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This study explores whether targeted microcredit can effectively alleviate households’ multidimensional relative poverty (MdRP) in rural China in the new era following the poverty elimination campaign and discusses it from a gendered perspective.

This study applies a fixed-effects model, propensity score matching (PSM) and two-stage instrumental variable method to two-period panel data collected from 611 households in rural western China in 2018 and 2021 to explore the effects, mechanisms and heterogenous performance of targeted microcredit on households’ MdRP in the new era.

(i) Targeted microcredit can alleviate MdRP among rural households in the new era, mainly by reducing income and opportunity inequality. (ii) Targeted microcredit can promote women’s empowerment, mainly by enhancing their social participation, thereby helping alleviate households’ MdRP. The effect of the targeted microcredit on MdRP is more significant in medium-educated women households and non-left-behind women households. (iii) The MdRP alleviation effect is stronger in villages with a high degree of digitalization.

Learn from the experience of targeted microcredit. Accurately identify poor groups and integrate loan design into financial health and women empowerment. Particularly, pay attention to less-educated and left-behind women households and strengthen coordination between targeted microcredit and digital village strategies.

This study clarifies the effect of targeted microcredit on women’s empowerment and households’ MdRP alleviation in the new era. It also explores its various effects on households with different female characteristics and regional digitalization levels, providing ideas for optimizing microcredit.

We explore the impact of equity liquidity on a firm’s dynamic leverage adjustments and the moderating impacts of leverage deviation and target instability on the link between equity liquidity and dynamic leverage in the UK market.

In applying the two-step system GMM, we estimate our model by exploring suitable instruments for the dynamic variable(s), i.e. lagged values of the dynamic term(s).

Our analyses document that a firm’s equity liquidity has a positive impact on the speed of adjustment (SOA) of its leverage ratio back to the target ratio in the UK market. We also demonstrate that the positive relationship between liquidity and SOA is more pronounced for firms whose current position is relatively close to their target leverage ratio and whose target ratio is relatively stable.

This study provides important implications for both firms’ managers and investors. Particularly, firms’ managers who wish to increase the leverage SOA to enhance firms’ value need to give great attention to their equity liquidity. Investors who want to evaluate firms’ performance could also consider their equity liquidity and leverage SOA.

We are the first to enrich the literature on leverage adjustments by identifying equity liquidity as a new determinant of SOA in a single developed country with many differences in the structure and development of capital markets, ownership concentration and institutional characteristics. We also provide new empirical evidence of the joint effect of equity liquidity, leverage deviation and target instability on leverage SOA.

The purpose of this study is to understand how executives in technology companies relate to targets for gender equality, especially pertaining to top management.

The study draws on 19 interviews of CEOs, senior line managers and HR directors in ten technology companies operating in Finland. The method is (reflexive) thematic analysis.

Previous studies on the role of executives in promoting gender equality provide somewhat mixed results: while their role is vital, senior leaders may not be inclined to support gender equality targets and measures. Drawing on critical feminist theorizing, this study identifies three ways in which the executives in technology companies related to gender equality targets: endorsing, negotiating and resisting. However, all these responses were constrained by the executives’ assumption that their companies are meritocratic. The study illustrates how executives’ narrow understanding of gender equality and reliance on the presumably well-working systems, combined with underlying doubts about the competence of women, hinder the advancement of women to top management.

While previous studies have evaluated targets to increase the number/percentage of women, both in certain “ideal case” companies and in terms of their effectiveness more broadly, this study discusses how technology company executives navigate these targets in relation to women's assumed “competence”.

This study focuses on the triadic multilevel psychic distance (MPD) between the firm, target market and bridge-maker and its consequences for firm internationalization. Specifically, it spotlights the triadic psychic distance between firms, the levels of psychic distance in the target market (country and business) and the bridge-maker. Therefore, this study examines the triadic MPD among these three entities and its impact on firm internationalization.

This study uses qualitative and case study research approaches. It is based on 8 case companies and 24 internationalization cases. Secondary data were collected, and interviews with bridge-makers and industry experts were conducted.

The study found that MPD appeared in the triad. The MPD between firms and markets is related to country-specific differences and business difficulties. The MPD between the firm and the bridge-maker is based on the latter’s lack of knowledge vis-à-vis bridging the firm’s MPD. Finally, the MPD between bridge-makers and the market is based on the former’s lack of knowledge of the home country’s business difficulties.

This is the first study to develop and adopt a triadic multilevel psychic distance conceptualization that provides evidence for and sheds light on the triadic MPD and its effect on firm internationalization. This study identifies the reasons behind triadic MPD in connection to firm internationalization. Notably, firm internationalization is interdependent on the triadic MPD setting between the firm, bridge-maker and target market. It has theoretical value and contributes to the recent advancement in the understanding of MPD in international marketing literature.

This paper aims to improve our understanding of performance measurement systems in the health and care sector, by focussing on employee reactions to core performance measurement practices. Targets and monitoring are hypothesised to be associated with employee perceptions of job control, supportive management and job demands, which in turn, are expected to be linked to employee-wellbeing and organisational commitment.

Matched employee workplace data are extracted from a nationally representative and publicly available survey. Structural equation models are estimated.

Performance measurement systems are neither perceived as resources nor additional demands. Setting many targets and a focus on productivity can lead to negative employee outcomes, since these positively correlate with perceptions of job demands, which negatively correlate with employee wellbeing. However, monitoring financial performance and monitoring employee performance may be helpful to managers, as these are positively associated with employee perceptions of job control and supportive management, which positively correlate with job satisfaction and organisational commitment and, negatively, with anxiety. Overall, common criticisms of performance measurement systems in healthcare are questioned.

Given the lack of consensus on how performance measurement systems can influence employee experiences and outcomes, this study combines theories that argue for performance measurement systems in managing operations with models developed by psychologists to describe how perceptions of the work conditions can affect employee attitude and wellbeing. A conceptual model is therefore developed and tested, and potential direct and indirect effects of performance measurement systems in the health sector are inferred.

Recognizing the severity of COVID-19 on the US economy, the authors investigate the behavior of US-listed firms towards leverage speed of adjustment (SOA) during the pandemic. While prior evidence (based on an international study) shows that firm leverage increased during the pandemic leading to a higher SOA toward leverage ratios, leverage for US firms during the same period reduced drastically. Yet there is a dearth of empirical studies on the behavior of US-listed firms' SOA during the pandemic. The authors fill this void.

The study includes US-listed non-financial and non-utility firms for the period 2015Q1-2021Q4, covering a total sample of 45,213 firm-quarter observations. The authors’ empirical strategy is based on the generalized method of moments (GMM) and firm-fixed effect methodology, controlling for firm- and quarter-fixed effects.

Three main findings are established: (1) while the SOA toward book target increased during the pandemic, SOA toward market target increased significantly only for less valued and cash-constrained firms; (2) firms in states most impacted by the pandemic adjusted faster towards target ratio; and (3) while the emergence of the pandemic and the overall firm-level risk increased (decreased) the deviation from book (market) target, firm-level risk partially mediated the effect of the pandemic on how far firms deviated from target ratio.

This study enhances our understanding of leverage adjustment during the crisis and shows that risk avoidance motive and the market value of firms are key determinants of convergence rate during the crisis and further demonstrates that market leverage is more sensitive to market dynamics. As such, caution must be taken when dealing with and interpreting market leverage SOA.

Although prior evidence based on international study provides insights into how firms behave toward their leverage ratios because of the pandemic, little is known about how US firms react to the pandemic in terms of the target ratios, particularly (1) since the USA is one of the severely affected countries and (2) firms in the USA reduced their leverage ratios as against what prior evidence shows. The authors provide evidence to explain how and why US firms reacted toward their SOA during the pandemic.

Recently, deep learning (DL) has been widely applied in various aspects of human endeavors. However, studies have shown that DL models may also be a primary cause of data leakage, which raises new data privacy concerns. Membership inference attacks (MIAs) are prominent threats to user privacy from DL model training data, as attackers investigate whether specific data samples exist in the training data of a target model. Therefore, the aim of this study is to develop a method for defending against MIAs and protecting data privacy.

One possible solution is to propose an MIA defense method that involves adjusting the model’s output by mapping the output to a distribution with equal probability density. This approach effectively preserves the accuracy of classification predictions while simultaneously preventing attackers from identifying the training data.

Experiments demonstrate that the proposed defense method is effective in reducing the classification accuracy of MIAs to below 50%. Because MIAs are viewed as a binary classification model, the proposed method effectively prevents privacy leakage and improves data privacy protection.

The method is only designed to defend against MIA in black-box classification models.

The proposed MIA defense method is effective and has a low cost. Therefore, the method enables us to protect data privacy without incurring significant additional expenses.

This paper explores which fundamental aspects of US insurance firms are significant factors in determining whether a firm will be a target or acquirer firm.

By focusing on 251 mergers and acquisitions (M&A) deals (119 target firms and 132 acquirer firms) over the period between 1990 and 2019, multinomial logistic regression results identify the determinants associated with becoming targets or acquirers.

US insurance firms are more likely to become targets if they are smaller, have lower cash holdings, are non-life, and do not have environmental, social and governance (ESG) scores. Insurance firms are more likely to be acquirers if they have higher profitability, higher cash flow and higher intangibles, and if they are non-life and do not have ESG scores. Moreover, the likelihood of becoming an acquirer decreases in times of global financial crises (GFCs) as compared to non-GFC times.

This paper is the first to utilize multi-period multinomial logistic regression analysis to investigate the determinants of selection decisions of M&A targets and acquirers in the US insurance industry.

This study aims to examine the impact of implementing target costing and continuous improvement techniques in industrial companies operating in southern Palestine on achieving sustainable competitive advantage (SCA). The study mainly assesses the level of application of these techniques by Palestinian industrial companies (PICs). Furthermore, it evaluates the extent to which the integration of these two methods can impact SCA, by producing cost-effective and innovative products that meet customer demands and needs, while simultaneously achieving continuous development of the company and an SCA.

A descriptive analytical approach was used to study the target costing and continuous improvement techniques employed by industrial companies in southern Palestine. A questionnaire was administered to 415 companies in the southern West Bank to collect data on the application of target cost and continuous improvement and their impact on SCA, measured through market share, differentiation and cost reduction. Control variables, such as company age, size (measured by the number of employees) and industrial sector classification were also included in the study model.

The findings of the study revealed that the PICs apply target costing and continuous improvement at a high level. Furthermore, all dimensions of achieving SCA were found to be achieved at a high level, with market share being the most prominent. The study also found that the integration of the target costing and continuous improvement had a positive impact on achieving SCA in the PICs. However, the study found no impact on company size, age or industrial sector on achieving a competitive advantage in terms of market share or other results.

The current study was limited to the application of strategic management methods to companies within the industrial sector only. This may constitute a limitation because it neglected other sectors. Likely, another limitation was the difficulty of obtaining the quantitative numbers needed for some quantitative variables that pertain to that type of industrial companies, which are mostly family companies that could not be regulated by the local companies' law to disclose their financial statement.

If industrial companies have ambitions to reduce production costs from the planning and design stage to set the target selling price. It is based on the understanding and awareness of customers' desires while maintaining the quality of products according to the best methods of improvement and innovation; therefore, this can be achieved by using the target costing and the continuous improvement techniques through reviewing the current study and its results.

The current study sought to link two methods, simultaneously and complementary, with each other of the strategic methods of managerial accounting, which helps the companies to offer their best to attract customers, develop the product or service and maintain their continuity in a changing labor market that enables it to achieve sustainable and competitive advantage.

This study is unique in that it explores the impact of the integration of target costing or continuous improvement techniques (Kaizen) on achieving SCA in Palestine industrial companies. While previous studies have examined either target costing or continuous improvement techniques separately, this study enhances the integration of these two methods to achieve SCA.

The aim of the paper is to investigate the associations between hedge fund activism and corporate internal control weaknesses.

In this paper, the authors identify hedge fund activism events using 13D filings and news search. After matching with internal control related information from Audit Analytics, the authors utilize ordinary least square (OLS) and propensity score matching (PSM) to analyze the data.

The authors find that after hedge fund activism, target firms report additional internal control weaknesses, and these identified internal control weaknesses are remediated in subsequent years, leading to better financial-reporting quality.

The findings indicate that both managers and activists have incentives to develop a stronger internal control environment after targeting.