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Collective Investment Schemes in Securities (‘CISS’) and Collective Investment Schemes in Property (CISP’) are common business vehicles in the South African economy. Nevertheless, there is still some uncertainty with regard to the tax treatment of these business structures, as the application of the specific income tax and capital gains tax provisions applicable to CISS and CISP results in several anomalies. The purpose of this article is to identify and highlight these anomalies by discussing the specific income tax and capital gains tax provisions applicable to CISS and CISP, and to suggest how some of these anomalies should be treated for tax purposes. It is submitted that the legislator did not consider the legal nature and practical operation of a CISS when the tax provisions for CISS were drafted. The tax treatment of CISP is also not without difficulties, especially where the CISP is constituted as an open‐ended investment company (OEIC’).

Aditya Agrawal is a scholarship graduate from Bond University (2006, first class honors in Management Science) and the 2007–2008 summer scholar at the Strategic and Defence Studies Centre, Australian National University. He commenced work at the University College, Australian Defence Force Academy in June 2008 and is currently reading for his doctorate in military outsourcing. Previously he has worked with both the corporate sector and the government departments. He has published in scholarly journals and peer-reviewed conferences and was awarded the Best Paper Prize at the national Australian Conference on Information Systems (ACIS 2007).

This research aims to gain a holistic understanding of how video conferencing (VC) apps' media characteristics influence individuals' perceptions of VC apps and, ultimately, their use and continued use in professional settings.

A conceptual research model is developed by integrating constructs from media synchronicity theory (MST), social presence theory and the unified theory of acceptance and use of technology (UTAUT2) model, as well as ubiquity, technicality and perceived fees. Structural equation modeling (SEM) is used to empirically test the conceptual model using data collected from 252 working professionals from the European Union.

The results reveal that while performance expectancy (PE) and facilitating conditions (FC) are fundamental to VC app use, these factors alone do not explain the use and continuing use of VC apps in the professional context. Media characteristics that include synchronicity, social presence, and ubiquity are equally crucial to professionals using VC apps. It also confirms the moderating effect of convergence on the relationship between synchronicity and PE and the moderating effect of technicality and perceived fees on the relationship between ubiquity and FC.

For researchers, the study offers insights into the extent to which technological and socially derived characteristics of VC apps influence the routine tasks undertaken by professionals in virtual work settings. For practitioners, recommendations pivotal to the use of VC apps are presented to promote higher acceptance and improved well-being of the professional workforce.

Drawing on the literature on public service motivation, the authors investigate the relationship between public service motivation and defensive decision-making. Further, the authors explore risk propensity and risk perception as potential antecedents of defensive decision-making.

Based on survey data from 144 German public financial managers of municipalities and federal agencies, the authors find no significant direct relationship between public service motivation and defensive decision-making.

However, the authors can show that risk propensity fully mediates the relationship between public service motivation and defensive decision-making. The findings also indicate that beyond the public service motivation and individual risk propensity of public financial managers, their risk perception does influence their decision making.

The study makes three contributions to the literature. First, the authors contribute to the relatively small amount of research on the risk-taking behaviour of public managers by explaining the indirect impact of PSM on their risk-taking behaviour. Second, this paper furthers the understanding of the influence of risk perception and risk propensity on decision-making and enhances the models of Sitkin and Pablo (1992) and Sitkin and Weingart (1995). Third, the paper also contributes to the call for more international research on German public administrations.

Drawing upon new institutional theory and blame avoidance theory, this paper aims to examine how stakeholder pressure has an impact on the implementation and use of risk management practices in public administrations. Furthermore, this paper investigates whether top management support mediates this proposed relationship.

This paper is based on a survey among public financial managers of German municipalities and federal agencies. Data from 136 questionnaires were used to evaluate the model.

The results indicate that top management support fully mediates the relationship between stakeholder pressure and risk management practices. This finding suggests that top management support is crucial for the successful implementation of accounting techniques, such as risk management, in public administrations.

This study is based on subjective answers by public financial managers. Moreover, this study is based solely on German data. Hence, future research could use a mixed-method approach and data from other countries.

This paper examines whether stakeholder pressure exerts an impact on the sophistication of public risk management practices.

This paper empirically investigates the performance of Islamic funds, which have been praised for weathering the 2008 financial storm relatively well and compares it to a European product designed to protect the most vulnerable of investors, UCITS funds.

This paper builds on 128 time-series regressions using various factor models to analyse the risk-return relationship of 242 Islamic and UCITS funds relative to a market benchmark, over a 10-year period starting January 2006, to capture severe bear and bull market conditions.

Islamic funds do not face a competitive disadvantage arising from their strict compliance with Sharīʿah principles, and their performance and investment style is relatively similar to UCITS schemes.

Islamic funds represent a low risk investment due to their very mild betas. Therefore, when forming part of a diversified portfolio, they can act as a hedging tool against adverse market movements.

Muslim investors are not punished relative to conventional retail investors when following their own beliefs. Other investors can consider Islamic funds in their portfolio allocation, especially those who seek socially and ethically responsible investments.

This paper fills a lacuna in the existing literature, because the sample is made up of Islamic funds established worldwide and includes not only equity, but also fixed income and mixed allocation funds.

The uncertainty as to whether investments in riskier and less efficient markets allow managers to ‘beat the market’ remains a question to which answers are required. Accordingly, the purpose of this chapter is to offer new insights on portfolios of the US, European and Emerging Market (‘EM’) domiciled equity mutual funds whose objectives are the investment in emerging economies, and specifically analyses two main issues: alpha generation and the influence of the funds’ characteristics on their risk-adjusted performance.

The dataset is made up a survivorship-bias controlled sample of 137 equity funds over the period January 2004 to December 2014, which are then grouped into equally weighted portfolios according to the scheme’s origin. The Jensen’s (1968) Single-Factor model along with the Fama and French’s (1993) and Carhart’s (1997) multifactor models are employed to authenticate results and answer both research questions.

Research analysis reveals that EM exposed fund managers fail to collectively outperform the market. It thereby offers ground to believe that the emerging world is very close to being efficient, proving that the Efficient Market Hypothesis (‘EMH’) ideal exists in this scenario where market inefficiency might only be a perception of market participants as any apparent opportunity to achieve above-average returns is speedily snapped up by very active managers. Overall these managers take a conservative approach to portfolio construction, whereby they are more unperturbed investing in large cap equity funds so as to lessen somewhat the exposure towards risks associated with liquidity, stability and volatility.

Furthermore, the findings show that large-sized equity portfolios have the lead over the medium and small-sized competitors, whilst the high cost and mature collective investment vehicles enjoy an alpha which although is negative is superior to their peers. The riskiest funds generated the lowest alpha, and thereby produced doubts as to whether investors should accept a higher risk for the hope of earning higher returns, at least when aiming to gain an exposure into the emerging world.

Mutual fund performance is not an innovative topic so to speak. Nonetheless, researchers and academia have centred their efforts on appraising the behaviour of fund managers domiciled primarily in developed and more efficient economics, leaving the emerging region highly uncovered in this respect. This study, therefore aims at crafting meaningful contributions to the literature as well as to the practical perspective.

News items like “A whopping 2 lakh gullible investors were cheated…….” amply illustrate the extent of problems and hardships caused by financial frauds related to Ponzi schemes, collective investment schemes (CIS), unregulated deposit schemes, etc. In India, over the years, many Ponzi and unregulated investment schemes have taken place, causing huge economic and financial loss to Indian economy. This paper aims to examine why investment such schemes like Ponzi schemes and CIS become popular, how such schemes got operated in different periods and what could be done to safeguard the interests of investors.

The analysis is done based on secondary data and research work of various researchers, organisation and institutions, which are available in the public domain.

This paper has tried to analyse various characteristics of such fraudulent schemes, like their modus operandi, promotional activity, background of promoters and legal process involved in recouping financial loss of millions of investors. This paper also examines the demand-side factors that are responsible for popularity of those schemes in India. Noting the regulatory changes and other initiative taken by regulatory authorities to control the supply of unregulated investment schemes, this paper indicates potential actions, which could be undertaken to make people aware about the risks and issues related with such fraudulent schemes.

This paper gives an overview about various aspects of unregulated investment schemes, which have duped numerous people at different point of time. To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this research work is original and has not been published in any other journal.

This paper seeks to investigate which factors influence user attitudes toward different levels of security measures for protecting data of differing importance. The paper also examines user characteristics including IT proficiency and risk propensity, which give rise to individual differences in such attitudes.

To capture user attitudes toward a security measure, a construct called “information security readiness” (ISR) and its corresponding measurement items were developed. Observations were collected from a laboratory experiment based on a 2×3 factorial design, with data criticality and security level as the treatment variables. The participants were undergraduate students of a major American university. The moderating effect of data criticality on the relationship between security level and ISR was tested with multi‐group structural equation modeling. In addition to the treatment variables, IT proficiency and risk propensity were included as covariates in the analysis.

The results revealed a nonlinear relationship between security level and ISR. For data of high criticality, enhancing security level had a positive impact on ISR, but only up to the point perceived as appropriate by the participants. For data of low criticality, the enhancement of security level was perceived as unnecessary. In addition, IT proficiency was found to be a significant covariate, especially when data criticality was high.

In practice, the specification of a security measure requires a trade‐off between the utility of the data protected and the usability of the security method. The measure of ISR provides a means to locate the equilibrium by examining user attitudes across different security levels in relation to a particular level of data criticality. The significance of IT proficiency demonstrates the importance of user training.

This study introduces the ISR construct to capture evaluation, power, and activity dimensions underlying an individual's cognitive beliefs, affective responses, and behavioral inclinations toward the adoption of security measures. The results provide interesting insights into the role of interaction between security level and data criticality in influencing ISR.