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The objective of this study is to construct a theoretical framework concerning wage determination, grounded in principles and supplemented by conventional theories. It discusses the Islamic perspectives on minimum wage and examines contemporary challenges and intricacies in its application.

This study uses thematic analysis to create the conceptual framework, drawing upon a review of pertinent literature such as academic papers, books and articles published up to 2023.

The framework encompasses various categories, namely, employee characteristics, job characteristics, market factors, compensation practices and Islamic principles. Each category consists of multiple variables. The resulting framework offers a holistic and ethically grounded methodology for wage determination, aligning with both Islamic and conventional perspectives. This study notes the absence of a universally agreed-upon minimum wage. Islamic economics faces challenges due to the unclear application of principles, limited awareness, legal constraints and a lack of empirical evidence on wage systems, along with complexities in their implementation.

The paper’s limited scope focuses solely on the Islamic perspective on wage determination, without comparing it to the conventional viewpoint. This may have implications for future research.

The insights on Islamic principles and wage determination guide scholars and policymakers interested in promoting just and equitable wages.

This study is distinct in its integration of various factors to propose an all-encompassing framework for wage determination, rooted in the Quran and principles, while also reinforcing the framework with conventional theories. Additionally, it adds to the growing body of literature by investigating the Quran’s stance and principles on minimum wage, as well as discusses the challenges involved in implementing an Islamic approach to wage determination, which has received limited attention in Islamic literature.

The purpose of this paper is to determine which software systems business school administrators use to support accreditation efforts and how administrators select and use these systems. This study also provides best practice suggestions from institutions using faculty data management systems to support accreditation efforts.

This study used a sequential explanatory design using an internet-based survey for business school administrators involved with accreditation reporting with follow-up interviews with survey respondents.

There are four major software vendors that most respondents use for managing reporting of faculty research activity and sufficiency. The location of the school appears to influence the system selected. For assurance of learning reporting, most schools used an in-house or manual system. Respondents highlighted the importance of doing a thorough needs analysis before selecting a system.

Although respondents were geographically diverse, having a larger sample with schools in developing regions would provide greater generalizability of results.

This study gives business school leaders a comprehensive overview of the business schools’ data management systems, criteria used in system selection and best practices for system selection and implementation, faculty engagement and ongoing maintenance.

This study addresses the limited attention given to resources and best practices for selecting and implementing faculty data management software for accreditation in the academic and industry literature despite the significant investment of resources for schools and the importance such systems play in a successful accreditation effort.

The purpose of this paper is to facilitate a deeper understanding of the uses and users of performance measurement (PM) in the university context.

Empirical data were gathered from four universities. This approach allows for a multilevel and comparative analysis based on the neo-institutional theory. The results are discussed alongside interdisciplinary literature on the use of PM in the public sector.

PM practices at universities have become increasingly popular on institutional, organisational and individual levels. The results indicate that different types of PM are used in universities and that the extent, and scope of PM used by various actors differ. Universities often use PM in a ceremonial and symbolic manner, with the aim of legitimising themselves externally as research-oriented institutions. The use of PM depends on both, exogenous factors (such as isomorphic pressures) and endogenous factors related to the different responses of organisations and individual actors (university managers, and academics). However, the analysis at the internal level reveals different attitudes and some resistance to the use of such kinds of PM. In universities with a local focus, the use of PM for rational decision-making is generally loosely coupled with the reporting performance for external accountability purposes. Moreover, the internal use of PM can be also symbolic.

This paper focusses on four case studies that are currently undergoing changes. The comparative analysis is supported by the use of different data collection methods and several in-depth interviews with key university actors.

The authors assume that the use of PM depends on a number of exogenous and endogenous factors. PM uses and users are discussed in the specific context of the higher education system in Poland. The four business school cases facilitate a comparative analysis of the similarities and differences in terms of the uses and users of PM in the context of internationally and locally oriented universities.

By reconsidering the concept of the historic environment, the aim of this study is to better understand how heritage is expressed by examining the networks within which the cultural performances of the historic environment take place. The goal is to move beyond a purely material expression and seek the expansion of the cultural dimension of the historic environment.

Conceptually, the historic environment is considered a valuable resource for heritage expression and exploration. The databases and records that house historic environment data are venerated and frequented entities for archeologists, but arguably less so for non-specialist users. In inventorying the historic environment, databases fulfill a major role in the planning process and asset management that is often considered to be more than just perfunctory. This paper approaches historic environment records (HERs) from an actor network perspective, particularizing the social foundation and relationships within the networks governing the historic environment and the environment's associated records.

The paper concludes that the performance of HERs from an actor-network perspective is a hegemonic process that is biased toward the supply and input to and from professional users. Furthermore, the paper provides a schematic for how many of the flaws in heritage transmission have come about.

The relevance here is largely belied by the fact that HERs as both public digital resources and as heritage networks were awaiting to be addressed in depth from a theoretical point of view.

In the present discourse of university politics, collegiality has come to be viewed as a slow force – seemingly inefficient and conservative compared to popular management models. Concerns have thus been raised regarding the future prospects of such a form of governance in a society marked by haste and acceleration. One way to bring perspectives on this contentious issue is to perceive it in the light of the long history of the university. In this article, I derive insights about the shifting state of collegial governance through a survey of an intense period of reforms in Sweden c. 1850–1920 when higher education was allegedly engaged in a process of modernization and professionalization. Drawing on recent work in historical theory and science and technology studies (STS), I revisit contests and debates on collegiality in connection to a number of governmental commissions. Focusing on the co-existence – and collisions – of multiple temporalities reveals that overcoming potential problems associated with heterogeneous rhythms required an active work of synchronization by universities in order to make them appear timely, as higher education expanded along with the mounting ambitions of national politics, focused on centralization, efficiency, and rationalization. The analysis is structured around three focal issues for which collegial ideals and practices, including their temporal characteristics, were particularly questioned: (a) the composition of the university board, (b) the employment status of professors, and (c) hiring or promotion practices. Pointing at more structural challenges, this study highlights how collegiality requires a constant maintenance paired with an awareness of its longer and complex history.

This paper is a response to the doctrine that capital is incompatible with public ownership. The fundamental characteristics of modern productivity determine the co-existence of the market economy and capital relations.

Socialism can neither bypass the market economy nor “go beyond capital”; capital appears in two historical forms, including the private capital and the public capital. Public capital is the inevitable outcome of the inherent contradictions of public ownership in a socialist market economy.

It represents an economic relationship that compels individual labourers to provide surplus labour for the society. The combination of the strong accumulation function of public capital and the improvement of people's welfare is the main cause of China's development miracle.

The innovation impetus of the public capital and its “immunity” to the capitalist crisis highlight the tremendous power of socialism with Chinese characteristics in breaking free of the shackles of capitalism and continuously developing productive forces. Public capital demonstrates and will continue to demonstrate the historical legitimacy of socialism.

Many countries aim to improve public services by use of information and communication technology (ICT) in public service supply chains. However, the literature does not address how inter-organizational ICT is used in redesigning these particular supply chains. The purpose of this paper is to explore this important and under-investigated area.

An explorative multiple-case study was performed based on 36 interviews, 39 documents, extensive field visits and observations providing data on digital transformation in four European criminal justice supply chains.

Two different design approaches to digital transformation were found, which are labelled digitization and digitalization. These approaches are characterized by differences in public service strategies, performance aims, and how specific public characteristics and procedures are dealt with. Despite featuring different roles for ICT, both types show the viable digital transformation of public service supply chains. Additionally, the application of inter-organizational ICT is found not to automatically result in changes in the coordination and management of the chain, in contrast to common assumptions.

This paper is one of the first to adopt an inter-organizational perspective on the use of ICT in public service supply chains. The findings have scientific and managerial value because fine-grained insights are provided into how public service supply chains can use ICT in an inter-organizational setting. The study shows the dilemmas faced by and possible options for public organizations when designing digital service delivery.

The goal of this work is to determine whether Bitcoin behaves as a safe-haven asset. In order to do so, the influence of Economic Policy Uncertainty (EPU) on Bitcoin returns and volatility was studied.

It is evaluated whether, when compared with the evolution of EPU, Bitcoin's returns and volatility show behaviours typical of safe havens or rather, those of conventional speculative assets. When faced with an increase in EPU, safe havens – such as gold – can be expected to increase their returns and volatility, while conventional speculative assets will increase their volatility and reduce their returns. This study uses simple linear regression and quantile regression models on a daily data sample from 19 July 2010 to 11 April 2019, to analyse the influence of EPU on the returns and volatility of Bitcoin and gold.

Bitcoin's returns and volatility increase during more uncertain times, just like gold, showing that Bitcoin acts not only as a means of exchange but also shows characteristics of investment assets, specifically of safe havens. These findings provide useful information to investors by allowing Bitcoin to be considered as a tool to protect savings in times of economic uncertainty and to diversify portfolios.

This study complements and expands current research by aiming to answer the question of whether Bitcoin is a simple speculative asset or a safe haven. The most significant contribution is to show that Bitcoin is not a mere speculative asset but behaves like a safe haven.

本研究旨在確定比特幣是不是避難所資產。為達這目的，研究人員探討了經濟政策不確定性對比特幣的回報及波動性的影響。

研究評估比特幣的回報和波動性，若與經濟政策不確定的進化作比較，會顯示資金避難所的典型行為，抑或顯示傳統投機資產的行為。當面對經濟政策不確定的增加時，資金避難所 - 如黃金－會被預期有回報及波動性的上升。但傳統投機資產則其波動性會增加及其回報會減少。本研究使用簡單線性迴歸及分位數迴歸模型，根據從2010年7月19曰至2019年4月11日期間每天的數據樣本，來分析經濟政策不確定對比特幣和黃金的回報及波動性所產生的影響。

像黃金一樣，在較不明朗的時期，比特幣的回報和波動會增加，這顯示比特幣不單是一個交易工具，它也表現投資資產的特性，特別是資金避難所的特性。這研究結果為投資者提供有用的資訊，讓他們在經濟不明朗時考慮以比特幣作為保障存款的工具，及以比特幣作為使其投資組合更多元化的工具。

本研究旨在探索比特幣是一簡單的投機資產、抑或是一資金避難所，這補足及擴展了目前的研究。本研究最重要的貢獻、在於顯示了比特幣不單純是一種投機資產，它的行為實像資金避難所一樣。

The purpose of this paper is to use the two-way fixed effect (TWFE) methodology to estimate the impact of the reform, exploiting its staggered implementation across regions. The analysis is restricted to graduates from the short vocational track before and after the reform.

This paper studies the impact on the length of school-to-work transition of a reform that extended from two to three years the short vocational track in Italy in the early 2000s.

The study finds that the reform had a positive impact and reduced school-to-work transition by around five months (a 24% reduction). Moreover, the new short vocational track proved to be extremely effective for migrants and females, whose school-to-work transition was reduced by 1.4 years and 0.9 years, respectively. In implementing the new short vocational track, some regions adopted a quasi-market organization in which private training institutions competed with public schools. This model proved to be more effective in shortening school-to-work transitions, in particular for migrants.

This study makes an important contribution to the literature on the labor-market effect of vocational education by showing that lengthening the short vocational track, and changing the overall content of curricula, can speed up school-to-work transition.

This survey explores the application of real options theory to the field of health economics. The integration of options theory offers a valuable framework to address these challenges, providing insights into healthcare investments, policy analysis and patient care pathways.

This research employs the real options theory, a financial concept, to delve into health economics challenges. Through a systematic approach, three distinct models rooted in this theory are crafted and analyzed. Firstly, the study examines the value of investing in emerging health technology, factoring in future advantages, associated costs and unpredictability. The second model is patient-centric, evaluating the choice between immediate treatment switch and waiting for more clarity, while also weighing the associated risks. Lastly, the research assesses pandemic-related government policies, emphasizing the importance of delaying decisions in the face of uncertainties, thereby promoting data-driven policymaking.

Three different real options models are presented in this study to illustrate their applicability and value in aiding decision-makers. (1) The first evaluates investments in new technology, analyzing future benefits, discount rates and benefit volatility to determine investment value. (2) In the second model, a patient has the option of switching treatments now or waiting for more information before optimally switching treatments. However, waiting has its risks, such as disease progression. By modeling the potential benefits and risks of both options, and factoring in the time value, this model aids doctors and patients in making informed decisions based on a quantified assessment of potential outcomes. (3) The third model concerns pandemic policy: governments can end or prolong lockdowns. While awaiting more data on the virus might lead to economic and societal strain, the model emphasizes the economic value of deferring decisions under uncertainty.

This research provides a quantified perspective on various decisions in healthcare, from investments in new technology to treatment choices for patients to government decisions regarding pandemics. By applying real options theory, stakeholders can make more evidence-driven decisions.

Decisions about patient care pathways and pandemic policies have direct societal implications. For instance, choices regarding the prolongation or ending of lockdowns can lead to economic and societal strain.

The originality of this study lies in its application of real options theory, a concept from finance, to the realm of health economics, offering novel insights and analytical tools for decision-makers in the healthcare sector.