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In recent years, there is a steady increase of studies documenting the emergence of “contracting back-in” in many countries around the world, that is, governments bringing previously contracted services back in-house and once again relying on public employees to deliver these services. Through a survey of the academic discourse on contracting back-in, this manuscript describes the phenomenon of contracting back-in and discusses its implications for “bringing the state back in”.

The manuscript conducts a systematic review of existing literature on contracting back-in with a focus on the scope and rationale of contracting back-in.

The existing literature demonstrates that contracting back-in is often as common as contracting out and can be found in a variety of countries and across different service areas. Existing studies also suggest that contracting back-in is driven by a mix of managerial, political, and environmental factors. The rise of contracting back-in could imply a revival of the administrative state in public governance and a more dynamic, potentially more complicated, system of public service delivery.

The manuscript contributes to the special issue on “bringing the state back in” through the lens of government contracting. It adds a number of implications to the discussion on the emergence of the “new” administrative state and strategies to reinvent it.

The purpose of this study is to develop new type of reverse mortgage contract. How to provide adequate services and housing for an increasing number of people that are dependent on the help of others is a crucial question in the European Union (EU). The housing stock in Europe is not fit to support a shift from institutional care to the home-based independent living. Some 90% of houses in the UK and 70%–80% in Germany are not adequately built, as they contain accessibility barriers for people with emerging functional impairments. The available reverse mortgage contracts do not allow for relocation to their own adapted facilities. How to finance the adaptation from housing equity is discussed.

The authors have extended the existing loan reverse mortgage model. Actuarial methods based on the equivalence of the actuarial present values and the multiple decrement approach are used to evaluate premiums for flexible longevity and lifetime long-term care (LTC) insurance for financing adequate facilities.

The adequate, age-friendly housing provision that is appropriate to support the independence and autonomy of seniors with declining functional capacities can lower the cost of health care and improve the well-being of older adults. For financing the development of this kind of facilities for seniors, the authors developed the reverse mortgage scheme with embedded longevity and LTC insurance as a possible financial instrument for better LTC services and housing with care in assisted-living facilities. This kind of facilities should be available for the rapid growth of older cohorts.

The numerical example is based on rather crude numbers, because of lack of data, as the developed reverse mortgage product with LTC insurance is a novelty. Intensity of care and probabilities of care in certain category of care will change after the introduction of this product.

The model results indicate that it is possible to successfully tie an insurance product to the insured and not to the object.

The introduction of this insurance option will allow many older adult with low pension benefits and a substantial home equity to safely opt for a reverse mortgage and benefit from better social care.

While currently available reverse mortgage contracts lapse when the homeowner moves to assisted-living facilities in any EU Member State, in the paper a new method is developed where multiple adjustments of housing to the functional capacities with relocation is possible, under the same insurance and reverse mortgage contract. The case of Slovenia is presented as a numerical example. These insurance products, as a novelty, are portable, so the homeowner can move in own specialised housing unit in assisted-living facilities and keep the existing reverse mortgage contract with no additional costs, which is not possible in the current insurance products. With some small modifications, the method is useful for any EU Member State.

Discusses the savings that can result from online reverse auctions for the specific case of buyer‐designed machined parts. Distinguishes between gross and net savings, and highlights factors that can reduce the magnitude of anticipated savings. Determines that the savings actually achieved are less than that reported by suppliers of online auction services for the type of buyer‐designed production materials under consideration. Examines the root cause of why managers use online reverse auctions to reduce the price of purchased goods and services. Concludes that the root cause of online reverse auctions is local optimization of the business system along functional, managerial, or financial dimensions, which in turn perpetuates chronic underutilization of valuable internal and external resources.

The year 2020 heralds a landmark in Malaysia’s demographic and economic landscape, as the country is expected to become an ageing country, as well as aspiring of becoming a high-income country. The elderly persons are, however, reported to be vulnerable to the risk of financial insecurity in old age, which if not addressed can affect the country’s effort of accomplishing the Vision 2020 goal of becoming a high-income nation. Therefore, this paper aims to explore the factors that are capable of affecting the development of reverse mortgage market in Malaysia from the perspective of the financial service professionals.

The study is a qualitative design that involves the use of semi-structured questionnaire as data collection strategy. A total number of nine participants were selected for the interview using critical case sample scheme based on purposive sampling strategy.

The findings reveal that various economic, socio-demographic, behavioural and political/institutional factors would impose varying degrees of influence on reverse mortgage market in Malaysia.

The study is expected to spur discussion among stakeholders on the practicability of using reverse mortgage as alternative source of old-age financing in Malaysia.

No one denies that Islamic finance has grown during the last 40 years and numerous Islamic financial instruments have innovated and developed in order to cater to the needs of Muslims. However, the sale- and service-based contracts remain dominant in the market and contribute to creating more debt. Partnership contracts such as mudarabah or musahrakah are least popular due to several practical problems. This chapter examines and identifies the practical challenges of classical mudarabah and proposes a new Islamic financing model – reserve mudarabah with appropriate examples. The model can be a useful tool for SME financing and in Islamic microfinance.

With rising environmental concerns, recent years have witnessed a significant surge of academic and corporate interest in green supply chain coordination (GSCC). This is evident from the rise in channel coordination literature focused toward the elimination of sub-optimal in the green supply chain (GSC). This paper seeks to summarize the model-based research on coordination in GSCs with the help of a framework developed specifically for this paper. The purpose of this paper is to present an in-depth analysis of the widely used models in the area.

A review of literature is presented in this paper to examine the underlying concepts peculiar to GSCC. A classification framework is developed to present an exhaustive survey of commonly used concepts.

Around 90 percent of the papers on GSCC come from game theory (GT) application, which explicitly utilizes coordination through contracts. The review concludes prospective area of research in GSCC. The study posits that there exists a potential of creating a more rational and efficient coordination strategies to improve GSC’s operational performance, with the view of the optimum distribution of resources and better environmental management.

To the best of authors’ knowledge, this is the first state-of-the-art review of GSCC literature focused primarily on mathematical model-based literature. This review identifies various methodological and content-oriented characteristics of GSCC. The paper also opens avenues of future research.

Reverse supply chain (RSC) is one of the ways to handle product returns efficiently. Recovery of residual value from product returns also helps in achieving sustainability. Its successful implementation requires coordination among all the channel members involved in the activities, from the acquisition to collection to the disposition of returned products. This article aims to review the literature about coordination issues in the RSC.

A systematic literature review of 151 articles published during 2004–2021 is carried out. Theory, context and methodology (TCM) framework of the literature review is used to identify the research gaps for future research directions.

This study identifies the characteristics of RSC coordination. It includes channel structures; coordination mechanisms; performance measuring parameters; the methodology applied and explored industries. The review shows that game-theoretical modeling in RSC coordination is the most commonly used method to coordinate the channels. It was found that issues like disruption, fairness and corporate social responsibility are not explored in-depth and offer much potential for future research.

There are very limited studies on coordination issues in the RSC. The proposed articles add value by considering RSC issues from different strategic, government, consumers' behavior and functionality decision-making point of view.

The present study aims to reveal knowledge, report on perception level and look at the evaluation of exchange rate risk management techniques of enterprises registered to Afyonkarahisar Chamber of Commerce and Industry. In order to achieve this, the authors conducted a study that included a field-survey and consisted of 223 enterprises that have foreign trade transactions in Afyonkarahisar city. The data that were used in the analysis had been collected via a survey and they were statistically evaluated by SPSS program.

Within the scope of the study, the authors investigated the determination of corporational identity of the sampled manufacturing enterprises, organisational structure of finance departments, determination of ownership structures of these enterprises, determination of foreign exchange risk perceptions, classification of exchange rate risks according to industry type and the determination of risk management instruments such as internal and external hedging strategies and information and usage levels of derivative instruments.

The most important result obtained in the study is that the majority of the companies, which operate in a competitive environment, are intensely exposed to foreign exchange risk but try to overcome the foreign exchange risk using traditional internal firm-level hedging methods instead of well-reputed external hedging methods or derivative instruments. Firms declared to be out of knowledge – by any means – for derivative instruments as the main reason for not utilising a well-reputed external foreign exchange risk management techniques.

Recycling has experienced rapid growth as a technique to reduce the solid waste stream volume. Despite the public appeal and acceptance of recycling, the reverse logistics channels used in recycling have received minimal attention. However, the reverse channels′ membership and capabilities have a significant impact on the efficiency of processing recyclable material for remanufacture into recycled products. Differing product characteristics, extensive handling, and low density shipments pose considerable obstacles to establishing an efficient reverse channel for recyclable commodities. A framework, based on interviews and current literature, describes the reverse logistics channel structure, membership and functions, and provides a foundation for identifying the issues affecting efficiency and marketability, and possible future directions for improving efficiency within the reverse channel structure.

Researchers in supply chain (SC) payment management have long sought to understand how project contractors, project owners, specialist contractors, and suppliers behave in the context of negotiating payment terms that improve contractors' SC cash flow.

Using a single case study approach, semi‐structured interviews with contract and project managers identify behavioral patterns. An analysis of categorical experiments and Spearman's correlation tests on 118 surveys from Taiwanese project contracting corporations generalizes the case findings.

The findings suggest that payment terms of project owners, specialists, and suppliers have an important impact on contractors' working capital. The findings also reveal that contractors pass project owners' payment terms down to specialists and suppliers, suggesting that contractors' behavior depends on that of the project owners.

This paper generalizes the case findings via surveys, but does not assume that the reported behavior patterns apply to all business enterprises. Future research could triangulate the findings.

This study combines qualitative and quantitative methods to understand how the project owner‐contractor‐supplier (or owner‐contractor‐specialist) triad behaves. Particularly, it focuses on an economic sector – real estate and construction – that receives less research interest than processing or manufacturing.