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The purpose of this paper is to pinpoint key conduits promoting knowledge spillovers through inward foreign direct investment in the banking sector.

The data were obtained by a survey. The survey data were collected from managers of five major local banks in Korea. The survey was conducted during May 10-June 30, 2015 with a total of 581 self-administered responses finally collected at the end (response rate: 60.5 percent).

Based on the survey data collected from the survey, the results indicate that knowledge spillovers from foreign to local banks occur in the Korean context. Demonstration effect, worker mobility and absorptive capacity of local banks are found to be effective conduits for knowledge spillovers. In addition, the authors have also found that competitive pressure negatively influences worker mobility leading to knowledge spillovers while two other elements (i.e. demonstration effect and absorptive capacity) positively mediate the relationship between competitive pressure and knowledge spillovers.

It is essential for the managers of multinational banks vigorously consider placing a strong emphasis on security of internal information and management of own personnel as the knowledge outflow through the demonstration effect and worker mobility is critical. For the managers of local banks, the discoveries suggest that active investment in human resources to maximize knowledge spillovers through the demonstration effect and through absorptive capacity is heightened by building an internal knowledge base.

The study contributes to the extant literature in the field of international business in two key ways. First, it examines the knowledge spillovers in the banking sector, a regulated industry, in Korea where empirical research is sparse. This paper’s second contribution is the finding of the key conduits of knowledge spillover phenomena by predicting and identifying the elements which affect the magnitude of knowledge flows from foreign to local banks.

This paper aims to examine the authorities tasked to fight against money laundering in Tanzania and appraise the efficacy of the country’s anti-money institutional framework to tackle the problem.

The paper draws on a qualitative research and data generated from the analysis of documentary materials. It surveys the anti-money laundering (AML) law in Tanzania to describe the legal and institutional frameworks for tackling money laundering. It explores law-related and non-law aspects to interrogate and appraise the efficacy of Tanzania’s AML law and authorities. The qualitative data were generated using the thematic content analysis technique.

The law in Tanzania establishes authorities and vests them with powers to combat money laundering. The authorities, which are part of Tanzania’s AML institutional framework, have been instrumental in combating money laundering. Nevertheless, several law-related and non-law factors emasculate the efficacy of the AML law and authorities in Tanzania. Some political and economic factors wear off the effectiveness of the country’s AML institutional framework. The transnational nature and complexity of money laundering overwhelm the capacity of the AML authorities in Tanzania.

The paper provides useful insights on money laundering and the legal regime to counteract the scourge in Tanzania which sets up the country’s AML institutional framework. It raises some issues for researchers, policymakers and law enforcers who can re-examine the problem and revisit the law and re-evaluate authorities and propose measures that will enable the government to reinforce the country’s AML regime. The paper makes a case for the government to implement the reforms of the country’s AML policy, legal and institutional frameworks.

The paper investigates issues relating to money laundering and its control in Tanzania beyond the legal perspective to uncover limitations and challenges that emasculate the efficacy of the AML authorities in the Tanzanian context. The issues examined in this paper are not unique to Tanzania and, hence, have relevance to other jurisdictions in sub-Saharan Africa.

This article examines several library metadata standards, structures and schema relevant to the challenge of managing electronic resources. Among the standards, structures and schema to be discussed are MARC, METS, Dublin Core, EAD, XrML, and ODRL. The authors’ analysis reveals that there is currently no one standard, structure or schema that adequately addresses the complexity of e‐resource management. The article concludes with an outline and proposal for a new metadata schema designed to manage electronic resources.

This paper aims to examine the per capita income convergence of 57 member countries of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) over the period 1990–2017 and to investigate the determinants of convergence club formations.

The authors applied the methodology of Phillips and Sul (2007, 2009) to identify the convergence clubs and estimated several-ordered logit models to determine the key drivers.

The results support existence of two convergence clubs and one diverging unit, indicating that 30 and 26 member countries form two separate groups converging to their own steady-state paths. They also suggest a significant productivity divergence between these clubs. The authors showed that the number of convergence clubs started to decline after the global financial crisis in 2008. Moreover, they found that fixed capital formation, education and political stability are key drivers of convergence club membership.

There is a strong need for large-scale policy interventions to close the gap between leading and lagging clubs of the OIC. A substantial investment in human and physical capital seems necessary for lower-income OIC countries.

This is the first empirical study on the existence of convergence clubs among member countries of the OIC.

The purpose of this paper is to analyse the role of knowledge management (KM) in small and medium‐sized enterprises (SMEs) in Lithuania by looking at information and knowledge resources, the development of information technology (IT) which supports the business process and the main processes of KM inside companies.

Questionnaires and some interviews within Lithuanian SMEs helped reveal what the present situation is in terms of KM processes and the use of IT.

There appears to be a strong awareness of KM already. However, the development of adequate methods to make information management (IM) and KM fully effective appears to be lacking or only partially realized. There is some evidence to suggest that Lithuanian SME managers are becoming more psychologically prepared to work within KM but there is much less evidence to show that this is leading to effective innovation in practice at present.

There is great interest in the smaller emergent European economies in particular, and in SMEs in general. Lithuania inherited a stronger asset base than some ex‐Soviet republics and is positioning itself amongst the Baltic economies. With few natural resources, “knowledge” is a key area for growth, but SMEs and other sectors still need to engage strongly in development. SMEs have yet to drive the economy forward.

This paper aims to examine the dynamics of foreign direct investment (FDI) inflows into Indonesia. It is interested specifically in analysing and deliberating on two important policy questions: First, are all kinds of FDI useful from a policy perspective and what does the existing data on FDI reveal about the type of FDI inflows into Indonesia? Second, does the existing data help understand the extent of de facto bilateral linkages between Indonesia and other countries?

The paper offers an in-depth case study of Indonesia using extensive exploratory data analysis on FDI inflows into Indonesia. As discussed in the paper, the data investigation uses and reconciles available FDI data both from national and international sources to understand the usefulness of such data for policy analysis.

A data investigation of the trends in different types of FDI flows reveals a discernible downward trend in the ratio of mergers and acquisitions (M&A)–FDI ratio over the years. The paper argues that from a sequencing perspective, while a medium-to-long-term framework encouraging both domestic and foreign Greenfield investments could help Indonesia regain its growth luster, in the near term much more attention needs to be paid to FDI inflows in the form of M&As. Further, reconciling FDI and M&A data might help identify the original sources of FDI flows because existing data are based on flow of funds rather than ultimate ownership.

Since the Asian financial crisis, Indonesia has successfully embarked on a phase of economic and political transition post-Suharto, with the cornerstones of such a strategy being a process of greater democratisation and decentralisation. However, there have been growing concerns of economic growth stagnation in recent years. One of the policies to revive the economy’s lustre adopted by the government has been to attract greater FDI inflows. In this light, this paper examines the dynamics of FDI into Indonesia and deliberates on what kinds of FDI policymakers should focus on attracting to restore the country’s growth lustre.

The question of whether a policy to attract FDI should be careful in distinguishing the kind of FDI it wants to attract has not been sufficiently addressed in the related literature. This paper provides a framework to understand the different macroeconomic policy implications of types of FDI and provides extensive data analysis to not only understand the types of FDI but also sources of bilateral FDI inflows to Indonesia by reconciling FDI and M&A data.

This article aims to identify threats perceived by Swedish public library directors as the most prominent.

A web questionnaire was sent to public library directors in all of the Swedish municipalities. The data were analysed using qualitative content analysis.

The findings reveal that the main threat was considered to be the tension between the current activities of the public library and the expectations of the public, or of local decision makers. One reason for the lack of correspondence between activities and expectations is that public library managers regard the expectations on the public library as unrealistic. Another reason is that lack of resources prevent public library staff from meeting many of these expectations. Public libraries are thus prevented by both ideological and practical barriers in fulfilling expectations.

A central issue in current public library research concerns how change in Western society affects public libraries. Many of these studies are either theoretical or based on interviews with politicians. Few researchers investigate how public library directors perceive the situation of public libraries today. Therefore, this article identifies perceptions made by public library directors.

The oil and gas industry is a crucial economic sector for both developed and developing economies. Delays in extraction and refining of these resources would adversely affect industrial players, including that of the host countries. Supplier selection is one of the most important decisions taken by managers of this industry that affect their supply chain operations. However, determining suitable suppliers to work with has become a phenomenon faced by these managers and their organizations. Furthermore, identifying relevant, critical and important criteria needed to guide these managers and their organizations for supplier selection decisions has become even more complicated due to various criteria that need to be taken into consideration. With limited works in the current literature of supplier selection in the oil and gas industry having major methodological drawbacks, the purpose of this paper is to develop an integrated approach for supplier selection in the oil and gas industry.

To address this problem, this paper proposes a new uncertain decision framework. A grey-Delphi approach is first applied to aid in the evaluation and refinement of these various available criteria to obtain the most important and relevant criteria for the oil and gas industry. The grey systems theoretic concept is adopted to address the subjectivity and uncertainty in human judgments. The grey-Shannon entropy approach is used to determine the criteria weights, and finally, the grey-EDAS (evaluation based on distance from average solution) method is utilized for determining the ranking of the suppliers.

To exemplify the applicability and robustness of the proposed approach, this study uses the oil and gas industry of Iran as a case in point. From the literature review, 21 criteria were established and using the grey-Delphi approach, 16 were finally considered. The four top-ranked criteria, using grey-Shannon entropy, include warranty level and experience time, relationship closeness, supplier’s technical level and risks which are considered as the most critical and influential criteria for supplier evaluation in the Iranian oil and gas industry. The ranking of the suppliers is obtained, and the best and worst suppliers are also identified. Sensitivity analysis indicates that the results using the proposed methodology are robust.

The proposed approach would assist supply chain practicing managers, including purchasing managers, procurement managers and supply chain managers in the oil and gas and other industries, to effectively select suitable suppliers for cooperation. It can also be used for other multi-criteria decision-making (MCDM) applications. Future works on applying other MCDM methods and comparing them with the results of this study can be addressed. Finally, broader and more empirical works are required in the oil and gas industry.

This study is among the first few studies of supplier selection in the oil and gas industry from an emerging economy perspective and sets the stage for future research. The proposed integrated grey-based MCDM approach provides robust results in supplier evaluation and can be used for future domain applications.

The purpose of this paper is to present well-being, leadership, and the development of each from a communal perspective in a Finnish primary school in the years 2000-2009.

The study included five sets of data. The quantitative research data were collected from the school staff using the Well-Being at Your Work index questionnaire in 2004 (n=36), 2005 (n=41), and in 2009 (n=34). In 2006, two group interviews were carried out with the school personnel (n=21), and in 2011, retrospective interview data were collected from an expert classroom teacher (n=1). Quantitative data were analysed statistically using descriptive statistics. The qualitative group interview data were analysed by an inductive content analysis, while the expert interview was analysed according to the methods of factual analysis.

During this period, several communal interventions were developed in the school to promote occupational well-being. Over the course of the study, staff members’ satisfaction with the actions and the support provided by the principal has improved, and leadership-related problems have decreased.

The results cover research findings from one school and therefore cannot be generalised to other Finnish school communities.

Schools’ work communities must be active in developing interventions to improve their own occupational well-being. Furthermore, leaders must be actively involved in the development of occupational well-being.

Aim of the present monograph is the economic analysis of the role of MNEs regarding globalisation and digital economy and in parallel there is a reference and examination of some legal aspects concerning MNEs, cyberspace and e‐commerce as the means of expression of the digital economy. The whole effort of the author is focused on the examination of various aspects of MNEs and their impact upon globalisation and vice versa and how and if we are moving towards a global digital economy.