Search results
1 – 10 of over 5000The purpose of this paper is to study the relationship between intellectual capital and organizational innovation in Kuwait Petroleum Corporation (KPC) through a case study at KPC…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to study the relationship between intellectual capital and organizational innovation in Kuwait Petroleum Corporation (KPC) through a case study at KPC on the employees of the corporation (The study population was 2,180 respondents and the sample size was 335 respondents).
Design/methodology/approach
The statistical package for social science was used to analyze the data. While trying to explore the relationship between intellectual capital and innovation, the researcher used the descriptive analytical method and the case study methodology using various references, periodicals, internal and external documents and data, in addition to conducting a field study on a sample of employees of KPC, through a questionnaire form containing the axes that reflect the study variables.
Findings
There is a relative approval between the sample of the research on the existence of a good role for training in the corporation in terms of availability for all employees and the compatibility of training programs with the actual needs of employees, and linking the training paths and career paths for promotions in the corporation. The researcher attributed this to the employees' awareness to the importance of training and its role in raising their performance levels, and the awareness of the corporation to the importance of training and capacity building of the human element.
Originality/value
The research, in general, demonstrated the importance of human capital as the organization's most valuable assets, especially as it supports creativity and innovation, thus enabling competitiveness. The research stressed that human capital is the most important element in the formation of intellectual capital, which requires decision-makers to support it and give the intellectual and human aspects a strategic content that meets the needs to develop innovation and institutional education and to recruit systems and indicators to measure the performance objectively to achieve the goal of survival of the corporation in a competitive sustainable environment, through providing material and moral potentials that can support the implementation of organizational innovation at various levels.
Details
Keywords
Johan Nordgren and Fredrik Tiberg
Drug sales facilitated through digital communication on the surface web and on darknet cryptomarkets have increased during the past two decades. This has resulted in an increase…
Abstract
Purpose
Drug sales facilitated through digital communication on the surface web and on darknet cryptomarkets have increased during the past two decades. This has resulted in an increase in drug law enforcement efforts to combat these markets and a subsequent increase in judicial sentencing of people selling drugs online. The aim of this study was to analyze how Swedish courts describe sentenced sellers and how the courts apply case law.
Design/methodology/approach
The empirical material consists of 71 sentencing documents produced by Swedish courts in cases of online drug selling between January 1, 2010 and January 1, 2020. In total, 99 sentenced persons occur in the documents. Using a qualitative research design, the authors analyzed the material through thematic text analysis.
Findings
Overall, in their descriptions of online drug sale operations, the courts’ characterizations of the concepts of street capital and digital capital show a dichotomy. These forms of capital are situationally described as both aggravating and mitigating aspects in the application of case law, indicating that it may be fruitful to view both street and digital capital as resources used on contemporary drug markets in general.
Originality/value
Very little research exists into how judicial systems describe and perceive the developing phenomenon of online drug sales. Using a relatively large sample from a decade of sentencing, the authors provide an analysis of how Swedish courts view and valuate capital forms in the online drugs trade.
Details
Keywords
Mehdi Tajpour, Aidin Salamzadeh, Yashar Salamzadeh and Vitor Braga
The purpose of this paper is to investigate social capital's effect on family business development in selected family media firms.
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to investigate social capital's effect on family business development in selected family media firms.
Design/methodology/approach
The statistical population includes 100 individuals who run a family business in this industry. Eighty individuals are selected as the research sample through the stratified random sampling method. The data are collected using a questionnaire. The authors used structural equation modelling method for data analysis.
Findings
The results indicate that social capital affects the development of family businesses in media firms. According to the results obtained from the structural equation test, the effect of the relational dimension of social capital on trust and the effect of the cognitive and structural dimensions of social capital on trust are supported, while the effect of the relational dimension of social capital on commitment as well as the effect of the cognitive dimension of social capital on trust are not supported.
Practical implications
This research could help family firms in media industries improve trust and commitment by paying attention to different aspects of social capital. Besides, it shows that even the impact of relational and cognitive social capital, respectively, on commitment and trust, are not supported; these two could affect trust and commitment, respectively.
Originality/value
The paper is among the first studies that investigate family firms in media industries. Besides, the relationships between relational, cognitive and structural aspects of social capital and trust and commitment are rarely studied in the literature as two determinants of family business development.
Details
Keywords
Prior studies argue that social capital is vital for firm growth. Adding to this line of research, this paper provides more evidence regarding the contribution of bonding and…
Abstract
Prior studies argue that social capital is vital for firm growth. Adding to this line of research, this paper provides more evidence regarding the contribution of bonding and bridging social ties to various aspects of small-l and medium-sized enterprise (SME) development. Building on the original data from Russia, this paper investigates the effects of firm-internal and firm-external relational ties on SME performance and geographic expansion. The findings indicate that horizontal bridging ties facilitate specific strategies of SME growth. Thus, this paper supports prior research conducted in the Asian context, and allows for extending the outcomes of bonding and bridging social capital into broader institutional settings. In addition, this study raises the question of relationship between the composition of social capital and distinct organizational characteristics of SMEs. Finally, the paper discusses the implications for future research, and outlines some practical recommendations for SMEs operating in emerging markets.
Details
Keywords
Yasmeen Al Balushi, Stuart Locke and Zakaria Boulanouar
Small and medium enterprises’ (SMEs) capital structure and financial policies are important areas of policy concern. Only a limited number of studies on capital structure have…
Abstract
Purpose
Small and medium enterprises’ (SMEs) capital structure and financial policies are important areas of policy concern. Only a limited number of studies on capital structure have, however, been conducted on SMEs, and this deficiency is particularly evident when investigating what influences funding decisions around Islamic finance. This paper accordingly aims to investigate whether Omani SME owner-managers’ intention to adopt Islamic finance is influenced by their knowledge of Islamic finance, their own characteristics and/or their firms’ characteristics.
Design/methodology/approach
The authors administered a questionnaire survey via face-to-face interviews to 385 SME owner-managers operating in Muscat, Oman’s capital city. The Kruskal–Wallis one-way analysis of variance (ANOVA) non-parametric test was used to analyse the questionnaire survey data.
Findings
The findings indicate that while SME owner-managers’ Islamic financial knowledge and personal characteristics do influence their intention to adopt Islamic finance, their firms’ characteristics have no significant influence on SME owner-managers’ decisions to accede to Islamic financing.
Research limitations/implications
The research’s first limitation is that it gathered data from SME owner-managers in Muscat only. Future studies could survey a wider sample of Omani SME owner-managers. Second, the study’s findings cannot be generalised to large and public firms, as the sample includes owner-managers of SMEs only. Finally, there is a need to investigate other factors such as nonfinancial and behavioural factors, which were not explored in the present study, but which may influence SME owner-managers’ Islamic financial decisions.
Originality/value
Theoretical and empirical studies on capital structure have focused primarily on large listed firms. Only a few studies have paid attention to the capital structure of SMEs, particularly in the context of an emerging market such as Oman. This gap in the literature is mostly evident when investigating the factors that influence the funding decision towards Islamic financing in a country, such as Oman, where Islamic finance represents a new banking sector offering.
Details
Keywords
The purpose of this paper is to examine whether income diversification moderates the relationship between human capital and bank performance.
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to examine whether income diversification moderates the relationship between human capital and bank performance.
Design/methodology/approach
The study uses a sample of 53 banks and panel data for the years 2010–2018. The hypotheses are tested through hierarchical multiple regression and the choice between fixed effect and random effect estimation is based on the results of the Hausman test.
Findings
The study finds that human capital and income diversification significantly influence bank performance; however, the direction of the causality varies. While human capital has a positive effect, income diversification has a negative effect. Additionally, the interaction term has a negative and significant effect on bank performance, inferring that income diversification has an antagonistic effect on the human capital and bank performance relationship. For the control variable, liquidity and asset quality negatively affects bank performance while capitalization has a positive effect.
Research limitations/implications
Human capital was measured as human capital efficiency (HCE), which is a quantitative measure of human capital, hence future studies can use qualitative measures. Also, the study focused on commercial banks in East Africa, future researcher may possibly consider other regions and industries, which would shed more insights.
Practical implications
The results of this paper provide valuable insights. Bank managers can get a better understanding of the impact of human capital on bank performance, and the need to invest more in human capital development. Further, the study cautions bank managers that engaging in non-lending activities might destroy the economic value of human capital and ultimately lower performance. The study also recommends that policymakers should address the obstacles to banks' income diversification, for instance relaxing regulations restricting diversification; this might enable banks to leverage related financial service activities for optimal utilization of human capital and improve banks' profitability.
Originality/value
While a good number of previous studies investigated the direct effect of human capital and income diversification on the performance of banks, this study examines the moderating role of income diversification on the relationship between human capital and performance of banks in East Africa.
Details
Keywords
Kenneth Cafferkey, Brian Harney, Keith Townsend and Jonathan Winterton
This study describes and analyzes the output of academic research on the topic of social capital. The concept of social capital has attracted the interest of scholars from a range…
Abstract
Purpose
This study describes and analyzes the output of academic research on the topic of social capital. The concept of social capital has attracted the interest of scholars from a range of academic disciplines, and it has been applied to explain a variety of phenomena.
Design/methodology/approach
Using the bibliographic approach, I analyzed aggregate data obtained from the Web of Science database. The analyses were carried out using VOSviewer software.
Findings
The results show social capital to be a topic of interest in multiple fields of academic research. The findings highlight the important role that journals, including those from disciplines other than the social sciences, have played in divulging this concept, and show that some countries and institutions are more productive and engage in more collaborative research efforts than others.
Research limitations/implications
The main implications of this study regard research on social capital. The results demonstrate how social capital continues to interest scholars from a variety of academic disciplines. Future bibliometric research should include other sources (literature databases) and be expanded to consider other types of publication.
Originality/value
This paper furthers previous research by exclusively focusing on the concept of social capital. It analyzes the international trend in publications up until the end of 2021, thus expanding the publication period considered in previous studies. The results of this study highlight the relevance of bibliometric tools for assessing research performance.
Details
Keywords
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…
Abstract
Purpose
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.
Design/methodology/approach
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.
Findings
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.
Originality/value
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.
Details
Keywords
Ming Qi, Jiawei Zhang, Jing Xiao, Pei Wang, Danyang Shi and Amuji Bridget Nnenna
In this paper the interconnectedness among financial institutions and the level of systemic risks of four types of Chinese financial institutions are investigated.
Abstract
Purpose
In this paper the interconnectedness among financial institutions and the level of systemic risks of four types of Chinese financial institutions are investigated.
Design/methodology/approach
By the means of RAS algorithm, the interconnection among financial institutions are illustrated. Different methods, including Linear Granger, Systemic impact index (SII), vulnerability index (VI), CoVaR, and MES are used to measure the systemic risk exposures across different institutions.
Findings
The results illustrate that big banks are more interconnected and hold the biggest scales of inter-bank transactions in the financial network. The institutions which have larger size tend to have more connection with others. Insurance and security companies contribute more to the systemic risk where as other institutions, such as trusts, financial companies, etc. may bring about severe loss and endanger the financial system as a whole.
Practical implications
Since other institutions with low levels of regulation may bring about higher extreme loss and suffer the whole system, it deserves more attention by regulators considering the contagion of potential risks in the financial system.
Originality/value
This study builds a valuable contribution by examine the systemic risks from the perspectives of both interconnection and tail risk measures. Furthermore; Four types financial institutions are investigated in this paper.
Details