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This chapter introduces dividend policy as both financial and business decisions. First, it presents the history of dividend payment, definition of dividend, and typical types of dividend. Dividends originate from liquidating payments of sailing vessels in the early 16th century and become popular with the development of corporations. In this book, a dividend is defined as a cash payment to shareholders. By payment time, there are three typical types of dividend including final dividend, interim dividend, and special dividend. Second, it presents definition, important dates, measures, and patterns of dividend policy. Dividend policy includes two decisions: the first is to pay or not to pay dividends, and the second is the dividend magnitude. Investors have to follow important dates of dividend payments in order to make their investment decisions. Important dates include declaration date, record date, ex-dividend date, and payment date. Dividend payout ratio and dividend yield are two common measures of dividend policy. Common patterns of dividend policy are no dividend policy, residual dividend policy, stable dividend policy, and irregular dividend policy. Finally, dividend policy is both financial and business-related decisions. Therefore, dividend decisions are affected by various levels of business environment such as internal, micro (industry), and macro-environment. Dividend theories are the behind mechanisms to explain the effect of each factor in the business environment on corporate dividend policy. Dividend policy, in turn, determines shareholders' wealth through its impact on stock price.

While digital transformation holds immense promise, organizations often fail to realize its benefits. This study aims to address how policies for digital transformation benefits realization are translated into practice.

The authors apply a qualitative, comparative case study of two large, public-sector health care organizations in Sweden. Through document and interview data, the authors analyze the process of translation.

The study finds that practice variation is primarily caused by two types of decoupling: policy-practice and means-ends. Contrary to previous studies, coercion in policy compliance is not found to decrease practice variation.

The limitations primarily stem from the empirical selection of two large public health-care organizations in Sweden, affecting the study’s generalizability. Reducing practice variation is more effectively achieved through goal alignment than coercion, leading to implications for the design of governance and control.

Policymakers should, instead of focusing on control-related compliance, work to align organizational objectives and policies to decrease practice variation for successful benefits realization.

The study contributes to better benefits realization of digital transformation initiatives in health care. As such, the authors contribute to a better functioning and more transformative health care in times of increased demand and decreased supply of health-care services.

The study challenges conventional wisdom by identifying that coercion is less effective than goal alignment in reducing practice variation, thereby enhancing the understanding of policy implementation dynamics in health-care settings.

This paper aims to further our understanding of policy–practice gaps in organizations from an organizational learning perspective. The authors conceptualize and analyze policy–practice gaps in terms of what they label the dual challenge of organizational learning, i.e. the organizational tasks of both adapting ongoing practices to prescribed policy demands and adapting the policy itself to the needs of practice. Specifically, the authors address how this dual challenge can be understood in terms of organizational learning and how an organization can be managed to successfully resolve the dual learning challenge and, thereby, bridge policy–practice gaps in organizations.

This paper draws on existing literature to explore the gap between policy and practice. Through a synthesis of theories and an illustrative practical example, this paper highlights key conceptual underpinnings.

In the analysis of the dual challenge of organizational learning, this study provides a conceptual framework that emphasizes the important role of tensions and contradictions between policy and practice and their role as drivers of organizational learning. To bridge policy–practice gaps in organizations, this paper proposes five key principles that aim to resolve the dual challenge and accommodate both deployment and discovery in organizations.

Because this is a conceptual study, empirical research is called for to explore further and test the findings and conclusions of the study. Several avenues of possible future research are proposed.

This paper primarily contributes by introducing and elaborating on a conceptual framework that offers novel perspectives on the dual challenges of facilitating both discovery and deployment processes within organizations.

This paper investigates the effect of state-society relations on the industrially-related growth paths of developed countries.

It introduces a novel theoretical framework, the state-business-labor relations (SBLR) framework, where four main actors are identified: the state, big businesspersons or tycoons, owners and managers of small and medium enterprises (SMEs) or Entrepreneurs and labor. Different SBLR categories or modes are introduced depending on levels of coordination and power relations between the studied actors. The paper then investigates how these SBLR modes, through adopting various policies targeting the industrial sector, lead to different growth paths. Rather than focusing only on economic growth, this research regards a growth path as a matrix of the performance in long-run growth and equality of distribution.

Using regression analysis and statistical data, the results suggest that the Co-Balanced mode, having higher levels of coordination and lower favoritism, leads to the best growth path among the four introduced modes, especially with its emphasis on high levels of venture capital availability and easiness of starting business. while the Lib-Capture mode, characterized by lower coordination and higher favoritism, seems to have the worst growth path and the best implemented policy for this mode is suggested to be high profit taxes that seem to counter the negative impact of the existing high levels of favoritism.

Despite the important findings that this research has reached, this paper is mainly meant to open a further investigation into this topic and open this dimension that the research on VoC and political economy have under-researched. A deeper investigation of SBLR typologies that could only be possible by having richer datasets with more data on coordination for the whole world, rather than only the advanced economies, would further our understanding of the dynamics that shape the growth paths of different countries of the world.

To realize the best industrial growth path, fighting favoritism should be an important objective. The negative impact of favoritism on innovation could not be disregarded in the eve of the fourth industrial revolution, where innovation is increasingly pivotal to future industrial development. Actively engaging societal groups in the policymaking process is important in addressing their concerns and balancing them at the same time. This should lead to the double benefit of formulating better policies that should foster growth as well as provide better distribution of this growth. High levels of coordination should help in realizing this objective. Yet, this could only be possible if societal groups are free to associate and aggregate their power and when there are means of preventing one actor from gaining more favorite treatment and exclusive influence over policymakers. The presence of both powerful and broadly represented business associations and labor unions and the existence of a government interested in coordinating their efforts-rather than letting itself be controlled by one group at the expense of the others-should help in the realization of the best growth path. Thus, institutional reform that empowers societal groups and enables them to defend their interests as well as fights all forms of corruption should lead to the realization of a more prosperous and equitable industrial development, with the “re-industrialization” of the developed world being no exception. The technological and social challenges of intensive automation and digitalization accompanying the fourth industrial revolution make the envisaged institutional reform more urgent.

This paper is introducing a novel theoretical framework for studying the effect of state-society relations, particularly SBLR, on the industrial growth paths of developed countries. It integrates three important bodies of literature in order to build a more comprehensive understanding of the dynamics of state-society relations and their economic consequences. These are the Varieties of Capitalism (VoC), State-Business Relations (SBR) and Industrial Relations. The SBLR framework differentiates between tycoons and entrepreneurs, an important distinction that often goes unnoticed. Different SBLR categories or modes are introduced, depending on levels of coordination and power relations between the actors. It is proposed in this research that the effect on growth paths goes beyond the simple dichotomy between CMEs and LMEs usually present in the literature of VoC and that power relations provide an essential complementary dimension in explaining this causality.

We investigate the role of fiscal policy, through several measures of government revenues and expenditures and redistribution, on disposable and market income inequality and economic growth as well as the interaction between inequality and growth for 31 European countries from 1995 to 2019.

We use a simultaneous equations model to assess the linkage between economic growth, inequalities and fiscal policy variables.

(1) While disposable income inequality has a negative effect on all fiscal policy variables, market income inequality has a mixed effects; (2) for Eastern European countries, public consumption and direct taxation positively influence economic growth; conversely, for Western European countries, the effects are negative; (3) disposable and market income inequality have a positive effect on growth for Eastern European countries, and a negative influence on growth for Western European countries; (4) growth contributes to the increase of disposable and market income inequality for Eastern European countries; for Western European countries, the effects are opposite; and (5) fiscal policy allows for the attenuation of disposable income inequality.

The different results between the role of market and disposable income inequality levels lead us to suggest tax progressivity as an important feature to consider when analyse the trivariate relationship between inequalities, fiscal policy and growth. Furthermore, there are different dynamics between inequality and growth, and the role of fiscal policy, on both Eastern and Western European countries.

The microfinancing sector is infamous for being prone to high credit risks due to loan defaults by its poor borrowers. Conversely, the sector is also criticized for creating debt traps for the poor. The dual nature of these peculiar problems in microfinancing causes the market failure phenomenon. Therefore, the current study explores whether public policy intervention is required to address market failure.

The study undertakes a critical review of existing literature, the news, the policy documents and other publicly available information to shape the viewpoints in this study. Constructive criticism is used to build arguments to arrive at a conceptual framework that depicts how public policy should interact with markets to address the peculiar problems of the microfinancing sector.

The findings indicate that market failure in microfinancing is real and pressing. Therefore, public policy is invited, though in its limited form. While the policy intervention may help the formal microfinancing arena by regulating the interest rates, the policy administration in the informal sector is likely to fail. Therefore, the policy should attempt to create an environment of inclusiveness. Policies that rely on coercion are not recommended. In the long run, subsidies via policy intervention are discouraged. Instead, the policy should motivate the microfinancing sector to become self-reliant.

The study is one of its kind to provide perspectives on specific market failures and policy interventions in microfinancing, particularly in economies where formal and informal sectors coexist and are equally crucial.

The purpose of this study is to examine the effects of the Odd-Even Road Rationing Policy (RRP) on housing prices in Jakarta, Indonesia. It aims to evaluate the net effect of the RRP on housing prices.

The study uses the monocentric model and employs the difference-in-differences (DD) method. Annual neighborhood-level housing price data is analyzed to assess the impact of the RRP on housing prices. Additionally, propensity score matching is used to address potential biases resulting from non-random policy assignments.

The results demonstrate that houses located within the RRP-restricted area experience a decrease in price that is relative to those in the control group. The findings indicate a decrease in housing prices ranging from 7.59% to 14.7% within the RRP-restricted area. This suggests that the positive impacts resulting from the RRP have not fully compensated for the restricted accessibility experienced by individuals who have limited behavioral changes. The study also confirms the significance of commuting costs in individuals' location decisions, aligning with predictions from urban economics models.

This study contributes to the literature by providing insights into the effects of a RRP on housing prices. It expands understanding beyond the immediate effects on traffic conditions and air pollution, which previous studies have primarily focused on. Furthermore, to the best of the authors’ knowledge, this research will be the first conducted to identify the impacts of RRP on housing prices in Indonesia.

Family policy is an area where policy transfer has garnered a lot of attention lately. A growing body of research demonstrates policymakers' interest in and willingness to adopt foreign family policies. However, previous studies have tended to neglect the second mechanism of policy transfer: resistance. This manuscript aims to address this research gap by exploring both the willingness and resistance to policy transfer in Czech and Korean childcare and leave policies.

This study employs a qualitative research design, incorporating structured expert interviews instrumental in in-depth thematic analysis.

The analysis shows that policymakers in both countries demonstrated interest and willingness to transfer family policies, albeit employing different strategies and to varying extents. Moreover, the two countries exhibited significant differences in resistance to family policy transfer, with resistance in the Czech Republic being more frequent and effective. Resistance is directed towards both forced and voluntary transfers, although it isn't always against transfers that require a paradigm change. Policy transfer and non-transfer can concurrently be perceived as threats.

The study concludes that integrating both policy transfer and resistance in the analyses helps to shed light on cross-national differences in family policy change and contributes to a more nuanced portrayal of the world of policy transfer in this policy field.

Applying universal ownership theory and drawing on a multiplecase study design, this study aims to analyze what drives institutional investors to engage with government entities and what challenges they find in the process.

The authors relied on document analysis and conducted 12 semi-structured interviews with representatives from asset owners, asset managers, investor associations and academia.

The authors identify a trend where investors conduct policy engagement to fulfill their fiduciary duty, improve investment risk management and create an enabling environment for sustainable investments. As for engagement challenges, investors report the longer-term horizon, a perceived limited influence toward governments, the need for capacity building for investors and governments, as well as the difficulty in accessing government representatives.

This research contributes to filling a gap in the literature on this new form of investor activism, as a growing number of investors engage with sovereign entities on environmental, social and governance issues.

This paper assesses the environment of legitimacy by determining the role of institutional quality and policy uncertainty on the performance of five major South Asian stock markets (India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, and Nepal) using 21 years data from 2000 to 2020. The focus of this study is to approach the issue of the environment of legitimacy that leads to sustained market returns.

Panel cointegration tests of Kao and Pedroni are applied, and the Dynamic Panel Vector Autoregressive (PVAR) model is used to determine the estimates.

ADF P-Values of both Kao and Pedroni tests show that the panels are cointegrated; the statistical significance of the results of the Kao and Pedroni panel cointegration test confirms cointegration among the variables. After determining the most appropriate lag, the analysis is done using PVAR. The results indicate that institutional quality, policy uncertainty, and GDP positively affect stock market return. Meanwhile, government actions and inflation negatively affect stock market returns. On the other hand, stock market return positively affects institutional quality, government action, policy uncertainty, and GDP. While stock market return negatively affects inflation.

The sample is taken only from a limited number of South Asian countries, and the period is also limited to 21 years.

Based on our research findings, we have identified several policy implications recommended to enhance and sustain the performance of stock markets.

This paper uses a unique analytical tool, which gives a better insight into the problem. The value of this work lies in its findings, which also have practical implications and theoretical significance.