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The aim of the study is to examine the effect of public attitude on petty corruption.

This is a survey study on customers of a licenses providing authority (N = 390) in Cairo, Egypt. The authors use Akers social learning theory of crime and deviance and take into consideration criticisms of it. The authors control for individual and organizational level determinants that are identified by scholars as influencing people's attitudes toward corruption and which could be known through the authority customers' experiences. Because the dependent variable is binary, whether a person paid a bribe during last transaction with this authority or not, the authors use binary logistic regression.

The findings indicate that people are more likely to engage in petty corruption when they see it as acceptable, have previous petty corruption experience and when they use a mediator. Also, of those who dealt with that civil service authority during and directly after the 25th of January Revolution (N = 161) 31% reported that they did not engage in petty corruption in comparison to previous years. They referred this to a change in attitude at the time.

The policy implications of the research are important. Social science theories could generate cultural and policy relevant solutions for petty corruption; however, they have not been taken full advantage of. Also, experience-based country-specific corruption survey studies are important input for an effective anti-corruption policy.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the antecedents of entrepreneurial intentions amongst open and distance learning students during employment crisis. To achieve the purpose of this study, Ajzen’s theory of planned behaviour (TPB) was applied and empirically tested on the sample population.

Data were taken from a sample of university students pursuing business-related courses in Open and Distance Learning mode. Self-reported questionnaires were handed to a total of 500 students to complete and return. Returned and usable questionnaires numbered 245 in total, giving a return rate of 49 per cent. Descriptive statistics and regression analyses were utilised to analyse data. Structural equation modelling incorporated into SPSS was used to assess the structural model.

The key finding reveal that Ajzen’s TPB can partially be applied in determining entrepreneurial intentions in the developing economy. The study results also revealed that perceived behavioural control, personal attitude and subjective norm (SN) explained 62.5 per cent of variations in entrepreneurial intention, which surpasses many other studies conducted previously.

Present study relied on cross-sectional data using quantitative design, therefore limiting the full understanding of the causal relationship between variables.

The study developed a conceptual framework based on literature that was empirically tested, which adds to existing ones, thereby extending the literature in the field. Moreover, the study managed to incorporate SN as an intervening variable, which has rarely been done.

This study aims to analyse the efficiency effects of institutional distance on Chinese outward foreign direct investment (FDI) in Africa.

The study utilised the true fixed-effect stochastic frontier analysis (SFA) model. Data from 2003 to 2016 (14 years) were acquired from 42 targeted African countries, which are included in the analysis.

The results reveal that FDI flow efficiency can be maximised with a high institutional distance between China and African countries. Contrariwise, comparable institutional distance, measured by the rule of law, regulatory quality and government effectiveness between the host and home countries, reflected a significant positive impact for Chinese outward foreign direct investment (OFDIs), indicating Chinese MNEs can invest directly in a country with comparable institutional characteristics.

There have been limited exceptional studies that assessed the effect of institutional distance between emerging countries. However, none of these studies investigated the effect of institutional distance between China and Africa at a national level. Using the advantage of the SFA model, this study assesses the efficiency effects of institutional distance between the host and home country.

The study seeks to find the effect of financial leverage on the firm performance of non-financial companies listed in the Tokyo stock market.

The study collected data from 263 companies in the automobile and industrial producer sectors listed on the Tokyo stock exchange between 2001 and 2021. The generalized method of moments was used to estimate the effect of leverage on financial performance due to its ability to overcome the problems of endogeneity and autocorrelation.

The study found that the equity multiplier has a positive and statistically significant effect on return on assets (ROA), return on equity (ROE) and earning per share (EPS). The study discovered that the interest coverage ratio has a positive and statistically significant effect on ROA, ROE, EPS and Tobin’s Q. The results revealed that the degree of financial leverage and debt to earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization (EBITDA) have a negative and statistically significant effect on ROE, EPS and Tobin’s Q. The study also found that the capitalization ratios of the firms have a negative and statistically significant effect on ROA, ROE, EPS and Tobin’s Q.

The use of debt financing, which presents financial leverage, indicates that the companies can make enough earnings to pay off the interest and principal (debt service obligations), which were shown by the interest coverage ratio, as well as to pay all the long-term fixed expenses, which were shown by the fixed charge coverage ratio. Interest and fixed charge coverage have a positive statistically significant effect on the financial performance of automobile and industrial producer companies.

The study focused on the effect of financial leverage on financial performance by relying on pecking and trade-off theories to contribute to the existing body of literature in finance.

This study aims to explore the downstream pharmaceutical supply chain (PSC) and provides insight to the delivery process of medicines and associated operational inefficiencies.

An exploratory, qualitative approach was adopted to examine PSC inefficiency within two European contexts, namely, the UK and Greece. Data was gathered through interviews and a thematic analysis conducted to analyse the data and identify challenges faced by both supply chains(SCs).

The medicines delivery system needs to be enhanced in terms of quality, visibility, speed and cost to perform effectively. The findings demonstrated that although the healthcare SCs in the two European contexts have different operational structures, the results are in concordance with each other. Financial, communication, waste and complexity issues were the major concerns.

To the knowledge this is the first study to examine aspects of the medicines SC via a cross-case analysis in the UK and Greece and extends the body of knowledge. A broader sample of responses is warranted to further validate these findings.

The study outputs can inform pharmacies’ strategic to instigate targeted improvement interventions. The implications of which may be extrapolated further to other European healthcare organisations.

This research contributes to the academic literature by adding further theoretical insights to SC strategy development, especially those that have been characterised as highly complex. The study identifies four key areas of intervention needed within this SC (in both countries) to promote higher level efficiencies and effectiveness.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate an unexplored part of advertising history; namely, the education of a large, mundane, nonelite group of advertising professionals, so-called advertising technicians and the knowledge they acquired. Examining correspondence courses in the technology of advertising, we focus particularly on the production of technified knowledge and mass personas.

The study is based on a qualitative analysis of course material from Sweden’s two largest correspondence schools in the 1930s and 1940s. Two theoretical concepts guide the analysis: the concept of market devices and the notion of personas, both of which we use to show how the courses crafted a particular kind of advertising professional as well as knowledge.

The study shows that courses created a template-based persona of the advertising technician, who possessed what we call bounded originality characterized by diligence, modesty and rule-governed creative imagination. Similarly, the courses created a body of knowledge that was controllable and highly practice-oriented. The advertising technician was expected to embody and internalize the advertising knowledge, thus, becoming an extension of this knowledge on the market.

By directing the searchlight at the cadre of ordinary, middle-class advertising professionals instead of the high-profile “advertising creatives” and innovators, the paper brings to the foreground the nonelite level of the advertising industry. These practitioners went to work in the business world to produce the everyday advertising that was not necessarily groundbreaking but was needed in a growing mass-consumption society.

The aim of this study is to outline a practice approach towards safety in public places whereby safety and place is understood as simultaneously produced in everyday work practice. Hence, the focus is shifted from place safety as a manageable asset to safe places as ongoing accomplishments.

This study focuses on practices of enacting safe places on the municipal level in Sweden. Thus, the focus of analysis is on the meanings of safety. The empirical material was collected during the period 2017–2019 in the Swedish cities of Stockholm, Helsingborg and Malmö. In different ways, these cities struggle with navigating safety issues in public places.

The study demonstrates how urban places are enacted as safe in and through practice. The findings include some of the ways in which safe places are accomplished, such as maintaining and caring for places, countering negative rumours and news reports and forming collaboration across sectors and actors. To gain a better understanding of safety in city centres, the study illuminates competing meaning-making processes in management work practice whereby places are negotiated as safe.

The existing research on safety in public places is scattered across disciplinary fields and dominated by a fortress approach to safe places. By contrast to the top-down view of safety as a measure of control, this study generates knowledge of how safe places are continuously construed in the junction of management practices and practices of everyday life.

This paper investigates how two characteristics of language, abstractness vs concreteness and narrativity, influence user engagement in communication exercises on innovation targeted to the general audience. The proposed conceptual model suggests that innovation fits well with more abstract language because of the association of innovation with imagination and distal construal. Moreover, communication of innovation may benefit from greater adherence to the narrativity arc, that is, early staging, increasing plot progression and climax optimal point. These effects are moderated by content variety and emotional tone, respectively.

Based on a Latent Dirichlet allocation (LDA) application on a sample of 3225 TED Talks transcripts, the authors identify 287 TED Talks on innovation, and then applied econometric analyses to test the hypotheses on the effects of abstractness vs concreteness and narrativity on engagement, and on the moderation effects of content variety and emotional tone.

The authors found that abstractness (vs concreteness) and narrativity have positive effects on engagement. These two effects are stronger with higher content variety and more positive emotional tone, respectively.

This paper extends the literature on communication of innovation, linguistics and text analysis by evaluating the roles of abstractness vs concreteness and narrativity in shaping appreciation of innovation.

This paper reports conceptual and empirical analyses on innovation dissemination through a popular medium – TED Talks – and applies modern text analysis algorithms to test hypotheses on the effects of two pivotal dimensions of language on user engagement.

As the superiority of sports celebrities' endorsements has been questioned, the purpose of this study is to identify various types of endorsers' direct and indirect effects on consumers' purchase intentions.

Empirical data were collected from 240 useful responses to an online experiment, and research hypotheses were tested using (moderated) serial mediation analyses.

The study's findings indicate that an endorser has a positive influence on consumers' purchase intentions through their perceptions of the advertisement and the endorsed brand. A moderated serial mediation analysis finds differences in the four types of endorsers analyzed. A sports celebrity is the most effective type of endorser in increasing consumers' purchase intentions, whereas endorsements by company managers and peer consumers, while also positive, are less effective in influencing advertising outcomes. An expert's endorsement is comparable to that of a manager but not significant.

The generalizability of the study's findings is limited because of a restricted data sample, the use of fictitious endorsers and the limited number of product categories and brands analyzed.

The study systematically analyzes the behavioral influence of four types of endorsers on consumers' purchase intentions, mediated by their perceptions of the advertisements and the endorsed brand. The results of this analysis extend the current state of endorsement research, indicating that endorsements should be integrated into companies' marketing strategies and provide marketing professionals practical guidance on which type of endorser is most effective in influencing advertising outcomes.