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The study examines audit reports of a federal loan program which has a high incidence of reported irregularities. The following research questions are examined: (1) are there characteristics common to projects in which irregularities are reported? (2) Can variables be identified which are significant in differentiating between projects with and without reported irregularities? Projects with reported irregularities are found to be significantly associated with internal control weaknesses, related party transactions, lower net income, smaller cash flow, fewer projects per developer, and an auditor with fewer Farmers Home Administration (FmHA) clients.

The perspectives of industry instructors from a case enterprise were adopted to analyze various contexts of internship implementation and to examine feasible strategies for incorporating internships in the human resource development process.

A Taiwanese enterprise stationed in China was selected for case study. This study focused on the 2019 summer internship program. Interviews were conducted with 23 industry instructors.

(1) Units should effectively employ interns by guiding them to learn by doing tasks. (2) Provide training and assign personal industry instructors to guide interns in learning by doing, thereby establishing workplace relationships in advance. (3) High-level leaders and senior managers must pay close attention to internship results and inspire industry instructors and interns to perform internship tasks. (4) Managers of internship units must participate in interviews to select potential employees that satisfy unit requirements. (5) Opportunities for university teachers to interact with enterprises and recommend interested students who learn knowledge, skills, abilities and other characteristics (KSAOs) that fulfill enterprise requirements should be increased.

Enterprises must systematically plan internship tasks, recruitment and selection, as well as practices and reports if they wish to employ interns as potential human resource.

This study used the practical perspectives of industry instructors to establish the contexts and strategies of intern training for human resource development. The results of this study are expected to provide a reference for enterprises in planning internship workplaces and increase their willingness to employ interns.

This paper aims to investigate the effects of informativeness, entertainment and credibility of social media on the perceived value of advertising for Muslim millennial parents. It evaluates the impact of these variables on brand awareness and purchase intention.

This study uses a mixed-method analysis with two stages. In the first stage, information from social media was collected. The second stage involved an online survey of 210 Muslim millennial parents. Structural equation modeling-partial least squares was used to test the study’s prediction.

The results showed that informativeness, entertainment and credibility of the message significantly influence Muslim millennial parents’ perceived value of social media advertising. These aspects also have a significant effect on brand awareness and purchase intention. The parents appreciate entertainment most, followed by the informativeness and credibility of the message.

This study offers new insights on Muslim millennial parents as a new segment in the market. Social media advertising is the most appropriate strategy for approaching this segment, and therefore, should be given much attention by marketers. The message created needs to be informative, entertaining and credible. It should consider culture, Islamic values and tradition.

The study contributes to the evaluation of a new trend for Muslim millennials as young parents. The tendency to spend more time using social media as the primary source of information is evaluated. Additionally, this study gives marketers a better understanding of Muslim millennial parents, especially in a collective society.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the knowledge needs of a small, volunteer‐based Non‐Profit Organization (NPO) and present recommendations for implementation of KM solutions.

The methodology used in this paper is the knowledge audit. Data collection methods include semi‐structured interviews, documentary photography, and a review of content on the NPO's website.

The paper recommends a combination of web 2.0 technology and low‐tech solutions to meet the KM needs of the volunteer‐based organization within the constraints of its limited resources. Based on the observation that dedicated and reliable volunteers are critical to this organization's success, the paper proposes that the KM solution address personal knowledge needs related to volunteer motivation factors as a strategy for improving volunteer recruitment and retention.

The study examined a small group of volunteers engaged in a specialized form of knowledge‐sharing work. Future research could test this paper's conclusions in larger and more diverse volunteer‐based NPOs.

The paper extends KM research into the realm of volunteer‐based NPOs and adopts elements from Motivation‐Hygiene theory as well as specific volunteer motivation factors as additional criteria for a KM solution.

This study aimed to acquire knowledge about Singapore secondary school (ages 13 to 16 years old) students' skills in searching, evaluating and using information.

A comprehensive instrument encompassing the basic information literacy (IL) skills, as well as a new dimension of ethical usage of information and collaborative information seeking was used for data collection. From August to November 2010, a total of eight schools comprising 3,164 students participated in this study.

It was a matter of concern that various kinds of libraries, including school libraries, were found to be under-utilized. From the test that was administered to assess the IL skills of students, the results were found to be generally unsatisfactory as each of the major categories of IL skills recorded a score that is below 50 (out of a maximum of 100) except for “task definition”. For skills related to “information seeking strategies”, “location & access” and “information use”, the types of schools, academic streams of study, and students' family background seemed to have significant influences.

This study is the first large-scale survey conducted in Singapore that sought to test the IL skills of secondary school students. The findings are useful in assessing the current effectiveness of IL integration, and the need for a more planned approach towards IL competency training within the school curriculum in Singapore.

The purpose of this paper is to add to the existing research about how corporate performance is influenced by their basic research (BR) investment. On this basis, the authors examined the moderating effect of human capital structure (HCS) on the relationship between BR investment and corporate performance.

Hypotheses were tested using static and dynamic models to analyze a large-scale data of Chinese A-share listed companies.

This study provides empirical evidence that contributes to the research about how private BR investment influences corporate performance in the digital age. In addition, human resource is an important dynamic ability for enterprise development. Based on the dynamic capability theory, further research finds that the human resources practice on the knowledge stock can enhance the company’s dynamic capability, thereby enhancing the company’s core competitiveness.

The results may be affected by the context of the data set. This study considers the influence of private research investment type on corporate performance, further studies considering the influence of specific contextual variables, such as corporate industry differences, could yield richer insights that would help validate the results of this study.

This study provides useful information for managers. As well as increasing the investment in the BR of enterprise and creating the necessary conditions to increase the competitiveness of enterprise, they should strive to adjust the structure and quality of researchers involved in BR projects.

This research contributes to the enterprise’s BR investment and the management of human capital resource. It points that the investment of BR positively influences the corporate performance. In addition, the increasing of high-skilled labor’s proportion positively promotes the promotion of BR investment on corporate performance.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the relationship between Six Sigma, organizational learning and innovation performance. Also, whether organizational learning advance innovation performance by playing a mediating role between Six Sigma and innovation performance, probing the moderating effects of organizational types between six sigma and organizational learning, and also testing a proposed model to explain the relationships among Six Sigma, organizational type organizational learning, and innovation performance through an empirical examination in the Indian industry context.

Correlations are used to analyze the degree of relationship between constructs and to further understand the direct and indirect effects, as well as the moderating and mediating effects among the constructs in model, structural equation modeling is conducted using AMOS 6.0 on data collected from Indian industries.

This study proves the positive relationship between Six Sigma and organizational learning. It also confirms that Six Sigma role structure and Six Sigma focus on metrics contributes positively to organizational innovation, however, Six Sigma structured improvement procedure was found to be negatively related to organizational innovation, thus contributing to Six Sigma‐Innovation Paradox. This study also rejects moderating effects of organizational type between Six Sigma and organizational learning.

Cultural context is a critical factor not only on Six Sigma, but also organizational learning, and organization innovation for investigating hence future study should consider this aspect. This research suggests the need for more intensive research to explore in more depth the relationship between Six Sigma structured improvement procedure, and the administrative and the technical innovation to identify the existence of potentially mediating variables in order to understand what is named the Six Sigma‐Innovation Paradox.

The findings are useful for business managers in developing countries such as India, who want to enhance business performance through implementing Six Sigma practices that support their firm's product and services innovation efforts.

The study has contributed to establishing an empirical research between Six Sigma, organizational learning and organizational innovations that facilitates more quality management research in developing countries. It has contributed to clarifying the disputed relationship between Six Sigma practices and the firm's learning and innovativeness, and shows empirical evidence in India to confirm that the Six Sigma practices deployed by a firm has a positive impact on its organizational learning. Six Sigma focuses on role structure and metrics contributed positively to innovation, however the Six Sigma effect of procedure on organizational innovation is negatively related, thus opening new areas of Six Sigma‐Innovation Paradox.

This paper presents the findings of a study that explores the use of school libraries and their resources by teachers, their level of collaboration with their school librarian, and the problems faced by them in using these libraries.

A questionnaire survey was conducted and 76 teachers from seven schools in Singapore participated in the study.

The results showed that teachers generally did not use their school libraries and various information resources effectively, mainly due to the inadequacy of their school libraries in terms of educational materials. In addition, teachers typically did not collaborate with their school librarian in planning their lessons or other academic activities.

The study only managed to involve 76 teachers from seven schools. A larger number of respondents would have been more desirable. However, these 76 respondents represented teachers with teaching experiences that ranged from less than 3 years to more than 20 years. The study provided an insight into the situation of school library use by teachers in Singapore and their related factors. This insight could in turn yield initiatives on various aspects of school library research, such as the role of the school library in the school curriculum, and how school library usage by teachers or school librarian‐teacher collaboration can be improved.

The study proposes that teachers be familiarised with the role of school libraries and librarians through in‐service and pre‐service teacher training courses and through school library outreach programmes.

The paper highlights the importance of the school library in the school curriculum, presents the elements that can contribute to or work against the use of the school library by teachers, and most importantly, proposes strategies that can be implemented to improve the situation as revealed in the study.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the socio-economic impacts of AIDS on families caring for AIDS-orphaned children in Mbeya rural district, Tanzania.

A qualitative inquiry employing one-on-one in-depth interviews was conducted in 2015. Purposive sampling technique was used to recruit participants (n=24) comprising 20 heads of families caring for AIDS-orphaned children, two local government staff and two staff from Isangati Agricultural Development Organisation – a non-government organisation. Qualitative data were analysed using thematic and framework approach.

Results demonstrated that families caring for AIDS-orphaned children experienced severe socio-economic impacts of the epidemic. Reduction in household savings, increase in living expenses on health care and increased education fees were the identified economic impacts on these families. Social impacts included labour shortage, withdrawal of children from school and increased demand for food.

There is a need for urgent responses and for scaling up programmes delivered by organisations, institutions and the government of Tanzania to help families cope with these impacts.

This study provides evidence on socio-economic impacts of AIDS on families caring for AIDS-orphaned children in Tanzania. An understanding of these impacts can help governmental and non-governmental institutions and programme planners to address the problem in their policies and develop evidence-based strategies and interventions in responding to the problem in Mbeya and Tanzania. Moreover, responses to reducing the impacts of AIDS on families require a holistic approach that encourages the involvement of all sectors and agents outside of the health sector.

The purpose of this paper is to develop a model for generic competencies based on lifecycle orientation of projects to support infrastructure managers (IMs) in India.

This study has reviewed literature on competency theories and their advancement of knowledge in management, construction and engineering projects. This study has applied exploratory factor analysis (EFA) to structure generic competencies founded on infrastructure practices in India. Further this study has applied confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) to test for confirmation on emerged dimensionality of the competence construct for IMs in India.

Using data collected from 175 usable questionnaires of managers serving in infrastructure firms in India for EFA followed by CFA, six generic competencies have been established in the domains of strategic, analytical, personal, managerial, professional and leadership dimensions significantly impacting competent performance.

This study has applied plausibility sampling and it presents only generic competencies for executives working in the infrastructure sector alone.

Due to the growth in number of executives to be employed in infrastructure firms in India, academic institutions in this subcontinent have gained momentum in offering programmes covering the field of infrastructure management. These institutions are believed to be covering domains of strategic, analytical, personal, managerial, professional and leadership dimensions for assuring competent performance of IMs in India.

Attention to these generic competencies can help IMs to contribute towards better performance, academic institutions to design curriculum, recruiters to acquire talent and executives to advance professionally.

Extant academic studies relating to generic competencies are available mostly in project and construction domains. There is a paucity of such academic studies in the domain of infrastructure.