Search results

The paper tests if and to what extent lean management system adoption generates abnormal profitability, and how it accrues over time. Configurational approaches to lean management systems and “S-curve” effects in lean implementation are used to ground the paper's hypotheses and interpret its findings.

Using the emerging view of lean as enterprise-wide management systems, this quasi-experimental study uses a difference-in-differences approach to estimate the abnormal profitability (ROIC) attributable to lean management system adoption. The paper leverages a unique data set of lean adopters nested in a panel data set (19 years) of 2,088 industrial firms matched by industry and firm size. It applies a variety of regression methods (two-way fixed effect panel estimator, propensity score matching, instrumental variable two-stage-least squares) to estimate the size of the abnormal profitability attributable to lean management systems, addressing endogeneity issues related to non-random sampling, omitted variable bias and reverse causation. It also analyzes the cross-firm variability of such abnormal profitability and how it accrues over time.

For the average non-adopter in the sample (44.3 million euro revenues), lean adoption generates abnormal ROIC ranging from 1.4% to 3.9%. These results come into effect approximately three years after starting lean adoption and peak after eight years. While the average abnormal profitability attributable to lean adoption is sizable, it varies significantly across firms and over time. This significant variation is compatible with firms' diverse ability to understand the complex inner workings of lean systems, and to design and implement them so that they improve profitability.

The conceptualization of lean as enterprise-wide management system can be further refined to more effectively categorize the components of lean systems and investigate the nature of their relationships. Lean system adoption measurement can be fine-tuned to better capture cross-firm and longitudinal heterogeneity. Future work can explore other dependent variables of interest to different stakeholders including shareholders' value, employment and environmental and social sustainability.

The financial benefits of adopting lean can be reaped to the extent to which managers embrace lean as a philosophy and implement it pervasively in the organization. A firm can use the study's estimates as a basis for making calculations about the returns of investment in lean adoption. The paper also shows that “getting the lean system right” makes a significant difference in terms of abnormal profitability, which is twice as large for the best lean adopters..

Compared with the promises of many lean proponents and supporters, the paper provides a more realistic view of what to expect from lean adoption in terms of profitability. Adopting lean as a comprehensive, enterprise-wide management system is not a universal panacea, but a complex endeavor, characterized by multiple complex decisions that require considerable capabilities, coordinated efforts and consistency of action.

Differently from extant research, this study does not study the correlation between the adoption of lean operation practices and financial performance but focuses on the abnormal profitability generated by the adoption of lean as a pervasive, enterprise-wide management system. Its research design allows to identify the differential profitability attributable to lean adoption and documents that it accrues non-linearly.

Globally, hepatitis C treatment uptake is lower among people who are homeless or unstably housed compared to those who are housed. Understanding and addressing this is essential to ensure no one is left behind in hepatitis C elimination efforts. This study aims to explore peoples’ experiences of unstable housing and health care, and how these experiences influenced engagement in hepatitis C treatment.

Purposive sampling was used to recruit people with lived experience of injection drug use, hepatitis C and unstable housing in Melbourne, Australia. In-depth semistructured interviews were conducted and a case study approach with interpretative phenomenological analysis was used to identify personal experiential themes and group experiential themes.

Four people were interviewed. The precarious nature of housing for women who inject drugs was a group experiential theme, however, this did not appear to be a direct barrier to hepatitis C treatment. Rather, competing priorities, including caregiving, were personal experiential themes and these created barriers to treatment. Another group experiential theme was “right place, right time, right people” with these three elements required to facilitate hepatitis C treatment.

There is limited research providing in-depth insight into how personal experiences with unstable housing and health care shape engagement with hepatitis C treatment. The analyses indicate there is a need to move beyond a “one size fits-all” approach to hepatitis C care. Instead, care should be tailored to the needs of individuals and their personal circumstances and regularly facilitated. This includes giving greater attention to gender in intervention design and evaluation, and research more broadly.

This paper investigates the extent to which commercial property valuers in the UK refer to Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors (RICS) professional standards and guidance on the inclusion of sustainability in valuation reports. Data collection, analysis and reporting related to sustainability attributes is examined, as well as the perceived importance of these attributes to clients and any value impacts that are associated with them.

An online survey of UK commercial property valuers was conducted from July to September 2019. The survey included both structured and open-ended questions.

Reference to RICS standards and guidance on sustainability has improved since earlier research. However, progress on data collection is still limited. At the time of the survey, UK valuers indicated that sustainability attributes were of more importance to owner-occupiers than investors and lenders. UK valuers also indicated that, out of a range of sustainability attributes, only certification was influencing market value (MV) and investment value (IV) to any great extent.

The online survey had 53 responses and this limited the ability to draw definitive conclusions. Hence, whilst the results may be indicative of the perceptions of some valuers of the significance of sustainability-related matters in the UK, the sample is not large enough to be considered representative of the opinions of property valuers per se in the UK.

Explicit reflection of sustainability in market or investment values is still limited in the UK valuation practice, but there are challenges faced by valuers that need further investigation, including difficulties in pricing sustainability attributes.

This is the first empirical investigation of the perception of sustainability by valuers in the UK commercial property market since the 2012 survey reported by Michl et al. (2016).

The purpose of this study is to examine the level of Shariah governance disclosure among Islamic banks in Malaysia and the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries (i.e. Kuwait, Bahrain, United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Oman and Saudi Arabia). On top of that, the effect of Shariah governance disclosure on Islamic banks financial performance is investigated.

Data underwent quantitative content analysis and a mean comparison of the Shariah governance disclosure mechanisms as well as multiple regression analysis. Shariah governance information is obtained from the Islamic banks' official websites and the Bursa Malaysia Exchange.

The results of the content analysis revealed that the level of Shariah governance disclosure among Malaysian Islamic banks has been more pronounced than in the GCC countries. Additionally, the multiple regression analysis results specified that of the five Shariah governance disclosure mechanisms, the Shariah committee emerged as the strongest determinant in the financial performance of the Islamic banks, followed by transparency and disclosure.

Islamic banks should emphasise publishing Shariah governance information in annual reports to reflect superior accounting practices as assessed by certified Shariah auditors with an effective monitoring system.

The empirical findings are vital for serving as a guideline for Islamic banks in Malaysia and the GCC countries to disclose their practice of Shariah governance and gain empirical insights into its effect on firms’ financial performance. Following that, Islamic banks would improve their accounting practices while adhering to Shariah principles, strengthen internal controls and boost their brand reputation.

The purpose of this paper is to examine and compare the trend of intellectual capital disclosures (ICD) of Islamic banks under the International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) and Accounting and Auditing Organization for Islamic Financial Institutions (AAOIFI) regimes over a seven-year period (2012–2018).

A self-developed checklist was developed to measure the extent of ICD practices of Islamic banks in both regimes.

The results revealed a moderate increase in ICD practices over the period of the study. However, there is no significant difference in ICD between the two financial reporting regimes i.e. IFRS and AAOIFI-based banks. In fact, most of the IFRS-based banks have better ICD than AAOIFI-based banks throughout the analysis period. This study contributed to the ICD literature by introducing Shariah capital as a new category of information to disclose besides the common disclosure on human capital, relational and structural related information by the Islamic banks.

It is important for Islamic banks to distinguish themselves from conventional banks and ICD can be a conduit to show their uniqueness. The introduction of Shariah capital in this study reflects the main objective of Islamic bank’s existence, and it should become an important element in ICD. In fact, some form of guidelines or policy by regulating agencies could facilitate the ICD by Islamic banks and reflect the truth about their ability to capitalize on Intellectual capital and disclose about these practices to their stakeholders.

The introduction of Shariah capital as a new component to the existing components (i.e. human capital, structural capital and relational capital) of intellectual capital brings a new perspective to the research on ICD of Islamic banks. This paper further contributes to the scarce evidence of ICD of Islamic banks globally.

The purpose of this study is to explore the lived experiences of the constraints of older adult family caregivers with chronic diseases in caring for and accessing health services during the COVID-19 pandemic.

This study used the descriptive phenomenology qualitative method. The sampling method was purposive sampling involving 16 older adult family caregivers.

The results of this study showed three themes such as difficulties in health services in hospitals during the COVID-19 pandemic (complaints of services provided by doctors, older adult treatment control problems and difficulty getting to hospital health facilities); difficulties accompanying taking older adult medicine (older adult non-compliance response to taking medication and older adult medicine assistance); and psychosocial complaints caring for and accompanying the older adult (negative emotions for the older adult, difficulty interacting with the older adult and the economic burden of caring for the older adult).

Barriers to family caregivers in caring for older adults with chronic diseases can help health-care service providers understand and support families caring for and assisting older adults, which may contribute to the quality of life and care for both family caregivers and older adults.

This study showed that Indonesian family caregivers faced difficulties caring for and living with older adults with chronic diseases during the pandemic. Family caregivers’ experiences are essential when developing an intervention to support and manage health care for older adults with chronic illnesses.

This study aims to evaluate Islamic bank compliance with the accounting and auditing organisation for Islamic financial institutions (AAOIFI), assess the impact of multiple accounting standards in Islamic banking, examine the need for private accounting standards and assess international financial reporting standards (IFRS) compatibility with Islamic banking and analyse financial leasing accounting in Islamic banking compared to IFRS 16.

A combination of comparative theoretical analysis, physical examination, and semi-structured interviews has been used as a research methodology. These methods are interconnected and complement each other to provide a comprehensive approach to address the research questions.

Islamic banks in various countries show varying compliance with AAOIFI accounting standards. Some fully comply, while others adopt a hybrid approach combining AAOIFI and IFRS. Differences in accounting treatments can result in conflicts, asset inflation and financial statement discrepancies. Challenges and criticisms faced by AAOIFI standards include violating the matching principle and lacking faithful representation. Collaboration among academics, standards-setting bodies and organisers is crucial for guiding the reporting of Islamic financial statements.

The research identifies gaps in implementing Islamic accounting standards and proposes strategies to enhance compliance, improve performance and increase transparency in Islamic financial institutions. It highlights the importance of a harmonised and universally accepted accounting framework for Islamic banking, considering the compatibility between IFRS and Islamic principles.

Social implications have arisen regarding the global acceptance of Islamic finance, which leads to an increase in socially Islamic finance exchange.

This research examines the consequences of using multiple accounting standards in the Islamic banking industry and discusses the need for private accounting standards and compatibility with IFRS.

This study aims to empirically evaluate the effectiveness of government auditing of local authorities’ compliance with the procurement rules.

A diff-in-diff approach is used where the measure of compliance is (changes in) the incidence of private litigation under the Public Procurement Act, in audited vs non-audited municipalities. Further, semi-structured interviews were conducted with chief procurement officials.

No statistically significant effect is found. While strong effects of audits can be ruled out, the statistical results and the interviews do not, however, contradict a modest but long-lasting effect.

Few studies have addressed the effect of public procurement auditing on compliance. This study develops an empirical framework and presents empirical results.

The UK Mental Health Act (MHA) Reform (2021) on race and ethnicity promotes new governmental strategies to tackle inequalities faced by ethnically racialised communities detained under the MHA. However, there is a scarcity in personality disorder and ethnicity research. This study aims to investigate what is available in the UK in relation to prevalence, aetiology and treatment provisions of personality disorder for ethnically diverse patients, and to understand their interconnectedness with mental health and criminal justice service provisions. Three key areas of investigations were reviewed, (1) UK prevalence of personality disorder amongst ethnically diverse individuals; (2) aetiology of personality disorder and ethnicity; (3) treatment provisions for ethnically diverse individuals diagnosed with personality disorder.

A scoping study review involved a comprehensive scanning of literature published between 2003 and 2022. Screening and data extraction tools were co-produced by an ethnically diverse research team, including people with lived experience of mental health and occupational expertise. Collaborative work was complete throughout the review, ensuring the research remained valid and reliable.

Ten papers were included. Results demonstrated an evident gap in the literature. Of these, nine papers discussed their prevalence, three papers informed on treatment provisions and only one made reference to aetiology. This review further supports the notion that personality disorder is under-represented within ethnic minority populations, particularly of African, Caribbean and British heritage, however, the reasons for this are multi-facetted and complex, hence, requiring further investigation. The evidence collected relating to treatment provisions of personality disorder was limited and of low quality to reach a clear conclusion on effective treatments for ethnically diverse patients.

The shortage of findings on prevalence, aetiology and treatment provisions, emphasises the need to prioritise further research in this area. Results provide valuable insights into this limited body of knowledge from a UK perspective.