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We have conducted a study of academic faculty use of databases for research, their need for evaluative guides to databases, and the appropriateness of currently‐available guides. Although the response rate was low (19%), the follow‐up survey suggested only a minimal non‐response bias. Our findings suggest that academic faculty are typically unaware of the range of databases available and few recognize the need for databases in research. Of those faculty who do use databases, most delegate the searching to a librarian or an assistant, rather than performing the searches themselves. We identified thirty‐nine database guides; these tend to be descriptive rather than evaluative.

This study aims to investigate the moderating effect of independent directors on the relationship between politicians on the board and corporate social responsibility disclosure (CSRD).

The ordinary least square has been used to analyze the CSRD data collected from the annual reports of all 30 listed banks of Bangladesh covering six years period ranging from 2013–2018. Further, the study has applied the generalized method of moments to prove the robustness of the model across the endogeneity issue.

The study found a positive relationship between board independence and CSRD that indicates board independence enhances the CSRD to a great extent. On the contrary, the inclusion of politicians on the board has shown a negative impact on CSRD that implies the higher the presence of political members on the board of a bank, the lower the involvement of the bank in CSR activities. However, board independence positively and significantly moderates the politician directors on the CSRD. The findings imply that if the independent directors are empowered, they play the role of whistleblowers that, in turn, mitigates the negative role of politician directors to CSRD.

The study suggests the banks’ management, and regulatory bodies formulate sound policies so that the banks are forced to include more independent directors with enough power and at the same time, reduce the politician directors on the board.

The study extends debate on the political CSR and CSRD through validating the role of board independence.

The basic intention of this research is to investigate the role of information transparency of financial institutions and psychological attitude of the individuals toward their attention to saving and borrowing. This study also tries to know how an individual's psychological factor affects a person's attitude to motivate them to save or borrow and contribute to well-being by giving them confidence that they can face financial challenges. So, the main concern of this study is to explore different factors that ultimately contribute to the financial well-being (FWB) of individual.

A survey was conducted by using a well-structured questionnaire to collect data and test the developed hypotheses by using SmartPLS. Data were collected from 120 customers of seven different commercial banks in Pakistan.

The findings of this study show that perceived information transparency positively affects FWB. It is also because transparent shared information creates positive change in individuals' perceived self-efficacy and leads to FWB. Furthermore, an individual's psychological attitude toward borrowing and saving did not contribute to the FWB of people who belong to Pakistan.

The research area is limited to one city of Pakistan and analysis is done with small numbers of sample, it can be increased and more areas can be explored.

This research provides significant implications for people and economists by providing awareness about the antecedents of FWB. The policymakers or managers who work in financial institutions should provide more transparent information and create less risky opportunities to improve the individual's well-being. If person, manager and financial institution can properly utilize the information of this study, then they are able to improve their FWB. By providing more transparent services and favorable experience with your dealings, it could help to obtain and retain more loyal internal (employees) and external customers. The loyal customers and sincere employees can increase the productivity level of organization. The more productive organizations in countries means better society and progress in the economy.

This research contributes to the body of knowledge that how perceived information transparency and psychological attitude of borrowing create improvement and upward changes in the FWB of a person.

Systems with the so‐called “additive” property are studied. This kind of system is an abstract in the language of systems theory of some useful structures in mathematics, such as topology. Some mapping properties between additive systems are given and open questions are posed.

Open innovation (OI) involves the alignment of the organisation’s strategy and resources. Notably, companies will not adopt this emerging paradigm without a guarantee of better results. Therefore, the purpose of this paper is to identify which combination of entrepreneurial managerial approaches makes it possible for companies to improve performance.

This study involves a survey questionnaire, 147 enterprises and regression analysis on the survey data to identify to what extent strategic and management orientations affect innovation performance (IP), as well as an analysis focusing on the results of two sectors (i.e. tourism and agri-food industries).

The main findings show a direct effect amongst the level of innovation, external openness and open innovation management (OIM), and IP. However, although there are no differences in the perception and orientation of OIM and the results across the two sectors, the influence of the variable firm size has been supported. Finally, the collective effort required by companies to ensure the successful implementation of OI processes and achieve high IP is outstanding.

This paper discusses the significance of these findings, highlighting the main practical implications for researchers and companies – especially the need to assimilate the organisational change involved in the challenge of OI.

This study combines the sectors industry and services, emphasises OIM and reinforces the literature in the field of IP.

The evaluation of linear dynamic response analysis of large structures by vector superposition requires, in its traditional formulation, the solution of a large and expensive eigenvalue problem. A method of solution based on a Ritz transformation to a reduced system of generalized coordinates using load dependent vectors generated from the spatial distribution of the dynamic loads is shown to maintain the high expected accuracy of modern computer analysis and significantly reduces the execution time over eigensolution procedures. New computational variants to generate load dependent vectors are presented and error norms are developed to control the convergence characteristics of load dependent Ritz solutions. Numerical applications on simple structural systems are used to show the relative efficiency of the proposed solution procedures.

This study focuses on a specific method of meat production that involves carcass purchase and meat production by packing facilities with a novel two-stage model that simultaneously considers location-routing and inventory-production operating decisions. The considered problem aims to reduce variable and fixed transportation and production costs, inventory holding cost and the cost of opening cold storage facilities.

The proposed model encompasses a two-stage model consisting of a single-echelon and a three-echelon many-to-many network with deterministic demand. The proposed model is a mixed-integer linear programming (MILP) model which was tested with the general algebraic modelling system (GAMS) software for a real-world case study in Iran. A sensitivity analysis was performed to examine the effect of retailers' holding capacity and supply capacity at carcass suppliers.

In this research, the number of products transferred at each level, the number of products held, the quantity of red meat produced, the required cold storage facilities and the required vehicles were optimally specified. The outcomes indicated a two percent (2%) decrease in cost per kg of red meat. Eventually, the outcomes of the first and second sensitivity analysis indicated that reduced retailers' holding capacity and supply capacity at carcass suppliers leads to higher total costs.

This research proposes a novel multi-period location-inventory-routing problem for the red meat supply chain in an emerging economy with a heterogeneous vehicle fleet and logistics decisions. The proposed model is presented in two stages and four-echelon including carcass suppliers, packing facilities, cold storage facilities and retailers.

The present study deals with the growth performance of export (X), ­import (M), and economic growth (Y) in India over the period 1970–1971 to 2016–2017 as well as tariff (TR) for the period 1990–2017 by employing the methodology of one-time endogenous structural break suggested by Zivot and Andrews (1992). Also, an attempt has been taken to examine the direction of causality between the above-mentioned trade-related variables and economic growth using Granger Causality Test. Results of estimation reveal that all the variables converge toward a stationarity process having constant variability overtime. There exists structural break in the year 1996, 2006, 2008, and 2010, respectively, for economic growth, tariff, imports, and exports. Bidirectional causality is found running from economic growth to tariff and from tariff to economic growth. But there is unidirectional causality from imports to tariff, imports to exports and from exports to tariff.

The international conference on Architectural Education, was held at the Faculty of Architecture, Eastern Mediterranean University (EMU) in Famagusta, North Cyprus, on April 3-4, 2014. This conference has been organized in collaboration with the European Association for Architectural Education (EAAE), under the title of “Unspoken Issues in Architectural Education (UIAE)”.

This paper aims to investigate the responses of single piles and pile groups due to tunneling-induced ground movements in a two-layered soil system. The analyses mainly focus on the additional single pile responses in terms of bending moment, lateral deflection, axial force, shaft resistance and pile settlement. Subsequently, a series of parametric studies were carried out to better understand the responses of single piles induced by tunneling. To give further understanding regarding the pile groups, a 2 × 2 pile group with two different pile head conditions, namely, free and capped, was considered.

Using the PLAXIS three-dimensional (3D) software, a full 3D numerical modeling is performed to investigate the effects of ground movements caused by tunneling on adjacent pile foundations. The numerical model was validated using centrifuge test data found in the literature. The relevance of the 3D model is also judged by comparison with the 2D plane strain model using the PLAXIS 2D code.

The numerical test results reveal that tunneling induces significant displacements and internal forces in nearby piles. The magnitude and distribution of internal forces depend mainly on the position of the pile toe relative to the tunnel depth and the distance between the pile and the vertical axis of the tunnel. As the volume loss increases from 1% to 3%, the apparent loss of pile capacity increases from 11% to 20%. By increasing the pile length from 0.5 to 1.5 times, the tunnel depth, the maximum pile settlement and lateral deflection decrease by about 63% and 18%, respectively. On the other hand, the maximum bending moment and axial load increase by about 7 and 13 times, respectively. When the pile is located at a distance of 2.5 times the tunnel diameter (Dt), the additional pile responses become insignificant. It was found that an increase in tunnel depth from 1.5Dt to 2.5Dt (with a pile length of 3Dt) increases the maximum lateral deflection by about 420%. Regarding the interaction between tunneling and group of piles, a positive group effect was observed with a significant reduction of the internal forces in rear piles. The maximum bending moment of the front piles was found to be higher than that of the rear piles by about 47%.

Soil is a complex material that shows differently in primary loading, unloading and reloading with stress-dependent stiffness. This general behavior was not possibly being accounted for in simple elastic perfectly plastic Mohr–Coulomb model which is often used to predict the behavior of soils. Thus, in the present study, the more advanced hardening soil model with small-strain stiffness (HSsmall) is used to model the non-linear stress–strain soil behavior. Moreover, unlike previous studies THAT are usually based on the assumption that the soil is homogeneous and using numerical methods by decoupled loadings under plane strain conditions; in this study, the pile responses have been exhaustively investigated in a two-layered soil system using a fully coupled 3D numerical analysis that takes into account the real interactions between tunneling and pile foundations. The paper presents a distinctive set of findings and insights that provide valuable guidance for the design and construction of shield tunnels passing through pile foundations.