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Over the past few years there has been increasing interest in the importance of spirituality for those in the fourth age of life in care settings. The emphasis on person‐centred approaches has led to recognition of spiritual needs as well as the need for spiritual assessment and care planning. In this paper we reflect on what makes life worth living at different stages, and review the spiritual needs of the fourth age in relation to those inner needs with which many of us would identify.We suggest that several approaches are required in order to understand and meet the spiritual needs of people in the fourth age. While a person‐centred approach is essential, much can also be gained from a broader understanding that places the older person in the context of the wider community. Spiritual and other needs may be met through addressing social inclusion.If we are to properly understand and meet the spiritual needs of those in the fourth age, both in the community and in care settings, we need a new paradigm. The insights and practice tools developed in other areas (through the Valuing People and social inclusion agendas) could provide a useful framework to assist in meeting the spiritual needs of the fourth age. This paper aims to contribute to, and extend, the debate about meeting spiritual needs of people in care settings.

This paper aims to describe the content and import of a conference held in partnership between Staffordshire University and The National Spirituality and Mental Health Forum on the importance of considering life in the context of human mortality, and the meaning and purpose of our lives. It was one of a series of conferences on the theme of health and multi‐belief systems; other conferences were on mental health and civic regeneration. A fourth conference is planned for 2012 on dementia and beliefs.

The conference and its format, including case studies is placed within the intense debate concerning the meaning of life in the context of death and what might be beyond “the grave”. With this conversation, and the issue of assisted dying becoming more prevalent, it was felt important to bring into the paper not just philosophical writings but examples from novels and “popular culture” which highlight the intensity of the dialogue.

Considering the perspectives of a variety of major belief systems assists in relating to and caring for the increasing diversity of older people and their carers when the ultimate challenge of dying is being faced.

As the discourse around assisted dying, belief systems and dignity come more to the fore, staff in health and social care will need time to discuss what are crucial issues for those they serve.

As religion and other belief systems come back into focus, partly through equalities legislation and increased demographic diversity, the Staffordshire University/National Spirituality and Mental Health Forum conference series has been an innovative way of meeting this renewed need.

This study investigates the relationship between working capital investment (WCI) and firm value for Indian manufacturing firms using excess net working capital (NWC) and Tobin's Q as a measure of WCI and firm value, respectively. The study also examines whether firms use the cash released from excess investment in working capital to make long-term investments.

The sample comprises 834 Bombay Stock Exchange (BSE) listed Indian manufacturing firms whose data from April 2010 to March 2020 are analyzed using a fixed-effect panel regression analysis approach.

The empirical results show that excess NWC influences firm value negatively and significantly. However, the nature of the relationship becomes nonlinear upon dividing the sample into positive excess NWC and negative excess NWC. The findings from the study also reveal that firms redistribute cash freed from positive excess NWC for long-term investments to improve their value without impacting the corresponding risk.

Overall, the results suggest that firms with positive excess NWC can enhance their valuations by building adequate long-term investments from surplus WCI funds.

To the authors’ best knowledge, studies on this issue have primarily focused on developed economies. No study seems to have been done on this subject in the emerging South Asian economies. The present study is the first to bridge the research gap by investigating the relationship between excess WCI and firm value for manufacturing firms in India. Moreover, it examines whether a positive excess NWC reduction translates into corporate investments (CI).

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the relationship between working capital management and corporate performance with financial constraints.

This study uses large panel sample of Chinese listed firms over the period 2005–2015 using system generalized method of moments (GMM) estimator that controls unobserved heterogeneity of individual firms well and GMM methodology is robust to address endogeneity issues.

Empirical evidence finds inverted U-shaped relationship between working capital and corporate performance and exhibits similar evidence for financially constrained firms. Evidence shows impact of high sales and discounts on early payments at low level of working capital and dominance of opportunity cost and cost of external finance at high level of working capital. The findings of the results show that optimal working capital level of financially constrained firms is relatively lower due to high cost of external capital and debt rationing. The results also indicate that on average NET is significantly lower for firms with Tobin’s Q>1 than firms with Tobin’s Q=1, and suggest that aggressive working capital management is significantly and positively associated with higher corporate values.

This paper is among few that complement the existing literature by providing evidence that inverted U-shaped relationship between working capital management and corporate performance also exists in the context of Chinese listed non-financial firms. Exclusively, the relationship of working capital and corporate performance with linkage of financial constraints is scant in the context of Chinese listed non-financial firms.

Ukraine hosts thousands of international students for educational tourism, of which more than 18,000 Indian medical students were compelled to escape Ukraine under emergency conditions of war. This paper aims to examine their intention to return to Ukraine to complete their education based on an integrated theory of planned behaviour (TPB) framework with added constructs, i.e. risk perception, career anxiety, rescue and relief memory.

The data were collected from 26 February 2022 to 30 June 2022 in two phases and two modes. It was ensured that the respondents were strictly confined to Indian medical students who had travelled to Ukraine for educational tourism. SPSS 25 and AMOS 23.0 were used to analyse the data. The hypotheses proposed were statistically tested.

The analysis reveals that the extended TPB model resulted in a strong model and the empirical findings corroborate that the students’ attitude, subjective norms, perceived behavioural control and career anxiety significantly and positively influence the students’ revisit intention (RI) while risk perception and rescue and relief memory have a negative influence on the RI.

The study provides timely insights and implications to the Ukrainian tourism industry, particularly educational tourism business and medical institutions under the present turmoil, which can also act as blueprint research for destinations with a similar unstable political background.

The primary value of this research work is that it provides an understanding of the intention of medical students (educational tourists) towards revisiting the war-hit destination of Ukraine.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the effects of working capital management on firm valuation, profitability and risk.

The paper uses a panel data set of 497 firms covering the period 2007 to 2016. The authors test the effects of working capital management on firm valuation, profitability and risk using the panel data methodology that includes firm and year fixed effects regressions.

The authors find a significantly negative relationship between net working capital (NWC) and firm valuation, profitability and risk. The results suggest that, in managing working capital, firm managers must make a trade-off between their objectives for profitability and risk control. Working-capital management is of particular importance in firms with less access to capital; it is also important when firms are expanding their investments during periods of economic recovery.

This paper contributes to the literature in several ways. First, to my knowledge, it provides the most comprehensive investigation, to date, on the relationship between working capital management and firm valuation, profitability and risk in an emerging market. Second, this study documents the existence of an optimal level of NWC in an emerging market. Third, firm performance, as measured in both market and accounting value, can be improved with efficient working capital management. Finally, the study includes the impact of the business cycle in an analysis of the effects of working capital management on firm performance.

This study aims to primarily investigate two vital questions: First, the authors examine whether group-affiliated firms are more (less) financially constrained vis-à-vis standalone firms. The authors estimate working capital investment (WCI) to cash flow sensitivity to understand the nature of financial constraints. Second, the authors further investigate the impact of working capital level on firm values and risks between group-affiliated and standalone firms.

This paper uses balanced panel data set from the year 2012–2019. The authors employ propensity score matching to ascertain comparable firm attributes from business group and standalone firms. This process yields 280 firms (140 in each group) after controlling the firm heterogeneity between these two groups. All the models are estimated using fixed-effect regression.

The authors find that group affiliated firms are less financially constrained than standalone firms. The results show that WCI to cash flow sensitivity is higher in standalone firms vis-a-vis group-affiliated firms, implying that standalone firms are more financially constrained than group-affiliated firms. Second, the authors find that firm values are more sensitive to working capital level in standalone firms versus group-affiliated firms. Furthermore, the authors document that the risk of the standalone firms is less sensitive to working capital level than that of group-affiliated firms.

Most recent studies exploring the role of group affiliation in financing constraints have not controlled for heterogeneity among group-affiliated firms vis-à-vis standalone firms, which may arise due to variation in firm characteristics. Unlike prior studies, this research design ascertains comparable firm attributes between business group and standalone firms, implying firms belonging to these two groups differ by the exogeneous affiliation (business group and standalone firms). The authors document that group-affiliated firms are less financially constrained than standalone firms controlling firm-level heterogeneity between group-affiliated and standalone firms. To the best of the authors' knowledge, no such work has been previously done in general (specifically in India).

Does societal trust influence short-term financial management? Recent papers uncover the importance of societal trust for financial management in specific countries and large firms. Our paper aims to provide a comprehensive analysis of the impact of societal trust on short-term financial policies of SMEs, namely working capital management and cash holdings.

We rely on a sample of 14,711 privately owned medium-sized manufacturing firms from 26 European countries with a sample period between 2014 and 2020. For estimation, we use pooled OLS and hierarchical linear models and control for several firm-specific and country-specific known determinants of short-term financial management. Moreover, our results are robust to the specific measurement of trust, financial constraints, and corruption.

We show a positive relationship between trust and working capital requirements investment and a negative relationship between trust and the level of cash holdings. Moreover, we show that trust attenuates the negative impact of being a financially constrained firm and the positive impact of national perceptions of corruption. Finally, in higher trustworthy environments, firms operate with relatively higher inventories and relatively lower trade credit granted and obtained.

Results suggest that policies supporting societal trust may also foster business development and that when dealing with clients or suppliers from different trustworthy environments, firms may have to adapt their business models to incorporate trust differences between business environments.

Firstly, the comprehensive analysis of the impact of trust on working capital management and cash holdings while controlling for different firm-level and country-level known determinants of short-term financial management. Secondly, it addresses a European sample of unquoted, medium-sized firms. Thirdly, it studies the combined effect of trust and financial constraints and trust and corruption.