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The need in disaster response to assess how reliably and equitably funding was accounted for and distributed is addressed by a standardized report and index applicable to any disaster type. The paper aims to discuss this issue.

Data from the Nepal earthquake (2015), Typhoon Haiyan (2013), the Haiti earthquake (2010), Sri Lankan flood (2011), and Hurricane Sandy (2012) illustrate uses of a public equitable allocation of resources log (PEARL). Drawing from activity-based costing and the Gini index, a PEARL spreadsheet computes absolute inequity sector by sector as well as a cumulative index. Response variations guide index value interpretation.

Index values indicates major inequity in Nepal hygiene kit distribution and Haiti earthquake (both PEARL indices near 0.5), moderate inequity for the Sri Lankan flood (index roughly 0.75) and equitable distributions for Typhoon Haiyan and Hurricane Sandy (both indices approximately 0.95). Indices are useful to approximate proportions of inequity in the total response and investigate allocation under uncertainty in sector need specification.

This original tool is implementable using a website containing a practice PEARL, completed examples and downloadable spreadsheet. Used across multiple sectors or for a single sector, PEARL may signal need for additional resources, correct inequitable distribution decisions, simplify administrative monitoring/assessment, and foster greater accounting transparency in summary reports. PEARL also assists historical analysis of all disaster types to determine completeness of public accounting records and equity in fund distribution.

Budgeting in Germany is characterized by procedural continuities which have developed more and more into dignified parts of the German financial constitution. This is true for the way budgets are prepared at the executive level, controlled in parliament and audited. Procedural accuracies do, however, mean little for budgetary outcomes. Typical for these is that hard choices tend to be avoided by the frequent use of off-budget funds, and that, so far, mere lip-service has been paid to the problem of reducing the deficit. Budgetary compromises necessary to reconcile cut-back rhetoric and ever-growing expenditure demands have become more complicated because in most cases the support reform of entitlements. By adding huge new

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the effect of revenue diversification, non-interest income and asset diversification on the performance and stability of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) conventional and Islamic banking systems.

The authors implement a panel of 69 conventional and Islamic banks listed in six GCC markets over the period of 2003–2015, using the System Generalized Method of Moments methodology.

Non-interest income diversification has a negative impact on GCC banks’ performance, while asset-based diversification affects banks performance positively. However, Investors tend to penalize the value of the banks’ assets, which are highly diversified. Government intervention, lack of competition, legal protection and high control of Central banks on GCC banks’ have positive impact on performance. Contrary to the results on conventional banks, asset diversification adds value to Islamic banks. Overall, both banks’ revenue and non-interest diversification have negative impact on GCC banks’ stability, while asset diversification improves Islamic banks’ stability.

The analysis is limited to a sample of banks, which are listed in the GCC stock exchanges. The lack of data on private and foreign banks operating in the region made the analysis and, consequently, the results specific to shareholding companies. Also, the authors’ measures of bank stability might not be appropriate to use for Islamic banks, given their banking models implemented.

Research results provide important implications for regulators, bank managers and policy makers, as to the expected ways to support economic diversification through bank diversification strategies.

Unlike related studies, the authors’ sample of homogeneous banks has a market structure that is different from the samples in the literature covering either developed countries or heterogeneous samples from both developed and developing countries. Furthermore, using an efficient econometric methodology, the authors deal with two types of banks: conventional banks and Islamic banks. The research determines which type of bank is more able to benefit from different types of diversification. Unlike previous research, this research explores the sensitivity of the results both to the regulatory environment of the GCC market and to general market conditions.

This paper aims to investigate a fundamental research question of whether the Islamic banking business model makes corporate earnings more uncertain. This question arises because prior research shows that Islamic banks do well in loan performance but incur more operational costs than conventional banks, indicating the systemic limitation of Islamic banks in business risk management.

The study used a sample of banks to conduct the panel regression analysis with 15 years of data for 532 banks (129 Islamic and 403 conventional) from 23 Muslim countries across the world. The authors estimate earnings uncertainty in two ways: the spread and standard deviation of the country-adjusted return over the sample period and applied the difference-in-difference approach interacting cost to income ratio with the Islamic bank dummy, checking if Islamic bank’s high operational costs contribute to more earning uncertainty.

Islamic banks’ returns on assets are significantly more uncertain than conventional banks due to higher operational costs. Consistent with earlier evidence, the study also finds that Islamic banks generally have fewer nonperforming loans than conventional banks. The authors conclude that Islamic banks trade-off between reducing credit risk and escalating business risk.

This study documents that the Islamic banking model helps build a safer asset portfolio but gives rise to the uncertainty of corporate earnings. Therefore, the choice between Islamic and conventional banking models involves a trade-off between credit and business risks. It is a new finding that we add to the literature body on Islamic finance.

This study examines how various characteristics of the discount retail environment and the overall attitude towards a discount retail store, considered to be an abstract and global image component, influence consumers’ satisfaction and how consumers’ satisfaction, in turn, affects store loyalty. The data, collected from a sample of 517 discount retail customers in Daegu, Korea, indicate that: (1) forming the overall attitude is more closely related to in‐store services: atmosphere, employee service, after sales service and merchandising, (2) store satisfaction is formed through perceived store atmosphere and value, (3) the overall attitude has strong influence on satisfaction and loyalty and its impact is much stronger on loyalty than on satisfaction, (4) store loyalty is directly affected by most significantly location, merchandising and after sale service in order, (5) satisfaction is not related to customers’ committed store revisiting behavior. The applications in management and implications for future research are discussed.

THE catalogue, as a library appliance of importance, has had more attention devoted to it than, perhaps, any other method or factor of librarianship. Its construction, materials, rules for compilation and other aspects have all been considered at great length, and in every conceivable manner, so that little remains for exposition save some points in the policy of the catalogue, and its effects on progress and methods. In the early days of the municipal library movement, when methods were somewhat crude, and hedged round with restrictions of many kinds, the catalogue, even in the primitive form it then assumed, was the only key to the book‐wealth of a library, and as such its value was duly recognized. As time went on, and the vogue of the printed catalogue was consolidated, its importance as an appliance became more and more established, and when the first Newcastle catalogue appeared and received such an unusual amount of journalistic notice, the idea of the printed catalogue as the indispensable library tool was enormously enhanced from that time till quite recently. One undoubted result of this devotion to the catalogue has been to stereotype methods to a great extent, leading in the end to stagnation, and there are places even now where every department of the library is made to revolve round the catalogue. Whether it is altogether wise to subordinate everything in library work to the cult of the catalogue has been questioned by several librarians during the past few years, and it is because there is so much to be said against this policy that the following reflections are submitted.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the views of community representatives participating in a large health service in Australia.

Cross-sectional survey of 49 community representatives and interviews with a purposeful sample of representatives (n=10) and staff (n=19).

Most community representatives had positive attitudes about their value and potential for influence, citing concrete examples of impact. Having an external network or group was related to their beliefs in their ability to add value to their health service. Community representatives largely agreed they provided a link to, and represented, the wider community although most thought staff did not understand their role or how to work with them. Some staff questioned representativeness of their community representatives.

Improving community participation is argued to be important in delivering better healthcare services, but effective engagement and representation at the local level is often challenging. Focusing on community representative views takes us beyond debates around representativeness to identify practical strategies to improve practice. The authors recommend health services recruit consumers with strong links to networks in the community, provide a structured and supported program, and improve staff understanding of the range of possible roles for community representatives. Local examples of community representatives’ impact on policy and practice should be widely communicated.

In giving prominence to the views of consumers using triangulated methods, the authors found most could report with clarity what their role was and how they impacted at their local health service.

The purpose of this paper is to answer the following three questions: what influence has the centrally planned economy and Soviet-style manufacturing had on the evolution and implementation of quality management practices in Bulgaria’s manufacturing sector since the end of the communism; have Bulgaria and its businesses been able to embrace modern quality management philosophies such as TQM, which at times preach the exact opposite philosophies of the Soviet-style manufacturing; and if so, how advanced is the quality mindset of Bulgarian manufacturing businesses today – 24 years after the end of communism?

The paper relies mainly on qualitative research methods. The authors have opted for exploratory approach. Besides an array of articles from scholarly journals, books, and conference proceedings, the authors have relied on five in-depth, semi-structured interviews and one case study in the form of plant visit and observations. The authors have used a framed analytical approach for interpreting the empirical data.

The paper argues that the slow and painful transition from a centrally planned to market economy has impeded the evolution and implementation of QM practices in Bulgaria. More precisely, haphazard reforms in education, lack of highly qualified individuals due to the brain drain in the early 1990s, and the workers’ strong resistance to change have been among the main obstacles in the case of the quality movement.

The work presented in this paper is just the beginning of a series of studies on the quality management initiatives in Bulgaria. To go deeper into the topic, the authors realize that further research in a number of different directions is required. The first direction is related to the degree of relevance of Management Sovieticus in the twenty-first century, which somehow has been completely neglected as a research topic in the last decade. The second direction lies in the aspect of the attributes of Bulgarian managers and their perception toward the importance of the role of quality today.

Countries with similar, political, economic, and social backgrounds – former Eastern Bloc members – can profit a great deal from the authors’ work. More than 20 years since the end of communism, both researchers and entrepreneurs, especially those from the West, have been neglecting the legacy of the centrally planned economy, which has been a major reason for the great number of business failures in the region. The authors’ work seeks to awaken those who still believe that two decades are sufficient to eradicate fully the unfortunate legacy of the command economy.

Little, not to say incremental, research on the quality initiatives in Eastern Europe (*except for Russia) has been conducted so far. As to Bulgaria, the investigation reveals no significant studies on quality management, especially ones published in English. Hence, the authors’ work is the first international study on the evolution and implementation of QM practices in Bulgaria.

This paper aims to explore the nature of Industry 4.0 (I4.0) cluster, to establish and empirically verify in the pilot study the role of clusters in developing the fourth industrial revolution. It aims to find out if the cluster can provide a conducive knowledge environment fostering the advancement of I4.0; simplify the implementation of I4.0 by making it faster, easier, and cheaper and finally be applied as policy tool organising the development of I4.0.

This paper is based on the narrative literature review mapping the cluster’s nature with I4.0 features. It adopts the case study approach and uses simple statistical analysis to explore the basic characteristics of I4.0 clusters combined with a survey technique – short questionnaire organised in three major blocks.

Drawing on German pilot study it can be confirmed that clusters offer conducive environment facilitating the emergence, testing and development of I4.0 specific solutions. They provide favourable knowledge environment, simplify and increase the efficiency of the business processes and organise the policymaking in this area.

The results of presented pilot study rooted in Germany – a country seen as the front-runner in implementing the solutions of the fourth industrial revolution – can add a certain value to the emerging research on unearthed linkages between clusters and I4.0. This paper might be seen as a contribution to the emerging literature on the spatial dimension of I4.0. It expands previous research on cluster channels’ likely impact on I4.0.

The purpose of this paper is to analyze the optimal competition or cooperation decision between technology service platforms and governments in the context of fierce competition within urban agglomerations.

Based on the cooperation and competition game model, this study builds a two-level model for government and technology service platforms considering three cases: perfect competition, platform cooperation and government-led cooperation.

By analyzing the optimal strategies of the government and a platform in three cases, the research shows that choosing appropriate cooperation in a competitive situation is beneficial to both the government and the platform. Government-led cooperation is conducive to increasing social welfare. From the perspective of the platforms, if they actively seek cooperation, they can obtain higher subsidies and profits. The more intense the competition is, the higher the profits and social welfare generated from the platforms' active cooperation.

The contribution of this study relates to the development of technology service platforms in urban agglomerations. As local governments and platforms continuously undertake decision-making processes, this study constructs quantitative models to analyze the advantages and disadvantages of competition and cooperation. It is worth noting that relying on government subsidies to maintain the sustainable development of technology service platforms is not a long-term solution. Government subsidies play a vital role in the initial development of technology service platforms. The analysis results are in line with Guo et al. (2016), Jung and Feng (2020) and Li (2021) conclusions. Furthermore, long-term government subsidies will make platforms dependent on these subsidies. These are the contributions to the scientific literature.

Instead of focusing on vertical relationships, this study emphasizes the horizontal cooperation and competition relationship between platforms and local governments in an urban agglomeration. Thus, the vertical effects of government subsidies on platforms can be investigated. Another innovation is the social welfare policy goal, which is an important index for the development of urban agglomerations.