bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025_split huggingface dataset:
Interaction between precious metals price and Islamic stock markets
Authors: Tuna Gülfen 
Published: September 2018

Purpose
This study aims to analyze the presence of a long-term relationship between precious metal prices, such as for gold, silver, platinum and palladium, and Islamic stock markets of 32 different countries – 21 developed and 11 developing. In this study, the long-term relationship between the precious metal prices and the Islamic stock markets of countries grouped by the Morgan Stanley Capital Index (MSCI) according to their level of development was examined. In the economies included in the study, it is necessary that the Islamic stock index be created by MSCI. It is not a constraint as a Muslim country.

Design/methodology/approach
This study used the Pedroni panel cointegration analysis and full modified ordinary least square method. All analyses in this study were performed using monthly data from 2002 to 2015.

Findings
According to the Pedroni panel cointegration analysis applied in this study, all four precious metals – gold, silver, platinum and palladium – are effective portfolio diversification tools for developed Islamic stock markets within the analyzed period. However, in developing countries, although gold and palladium are effective portfolio diversification tools, silver and platinum are not.

Practical implications
These results provide practical implications for academicians, practitioners as portfolio managers, policymakers. These implications are related in portfolio risk management, the diversification benefits and to propose new investment tools among developed and developing Islamic markets.

Social implications
This study is important for investors who assemble portfolios under the restriction of selecting investment tools suitable for Islamic rules. These investors are important in terms of using precious metals that they prefer as an alternative to stock markets to protect against the risks related to their suitable portfolio options. Governments, individuals and institutional investors that use capital stock according to Islamic rules in developed countries can effectively use gold, silver, platinum and palladium as hedging tools. However, this choice is limited to only gold and palladium in developing country markets. Gold continues to be an effective diversification tool in Islamic share markets, as in traditional stock markets.

Originality/value
The author would like to emphasize that this article is second to examine precious metals and Islamic stock markets in literature.
Towards a better understanding of fashion clothing purchase involvement
Authors: Rahman Mahfuzur , Albaity Mohamed , Isa Che Ruhana , Azma Nurul 
Published: September 2018

Purpose
This study aims to concern with Malaysian consumer involvement in fashion clothing. To achieve this, materialism, fashion clothing involvement and religiosity are examined as drivers of fashion clothing purchase involvement.

Design/methodology/approach
Gender, race and age are explored to have better understanding of fashion clothing purchase involvement in Malaysia. Data were gathered using a Malaysian university student sample, resulting in 281 completed questionnaires.

Findings
The results support the study’s model and its hypotheses and indicate that materialism, fashion clothing involvement and religiosity are significant drivers of fashion clothing purchase involvement. Also, materialism is a significant driver of fashion clothing involvement, and fashion clothing involvement mediates the relationship between materialism and fashion clothing purchase involvement. The results also show that Malaysian youth do not possess a high level of materialistic tendencies.

Originality/value
This study offers enormous opportunities for the international apparel marketers to formulate relevant business policies and strategies.
A citation analysis of corporate social responsibility (1970-2014): insights from Islamic perspective
Authors: Alfakhri Yazeed , Nurunnabi Mohammad , Alfakhri Demah 
Published: September 2018

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to analyse the citations of scientific research on the concept of corporate social responsibility (CSR) from 1970 to 2014. In particular, several interconnected research questions were investigated: How did the conceptualisation of CSR change from 1970 to 2014? What is the general direction of the change? How does Islamic CSR emerge?Design/methodology/approachAn in-depth analysis was performed with the use of the data analysis tool available in the Web of Science. The study categorises CSR into four areas: business ethics and corporate governance; management; marketing; and others. The first three categories were based on the Chartered Association of Business Schools’ Academic Journal Guide 2010 and 2015 (UK).FindingsThe findings reveal that 67.19 per cent articles have been published based on the ranked journals of Academic Journal Guide 2010 and 2015. The findings of the study will help to inform future areas of CSR. The top journals which published most articles from Academic Journal Guide 2015 areJournal of Business EthicsandCorporate Social Responsibility and Environmental Management.Practical implicationsThe findings suggest that the remit of sustainability from Islamic perspective is wider. Islamic marketing, as an area, remains largely in need of empirical research. The business communities should successfully integrate Muslim communities into their marketing strategies.Originality/valueTo the best of the knowledge, this is the first study to explore citation analysis of general CSR literature and Islamic CSR. The study finds that there has been an increase in interest in this subject of CSR and Islam in the recent years. Future research is needed on theory and methodological analysis of general CSR field and Islamic CSR field.
Perception of the takaful operators’ performance towards customers’ intention in using medical takaful card among public sector
Authors: Haji Wahab Muhammad Zarunnaim 
Published: September 2018

Purpose
This paper aims to examine the level and the relationship between the perception of the performance of takaful operators and the customers’ intention in using medical takaful card among public sectors in Kedah, Malaysia.

Design/methodology/approach
A quantitative research methodology was advocated to answer the objectives progressively. Data were collected from questionnaires and analyzed using SPSS v22. In total, 313 respondents were selected from three public sectors in Kedah, Malaysia.

Findings
The review found that the level of customers’ perception of performance towards the customers’ intention in using medical takaful card was high. Besides, the findings concluded that a positive moderate relationship was observed between the perception of the performance of takaful operators and the customers’ intention in using medical takaful card among public officers in Kedah, Malaysia.

Research limitations/implications
There were three major limitations of this paper. These limitations are further explained in the conclusion.

Practical implications
This study has provided some major implications. First, on behalf of the public sector institutions, the results of this study clearly showed that the intention of the public sector officers in using medical takaful card should be increased. Second, on behalf of the industry, this study could acknowledge them to improve their performance to increase efficiency, creativity and innovation to create a good impression among consumers. Third, the previous theory and literature related to the perception of performance is suitable to use even in the event that the takaful industry has been proven.

Originality/value
The paper is useful to takaful operators to provide a good perception of their performance in the process of influencing the customers, especially among the public sector officers, to enrol in the medical takaful coverage.
How perceptions of training impact employee performance
Authors: Guan Xiaoyu , Frenkel Stephen 
Published: September 2018

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to investigate the influence of firm training on the job performance of mainly semi-skilled manufacturing employees in the context of changes required to ensure the competitiveness of contemporary Chinese manufacturing.Design/methodology/approachData were collected using a survey with time-lagged method and from multiple sources. The sample included 348 supervisor-subordinate dyads from two Chinese manufacturing firms. PROCESS macro tool (Hayes) was used to test the mediating role of work engagement and the moderating role of HRM strength in the training-performance relationship.FindingsWork engagement mediates the relationship between training and in-role task performance, while the relationships between work engagement and both task performance and organizational citizenship behavior are moderated by HRM strength.Research limitations/implicationsBased on a time-lagged survey, causal relationships cannot be drawn from this study. Results point to future research on the training-performance relationship that more closely considers antecedents and the organizations’ internal and external contexts.Practical implicationsManagers should pay close attention to the context and process of training and learning from the employees’ perspective. In addition, a strong HRM system will improve the benefits of training on employee performance.Originality/valueThis study provides theoretical explanations on the mechanisms linking training and employee performance based on the ability-motivation-opportunity framework.
High-tech workplace tools are key to winning the war for talent
Authors: McNulty Jacob 
Published: September 2018

Purpose
With HR now at the center of efforts to address the talent crisis, how can HR strategists best deploy their resources to help their organizations to rise to the challenge?

Design/methodology/approach
Data-driven digital solutions can be a good starting point for discovering what’s working with existing employees. A new breed of high-tech tools are giving HR departments the means to more thoroughly and actionably understand the factors that attract, retain and drive away quality employees.

Findings
Based on data from these tools, HR teams can design inviting, engaging and productive work environments.

Originality/value
The struggle to attract and retain quality talent in the workplace is real, it is escalating and it has landed right at the doorstep of HR departments. It is perhaps the most pressing priority they – and their entire organizations – must confront to keep pace in the ongoing US economic expansion.
Schooling, teachers in Jamaica and social responsibility: rethinking teacher preparation
Authors: Roofe Carmel 
Published: September 2018

PurposeIn a context where standardized testing and achievement scores have become the hallmark of accountability frameworks, the issue of social responsibility is not given much attention in schools in Jamaica. This has led to a continuous decline of the moral and spiritual dimension of schooling in the country. This is evidenced through an increase in school violence and other disparities among students. This paper aims to explore teachers’ perception of how they are prepared for their role as agents of social responsibility.Design/methodology/approachThrough interviews of 16 in-service teachers, this research sought to explore teachers’ perception of how they are prepared for their role as agents of social responsibility. Each participant in the study was interviewed using a structured interview schedule comprising six questions. Data collected were transcribed and analyzed by sorting and identifying codes. Pattern codes were established which were then interpreted to form themes. Three themes emerged which are used to present findings.FindingsFindings revealed that teachers had a shared understanding of social responsibility; they felt that they were prepared for this role throughad hoccurriculum encounters, were not adequately prepared for their role and social responsibility required a belief in the idea first before it can be taught.Research limitations/implicationsThe findings from the research are used to present arguments in the paper for emphasis on preparing student teachers to be agents of social responsibility and for a rethinking of teacher preparation curriculum in Jamaica. The paper also presents strategies that can be used to guide the re-thinking of teacher preparation programmes.Practical implicationsTeacher preparation programmes represent the avenue through which teachers can be prepared to develop their social consciousness, so that they can in turn help students. The results of this paper are means of helping teacher educators understand this.Originality/valueThis paper is one of the first since the early 1990s to discuss social responsibility as a key component of teacher preparation in Jamaica. It also fills the void of scarcity of research in Jamaica on teacher education on a whole and social responsibility in teacher education in particular.
The making of Chinese medicine in Hong Kong
Authors: Pang Ka Wei 
Published: September 2018

Purpose
This paper aims to examine the development of Chinese medicine in Hong Kong and argues that Chinese medicine is not a mere healing practice but a discursive practice against its unique institutional context.

Design/methodology/approach
Reviewing the medical history in the colonial and post-colonial era, this paper delineates the dynamics between Chinese medicine and Western medicine, and the discursive shaping of Chinese medicine in Hong Kong.

Findings
While Chinese medicine in post-colonial Hong Kong is modernizing itself from a traditional medicine to the scientific Traditional Chinese medicine (TCM), it partakes in the decolonization and nationalization project and is geared towards the standardized TCM.

Originality/value
This paper proposed a critical cultural perspective in studying the discursive formation of Chinese medicine in Hong Kong.
Use of immune checkpoint inhibitors prolonged overall survival in a Japanese population of advanced malignant melanoma patients: Retrospective single institutional study
Authors: Nakamura Yoshiyuki , Fujisawa Yasuhiro , Tanaka Ryota , Maruyama Hiroshi , Ishitsuka Yosuke , Okiyama Naoko , Watanabe Rei , Fujimoto Manabu 
Published: September 2018

AbstractAlthough recent clinical trials have revealed that immune checkpoint inhibitors significantly improved the overall survival (OS) of patients with advanced melanoma, these previous studies comprised mainly white populations, in which superficial spreading melanoma (SSM) and lentigo maligna melanoma are the major clinical types of melanoma. In contrast, Asians manifest a distinct clinicopathological type of melanoma from that of whites and show much higher frequencies of acral lentiginous melanoma (ALM) and mucosal melanoma, which have been shown to be less susceptible to immune checkpoint inhibitors. Because no comparative studies have been published showing improvement of OS by immune checkpoint inhibitors in Asian melanoma patients, we retrospectively collected the data for 45 melanoma patients treated with checkpoint inhibitors and 24 melanoma patients treated with chemotherapy alone before immune checkpoint inhibitors became available, and compared their OS. The results showed that the patients treated with immune checkpoint inhibitors had significantly better OS than did those treated with chemotherapy alone (P < 0.0001). Improved OS was observed in both the SSM and the ALM patients. In addition, multivariate Cox regression analyses revealed that use of immune checkpoint inhibitors was associated with favorable prognosis (P = 0.0001), indicating that use of immune checkpoint inhibitors is an independent factor for favorable survival. Our study showed that immune checkpoint inhibitors may also improve the prognosis of Asian melanoma patients.
Profile fluctuation of peripheral blood in advanced melanoma patients treated with nivolumab
Authors: Saito Ryuichi , Sawada Yu , Saito‐Sasaki Natsuko , Yamamoto Kayo , Yoshioka Haruna , Ohmori Shun , Yoshioka Manabu , Okada Etsuko , Nakamura Motonobu 
Published: September 2018

AbstractMelanoma is a malignant tumor of the melanocytes with an unfavorable clinical behavior. Nivolumab, a representative anti‐programmed death 1 (PD‐1) antibody, has recently been used for the treatment of metastatic malignant melanoma. However, there have been few appropriate biomarkers predicting the effect of nivolumab before the administration. Furthermore, the detailed characteristics of peripheral blood mononuclear cell (PBMC) profiles during nivolumab treatment remains unclear. In this study, we investigated fluctuations of PBMC profile during nivolumab treatment. PBMC analysis showed T‐helper (Th)2‐dominant conditions after a first course of nivolumab treatment. In a favorable case treated with nivolumab, a Th1/T‐cytotoxic 1 shift was observed after nivolumab was administrated. These results suggest that flow cytometric analysis of PBMC may be helpful for the treatment of nivolumab.
Productivity and diversity of annually harvested reconstructed prairie communities
Authors: Kordbacheh Farnaz , Jarchow Meghann , English Lydia , Liebman Matt 
Published: September 2018

AbstractBiofuel production from cellulosic feedstocks may increase during the next century. To be sustainable, this production should protect environmental quality and biodiversity. Fertilized mixed‐species prairie can deliver substantial quantities of cellulosic ethanol per unit land area with minimal losses of NO3‐N in drainage water, but the long‐term maintenance of biodiversity in such systems has been uncertain.We report how nitrogen, phosphorus, and potassium fertilizer application, precipitation, and time affected the species composition and productivity of reconstructed prairie communities harvested annually as biofuel feedstocks over a 9‐year period.Results indicated that both precipitation and fertilizer application drove above‐ground biomass production, with the greatest response to fertilizer occurring in wetter than average years. Fertilization reduced species richness, but increased species evenness. Consequently, Simpson's diversity index did not differ between the fertilized and unfertilized communities, though it declined in both communities over time.A total of 59 plant species was recorded, with eight of them explaining most of the differences in vegetation cover between the fertilized and unfertilized treatments. After 9 years, the high fertility community was dominated by the C4 grassAndropogon gerardii,the C3 grassElymus canadensis, and the non‐leguminous forbsHeliopsis helianthoides,Helianthus maximiliani, andMonarda fistulosa, whereas the low fertility community was dominated by the C4 grassesA. gerardiiandSorghastrum nutans, the C3 grassE. canadensis, and the non‐leguminous forbM. fistulosa. Fertilization increased the abundance of flowering forbs available to pollinators in the early, middle and late portions of the growing season.Synthesis and applications. Results of our study suggest that maintenance of reasonably high levels of productivity and biodiversity are possible in fertilized prairie communities harvested annually for bioenergy, with plant cover more evenly distributed among different functional groups. In the future, if policy and markets favour biofuels and better delivery of ecosystem services from harvested land, prairie‐based feedstocks could become part of a renewable energy portfolio that fosters biodiversity and contributes to the provision of floral resources for pollinators.
Impact of Pharmacists on Access to Vaccine Providers: A Geospatial Analysis
Authors: SHAH PARTH D. , TROGDON JUSTIN G. , GOLDEN SHELLEY D. , GOLIN CAROL E. , MARCINIAK MACARY WECK , BREWER NOEL T. 
Published: September 2018

Policy Points:
Policymakers in the United States should consider expanding pharmacy practice laws to allow pharmacists to vaccinate adolescents as a way to improve geographic access to adolescent vaccines, particularly for human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccine, which has low uptake.
Our state‐level analysis showed that pharmacists are more geographically dispersed than primary care physicians in the US state of Texas.
Including pharmacists among available adolescent vaccine providers would improve the geographic distribution of vaccine providers, especially in areas with an inadequate number of primary care physicians.
ContextThe largest disparities in human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccination in the United States are due to geography. One potential way of addressing these disparities is by improving geographic access to HPV vaccination. Two federal panels have recommended including community pharmacists as HPV vaccine providers as a strategy to improve opportunities for HPV vaccination for adolescents. We sought to evaluate whether community pharmacists can improve the number of vaccine providers in areas with primary care physician shortages in the US state of Texas.MethodsWe gathered publicly available physician and pharmacist 2016 workforce data from the Texas Medical Board and Board of Pharmacy. We conducted geospatial analysis of census tracts to analyze the distribution of physicians and pharmacists and how pharmacists change vaccine provider coverage across the state.FindingsCensus tracts with high numbers of physicians per capita tended to be located near one another, in 5 of 5 analyses of Moran's I (median = .04). In contrast, pharmacist rates were not spatially dependent on census tract in any of our analyses. If pharmacists were added to primary care physicians as vaccine providers, 35% of urban census tracts that previously had inadequate coverage would be adequately covered, while 18% of inadequately covered rural census tracts would become adequately covered. Overall, when pharmacists were included with primary care physicians as vaccine providers, vaccine providers per capita increased in 2,413 of the 4,508 urban census tracts (54%), while the rate increased in 223 of 746 rural census tracts (30%).ConclusionsPharmacists are more geographically dispersed across census tracts than primary care physicians. As a result, adding pharmacists to the workforce would increase the availability of vaccine providers in areas with inadequate primary care provider coverage.