bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025_split huggingface dataset:
The financial performance of Saudi Arabian IPOs
Authors: Alanazi Ahmed S. , Liu Benjamin , Forster John 
Published: June 2011

PurposeThe main objective of this paper is to measure Saudi Arabian initial public offerings' (IPOs) financial performance before and after going public on the Saudi Stock Exchange Market. The paper also aims to explore factors associated with the financial performance variation between pre‐ and post‐IPO.Design/methodology/approachA sample of 16 Saudi IPOs is investigated. A matched pairs methodology is mainly used combined with regression analysis.FindingsSaudi IPOs exhibit a significant decline in the post‐IPO performance compared to the pre‐IPO level as measured by the return on assets and return on sales. It was also found that the performance deterioration is associated with the IPO event.Originality/valueThe paper is the first assessment of IPOs clustering occurred in Saudi Arabia.
Promoting sustainable festival events tourism: a case study of Lamu Kenya
Authors: Okech Roselyne N. 
Published: June 2011

PurposeTourism has been a key force in promoting festival growth and expansion. Towns, villages and cities are increasingly keen to share their culture, environment and spending opportunities with visitors by the promotion of festivals. One such festival is held annually in Lamu Old Town, a world heritage site in Kenya. The purpose of the paper is to highlight the importance of hosting sustainable events in Kenya.Design/methodology/approachThe subject scope is on maintaining sustainable events within local communities with an aim of improving the local economy.FindingsResults suggest that although festivals may have the potential to provide opportunities for sustainable local economic development, such opportunities frequently remain unexploited. For these reasons, festivals' engagement with tourism forces in Lamu need to be carefully managed, both in the interests of sustaining festivals and of promoting sustainable approaches to tourism development.Practical implicationsIn addition to their cultural and social values, cultural festivals have emerged as an instrument for tourism development, tourism seasonality expansion, city image improvement and boosting regional economies. Therefore, the implications will be to invest in festivals development and community engagement and present the tourist with authentic experiences.Originality/valueThis article is valuable to policy makers as not enough research has been done on the importance of this festival and the need to provide a significant role to the local people in Lamu in communicating their identity, history and cultural practices.
Roundtable discussion: applying sustainability legislation to events
Authors: Paterson Melanie , Ward Sharon 
Published: June 2011

PurposeEnvironmental policies and sustainability‐focussed legislation has far‐reaching impacts across a range of aspects. This article attempts to provide a concise overview of four sustainability‐related imperatives, to understand how they apply to event management in practice and the challenges and opportunities these initiatives present within an event industry context.Design/methodology/approachEvent management professionals were asked to discuss four current sustainability agendas by examining how they could apply legislation applicable to water, waste, energy and big society to their planning and delivery of a client's event.FindingsAn evident lack of knowledge on sustainability legislation was unearthed along with a resistance to learn about a new and seemingly vast subject matter. Core to successfully applying the legislation to their events were relationships with the client, venue and supplier. These were seen as both an opportunity and a hindrance.Practical implicationsThe discussion identified practical methods for engaging and educating industry professionals in a way which enables and empowers them rather than overwhelming. It also pointed to changes required of businesses to provide the tools and resource the managers need.Originality/valueThis is a valuable tool for event managers starting out on their sustainability journey.
High‐tech ventures' innovation and influences of institutional voids
Authors: Liu Yipeng 
Published: June 2011

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to investigate how institutional voids influence high‐tech ventures' innovation, and what strategies high‐tech entrepreneurs deploy to cope with the institutional environments they encounter.Design/methodology/approachA qualitative research approach was taken. In‐depth interviews were conducted with nine high‐tech entrepreneurs. In addition, governmental officials, overseas associations, and professional investors were interviewed for more/further observations.FindingsInstitutional voids may negatively influence high‐tech ventures' innovation. They might be moderated by guanxi and government active involvement. On the contrary, institutional voids can offer high‐tech entrepreneurs the opportunity to create innovative business models. The co‐evolution of institutional developments and high‐tech ventures illustrates the particular characteristics of Chinese entrepreneurial environment.Research limitations/implicationsQualitative study cannot simply be generalized, albeit this explorative study provides illustrative insights. Quantitative research (e.g. surveys), which is applied to test the propositions, calls for further scholarly inquiry.Practical implicationsOverseas entrepreneurs are presented with the opportunities to pursue an entrepreneurial career. SMEs from developed economies may join the movement with technology entrepreneurs to enter the Chinese market and co‐shape the market development.Originality/valueInstitutional voids were conceptualized from a multi‐dimensional perspective, namely national, regional, and individual. By providing qualitative evidence, different mechanisms to fill the institutional voids are explored.
Perceived value of entrepreneurship
Authors: Wu Lingfei , Li Jun 
Published: June 2011

PurposeThis paper seeks to address the question of “why some people choose to be an entrepreneur?” It offers a novel perspective in the strand of cognitive models to examine the formation of entrepreneurial intention.Design/methodology/approachData for this research came from a questionnaire survey of university students in Shanghai, Zhejiang and Hubei provinces. The conceptual model is tested using the method of structural equation modelling on a sample of 415 university students.FindingsThe research confirms that perceived benefits of entrepreneurship have positive and statistically significant effects on perceived value of entrepreneurship and that perceived sacrifices of entrepreneurship in terms of non‐economic sacrifices have negative and statistically significant effects on perceived value of entrepreneurship.Originality/valueThe paper proposes a new construct of perceived value of entrepreneurship to explain the formation of entrepreneurial intention. Building on the concept of value perception from the marketing literature, it conceptualized the perceived value of entrepreneurship in benefit‐sacrifice components and empirically tested the argument that entrepreneurship‐related career decision making is a cognitive process in which entrepreneurial intention results from a cognitive trade‐off between perceived benefits and perceived sacrifices.
Particle swarm optimization for finding RNA secondary structures
Authors: Geis Michael , Middendorf Martin 
Published: June 2011

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to present a new particle swarm optimization (PSO) algorithm called HelixPSO for finding ribonucleic acid (RNA) secondary structures that have a low energy and are similar to the native structure.Design/methodology/approachTwo variants of HelixPSO are described and compared to the recent algorithms Rna‐Predict, SARNA‐Predict, SetPSO and RNAfold. Furthermore, a parallel version of the HelixPSO is proposed.FindingsFor a set of standard RNA test sequences it is shown experimentally that HelixPSO obtains a better average sensitivity than SARNA‐Predict and SetPSO and is as good as RNA‐Predict and RNAfold. When best values for different measures (e.g. number of correctly predicted base pairs, false positives and sensitivity) over several runs are compared, HelixPSO performs better than RNAfold, similar to RNA‐Predict, and is outperformed by SARNA‐Predict. It is shown that HelixPSO complements RNA‐Predict and SARNA‐Predict well since the algorithms show often very different behavior on the same sequence. For the parallel version of HelixPSO it is shown that good speedup values can be obtained for small to medium size PC clusters.Originality/valueThe new PSO algorithm HelixPSO for finding RNA secondary structures uses different algorithmic ideas than the other existing PSO algorithm SetPSO. HelixPSO uses thermodynamic information as well as the centroid as a reference structure and is based on a multiple swarm approach.
Colony of cooperating agents based independent job scheduling in a computation grid
Authors: Helmy Tarek , Rasheed Zeehasham 
Published: June 2011

PurposeGrid computing is gaining more significance in the high‐performance computing world. This concept leads to the discovery of solutions for complicated problems regarding the diversity of available resources among different jobs in the grid. However, the major problem is the optimal job scheduling for heterogeneous resources, in which each job needs to be allocated to a proper grid's node with the appropriate resources. An important challenge is to solve optimally the scheduling problem, because the capability and availability of resources vary dynamically and the complexity of scheduling increases with the size of the grid. The purpose of this paper is to present a framework which combines the fuzzy C‐mean (FCM) clustering with an ant colony optimization (ACO) algorithm to improve the scheduling decision when the grid is heterogeneous.Design/methodology/approachIn the proposed model, the FCM algorithm classifies the jobs into appropriate classes, and the ACO algorithm maps the jobs to the appropriate resources. The ACO is characterized by ant‐like mobile agents that cooperate and stochastically explore a network, iteratively building solutions based on their own memory and on the traces (pheromone levels) left by other agents.FindingsThe simulation is done by using historical information on jobs in a grid. The experimental results show that the proposed algorithm can allocate jobs more efficiently and more effectively than the traditional algorithms for scheduling policies.Originality/valueThe paper provides a scheduling model based on FCM clustering and ACO algorithm for grid scheduling. The authors compared the performance of the proposed algorithm with the performance of various job‐scheduling algorithms in the grid computing environment. The comparison results show that the proposed algorithm outperforms other algorithms and gives optimal results.
Movement consensus of delayed multi‐agent systems with directed weighted networks
Authors: Yang Hong‐yong , Zong Guang‐deng , Zhang Si‐ying 
Published: June 2011

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to study the moving consensus of multi‐agent dynamical systems with time delays and directed weighted networks.Design/methodology/approachThe approach used in the study, the topologies of multi‐agent dynamical systems with directed weighted networks is graph theories. The frequency domain is applied to research the movement characteristics of multi‐agent systems with time delays. The generalized Nyquist criterion and curvature theorem are utilized to analyze the consensus algorithm with heterogeneous input delays and heterogeneous communication delays.FindingsIt was discovered that the consensus for the delayed multi‐agent systems with asymmetric coupling weights can be achieved with the hypothesis of directed weighted network composed of n agents with a globally reachable node. The convergence condition is a decentralized consensus condition which uses only local information of each agent.Originality/valueThe novelty associated with this work is to present a new approach to study the consensus of delayed multi‐agent dynamical systems with directed weighted networks. The consensus condition obtained in the paper is less conservative than the consensus condition given in references.
Trait‐based conformity in reporting of selling, general and administrative expenses
Authors: Aerts Walter , Van Caneghem Tom 
Published: June 2011

PurposeThis paper aims to study conformity tendencies in selling, general and administrative (SG&A) expenses reporting of US firms through an institutional lens.Design/methodology/approachThe paper examines intra‐industry conformity in SG&A reporting over a ten‐year period among a sample of US firms. It measures conformity by comparing a firm's SG&A profile (reported SG&A relative to sales) against a reference group of industry model firms.FindingsResults suggest that a firm's conformity to large and successful firms' SG&A profiles is determined by the tendency of other industry members to imitate those reference models. Large audit firms (i.e. the BigN) are shown to provide an effective diffusion channel of shared industry‐based reporting templates. Different modes of trait imitation in SG&A reporting seem to coexist as long as the industry model firms are defined in terms of size and/or profitability.Research limitations/implicationsThe paper's results may be of interest to capital market standard‐setters and regulators by showing how regulative ambiguity created by the lack of guidance, feeds social processes that tend to fill the guidance gap.Practical implicationsThe paper's results show that intra‐industry benchmarking of SG&A reporting plays a significant role in the USA and that international auditor networks are important in establishing and promoting industry‐based reporting formats.Originality/valueThe paper shows that the behavior of firms at the industry level can be significant predictors of financial reporting practices at firm level and illustrate specific, socially based mechanisms through which the institutional environment affects financial reporting decisions.
The effects of perceived business uncertainty, external consultants and risk management on organisational outcomes
Authors: Subramaniam Nava , Collier Paul , Phang Michelle , Burke Gary 
Published: June 2011

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to investigate the relations between perceived business uncertainty (PBU), use of external risk management (RM) consultants, formalisation of RM, magnitude of RM methods and perceived organisational outcomes.Design/methodology/approachThis paper is based on a questionnaire survey of members of the Chartered Institute of Management Accountants in the UK. Using AMOS 17.0, the paper tests the strength of the direct and indirect effects among the variables and explores the fit of the overall path model.FindingsThe results indicate significant and positive associations exist between the extent of PBU and the level of RM formalisation, as well as between the level of RM formalisation and the magnitude of RM methods adopted. The use of external RM consultants is also found to have a significant and positive impact on the magnitude of RM methods adopted. Finally, both the extent of RM formalisation and the magnitude of RM methods adopted are seen to be significantly associated with overall improvement in organisational outcomes.Research limitations/implicationsThe study uses perceptual measures of the level of business uncertainty, usage of RM and organisational outcomes. Further, the respondents are members of a management accounting professional body and the views of other managers, such as risk managers, who are also important to the governance process are not incorporated.Originality/valueThis study provides empirical evidence on the impact of RM design and usage on improvements in organisational outcomes. It contributes to the RM literature where empirical research is needed in order to be comparable with the traditional management control system literature.
The impact of attitude variables on the credit debt behavior
Authors: Wang Lili , Lv Wei , Jiang Lin 
Published: June 2011

PurposeThe present research attempts to address what kinds of attitude variables influence individuals' debt behavior. Although credit card debt has been extensively documented recently, the main focus is on the pure amount of debt. Little research is concerned with the source of credit card debt. This research tries to investigate how different attitude variables affect revolving credit card use and petty installment use which are two main sources of credit card debt. It is generally accepted that attitude variables are one of the causes of credit card misuse. But there is no research to compare the differential effect of each factor in one model. The present research tries to use statistical method to find out the distinctive effect of each attitude factor.Design/methodology/approachThe study was conducted by using mail‐in questionnaires, which were sent to credit card holders who were using or had used either revolving credit or petty installment plans. After reliability and validity tests, stepwise regression model has been used to test the differential effect of each attitude variable.FindingsAccording to regression functions, it was found that attitude variables had a wonderful explanatory power in accounting for revolving credit use and petty installment use. Specifically, it was found that revolving credit use and petty installment use were closely related to attitudes about credit card, money, and debt. Risk attitude efficiently predicted petty installment use; however, it did not correlate with revolving credit use. Meanwhile, it was found that all of the attitude factors account for 82.1 percent of variance for revolving credit use. In contrast, they account for 41.6 percent of variance for petty installment use. The findings shed light on the role of attitude variables in debt behavior. Moreover, the paper identifies the specific role of different attitude variables, which has great implications for practice.Originality/valueExisting research has significantly clarified credit card debt issues, but there are still some gaps to fill in. For one, although the previous literature tests both separate effects and joint effects, it ignores some important variables, such as attitude variables. Meanwhile, previous research focuses on single variables most of the time, such as credit card attitude and debt attitude, and little research has simultaneously considered a bunch of attitude factors simultaneously. In summary, further exploration of the attitude factors is necessary. Additionally, previous researchers have focused only on the final consequences of credit usage – the outstanding balance or credit card debt rather than the behavior which triggers credit card debt. The present research aims to address these two questions.
Female participation in TMT and firm performance: evidence from Chinese private enterprises
Authors: Ren Ting , Wang Zheng 
Published: June 2011

PurposeThis paper proposes an examination of the relationship between female participation in top management teams and firm performance in the emerging Chinese private economy. It aims to examine the direct link between female participation in top management teams and firm performance. This is examined in the context of human capital and social capital associated with female top executives to investigate the origins and the contingencies of the linkage.Design/methodology/approachDrawing on resource dependence theory, the study develops and tests a set of hypotheses regarding the key relationships, using the data of listed private‐owned companies in China's security exchanges in 2008, with critical information on financial performance, corporate governance structure and the top management team composition of the companies. Regression analyses are conducted to test the direct relationship and the moderating effects.FindingsThe empirical analysis supports a positive relationship between the degree of female participation and firm performance in Chinese privately owned companies. The positive relationship is further strengthened by female top executives' human capital and social capital, consistent with the hypotheses.Research limitations/implicationsThe present study gains consistent results with research conducted in the Western context, suggesting that the top management behavior of Chinese private enterprises is similar to that of their Western counterparts, possibly due to the fact that they are less influenced by direct governmental control and are more profit‐driven than state‐owned companies.Practical implicationsThe results of the study suggest that Chinese private companies can gain competitive advantages through identifying, attracting, and developing female managerial talents. And the female executives in the new era should be ones with systematic education and strong social connections. Both factors facilitate female executives to contribute better to their companies' performance.Originality/valueThe contribution of the present study is twofold. First, drawing on extant literature in the Western business context, the present study is the first to examine how female participation in top management influences firm performance in the context of the Chinese private sector, which contributes to the understanding of and offers insights to Chinese managerial practices. Second, the study enriches the extant literature by examining the moderating effects of female executives' human and social capitals.
Political resources, business model and headquarters location of private enterprises
Authors: Ye Guangyu , Wan Qingliang , Chen Jingling 
Published: June 2011

PurposeThis paper aims to focus on how political resources and their correlation with business models affected the headquarters location decision making of successful private enterprises established in small cities.Design/methodology/approachThe paper constructed a research model which included political resources and a business model as contributing factors; selected eight companies as the research object; and used cross‐case study method to explore the function of political resources and a business model to the headquarters location decision of private enterprises.FindingsThe special political environment during China's economic transformation created substantially different political resources between different regions and governments at different levels, which forced private enterprises to relocate their headquarters in order to chase political resources conveniently. The relevance of a business model and political resources determined the significantly different ways that private enterprises obtained political resources: enterprises which were highly dependent on local political resources found it difficult to make a decision regarding corporate headquarters relocation; those enterprises with a high political resources optimization capability would be driven by the pursuit of political resources to make their headquarters relocation decision; those enterprises with an inconspicuous connection between political resources and a business model would rather be “hermits” in a metropolis and relocate their headquarters.Practical implicationsThis paper's research results would be conducive to further study of private enterprises' headquarters location decision making during China's economic transformation.Originality/valueThe paper indicates the importance of political resources and the relevance of corporate business models to the headquarters location decision of private enterprises; the paper further makes clear the status of political resources as an important factor in location theory.