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Sustainable supply chain management (SSCM) concepts have received immense attention in the recent past in both academia and industries. Especially, manufacturing industries in developing countries realize the importance of adopting sustainability concepts in their supply chain. The SSCM adoption has not been to the same level across different manufacturing sectors and hence a single implementation framework will not have the same effect across sectors. This paper aims to compare the adoption level of 25 SSCM practices across three major manufacturing sectors, namely, automobile, electronics and textile, in an emerging economy, India.

A questionnaire-based data collection technique is used to obtain adoption levels of each of the identified SSCM practices on a five-point Likert-type scale with “1” representing not considering presently to “5” indicating successful implementation. Second, a hypothesis is framed and tested to compare the adoption levels across sectors using a one-way single-factor ANOVA followed by a post hoc test by Tukey’s test.

The results derived suggest that though the industries across different sectors are in the course of adopting SSCM practices, the level of adoption is found to be not the same. The textile sector has adopted the least, and the electronic sector edges ahead of the automobile sector in terms of successful transformation to SSCM.

This study focuses on the differences and similarities in the adoption of policies in the automobile, electronics and textile sectors using statistical data analysis tools. A total of 25 individual practices are identified from existing literature and classified into six groups, namely, management, supplier, collaboration, design, internal and society, based on their similarities. Based on a detailed questionnaire survey with industrial experts in relevant fields as respondents, the adoption levels of practices are rated individually and categorically.

To analyze the impact of the adoption of just‐in‐time (JIT) production systems by different equipment manufacturers (OEMs) on the inventory profiles of their suppliers.

The research is designed to examine five financial measures of inventory management performance over the years 1994‐2004. Three specific industry sectors where OEMs have adopted and implemented JIT principles are studied. These sectors include the automotive, electronics, and aircraft industries. A one factor analysis of variance is employed to the five hypotheses and Tukey's post‐hoc test is used to interpret statistical pairwise differences between level means.

Overall, the research finds that OEM suppliers in the automotive, electronics, and aircraft sectors have shown mixed results in the impact JIT implementation has had on inventory performance measures.

The research focuses on three industrial sectors over approximately a ten year time frame that may limit its generalizability.

The processes that influence the reduction in inventory levels may be in fact more complex and strategic in nature than an OEM adopting a JIT inventory policy. In general, strategic changes within the supplier organization would have to drive process improvements that lead to inventory reductions.

The paper provides focused research in an area that has received little attention in the current literature and is very topical to all academics and business professionals interested or involved in the area of JIT systems.

The purpose of this paper is to compare the performance of Iran and G7 countries in the management of the COVID-19 crisis.

The indicators and statistics provided by the Oxford Government Response Tracker are used in this research. Sixteen indicators and their related items have been analyzed for eight countries including Iran, Canada, Germany, France, Great Britain, Italy, Japan, and the United States. For data analysis, Multivariate analysis of variance (MANOVA) and Tukey’s post hoc test were applied, and structural equation modeling performed with the help of SPSS and Smart-PLS software.

The results show that 8 indicators of closing schools, cancellation of public events, restriction of gatherings, restriction of domestic travel, restriction of international travel, reduction of household debt, testing policy, and contact tracing, have an effect on the number of deaths in the countries under review. The results also showed that the countries exhibit behaviors outside their normal culture during the crisis.

This paper will be helpful for scholars, as well as policymakers when making policies on the appropriate responses to COVID-19 and similar pandemics.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the impact of oil price shocks on capital spending in relation to the following firm characteristics: firm size, debt ratio, growth prospects, earnings and key sectors of the oil and gas industry.

To examine the impact of oil price changes on each of the sample firm’s capital spending, the authors utilize a vector autoregressive (VAR) framework which requires that the oil price and the firm’s capital spending series are stationary. The authors employ the Augmented Dickey–Fuller (ADF) procedure to test if these series are stationary in levels or in their first difference. Since the results show that the ADF values for adjusted oil price and for all but one capital spending series are stationary, the authors perform VAR analysis using the level data.

The impulse response results show that there is a positive relationship between oil price shocks and capital spending by the oil and gas firms. In other words, the oil and gas firms reduce (increase) capital spending when oil prices fall (rise). The responses are highest around q3. Additionally, the responses are stronger for the exploration and production, drilling, and oil services firms, and weaker for the refining firms (oil majors). Also, the small, low-earnings and low p/e firms exhibit the highest responses to oil price shocks. The impulse response results for the debt quartiles are inconclusive.

The findings shed light into the impact of oil price shocks on capital spending in relation to firm characteristics. The impulse response results that capital spending of the E&P, drilling and oil services firms, and the small firms in general, have a higher positive impact of oil shocks lend support to the argument that these firms more likely reduce capital spending because of financial constraints in the capital markets. A higher positive response by the low return on assets firms indicates that firms with low earnings and cash flow problems are more likely to reduce their capital spending when oil price drops. With regard to growth prospects, it appears that shocks in oil price dampen the outlook for the low p/e firms, which leads to a cut in their capital spending. On the other hand, the high p/e firms seem to rely more on their growth prospects and downplay the adverse impact of oil price shocks.

Unlike previous studies in this area, the study focuses on firm-level data in detail, uses quarterly data and uses firm-specific variables that explain impact of oil price shocks on capital spending in oil and gas industry.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the changes in Chinese workers’ values by comparing the work-related values of the One-Child Generation (OCG), the Social Reform Generation and the Cultural Revolution Generation.

A survey was conducted with 918 Chinese employees, the vast majority of them working for Chinese domestic firms in Guangzhou, Shaoguan and Harbin. The collected data were analysed mainly using ANOVA, Tukey’s pairwise comparison and Kruskall–Wallis tests.

The OCG was found to place less importance on income and job security, while possessing higher tolerance towards the practice of nepotism, than the older two generations. The authors found no significant differences in the levels of intrinsic values and altruism among the three generations. Additionally, the results indicate overall low altruistic values and high extrinsic values across all three generations of Chinese workers.

China’s unprecedented generation of only-children as workers is an unknown factor. It is only now, over a decade after the OCG first entered the job market, that a comparative study between their work values and those of previous generations has become possible. This study exploits the momentum and is one of the first studies to include the OCG in the investigation of work value changes in Chinese society.

This study aims to evaluate a human rights-informed dementia prevention program promoting better health and social care among older adults. In this study, the authors examined whether a dual-task training would improve cognition in healthy older adults.

Individuals attending the systematic health education program for older adults based in Japan were recruited for study inclusion, and divided into a dual-task training group (TG) and a control group (CG). The TG underwent 90 min of a weekly dual-task training for 12 weeks. Severity of dementia was measured using the Mini-Mental State Examination (MMSE) test. Brain function was assessed using a go/no-go task paradigm, during which cerebral blood flow was additionally measured using functional near-infrared spectroscopy to quantify oxyhemoglobin (oxy-Hb).

MMSE total score, number of errors in the go/no-go tasks and oxy-Hb values showed significant improvements in the TG.

Owing to the small number of participants allocated to the CG, the results must be interpreted with caution. Replication and further validation based on large-scale, randomized-controlled trials is warranted.

This study highlights potential benefits of incorporating an early prevention training for dementia into a human rights-friendly health education program.

This study suggests a potential means to reduce costs of social security and health care by introducing a human rights-informed dementia prevention program.

The results suggest that dual-task training may improve cognitive function in healthy older adults, thereby contributing to better health and improvement of social health care, based on a human rights-informed health education program for the prevention of dementia.

The purpose of the paper is to evaluate the performance and efficiency of the five most used search engines, i.e. Google, Yahoo!, Live, Ask, and AOL, in retrieving internet resources at specific points of time using a large number of complex queries.

In order to examine the performance of the five search engines, five sets of experiments were conducted using 50 complex queries within two different time frames. The data were evaluated using Excel and SPSS software.

The paper results highlight the fact that different web search engines, which use different technology to find and present web information, yield different first page search results. The overall analysis of the findings of different measures reveals that Google has a significantly higher rate of performance in retrieving web resources as compared with the other four search engines. Yahoo! is the second best in terms of retrieval performance. The other three search engines did not performed satisfactorily compared with Google and Yahoo!

The paper will provide important insight into the effectiveness of major search engines and their ability to retrieve relevant internet resources. This paper has produced key findings that are important for all web search engine users and researchers, and the web industry. The findings will also assist search companies to improve their services.

The purpose of this study is twofold: to investigate the correlation between the perception of respondent accountants (N = 164) on ethics elements and their demographic factors and to examine the gap between the expectations of employers (accountants) and the coverage of ethics in the education of professional accountants.

Both qualitative and quantitative methods were used to collect the data. An analysis of the relevant documents (syllabi and codes of ethics) was conducted to generate and group appropriate items that represent ethics themes. This led to 17 themes such as integrity, conflict of interest, ethics theories and resolving ethical dilemma. Using inputs from the qualitative study and relevant literature, a questionnaire was framed for the quantitative phase of this study.

Within accounting ethics education, more emphasis and awareness is required on the themes of integrity, independence, corruption and insider trading. Four categories emerge for the ethics themes related to education in accounting: “Integrity to Accounting Profession”, “Regulatory Compliance”, “Practical Ethical Issues” and “Sense of Responsibility”. The results of this study reveal there are gaps between ethics education and accountants’ expectations. It is found that accountants perceive more virtue-related elements be put in accounting education.

This study will make accounting educators, accountants and accounting professional associations to be more aware and work together to bridge this gap as well as contribute to a more effective ethics education for accountants in Hong Kong.

End of education is character and not merely the acquisition of intellectual prowess. With Aristotle’s wisdom and the learnings from the many corporate scandals, it would be safe to conclude that education should result in nurturing hearts and character and not just the transfer of worldly knowledge. While there are many studies focusing on perceptions about ethics, ethics education of business students or academics, there are hardly any studies available on accounting professionals’ perceptions on ethics education, especially in Hong Kong. The authors found that accountants want more virtue-related ethics elements included in accounting education.

This research is about embedding service-based supply chain management (SCM) concepts in the education sector. Due to Canada's competitive education sector, the authors focus on Canadian universities.

The authors develop a framework for evaluating and forecasting university performance using data envelopment analysis (DEA) and artificial neural networks (ANNs) to assist education policymakers. The application of the proposed framework is illustrated based on information from 16 Canadian universities and by investigating their teaching and research performance.

The major findings are (1) applying the service SCM concept to develop a performance evaluation and prediction framework, (2) demonstrating the application of DEA-ANN for computing and predicting the efficiency of service SCM in Canadian universities, and (3) generating insights to enable universities to improve their research and teaching performances considering critical inputs and outputs.

This paper presents a new framework for universities' performance assessment and performance prediction. DEA and ANN are integrated to aid decision-makers in evaluating the performances of universities.

The findings suggest that higher education policymakers should monitor attrition rates at graduate and undergraduate levels and provide financial support to facilitate research and concentrate on Ph.D. programs. Additionally, the sensitivity analysis indicates that selecting inputs and outputs is critical in determining university rankings.

This research proposes a new integrated DEA and ANN framework to assess and forecast future teaching and research efficiencies applying the service supply chain concept. The findings offer policymakers insights such as paying close attention to the attrition rates of undergraduate and postgraduate programs. In addition, prioritizing internal research support and concentrating on Ph.D. programs is recommended.