance was associated with poorer quality of maternal-foetal attachment and higher levels of maternal sensory sensitivity.
Practical implications
To support more typical infant sensory patterns, results point to the potential benefit of occupational therapists supporting pregnant women with previous perinatal loss; facilitating favourable maternal-foetal attachment; and educating new mothers on how their sensory patterns impact on interactions with their infant. Sensory modulation strategies that consider the sensory patterns of both mother and infant may be beneficial to promote engagement in co-occupations.
Originality/value
These findings are the first to suggest that previous perinatal loss, poorer quality of maternal-foetal attachment and higher levels of maternal postnatal sensory patterns represent risk factors for infant sensory patterns that are “more than typical.”
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