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A six-month randomized controlled trial was conducted to examine the impact of a home-based nutrition and exercise intervention on functional capacity to prevent falls among rural seniors. The paper aims to discuss this issue.

Men and women (n=134), aged 60 and older were assigned to one of four groups: exercise, nutrition, exercise-nutrition, and control. Participants in the exercise and exercise-nutrition groups performed a home-based exercise program (Home Support Exercise Program), and the nutrition and exercise-nutrition groups received a liquid nutritional supplement (Ensure®) for six months. Participants were assessed at baseline and six months on functional mobility, balance, flexibility and endurance.

There were significant group differences over time for functional reach and the Timed Up and Go test, with significant differences existing between exercise and nutrition-exercise, and exercise and nutrition groups respectively. Overall, the exercise group out-performed the other groups in terms of functional capacity and psychological well-being.

Improvement of functional health among rural seniors is achievable through the delivery of a home-based intervention focusing on exercise and nutrition.

The study also shows that the effective delivery of an intervention to successfully address a fundamental and persistent problem is possible using existing resources; however, it requires a commitment of focus and energy over considerable time.

The approach and findings helps seniors to age in place in a rural context. It shows feasibility of delivering a practical intervention in the rural setting through the health care infrastructure of home care.

Apart from the rural context, the study was innovative at many levels. Specifically, this intervention addressed a significant health issue (functional capacity, falls and injuries), involved frail rural seniors (often hard to reach through community-based programs), provided a feasible intervention (multiple component exercise program), used existing infrastructure (e.g. home care), and espoused community development principles (active involvement of community partners, researchers, and trainees). As well, the study had built-in mechanisms for monitoring and support through the involvement of home service workers who received training. This approach created a strong research to practice connection (another innovation) and was critical for the credibility of the investigation, as well as the sustainability of the intervention. Another innovation was the inclusion of a population health perspective as the study framework. From the population health perspective, this research addressed several determinants of health in rural and urban areas that include: physical environment (intervention within people’s home and rural context), social environment and social support networks (through existing infrastructures of home support workers), health services (availability of health promotion strategy delivered through the health care system) and personal health practices and coping skills (exercise).

Social isolation and loneliness are global issues experienced by many seniors, especially immigrant and refugee seniors. Guided by the five-stage methodological framework proposed by Arksey and O’Malley and more recently Levac, Colquhoun and O’Brien, the purpose of this paper is to explore the existing literature on social isolation and loneliness among immigrant and refugee seniors in Canada.

The authors conducted a literature search of several databases including: PubMed; MEDLINE; CINAHL; Web of Science; HealthStar Ovid; PschyInfo Ovid; Social Services Abstracts; AgeLine; Public Health Database, Google Scholar and Cochrane Library. In total, 17 articles met the inclusion criteria.

Based on the current literature five themes related to social isolation and loneliness emerged: loss; living arrangements; dependency; barriers and challenges; and family conflict.

Given the increasing demographic of aging immigrants in Canada, it is useful to highlight existing knowledge on social isolation and loneliness to facilitate research, policy and programs to support this growing population.

The population is aging around the world and it is also becoming increasingly diverse particularly in the high-income country context. Understanding and addressing social isolation is important for immigrant and refugee seniors, given the sociocultural and other differences.

Social isolation is a waste of human resource and value created by seniors in the communities.

The paper makes a unique contribution by focusing on immigrant and refugee seniors.

Osteoporosis is a metabolic bone disease and a growing global health problem. It is estimated that about 200m people are suffering from this disease in the world. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the perceptions and factors influencing the intention to do regular physical activities in order to prevent osteoporosis in Iranian Muslim working women.

The present cross-sectional descriptive study was conducted on 217 women employed in a university in Iran. The tool for data collection was a researcher-made questionnaire that had gone through validity and reliability processes. The data analysis was done using SPSS ver. 19 software as well as statistical descriptive and analytical tests.

The majority of participants were aged 30–39 (50.7 percent) and the least ones were 40 years old (24.4 percent). In total, 67.7 percent of the participants were married. Also, 77 percent of the participants had religious belief on the duty to do strong physical activities, and 83 percent had intention to do physical activities. The results showed that there was a significant difference in the mean scores of self-efficacy and the mean scores of religious belief between the women with and without having intention to do physical activities (p<0.01).

Regarding the relationship that self-efficacy and religious belief had with the intention to do physical activities in women employees, the need to address this issue through educational programming with the focus on self-efficacy and religious culture seems to find priority.

The purpose of this study is to assess the effects of demographic groups (i.e. gender groups, marital status groups, age groups, income groups, experience groups, education groups and occupation groups) on socially responsible consumption (hereafter SRC) behaviour.

The study was carried out in Chennai city, the capital of Tamil Nadu state of India. A total of 214 responses were collected during the survey. The respondents were the university staff composed of lecturer/professor, lab instructor, admin staff and support staff. A socially responsible purchase and disposal scale has been used to measure SRC behaviour amongst consumers. The convenience sampling technique was used for data collection. Independent-samples t-test and one-way analysis of variance (ANOVA) techniques were used for hypotheses testing.

Factor analyses confirmed the multidimensional structure of the SRC construct with the following axes: firms’ internal corporate social responsibility (hereafter CSR) performance, firms’ external CSR performance, firms’ environmental CSR performance and consumers’ personal social responsibility. In addition, this study found that demographic groups have no effects on SRC behaviour.

The current research will be a step forward to a richer and more inclusive understanding of the effects of demographic groups on SRC behaviour.

This study would help managers to understand consumer markets, formulate strategy and develop sustainable products.

This study is amongst the few attempted to examine the effects of demographic groups on SRC behaviour amongst consumers. This research endeavoured to validate the multidimensional nature of the SRC construct.

This paper revisits the debate between environmental determinism and strategic choice. It compares the two theories on their philosophical underpinnings, their view of decision making, and the environment. Although we argue that the theory of strategic choice generally prevails, we recognize that there are factors that restrict the choice and discretion of managers. Here we look at three types of factors—industry related factors (extent of regulation and stage of life cycle), organization related factors (characteristics of top management and organization size), and time related factors and explain how each of these factors either inhibit or enhance managerial discretion. Implications for theory and practice are discussed.

The paper provides a holistic overview of already available academic literature of mobile banking, business model innovation and ecosystem and activity system perspective of business model concepts. The purpose of this conceptual paper is to initiate a debate for future research in the agenda highlighted in this paper.

In this paper, mobile banking business ecosystem of Easypaisa is used as an illustrative case to understand mobile banking business model innovation in the context of business ecosystem and activity system perspective.

Based on Porter’s view of mobile financial service (MFS) industry, it is suggested that patterns of business model innovation can be explained through business ecosystem and activity system. The notion of business model innovation can also be explained through integrated value chain of mobile network operator and its partners in the supply chain of MFS.

This paper provides preliminary overview of the exiting academic literature on business model innovations, business ecosystem and activity system in the in the context of value network. Since this is only a literature review paper, therefore, no primary data have been collected for this case study through interviewing from the relevant people.

So far, no research has been conducted in Pakistan to address business model innovation in mobile banking sector in the context of business ecosystem and activity system perspective.

SMEs are essential to economic growth in Malaysia and many emerging economies as they are a major source of employment and contribute towards the gross domestic product. It is therefore imperative that the corporate governance practices of SMEs are enhanced by assurance that appropriate monitoring occurs and procedures are in place. This study aims to address this issue.

The concentration of ownership in Malaysian companies results in less protection for minority shareholders. This is because the laws protecting minority shareholders mainly focus on director/shareholder conflicts and are not suited to companies with concentrated shareholdings, especially where the conflict is commonly seen between the majority and minority shareholders. Furthermore, owing to the levels of power distance, collectivism and assertiveness in Malaysia, shareholders are unlikely to litigate. The research was carried out through case analysis and analysis of extant literature and existing laws in Malaysia, to illustrate that the minority shareholders in the concentrated shareholding SMEs are not well protected.

The paper finds that current prohibitive models of law are not desirable as they have promoted compliance with the letter but not the spirit of the law.

The study focuses only on SMEs that have been incorporated.

The study enables minority shareholders to reduce fraud and self‐dealing by the majority through more direct participation in corporations, reliance on procedural protections to balance business flexibility and application of brightline rules which stand a better chance of compliance by those who understand them.

The self‐enforcing model is a non‐adjudicative mechanism of enforcement which requires substantial compliance with procedural requirements and aims for voluntary compliance. It proposes that minority shareholders and independent directors hold veto powers, thus reducing fraud and self‐dealing.

The purpose of this paper is to try to formulate a conceptual model for service-oriented export pricing by looking at both demand- and supply-side considerations by taking export price as a function of domestic price of service.

Continuous time optimization technique has been adopted for maximization of the profit earned by firms in the domestic and foreign market for both demand- and supply-side scenarios. Dynamic simulations have also been carried out to find out the sensitivity of parameters in diverse scenarios.

Different results have been received for demand and supply sides for export price optimization. Various pricing objectives have been aligned to the price determining parameters in accordance with the dynamic simulation performances.

Continuous time optimization served our purpose, as sustainability of the same decision over a longer period was not considered. However, discrete time optimization can be taken up, if the effect of a series of decisions is scrutinized. More flexibility can be incorporated in the model, if a range of domestic price is considered over the singular domestic price.

This paper is significant for those firms, which are willing to extend their operations beyond the national boundary. The models derived here can give them an idea about how to price service in foreign market.

Aligning pricing objectives with export price determining parameters by considering demand and supply side perspectives in a continuous time optimization model is a new contribution in the existing literature.

The purpose of this paper is to explore how the entrepreneurs' social connections and types of employment differentially affect the survival of startup firms in the USA and India. Further, the authors analyze the differences during both the early stage and the later stages of new ventures.

The authors use data from the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor (GEM) database between 2012 and 2014 and examine the hypothesized effects with logistic regression analyses.

The analysis reveals that an entrepreneur's social connections with other entrepreneurs favor the survival of the focal entrepreneur's early-stage business in the USA. However, social connections are more critical for later-stage ventures in India. During the early stage, new ventures of full-time entrepreneurs are more likely to survive in India, whereas those by hybrid entrepreneurs are more likely to survive in the USA. The differences between the importance of full-time and hybrid entrepreneurs across geographies are less discernible during the later stages of new ventures.

The novelty of this paper is that it demonstrates the significant differences in the way social connections and types of employment (hybrid versus full-time) affect the survival of entrepreneurial firms in the early and later stages. The study also expands the international business literature by shedding new light on country-level differences that affect the survival of new ventures.

The purpose of this paper is to study differing demographic factors affecting fast-food customers loyalty towards national or international fast food chains. It also compares the variation between global and local fast food chains as the products offered are culturally different.

A variety of variables used to gain a holistic view, which includes factors such as quality, price, food and demographic profile of consumers affecting loyalty of fast food chains. The study adopts the theory and method of the trust-commitment-loyalty explanation chain and examines the consumer survey adapted from Fast food by Sahagun et al. (2014). The present analyses 542 filled questionnaires in which systematic sampling is used. Systematic sampling procedure is adopted.

Indians prefer global fast food chains compared to Indian fast food chains. Loyalty towards global brands is higher than that for Indian brands because they are found to be of better quality which leads to higher frequency of visit and recommendation of the brands to their friends and colleagues. There are ethnic variations towards global and Indian fast food chains. Global brand of food chains generated more good word of mouth publicity compared to Indian food chains. Demographic factors play a role in the patronage of fast food chains.

One of the limitations of this research is the study adapts the theory and method of the trust-commitment-loyalty explanation chain and examines the consumer survey adapted from a study of Sahagun et al. (2014) on fast food for emerging markets. Only India is studied, but the addition of other countries like Brazil, China, Russia and South Africa can add value.

Fast food managers had to illustrate the satisfaction on affective response, such as quality of food, convenient location, variety, service and value for money. Demographic variables like gender, age, education, income and ethnicity, global and local Brand will affect the perceptions.

This is the first attempt to study the loyalty of consumers in emerging markets, which is witnessing the entry of many fast food global chains. It studies the demographic variables effect on the loyalty and the behaviour of consumers and compares to local and global brand fast food chains. The research will be use to global managers who are planning to expand in emerging markets like India.