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This paper aims to focus on the absence of a direct criterion for the ideal level of net working capital (NWC) for which Acikgoz (2014) theoretically demonstrates that this NWC can be treated in a manner that allows the assessment of repayments. The study presents and discusses a new multiplier (i.e. the afa coefficient), defined as the ratio of cash equivalents ratio to NWC, measured as the percentage of short-term liabilities (Acikgoz, 2014). In other words, the study explores whether NWC could be an indicator of the ratios of corporate short-term bank credit to STL and of bank credit to total assets.

Sectoral panel regressions are used in the case of Turkey, spanning the period 1996-2013, on data obtained from the Central Bank of Turkey. Through second-generation panel unit root tests for cross-section dependence and panel cointegration methodologies, the results illustrate the statistical significance of the CD statistics, indicating the presence of cross dependence, the presence of non-stationary variables and the presence of a long-run association for the variables under study.

The findings document that a transformed variable of NWC is more substantive than the explicatory quality of the current ratio and may potentially be used in the prediction of bank credit in corporate liabilities.

The afa coefficient shows the ratio of liquid assets to NWC as a percentage of STL. The results illustrate that this coefficient plays a significant role for corporate bank credit usage in the case of the Turkish sectoral analysis.

This study aims to investigate the relationship between political connections, financing decisions and cash holding.

Based on historical data from 181 active non-financial firms listed on Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) Stock Exchange Markets during the period of 2009–2016, this study uses ordinary least squares and dynamic system-generalized method of moments to test the research hypotheses. The final data set comprises a total of 1,448 firm-year observations from ten major non-financial industry classifications.

This study finds a positive relationship between political connections and each of internal financing proxied by retained earnings ratio and external financing proxied by short- and long-term debt to total asset. The findings also show a positive relationship between political connections and cash holding.

The findings of the study provide a better understanding of the role of politically connected directors in financing decisions and cash holding in the GCC. Investors can consider the presence of royal family members in the board of directors when making investment decision. Policymakers are encouraged to develop more effective policies that encourage listed firms to provide information on the political positions of the board of directors, managers and major shareholders/owners of companies.

This study contributes to the literature by providing empirical evidence on the relationship between political connections and financing decisions by focusing on the GCC region. This study also highlights that boards in connected firms in the GCC have lower monitoring role owing to political interventions, and that connected firms face higher agency problems as they have weak governance and boards compared with non-connected firms.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the impact of financial reporting quality (FRQ) on dividend policy. This paper also examines the moderating role of corporate liquidity on the FRQ–dividend policy relationship.

The sample of this paper contains 113 non-financial companies listed on the Saudi Stock Exchange from 2003 to 2019 (1,675 firm-year observations). The authors use OLS regressions to test the hypotheses.

The authors find a positive relationship between FRQ and dividend policy. They also find that the positive effect of FRQ on dividend policy is not strengthened by the presence of corporate liquidity.

The findings of this study offer implications for stakeholders, including investors and others in Saudi Arabia and other developing countries with comparable business environments. This is because of the significant impact of the dividend policy on a company’s value, as it is a crucial decision that involves distributing substantial amounts of money to shareholders on a regular basis and interacts with other critical decisions within the company. Therefore, the dividend policy has a crucial role in determining the company’s value, which is reflected in its stock prices.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first study in Saudi Arabia that provides new empirical evidence on the impact of FRQ on dividend policy and the moderating role of corporate liquidity on this relationship.

The purpose of this study is to investigate the sustainability performances of apparel, footwear and accessory (AFA) B Corps, providing companies, especially micro, small and medium-sized enterprises, with reasonable suggestions on how to incorporate the concept of sustainability efficiently.

This study focused on 117 AFA B Corps. B Corps’ overall sustainability performances consist of their performances in the five areas of governance, workers, community, environment and customers. First, the 117 B Corps’ performances in these areas were compared. Second, multiple regression models were built to predict the B Corps’ sustainability performances based on their inherent characteristics (headquarter location, age, size and industry sector). Third, according to the B Corps’ performances in the five areas, the B Corps were clustered using the hieratical clustering method.

This study found that the B Corps’ performances in different areas were significantly different and their performances in the area of the community were better than in the other four areas. The B Corps’ characteristics were correlated to their sustainability performances. For example, company size was positively related to the B Corps’ performances in the area of workers. Additionally, Clusters 1, 2 and 3 were identified and characterized by their competitive performances in the areas of governance, workers and community, respectively.

This study contributes to the knowledge of AFA B Corps’ sustainability performances, identifying the weakness and strongness of the sustainable practices accepted by existing AFA B Corps and lending insights regarding how to predict and improve sustainability performances.

As the number of devices that connect to the Internet of Things (IoT) has grown, privacy and security issues have come up. Because IoT devices collect so much sensitive information, like user names, locations, phone numbers and even how they usually use energy, it is very important to protect users' privacy and security. IoT technology will be hard to use on the client side because IoT-enabled devices do not have clear privacy and security controls.

IoT technology would be harder to use on the client side if the IoT did not offer enough well-defined ways to protect users’ privacy and security. The goal of this research is to protect people's privacy in the IoT by using the oppositional artificial flora optimization (EGPKC-OAFA) algorithm to generate the best keys for the ElGamal public key cryptosystem (EGPKC). The EGPKC-OAFA approach puts the most weight on the IEEE 802.15.4 standard for MAC, which is the most important part of the standard. The security field is part of the MAC header of this standard. In addition, the MAC header includes EGPKC, which makes it possible to make authentication keys as quickly as possible.

With the proliferation of IoT devices, privacy and security have become major concerns in the academic world. Security and privacy are of the utmost importance due to the large amount of personally identifiable information acquired by IoT devices, such as name, location, phone numbers and energy use. Client-side deployment of IoT technologies will be hampered by the absence of well-defined privacy and security solutions afforded by the IoT. The purpose of this research is to present the EGPKC with optimum key generation using the EGPKC-OAFA algorithm for the purpose of protecting individual privacy within the context of the IoT. The EGPKC-OAFA approach is concerned with the MAC standard defined by the IEEE 802.15.4 standard, which includes the security field in its MAC header. Also, the MAC header incorporates EGPKC, which enables the fastest possible authentication key generation. In addition, the best methodology award goes to the OAFA strategy, which successfully implements the optimum EGPKC selection strategy by combining opposition-based (OBL) and standard AFA ideas. The EGPKC-OAFA method has been proved to effectively analyze performance in a number of simulations, with the results of various functions being identified.

In light of the growing prevalence of the IoT, an increasing number of people are becoming anxious about the protection and confidentiality of the personal data that they save online. This is especially true in light of the fact that more and more things are becoming connected to the internet. The IoT is capable of gathering personally identifiable information such as names, addresses and phone numbers, as well as the quantity of energy that is used. It will be challenging for customers to adopt IoT technology because of worries about the security and privacy of the data generated by users. In this work, the EGPKC is paired with adversarial artificial flora, which leads in an increase to the privacy security provided by EGPKC for the IoT (EGPKC-OAFA). The MAC security field that is part of the IEEE 802.15.4 standard is one of the areas that the EGPKC-OAFA protocol places a high focus on. The Authentication Key Generation Protocol Key Agreement, also known as EGPKCA, is used in MAC headers. The abbreviation for this protocol is EGPKCA. The OAFA technique, also known as the combination of OBL and AFA, is the most successful method for selecting EGPKCs. This method is recognized by its acronym, OAFA. It has been shown via a variety of simulations that the EGPKC-OAFA technique is a very useful instrument for carrying out performance analysis.

In this paper we use a large linked employer-employee data set on German establishments between 1993 and 2012 to investigate how the gender composition of the top layer of management affects a variety of establishment and worker outcomes. We use two different measures to identify the gender composition of the top layer based on direct survey data: the fraction of women among top managers, and the fraction of women among working proprietors. We document the following facts: (a) There is a strong negative association between the fraction of women in the top layer of management and several establishment outcomes, among them business volume, investment, total wage bill per worker, total employment, and turnover; (b) Establishments with a high fraction of women in the top layer of management are more likely to implement female-friendly policies, such as providing childcare facilities or promoting and mentoring female junior staff; (c) The fraction of women in the top layer of management is also negatively associated with employment and wages, both male and female, full-time and part-time. However, all of these associations vanish when we include establishment fixed effects and establishment-specific time trends. This reveals a substantial sorting of female managers across establishments: small and less productive establishments that invest less, pay their employees lower wages, but are more female-friendly are more likely to be led by women.

This paper aims to translate and validate an Arabic version of the Barriers to Access to Care Evaluation (BACE) BACE scale to make it appropriate for the targeted socio-cultural and linguistic context.

This psychometric study has two main compounds: translating the BACE into Arabic and validating it. Using the back-translation method, the authors involved seven professional individuals to maximize the efficacy of the translated version. The authors began with the process of translating the scale from English into Arabic and vice versa followed by evaluation, compression and matching. Later, a pilot study with a sample size of 35 participants was conducted to receive feedback on the Arabic version of the scale. Finally, an online survey was generated and distributed among Arabic-speaking countries; a total of 630 participants were voluntarily involved in this study.

A total of 630 participants completed the survey with a mean age of 31.4 ± 12.9, and 402 (63.8%) were females. Cronbach’s alpha coefficient and McDonald's Omega coefficient were both greater than 0.9. The confirmatory factor analysis was found to fit highly satisfactory with the stigma-related barriers.

The BACE was validated in Arabic and its psychometric properties were examined in-depth and found to be strong.

This paper fulfils an identified need to translate tools to make mental health more accessible to patients in need.

The purpose of this current study is to identify the optimal stable position of airship, with reference to spatial variation of atmospheric wind flow, so as to reduce the vibrations and thus aid in the development of control mechanism of airship dynamics.

Study of uniform flow under steady‐state conditions was carried out through the measurements of pressure and velocity in a wind tunnel at low Mach numbers on airship model (in order of size, 1:13) inclined to the uniform air stream at various angles. The measurements have been made for a range of angles of incidence, in both vertical and horizontal planes, with a Reynolds number, based on the free stream velocity and a body cross‐sectional dimension, of order of four and six, respectively. Steady‐state numerical simulations were performed, serving comparative investigation with experimental data for the specific case of the model inclined to the free stream, with orientation of side‐slip (yaw) angle β=0 and angle of attack (pitch) α=0.

The numerical results showed similar trend as found by experimental analysis. In this study, several factors such as the pressure (C_p), lift (C_L), drag (C_D) coefficients, pressure and air velocity were taken into account for comparative analysis. The analysis paved the way in identification of constructively stable position of airship model with orientation of β=0 and α=0, with respect to air flow direction.

The current findings aid in the development of control mechanism of airship dynamics.

The experimental analysis of the airship model is presented along with computational fluid dynamics analysis of optimised shape of airship model in different orientations with respect to direction of airflow.

Discusses the use of the act frequency approach methodology to develop and validate a measure of organizational support of revolutionary change. A total of nine unique behaviors, describing three constructs, were viewed by employees as supportive of revolutionary change; and 12 unique behaviors, describing two constructs, were perceived as being non‐supportive of revolutionary change. The measures developed were found to have high internal reliability. The measures were also found to be highly correlated with relevant individual and organizational outcome measures. These results provide empirical support for the idea that how an organization supports revolutionary change can have an impact on both the organization and its employees and that contextual variable may not influence perceptions.