Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Price Competition, Efficiency and Riskiness in Investment Banking

The recent financial crisis has shown that the stability of the investment banking industry plays a key role for the soundness of the financial system as a whole. Our paper examines the intertemporal relationships between price competition, cost efficiency and riskiness for a sample of investment banks inten large developed countries over 2000-2008.We show that price competition is rather limited in investment banking worldwide thus implying the existence of colluding oligopolies.We also find that although investment banks’ stability was granted by relatively low competitive pressures, banks appeared prone to take more risk thus giving some support to the competition-stability view for the investment banking industry.
System dynamics model for hospital waste characterization and generation in developing countries

Waste management policy makers always face the problem of how to predict the future amount and composition of medical solid waste, which, in turn, helps to determine the most appropriate treatment, recycling and disposal strategy. An accurate prediction can assist in both the planning and design of medical solid waste management systems. Insufficient budget and unavailable management capacity are the main reasons for the scarcity of medical solid waste quantities and components historical records, which are so important in long-term system planning and short-term expansion programs. This article presents a new technique, using System Dynamics modeling, to predict generated medical solid waste in a developing urban area, based on a set of limited samples from Jenin District hospitals, Palestine. The findings of the model present the trend of medical solid waste generation together with its different components and indicate that a new forecasting approach may cover a variety of possible causative models and track inevitable uncertainties when traditional statistical least-squared regression methods are unable to handle such issues.
Value-creating networks: an analysis of the software component business

Theoretical discussion concerning value creation has been popular in recent years in business studies, at both relationship and network levels. However, the body of research on value creation still clearly exhibits a dearth of empirical studies, especially at the level of networks. In this study, value-creating networks are empirically explored in a specific dynamic industrial setting, the software component business. The purpose of the research is to build an empirically grounded model that provides the elements that are involved in carrying out value creation processes related to software component business networks. Through the empirically grounded elements of the model and variations identified within them, a typology of value-creating networks related to the software component business is aimed to be provided as an empirical outcome of the study. First, a preliminary model of value-creating networks is built based on theoretical elaboration on the value creation and business network literature. The model is built upon the three interrelated elements of perceived end customer value, core competencies, and relationships. The preliminary model is then applied to the selected industrial setting. Based on the empirical findings, a fourth element is added at the heart of the model, namely the value system router. This fourth element characterise the importance of understanding the role of so-called system architecture in studying value creation and network structures in the software component business. System architecture provides the layered framework for integrating different components and subparts in order to build an effective total system solution for the end customer. System architecture acts as a value system router, as it gathers value streams from several suppliers at different system layers and then leads the value stream through the integration process to the end customer, which sees the system solution provided as being one value-creating entity. Although system architecture is not a new concept or area of consideration in the fields of technology and industrial management, its role both as a rationale for the specific value network structure and as a tool for understanding actor positioning, competence linking, and supplier portfolio management has not been taken into account
Corporate citizenship in Australia : some ups, some downs

Issues of corporate citizenship and corporate social responsibility, and more recently triple-bottom-line thinking, have been gradually climbing higher on the agenda of corporate Australia in the last couple of years. This paper reports on the results of a major survey of corporate citizenship of the top corporates in Australia recently completed by the Corporate Citizenship Research Unit, Deakin University. The most significant finding was that, while there is a great deal of understanding of, and aspirations towards, effective corporate citizenship in corporate Australia, there is a general lack of fit between wanting to do it and actually doing it so that it is seen to be core business.
Occupancy Quality Predictors of Office Worker Perceptions of Job Productivity

This paper describes use of a perceptual response survey instrument to assess the degree to which rankings by office workers of different key attributes of occupancy quality predict worker perceptions of their on-the-job productivity. Data were collected from a total of 434 workers employed in 10 different office sites. Results show that perceived levels of productivity are significantly correlated with rankings of perceived overall physical work environment and job quality. The correlation between perceived levels of productivity and perceived overall organization quality is marginally significant. No significant correlations are observed between perceived levels of productivity with rankings of perceived overall compensation, work station, and employment quality. The results should benefit employer decision-making regarding human factors/ergonomic (HF/E) interventions to improve office worker productivity.
PHOTOCYTOTOXICITY OF CURCUMIN

Curcumin, bis(4‐hydroxy‐3‐methoxyphenyl)‐l,6‐diene‐3,5‐dione, is a yellow‐orange dye derived from the rhizome of the plant Curcuma longa. Curcumin has demonstrated phototoxicity to several species of bacteria under aerobic conditions (Dahl, T. A., et al., 1989, Arch. Microbiol. 151 183), denoting photodynamic inactivation. We have now found that curcumin is also phototoxic to mammalian cells, using a rat basophilic leukemia cell model, and that this phototoxicity again requires the presence of oxygen. The spectral and photochemical properties of curcumin vary with environment, resulting in the potential for multiple or alternate pathways for the exertion of photodynamic effects. For example, curcumin photogenerates singlet oxygen and reduced forms of molecular oxygen under several conditions relevant to cellular environments. In addition, we detected carbon‐centered radicals, which may lead to oxidation products (see accompanying paper). Such products may be important reactants in curcumin's phototoxicity since singlet oxygen and reduced oxygen species alone could not explain the biological results, such as the relatively long lifetime (t12= 27 s) of the toxicant responsible for decreased cell viability.
SCATTR: an instrument for measuring shopping centre attractiveness

Focuses upon shopping centre developments through joint venture enterprises. By adapting the process proposed by Churchill to develop measures of marketing constructs, an instrument to assess perceived attractiveness of joint venture shopping centres in China is formulated. The proposed instrument (SCATTR) contains 21 attributes in five dimensions and exhibits high internal consistency and validity. The purpose of this instrument is to provide China’s joint venture shopping centres with an indication of their performance as well as an avenue to gain more knowledge about consumers in China. Concludes that the SCATTR instrument is a reliable and valid tool to assess the attractiveness and performance of shopping centres as perceived by consumers.
Cumulative Social Risk, Parenting, and Infant Development in Rural Low-Income Communities

SYNOPSIS Objective. The extent to which the severity of exposure to social risk is related to parenting and cognitive development in the first 15 months of an infant's life was studied in a representative diverse sample of families in two rural poor regions in the United States. Design. One thousand two hundred ninety-two families were followed for the first 15 months of the infant's life. Results. Evidence supported a pathway from risk severity through maternal sensitivity and warmth, language and learning activities, and maternal language to child outcomes, with the language and learning activities providing the most consistent independent prediction. Race, age, and geographic isolation moderated the associations between risk and different aspects of parenting. Both level and change in maternal engagement, maternal language input, and overall learning environment were related to early cognitive development. Cumulative risk measured as the mean of risk variables was a stronger predictor of parenting and infant development than when measured as the count of risk factors. Conclusion. Severity of risk exposure is negatively related to parenting and to child development for infants as young as 15 months of age. This study provides evidence supporting a pathway from risk severity through parenting to child outcomes and suggests that both initial parenting skills and change in parenting skills during infancy predict infants' cognitive skills.
Primary Clear Cell Carcinoma of the Endometrium: A Clinicopathologic Study of 20 Cases

Summary:Primary clear cell adenocarcinoma of the endometrium (CCE) is a rare, aggressive tumor, representing 1–5.5% of all primary endometrial cancers. Twenty cases of CCE were studied, covering the period 1973–1987. Both endometrial curettings and hysterectomy with bilateral salpingo-oophorectomy (BSO) specimens were reviewed. Treatment was total abdominal hysterec-tomy/BSO for all patients with/without pre- and postoperative and/or postoperative chemotherapy. Grossly the tumors formed fleshy, soft masses and involved most of the endometrial surface. The tumor arose in part in an endometrial polyp in 10 cases. Myometrial penetration was found in 12 cases and varied from 5 to 100%. The neoplasm exhibited the following microscopic patterns in pure form or mixed: papillary, tubulocystic, glandular, and solid. All cases were graded as poorly differentiated (grade 3) adenocarcinomas. The stroma surrounding tumor cells showed a lymphoplasmocytic cellular infiltrate in all cases. Follow-up varied from 5 to 165 months, with a crude survival of 60%; eight patients died; six of those had myometrial invasion of 40–100%. In conclusion, CCEs are specific tumors with defined histologic parameters in which the cytologic grade and/or tumor morphology do not appear to influence outcome. On the other hand, the depth of myometrial invasion and clinical staging are reliable prognostic elements.
The new logistics management: transformation through organizational learning

Major change efforts, such as business process redesign and transformation of the supply chain, can usefully be linked to an organizational learning approach. Radical change stands a far greater chance of success if attention is first paid to overall organizational readiness. Suggests a framework for first conducting a “change audit” using a holistic and systemic view of the firm. Concepts of the learning organization can then be applied to increase flexibility and increase capacity to withstand and exploit unexpected and rapid change. Makes recommendations for successfully combining a learning approach to strategy with proactive and integrated logistics management.
Health Service Delivery in Australia: Gaps and Solutions

This paper is intended to stimulate discussion on the issue of health service delivery. It will examine some of the underlying characteristics of services and review them from a health service perspective. It will then explore the nature and implications of health service failure. Key findings from a recent Australian study of practice in open disclosure in public hospitals will be reviewed for the purpose of discussing the implications of the impact of service failure in a health care setting. The paper then goes on to explore the process and nature of health service delivery in terms of potential shortcomings and flaws with its implication for service quality. To assist in the analysis of this topic and to begin the debate on potential solutions, a matrix table is developed to highlight the key areas of health service failure, suggest possible causes, and then go on to suggest prescriptive measures to help manage the risks involved in the health service delivery process.
Alternative Semantic Scaling Formats for Measuring Store Image: An Evaluation

Only slight advantages are shown for the Stapel scale in lack of leniency (high scores) and the semantic differential scale in precision (low variance) in a comparison of these scale approaches with the Likert one in measuring store image. Careful measure validation showed no marked differences among the three scale approaches, and thus choices among them should be made on other grounds.
An analysis of security, cost-effectiveness, and it compliance factors influencing cloud adoption by it managers

Cloud computing has gained acceptance as a model that aligns information technology (IT) service delivery with business strategies in organizations to improve real time provisioning of software, database, applications and infrastructure, and as a solution to rising costs of managing IT. The adoption of cloud computing provides benefits to organizations that include pay-as-you-go billing, on-demand capabilities, and reduction in IT operational expenses. The study was intended to provide business decision-makers with credible data about the factors influencing the adoption of cloud computing. The outcome of this study allows IT organizations, irrespective of their type and size, to make key decisions on adoption of cloud computing. The impact of managements’ perception of security, cost effectiveness, and IT compliance were tested using regression analysis in direct comparison to their decision to adopt cloud adoption technology. The study results determined that management’s perception of security, cost-effectiveness and IT compliance factors significantly influence the decisions to adopt cloud computing. The results of linear regression analysis testing in this study showed that management’s perception of cost-effectiveness is more significantly correlated to their decision to adopt cloud computing than security. The results of the study also indicate that the decision to adopt cloud computing technology depends on managers’ perception of security, costeffectiveness and IT compliance requirements, however cost-effectiveness scored higher that the other constructs.
Impact of Work Family Conflict on Female Intent to Quit: Descriptive Study of Commercial Banks of Faisalabad, Pakistan

Employee turnover is a challenge faced by any organization and banking is of no exception. Several studies are devoted to identify employees’ intent-to-quit in the banking sector of Pakistan, but most of them have ignored female turn over behavior. A separate research is imperative to explore female intent to quit. The present study is trying to fill up this gap by exploring the turnover intentions of female employees in the commercial banks of Faisalabad, Pakistan. Intent to quit (ITQ) has been tested empirically for its association with work-to-family conflict (WFC) and family-to-work conflict (FWC). The study is important in a sense that for the first time the quit intentions of female bankers have been identified. Data is collected from the female employees of six commercial banks of Faisalabad region. A total of 230 questionnaire were distributed out of which 200 returned, representing response rate of 87%. The analysis proved that intent-to-quit is positively and significantly associated with work-to-family conflict and family-to-work conflict. The study has also proposed some valuable recommendations for HR managers and policy makers to retain female workers in banks.
Convolutional Neural Networks for Noniterative Reconstruction of Compressively Sensed Images

Traditional algorithms for compressive sensing recovery are computationally expensive and are ineffective at low measurement rates. In this paper, we propose a data-driven noniterative algorithm to overcome the shortcomings of earlier iterative algorithms. Our solution, ReconNet, is a deep neural network, which is learned end-to-end to map block-wise compressive measurements of the scene to the desired image blocks. Reconstruction of an image becomes a simple forward pass through the network and can be done in real time. We show empirically that our algorithm yields reconstructions with higher peak signal-to-noise ratios (PSNRs) compared to iterative algorithms at low measurement rates and in presence of measurement noise. We also propose a variant of ReconNet, which uses adversarial loss in order to further improve reconstruction quality. We discuss how adding a fully connected layer to the existing ReconNet architecture allows for jointly learning the measurement matrix and the reconstruction algorithm in a single network. Experiments on real data obtained from a block compressive imager show that our networks are robust to unseen sensor noise.
Creating business opportunities : a critical realist perspective

The purpose of this research was to gain a more profound understanding of the emergence of the business opportunities, and to enhance the development of entrepreneurship theory in relation to this context. This research is to understand two issues: How does a business opportunity emerge? What makes it possible? This dissertation builds a conceptual framework of the process of creating the Business Opportunity and concentrates on three interrelated sub-processes emerging in it: Business Ideation Process, Business Modeling Process and Business Planning Process. The Business Ideation is defined as creating an idea of the business opportunity with a clear focus on the customer, consideration, connection, and/or commitment. The Business Modeling Process is the conceptual model of the future business opportunity consisting elements such as: value creation; firm’s internal source of advantage; position in the marketplace; profit making; and entrepreneur’s perspective. Finally, the Business Planning Process is the implementation plan of the conceptual business opportunity. The scientific choices are based on the critical realism that highlights reality simultaneously as existing independently of its observers and acknowledges the role of an actor (the entrepreneur) as being constrained by it as well as being able to change it. Furthermore, this dissertation treats the process of creating the business opportunities as creative process based on the idea of a personal (or everyday) creativity and the method of creative problem solving. The results indicate that the nature of the process of creating the Business Opportunities, the BOC process, allows all people to be treated as entrepreneurs if they play the role of the entrepreneur by interacting (more or less creatively) with business ideating, business modeling and business planning processes. Hence, the creative problem solving method utilized in every sub-process will free the entrepreneur from the restraint of the dominant insight of the opportunity that sees it as a true vision of the future business venture. Here, the business opportunities are created during the process. Furthermore, the results show a keen interplay between the process of creating business opportunities and their exploitation. Hence, the BOC process appears to be an essential part of the overall entrepreneurial process.
The Effect of Firm Size and Growth Opportunity on Accounting Discretion and its Relationship with Future Stock Return (Management Opportunism Test)

Accounting flexibility has raised concern about management opportunism among owners. Accounting discretion, as an information system controlled by directors, intensifies opportunism and agency problem. Regarding the firm situation, however, directors are likely to employ accounting discretion so that its consequences are compatible with shareholders’ interests, or at least do not oppose them. Firm size and growth opportunity are of great importance for its management, depending on the way it uses accounting discretion. The present study aims to offer a model indicating the relationship between firm size and growth opportunity and accounting discretion, and its effect on stock return as a distinctive characteristic of firm performance and consequently, test the management opportunism. This research employs an applied and correlational method. The results respectively point to a positively and negatively significant relationship between firm size and firm’s growth opportunity, and accounting discretion while the relationship between accounting discretion resulting from recent variables and stock return does not point to the opportunism of the directors. In general, the results indicated that there is no significant difference between predicted accounting discretion and projected future stock returns which indicates that there is a mismanagement in creating opportunities among the firms under study.
Perceptions of generic products: a macro and micro view

Branding has traditionally been viewed as an essential tool for marketers to establish an identity for their products. Even products among the commodity range make use of branding to establish a position for themselves in the market. Unbranded or “generic” products, therefore, tend to go against this branding principle. These products, which are usually sold at a price which is lower than their branded equivalents, are most often found in the area of low‐involvement grocery items. Previous studies of consumer perceptions of generic products tend to be broad in their scope by looking at generic products as a product category, rather than seeking consumer views on individual generic products. This paper identifies the characteristics of generic purchasers, and their broad perceptions of generic products as a group; and, the research extends previous work in the area by comparing a range of individual generic products to each other in terms of their value, quality and packaging. In addition, the research identifies how much importance consumers attach to value, quality and packaging when buying these individual products ‐ in generic form or otherwise. A mail survey of 1,000 New Zealanders revealed that, in contrast to previous studies, generic consumers tend to be older and on a lower household income. In general, consumers do not believe that generics are substandard products. However, when looking at individual generic products, the less standardized generic products are not performing as well as others when it comes to consumers’ perceptions and demands. Proposes that if generic products are to have a recognizable future, it may be necessary to embark on a program which enhances consumer perception of the quality and value of the less standardized generic products.