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This paper explores the factors motivating people to attend the Dutch hardstyle festival, Defqon.1. This paper delivers new insights to festival attendance by including social and cultural factors in the motivational dimensions and considering a niche electronic music festival.

This research utilised qualitative methods to identify and gain detailed information about attendee's visitor motives. Eleven semi-structured in-depth interviews which focus on the influence of intangible features of visitor motivations were conducted.

The research result revealed an increased influence of social factors and decreased the effect of all other visitor motives. The subcultural ties amongst members of the hardstyle scene were identified as stronger than the ones of different electronic music scenes. The study concluded that social factors, such as friendships gain significant importance for stimulating return visits.

Contemporary music festivals, especially electronic events have not comprehensively been researched. Also, the effects of social and cultural factors on festival attendance have previously been neglected in research. Studies on popular electronic music genres, such as rave and hardcore, are from a sociological viewpoint. These studies revealed motivations of members of the subculture to be a part of the scene and to attend events.

Through the use of computer simulation of three biogeochemical cycles—carbon, nitrogen, and phosphorus—we have shown that DDT poisoning of ocean producers (plants) can cause their growth to be limited by nitrogen, whereas ordinarily it is limited by phosphorus. We must qualify what we have shown because we restricted the simulation by representing only two ecosystems (ocean and land), by using simplified equations for some flow rates, and finally by estimating data for some biomass values and for some flow rates. In order to remove some of the restrictions on the simulation, we are extending it so that we may include in it knowledge of our own, of ecologists, and of systems analysts. By extending it, we are increasing our ability for using it to understand, and consequently to predict and control, the behavior of the interacting biogeochemical cycles of the world.

In this explorative study, the authors aim to contribute to the literature on socio-economic integration and migrant entrepreneurship by conducting an investigation into the migration journeys of Ukrainian migrants developing entrepreneurial activities in Krakow, Poland. The main research question for this study is as follows: how do migrant entrepreneurs establish their businesses in the new host country context? The authors have undertaken a qualitative comparative study, adopting an interpretivist paradigm involving 32 interviews with migrants of Ukrainian descent in Kraków and other cities, who are engaging in entrepreneurial activity. The findings reveal the critical importance of diaspora networks in business foundation and development, especially the linkages between the Ukrainians and other migrants from other former Soviet countries, a finding in line with Rodgers, Vershinina, Williams, and Theodorakopoulos’s (2019) findings from a study of migrants in the UK. The authors also demonstrate how as a result of the worsening economic and political climate in Ukraine, many businesses are being transferred to Poland.

This paper aims to explore the perceived drivers behind the implementation of performance measurement systems (PMSs) in Indonesian local government (ILG). It analytically assesses Indonesia’s attempt to introduce PMSs by addressing three research questions: Do organisations in developing countries actually use PMSs to aid decision-making and help plan for future performance improvement? (RQ1) Do the three isomorphic pressures exist in the development and use of PMSs? (RQ2) and If institutional isomorphism is evident, can accountability exist within the development and use of PMSs given these pressures? (RQ3).

This research explores the perceived drivers behind the implementation of performance measurement systems (PMSs) in Indonesian local government (ILG). It analytically assesses Indonesia’s attempt to introduce a PMS by addressing three research questions: RQ1 Do organisations in developing countries actually use PMSs to aid decision-making and help plan for future performance improvement? RQ2 Do the three isomorphic pressures exist in the development and use of PMSs? and RQ3 If institutional isomorphism is evident, can accountability exist within the development and use of PMSs given these pressures.

Results determined that although employees perceived coercive isomorphism as being a driver of ILG compliance with President B.J. Habibie’s presidential instruction (Inpres No. 7/1999), the Laporan Akuntabilitas Kinerja Institusi Pemerintah/Performance Accountability Report of State Apparatus (known as LAKIP), many councils were still not reporting and those who were, were not doing it well. Many councils lacked management motivation, with some choosing to merely mimic (mimetic isomorphism) what others were doing. Better-resourced councils made use of external consultants or local universities where knowledge was shared (normative isomorphism).

An understanding of factors influencing the development and use of performance measures, in turn, can be used not only to improve PMSs in the future but to improve the quantity and quality of LAKIP reporting.

The theoretical development and interpretation of this research is drawn from institutional theory with a major contribution being that it provides an in-depth conceptual overview and understanding of factors influencing the development and use of performance measures. Further, it fills a gap in the literature exploring PMSs and accountability in a developing country – in this case, Indonesia.

In the post-9/11 period, tackling the vertical and horizontal growth of international terrorism has become a major challenge for the international community, more pertinently for the liberal states. About three decades ago, Paul Wilkinson wrote a book entitled Terrorism and the Liberal State in which he made a hypothetical statement that the liberal states in today’s world were more vulnerable to terrorist attacks and threats than any other political system. Totalitarian societies do not provide any space to terrorism in view of the fact that this system does not recognize the importance of civil societies. However, the point to be noted is that in today’s globalized international order, terrorist activities are not only confined within the territory of liberal societies alone, rather it has engulfed many parts of the globe that includes non-liberal societies as well. Therefore, strengthening democratic regimes and values is not the solution to abolish terrorism. In this context, this chapter attempts to test Wilkinson’s propositions that liberal states are more vulnerable to terrorism than any other political system by making a comparative study between democratic and non-democratic regimes to identify the recent trends of terrorism.

The chapter is aimed at comprehensive discovery of the basic legal tools to improve the quality of corporate governance from the standpoint of efficient revealing, preventing and shooting negative implications of internal corporate disputes. The subject of the study, in particular, is regulatory and non-regulatory enactments in this area. Within the study we employ basic approaches that allow to reveal the conditions ensuring efficient corporate governance, i.e., dialectical, historical, systemic, formal-logic, and comparative-law ones. Therewith, the main focus is on the application of system theory developments in terms of the methodological techniques to describe any system object.

Regarding the disputes between participants of the corporation, we substantiate the need of creating conditions for the highest account of opinions of all the participants in the development of collective will, as well as for restraint of major participants from potential abuses (through accumulative voting mechanism, implementing “two keys” principle, etc.). Special attention is paid to the issues of procedure and content of interest-collision transactions made by economic societies.

The authors point out definite guidelines to improve legislation in anti-conflict aspect (forms of holding general meetings of participants, exclusive and non-exclusive competence of governing bodies, the content of acts coordinating interested-party transactions, etc.).

Social capital (SC), emerging as a new type of capital with 1980s, is defined as resources such as knowledge, opportunities, power, goodwill, and cooperation, achieved by means of interpersonal relationships. Businesses in possession of these resources will clearly gain an economic competitive advantage. This study was designed to determine how SC affects survival skills of businesses in economic competition. In this study, where qualitative research methods were used, data were obtained through semi-structured interviews with 40 micro- and small business owners, most of whom are second and third generations, operating in Antakya Long Bazaar, and three managers in charge of the management of Long Bazaar. Interviews were recorded with a voice recorder and note-taking technique. After transcription of voice recordings, the researchers coded and categorized the raw data and obtained themes and subthemes. Obtained data were analyzed with MAXQDA 20 software. In line with the performed qualitative analysis, responses of owner-managers were categorized in trust, trust promoting mechanisms (establishments, norms, and sanctions), network participation, collective action and cooperation, and learning aspects of SC. Questions on identification of variables and structural characteristics, which are prominent in determination of SC, were addressed to managers in charge of the management of Long Bazaar, thereby revealing the situation pertaining to the general structure.

The economic doctrine of market efficiency plays an essential role in securities fraud litigation. In lawsuits alleging violations of SEC Rule 10b-5, the plaintiffs typically must argue that the market for the relevant security is efficient, and therefore that the “fraud on the market” doctrine applies. However, the term “market efficiency” is often applied imprecisely. In this chapter, we discuss properties of efficient markets that have been proposed in academic research, legal scholarship, and case law. We explore what must be assumed about capital markets for each of these properties to hold. We then ask how, in practice, each property could be rebutted.

We investigate the association between attributes of the audit committee of a firm and the likelihood of negative events occurring in the firm’s life in Israel. The mandate of the audit committee in Israel is substantially different from its mandate in the US. The responsibilities of the committee in the US are divided between two committees in Israel, one of which deals with reviewing the financial statements and the other one, titled “audit committee,” is in charge of the remaining tasks of the US-type audit committee. This allows us a unique opportunity to focus on the roles of the audit committee other than reviewing the financial statements. Using hand-collected data on firms traded on Tel Aviv Stock Exchange in 2010–2014, we find that the larger the audit committee size, the larger the likelihood of negative events, consistent with the cumbersome workings and potential conflicts of interests characterizing a large committee. The percentage of directors with accounting and financial expertise on the audit committee is associated with a lower likelihood of negative events, in line with the value of such experts in tasks beyond reviewing the financial statements. The fraction of independent directors on the audit committee is not found to be significantly related to the likelihood of negative events. This is consistent with the notion that some independent directors are independent in form but not necessarily in substance, which is surprising in light of the comprehensive regulation regarding audit committee independence imposed by the Israeli regulator.