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Available literature overlooks the factors that affect employers’ opinions of the skills graduates bring to the labour market. The purpose of this paper is to examine the relationship between the perception of graduates’ skills and the employers’ anticipative and remedial strategies.

A qualitative multiple case study is used and data were gathered from interviews with human resource managers in ten firms in Portugal. The data set includes information on perceptions of graduates’ skills, solutions for the acquisition of skills, hiring and training policies, and practices associated with university–industry linkages.

Almost all the employers sampled are unsatisfied with graduates’ preparation in soft skills and other personal traits. Some report skill shortages and gaps in technical skills that result in training costs. The perception of technical skills varies according to anticipative and remedial strategies.

This is an explorative study with a very small sample of firms. However, it is a first step towards further research into whether the perception of graduates’ skills is affected by anticipative and remedial strategies implemented by firms within a particular human resource development system.

It is argued that the responsibility for graduates’ employability should be shared. Practitioners should learn how to interact with higher education, researchers should profit from insights into typologies of employers’ strategies on skill formation, and policy makers should understand that employers are heterogeneous and there is no one-size-fits-all solution.

Universities, employers and policy makers should understand that the employability of graduates presupposes shared responsibility.

The relationship between the strategies employers adopt to access skills and their perception of graduates’ skills is a quite underexplored topic.

The purpose of this paper is to estimate the impact of industry and occupation skills on the wages of displaced workers due to firm closure.

Using linked employer-employee data on displaced workers, this paper estimates the impact of industry and occupation tenure on post-displacement wage changes correcting for endogeneity with a multinomial logit model.

The evidence suggests that occupation has more specific skill requirements than industry. Displaced workers moving both industry and occupation suffer a higher wage decline than those changing only industry or occupation. Furthermore, the transferability of skills varies across occupations and industries; more specifically, intermediate-level occupations are more demanding in specific skills and impose higher wages losses for displaced workers. Finally, the economic crisis reduced the return on firm-specific skills only in some cases.

The examination of skill specificity/transferability helps firms, workers and policy makers to draw strategies and policies to improve their individual situation and social welfare. The analysis suggest that when experienced workers are displaced and forced to find a job in a different industry, they suffer considerable wage cuts. While displacement imposes costs to workers and society, different choices impact wages differently.

To the authors’ best knowledge, this is the first paper studying the simultaneous impact of industry and occupation tenure on wages using displaced workers due to firm closing. The paper also corrects for the selection of different alternatives after the displacement and uses data from a country characterised by low-job flows and low-worker flows. Finally, the impact of economic crises on return to skills is assessed.

Carpal tunnel syndrome (CTS) is a hand disease caused by the pressing of the median nerve present in the palmar side of the wrist. It causes severe pain in the wrist, triggering disturbance during sleep. Different products like splints, braces and gloves are available in the market to alleviate this disease but there was still a need to improve the wearability, comfort and cost of the product. This study was about designing a comfortable and cost-effective wearable system for mild-to-moderate CTS. Transcutaneous electrical nerve stimulation (TENS) therapy has been used to reduce the pain in the wrist.

After simulation by using Proteus software (which allowed the researchers to draw and simulate electrical circuits using ISIS, ARES and PCB design tools virtually), the circuit with optimum frequency, i.e. 33 Hz was selected, and the circuit was developed on a printed circuit board (PCB). The developed circuit was integrated successfully into the half glove structure.

The developed product had good thermophysiological comfort and hand properties as compared to the commercially available product of the same kind. In vivo testing (It involves the testing with living subjects like animals, plants or human beings) was performed which resulted in 85% confirmed viability of the product against CTS. A glove with an integrated circuit was developed successfully to accommodate various sizes without any sex specifications in a cost-effective way to mitigate the issue of CTS.

Industrial workers, individuals frequently using their hands or those diagnosed with CTS may wish to use this product as therapy. The attention could not be paid to the aesthetic or visual appeal of the developed product.

A very comfortable glove with integrated TENS electrodes was developed successfully to accommodate various sizes without any sex specifications in a cost-effective way to mitigate the issues of CTS.

This paper aims to investigate the role of organizational and technological enablers and their arrangement and alignment with the external environment to facilitate supply chain integration (SCI), which consequently improves operational performance.

The paper uses a structural equation modeling approach and the data from 307 manufacturing firms from the International Manufacturing Strategy Survey version VI for hypotheses testing.

The findings of the study reveal that (1) the alignment and particular arrangement of the sociotechnical organizational factors enable the SCI of a firm, (2) suitable organizational arrangements help in leveraging SCI under environmental pressures, and (3) SCI leverages the relationship between sociotechnical organizational factors and operational performance of the firm.

This paper informs managers that SCI leverages the operational performance of firms under heightened environmental pressures. Developing suitable manufacturing technologies infrastructure followed by organizational practices aligned with the manufacturing technologies make it easier to realize SCI.

This study explores the interaction of technological, organizational, and environmental factors as driving and enabling factors that help achieve SCI. Firms that develop an open and collaborative environment and use communication and integrative technologies to complement their work practices better cope with external pressures. These modern forms of working and the use of technologies facilitate SCI and leverage it effectively to positively impact firm performance.

This study aims to find the relationship of stock market returns and selected financial market variables (market capitalization, earnings per share, price-earnings multiples, dividend yield and trading volume) of Malaysia grounded by the arbitrage pricing theories.

This study empirically examines the effects of selected financial market variables on stock market returns using 64 companies listed in Malaysia's stock market with data spanning from 2005 to 2018. A systematic empirical study based on the Generalized Method of Moments following Arellano and Bond (1991) has been taken to estimate the effect.

The regression result of the financial market variables and stock market return shows that, except for trading volume, all selected financial market variables play significant roles in the stock market returns. Furthermore, market capitalization, earnings per share, price-earnings ratio, dividend yield and trading volume have a positive impact on stock market returns.

The outcome of this study can contribute by helping domestic and global investors devise strategies to minimize their risks. Also, policy administrators can use the outcomes of this study to inform the micro- and macro-level policy formulation.

This study will contribute to filling the gap in knowledge concerning the new release of factors affecting the stock market returns of Malaysia.

Conventionally, the marginalised population was considered to engage in child labour due to poverty, education or lack of other options, but indeed, a few children work voluntarily. However, a growing number of scholars, in recent years, have drawn their attention to the valuable question, “why children are engaged in child labour in the informal economy”. Even though a few studies have explored the motives of informal workers, to our knowledge not a single paper has explored the motives of child labourers working in the informal economy. The purpose of this study is to fill this gap by evaluating the motives of child labourers, through three competing theorisations of the informal economy.

In this study, face-to-face structured interviews of 45 child labourers were conducted, who worked in different automobile workshops in the city of Lahore, Pakistan. Respondents were selected using the snowball sampling technique as this strategy is suitable for researching sensitive issues and is feasible for small sample sizes.

The main finding is that no single explanation is universally applicable to all child labourers. Some (27 per cent) justify their participation in the informal sector as driven by necessity (structuralist perspective), majority (40 per cent) explain their participation in the informal economy as a rational economic choice (neo-liberal perspective) and finally, more than a quarter of respondents (31 per cent) engaged in child labour due to their own free will or voluntarily to work for their family (post-structuralist perspective). This study also revealed that entrepreneurial spawning is a key determinant of child labour as the majority of children, in our study, working in automobile workshops intended to start their own workshop business in the future.

This article shows that children early engaged in work with entrepreneurial intention/spawning. Entrepreneurial education is very important in a child’s life. Entrepreneurial education will be a ticket to fulfill their dreams and learn new things with entrepreneurial attitude.

Government should develop the vocational training institutes for children who left the schools.

This study contributes to the body of literature by providing a better understanding of why children work in informal employment, an occupation generally perceived as constituting exploitative working conditions. This study also contributes to the wider literature of entrepreneurship by exploring “entrepreneurial spawning” as one of the major reasons underlying the participation of children in informal work.

Intersectional scholarship on work and organizations while focusing on subjectivities and intersections largely overlooks the systemic dynamics of power (Rodriguez et al., 2016). One of the systemic dynamics of power is organizational practice (Acker, 2006). Intersectionality research on minority ethnic women pays relatively less attention to the role of organizational practices in career progression. The purpose of this paper is to draw attention to the interaction of intersectional identities of second-generation British Pakistani women managers and professionals with organizational practices and norms, and the resulting challenges and career implications.

A qualitative research approach was used with interviews of 37 participants who were in managerial or professional positions.

The research finds a resilience of discrimination because of expectations of compliance with dominant workplace cultures. This expectation presents challenges for minority ethnic women managers. The paper reveals that the intersectionality of gender, ethnicity and religion clashes specifically, with organizational expectations of being male, of being white, and of work-related socializing, which may adversely affect career progression. Organizations, thus, may feed into minority ethnic women managers’ inability to fit in and merge by implicitly demanding compliance or fitting in. These findings carry implications for HRM policies and practices.

Advancing intersectionality scholarship, the research finds the disadvantage caused by the intersection of gender, ethnicity and religion (intersectional identities) continues to be reproduced because of particular organizational demand and expectations and the non-compliance of minority ethnic women managers to merge and fit in. In other words, organizations implicitly demanding fitting in, and the inability to fit in and merge by minority ethnic women managers, hampers their careers.

This study comprehensively aims to review the key influential and intellectual aspects of spillovers between Islamic and conventional financial markets.

The study uses the bibliometric and content analysis methods using the VOSviewer software to analyse 52 academic documents derived from the Web of Sciences (WoS) between 2015 and June 2022.

The results demonstrate the influential aspects of spillovers between Islamic and conventional financial markets, including the leading authors, journals, countries and institutions and the intellectual aspects of literature. These aspects are synthesised into four main streams: research between stock indexes; studies between stock indexes, oil and precious metal; works between Sukuk, bond and indexes; and empirical studies review. The authors also propose future research directions in spillovers between Islamic and conventional financial markets.

Our study is subject to several limitations. Firstly, the authors only used the WoS database. Secondly, the study only includes papers and reviews written in English from the WoS. This study assists academic scholars, practitioners and regulatory bodies in further exploring the suggested issues in future studies and improving and predicting economic and financial stability.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, no extant empirical studies have been conducted in this area of research interest.

This study seeks to offer a contextual, multilevel perspective on the impact of patriarchal culture and Islamic faith on issues facing women holding leadership positions in a Middle Eastern context.

Data were collected through 25 in-depth qualitative interviews along with open-ended questions in a paper-based survey. In view of the authors' research objectives, the authors purposively recruited participants who were identified as Muslim scholars (academics) and clerics (practitioners).

While the study challenges the prevailing stereotype that Islam holds women leaders back by referring to Islamic teachings that support gender equality, it also highlights the adverse impact of gender discriminatory misinterpretations of Islam for women leaders. The study identifies three interconnected, multilevel factors that lead to misinterpretations of Islamic teachings, i.e. (1) cultural factors (macro level – i.e. patriarchal and tribal culture), (2) organizational factors (meso level – i.e. organizational policies) and (3) individual factors (micro level – i.e. interpretations and practices of religion).

This study contributes to the existing theory development of religion and women in leadership by presenting a novel model highlighting the interplay between religion, patriarchy and women in leadership.

The study recommends the application of a gender egalitarian system that enables full utilization of women's skills and capabilities by (1) reducing the discriminatory function of tribal culture and (2) identifying steps to reform inegalitarian gender practices in the Arab region.

The research is unique as it is the first time that a study has incorporated Muslim academic scholars' and clerics' views into gender and organization research. The study is thus contextually relevant and offers fresh multilevel insights on the interplay among religion, culture and gender.