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The paper frames modern slavery as a global wicked problem and aims to provide a set of international business (IB) policy recommendations for taming it. The outlined approach can also guide IB policymaking to address other kinds of wicked problems.

This is a conceptual paper that reviews existing literature on wicked problems and integrates it with an IB policy double helix framework. The paper focuseses on the role multinational enterprises (MNEs) play in moderl slavery globally, either through global value chains or within global factory modes of operation.

As a global wicked problem, modern slavery will never be solved, but it can be re-solved time and time over. Understanding the social reproduction of modern slavery can help shift the focus from labor governance and a narrow supply chain focus toward the role of transnational governance and the need to address institutional, market and organizational failures.

The paper contributes to the gap in an overarching theory of modern slavery and systematically applies the concept of wicked problems and wickedness theory to modern slavery. Drawing on an IB policy double helix framework, the paper addresses the governance nexus between modern slavery, IB and policymaking which can in turn advance IB policy research and theory.

The paper attempts to discuss the impact of reference price effect on pricing decisions.

With the growth of the Internet and e-commerce, more and more customers purchase products in through online channels and choose products by comparing different prices and services, and the reference price effect has an impact on pricing decisions. To investigate the impact of consumers' reference price effect on the dual-channel supply chain, the authors establish a basic model consisting of a single dominant manufacturer and a single downstream retailer, and analyze the optional decisions under different situations and discuss the influence of reference price effect. Finally, a number case verifies the validity and rationality of the proposed model.

The results show that (1) the reference price effect has varying effects on the price, channel demand and income of manufacturers and retailers in the channel depending on the role of customers' channel preferences. (2) The manufacturer's online channel demand and profits always increase with the reference pricing effect, whereas the retailer's offline demand and profits always decline. (3) When the proportion of consumers preferring offline is higher, the manufacturer's network price and wholesale price increase with the reference price effect, while the retailer's retail price decreases with the reference price effect; when the proportion of consumers preferring offline is lower, the opposite is true, and the centralized decision results are consistent with the decentralized decision results.

This paper can clarify the impact of consumer reference price effects on the operation of dual-channel supply chains, and help inform pricing decisions of manufacturers and retailers in dual-channel supply chains.

The proposed approach can well analyze the impact of consumer reference price effect and give channel their optional decisions.

This study aims to provide empirical evidence on the relationship between formal institutions and stock price crash risk from a global perspective.

This paper uses data of 35,468 firms globally over the years 1987–2019 and address the endogeneity issue by employing the Mundlak random effects estimator.

The authors find a significant negative impact of institution quality on stock price crash risk (i.e. better institutions reduce crash risk), after controlling for common determinants of crash risk such as leverage, return on asset, firm size, investment, etc. as well as macro factors such as GDP growth. This effect is robust to different measures of crash risk and sub-indicators of institutions quality. In addition, the authors also find this effect to be universally present in economies characterized by different levels of income.

To the best of the authors' knowledge, there's no known study that explores the potential causal relationship between institution quality and stock price crash risk. Therefore, the research topic in this study is original and can contribute significantly to the existing literature.

This paper analyses the factors that make fashion-product crowdfunding campaigns successful. The authors argue that crowdfunding is an innovative and functional way of bringing new fashion items to the market. The purpose of this paper is to answer the question whether product innovation, lifecycle and sustainability have a positive effect on the success of fashion crowdfunding campaigns. The findings highlight that the success of the fashion crowdfunding campaigns depends on creators' adherence to the values of the platform which they use to raise capital.

A total of 300 fashion crowdfunding projects running between the 17th of October and the 15th of December 2017 were collected from Kickstarter – the world's largest crowdfunding platform based on reward-based all-or-nothing model. Two-step binomial logistic regression was used to analyse the data.

The model predicted a significant increase in the odds of success for the fashion items crowdfunded during the first-time production, and innovative and environmentally sustainable products with a higher price range of rewards. In line with previous literature, regression analyses predicted a significant effect of the control variables of goal amount (negative) and the number of rewards (positive). Contrary to previous studies, neither the presence of a video nor the campaign length predicted success.

The novel findings of this study contribute to the literature by providing an analysis of success factors of fashion items on crowdfunding platforms. The results show that innovative, environmentally sustainable and higher-priced products produced by early-stage ventures are better welcomed by the audiences.

The paper provides a detailed historical account of Douglass C. North's early intellectual contributions and analytical developments in pursuing a Grand Theory for why some countries are rich and others poor.

The author approaches the discussion using a theoretical and historical reconstruction based on published and unpublished materials.

The systematic, continuous and profound attempt to answer the Smithian social coordination problem shaped North's journey from being a young serious Marxist to becoming one of the founders of New Institutional Economics. In the process, he was converted in the early 1950s into a rigid neoclassical economist, being one of the leaders in promoting New Economic History. The success of the cliometric revolution exposed the frailties of the movement itself, namely, the limitations of neoclassical economic theory to explain economic growth and social change. Incorporating transaction costs, the institutional framework in which property rights and contracts are measured, defined and enforced assumes a prominent role in explaining economic performance.

In the early 1970s, North adopted a naive theory of institutions and property rights still grounded in neoclassical assumptions. Institutional and organizational analysis is modeled as a social maximizing efficient equilibrium outcome. However, the increasing tension between the neoclassical theoretical apparatus and its failure to account for contrasting political and institutional structures, diverging economic paths and social change propelled the modification of its assumptions and progressive conceptual innovation. In the later 1970s and early 1980s, North abandoned the efficiency view and gradually became more critical of the objective rationality postulate. In this intellectual movement, North's avant-garde research program contributed significantly to the creation of New Institutional Economics.

This paper presents insights on expatriates in Africa and sets out a research agenda for Africa’s expatriation. The objective of the paper is to provide background and context on expatriation in Africa and to stimulate and guide further research in this important area.

The reviewed papers were drawn from journals and other sources that reported on expatriation to/from African countries. It also incorporates an array of literature on contextual African issues, exploring conceptually how these relate to expatriation.

The review confirmed that there is little research on the topic, particularly with respect to outward expatriation and the studies that exist are one of a kind and stand alone. There has been no attempt to build systematic theory or develop a wholistic picture. This means that the field is wide open for more research. The data provide a picture of the current expatriate situation, including numbers, demographics, host/home locations, success rates and so on, and are provide a basis for further research developing and testing hypotheses regarding individual, organizational and country/national characteristics and how these influence and relate to expatriate experiences and outcomes. Researchers can also draw on the existing expatriation literature from around the world for replication studies to identify uniquely African issues as well as similarities with other locations. As Selmer (2016) noted, replication research is widely used in the sciences and is at the core of the scientific method and thus should be considered for expatriation research.

Limited previous research means there is a need for further research.

Expatriation is a critical aspect of companies operating internationally and companies are increasingly interested in doing business in African countries. Africa's economic growth and development are strong and foreign direct investment (FDI) into Africa is growing with consequent increases in the number of expatriates going to Africa. Understanding expatriation in the African context is thus very important to a variety of companies.

Management literature focusing on Africa is limited and this is true regarding expatriation. This means there is a need for researchers and practitioners to understand expatriation issues in this context, particularly considering economic growth on the continent, increasing interest in doing business there, along with increasing FDI and use of expatriates, as well as the expansion of African companies. This paper provides a research agenda as a guide on which researchers, including those in Africa, can build.

Is there a secret recipe for economic growth?

No, there is no recipe, but we can extrapolate some pieces of advice from Adam Smith.

An economy can leave behind its “dull” stagnant state and grow when its markets expand, when the productivity of its workers increases thanks to high compensations, which are seen as incentives to work harder and when lobbying and cronyism are kept at bay. Luck plays a role too, but these three ingredients are necessary, even if not sufficient, for an economy to grow and thus be “cheerful.”

These three aspects – expansion of market, liberal compensation of workers and lobbying – especially combined, have often been underestimated in Smith’s understanding of the possible sources of economic growth.

The paper aims to explore the relationship between accounting and racial violence through an investigation of sharecropping in the postbellum American South.

A range of primary sources including peonage case files of the US Department of Justice and the archives of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) are utilised. Data are analysed by reference to Randall Collins' theory of violence. Consistent with this theory, a micro-sociological approach to examining violent encounters is employed.

It is demonstrated that the production of alternative or competing accounts, accounting manipulation and failure to account generated interactions where confrontational tension culminated in bluster, physical attacks and lynching. Such violence took place in the context of potent racial ideologies and institutions.

The paper is distinctive in its focus on the interface between accounting and “actual” (as opposed to symbolic) violence. It reveals how accounting processes and traces featured in the highly charged emotional fields from which physical violence could erupt. The study advances knowledge of the role of accounting in race relations from the late nineteenth century to the mid-twentieth century, a largely unexplored period in the accounting history literature. It also seeks to extend the research agenda on accounting and slavery (which has hitherto emphasised chattel slavery) to encompass the practice of debt peonage.

This study aims to systematically review the literature on modern Islamic finance transactions pertaining to Gharar dimensions. Gharar is defined as uncertainty that potentially leads to ambiguities and conflicts in contracts.

The articles reviewed in this study consisted of 13 articles related to Gharar published between 2013 and 2022. All selected articles were empirically and descriptively searched using specific keywords and strings. The main sources for this study were Scopus and Web of Science (WoS), whereas Google Scholar was a supportive database.

The review found that the dimensions that discussed previous research were trying their best to elaborating Gharar in modern financial transactions. They also demonstrate that rigorous study and deployment of the definition remain in the context defined by jurisprudence scholars. The focus of recent studies pertaining to Gharar is derivatives products that indicate high possibility of uncertainty in its operation.

This method relies heavily on the accessed database, namely, Scopus and WoS, also referred to the articles as recommended by the databases. Furthermore, the criteria of inclusion and exclusion of papers outlined by the authors deemed as an intrinsic limitation in writing systematic literature review.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this paper is original in its nature whereby the scholars had different comprehension on how Gharar exists in transaction but they still centred in its original meaning of uncertainty. As a result, this paper also realized how Gharar were interpreted differently relied on the contract’s nature and behaviour. In addition, this paper is expected to contribute to understand how Gharar been interpreted in modern finance transactions and finally reached to the point that further research is needed in establishing Gharar parameter for each contract in Islamic commercial law.

Early childhood and early elementary are key times when children develop internal and external antifat attitudes; thus, it is necessary to better understand the available children’s literature around fatness.This paper aims to examine children's picture books with fat protagonists to better understand the current landscape of children's literature. Drawing on relevant literature around fat characters and the fat studies movement, this critical content analysis considers five children’s books featuring fat protagonists.

This study uses critical content analysis to analyze texts featuring fat protagonists, including two rounds of initial reading and analysis. Using lenses of critical literacy and critical multicultural analysis, the author looks for common themes, silences and absences in the texts, images and peritext.

This paper identifies themes of characters initially internalizing antifatness, then pushing back against antifat bias toward existing with joy and without stigma. Several of these texts even draw on the history of fat activism, highlighting societal critique and a potential activist component of children’s literature with fat protagonists.

The study has a small number of books, due to the limited number of texts that fit the study parameters.

The paper concludes with examples of scaffolding for teachers and parents to have conversations with young children about antifat bias while also acknowledging notable absences, particularly boy protagonists.

These themes illustrate the power of young children to push back against antifat bias and critique oppressive social structures.

There have been very few studies looking at antifatness in children’s picture books. With more books with fat protagonists coming out in the 2020s, this study offers an understanding of the themes present, while also emphasizing the need for an intersectional approach to literature with fat protagonists.