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The paper's aim is to determine the role of non‐profit organizations (NPOs) in filling possible gaps in primary health care (PHC) service provision.

District (n=10) and sub‐district needs (n=14) analyses were conducted in five South African provinces. In each case, the district/sub‐district manager was interviewed using a semi‐structured interview guide.

The service gaps identified were understaffing/lack of capacity, difficulty in retaining and recruiting staff, service disparities, inaccessibility of services/low‐service utilisation and limited funding. It was believed that NPOs could fill these gaps. About 83 per cent perceived the relationship between government and NPOs as good. Contract monitoring, quality of service, communication and quality control were said to be unsatisfactory. The majority of sub‐districts (11) indicated that they provided supplies to NPOs; 50 per cent perceived the relationship between the sub‐districts and NPOs as good or very good. NPOs have critical role to play in PHC service delivery.

The study provides critical information required to make informed effective strategic decisions that support district/sub‐district performance and sustainability in a decentralized health system.

The use of industrial robots in the advanced countries of the world is growing. Whilst generally the concept of a robot is taken as a highly versatile human‐like device the term also extends to include much simpler devices of the pick‐and‐place type with a fixed sequence of events and these form by far the largest proportion of the world's robot population. Whilst they lack versatility in themselves they often form part of a much more complex automatic system in which some degree of flexibility is required. In addition they must operate at their optimum rate whilst being fail‐safe in operation. The design of a suitable control system to meet such demands particularly when a number of such devices and the primary process machinery have to be interlinked can be solved with the aid of sequential switching theory.

This study aims to investigate the factors associated with the implementation of risk-based internal audit (RBIA).

As a first step, a literature review of the relevant literature is performed and five potential factors related to the implementation of RBIA are identified. Based on that, this paper constructs a questionnaire survey sent out to 185 internal auditors, executives and accountants in Greece to receive 90 responses during the period of November 2019–January 2020. Multiple regression analysis is conducted to identify the factors related to the implementation of RBIA.

This paper shows that there is a statistically significant positive relationship between the implementation of RBIA and: the provision of risk management training, an active audit committee role and the establishment of a formalized risk management system.

The results have important implications for internal auditors, chief executive officers and accountants who wish to enhance internal audit effectiveness and the accuracy and quality of financial information.

Empirical studies on the factors related to the implementation of RBIA are rare. This is the first study to create empirical variables based on a thorough review of the relevant literature to empirically investigate the factors that are related to the implementation of RBIA in an emerging economy. By focusing on the Greek context, this study also sheds light to other countries with similar corporate governance systems, thus providing insights to settings where the Type II agency problem exists (La Porta et al., 1999).

Governments count on tax revenues in order to finance their fiscal and social activities. The purpose of this paper is to analyse the citizens’ conception of tax compliance and examine the factors affecting tax behaviour.

This survey was conducted through a stratified sample and questionnaires consisted of closed-ended questions. A linear regression and a series of reliability tests including an analysis of variance were conducted with IBM Statistical Package for Social Sciences.

The majority of the respondents demonstrate a positive perspective towards tax compliance and tax administration employees that inspire it. However, while the fairness of the tax system is evident, findings indicate a deeper issue of social and behavioural influences, including the characteristics of tax administrative employees and tax morality.

The findings are subject to over- or sub-representation, since the sample derived from groups whose occupations feature strong tax compliance. The study was conducted in Greece, and it is possible that the results can be generalised to developing countries with similar economic environments and fiscal circumstances.

Non-economic factors affect tax behaviour and the formation of modern tax strategies. This survey enables governments to improve tax compliance rates and increase tax revenues. Fiscal depression tends to decrease state revenues. Tax compliance factors should be taken into account through tax decision-making processes and ensure efficient tax collection.

This paper furthers the existent literature and deepens in non-economic factors of morality, revealing tax behaviours instigated by reasons beyond tax unfairness.

The aim of this study is to examine continuous auditing in the digital age from the perspective of audit firm employees. It also investigates contemporary factors affecting continuous auditing, as well as the techniques that could be utilised for its implementation.

Internal audit departments of private companies were contacted via email and given a questionnaire developed based on the extant literature. The sample consisted of 105 individuals employed in the largest audit institutions in Greece. Data were analysed using multiple regression.

As expected, technological advances are indispensable for the establishment of an effective digital auditing system. The impact of data protection measures against cyber-attacks as well as employees' skills and training were found to be significant. Particular attention should be given to the preparation and building of virtual auditing teams.

The fact that the digital era is still nascent with its final outcomes not yet visible makes it difficult to produce accurate predictions and draw conclusions. Further, there is a need to survey salient stakeholders in other country contexts beyond Greece pursuant of producing generalisable results.

The actions taken by companies to ensure cyber security and the formation of virtual teams were found to be highly significant for the implementation of a real-time auditing process. Traditionally, factors such as cost and time play an important role in optimising internal continuous auditing. Technological advancements combined with careful, strategic and case-specific implementation have the potential to enhance the efficacy of older methods.

The positive propensity of staff to adopt technology and modern techniques illustrates how implementation difficulties can be overcome through the redefinition and scheduling of an organisation's objectives and training of its personnel.

Audit firm employees highlighted the protection of personal data, the avoidance of cyber-attacks and training as major continuous internal auditing goals. The results indicate acceptance towards technology and modern techniques, provided companies ensure adequate preparation and staff training conditions.

The present paper aims at the identification of the critical variables of risk-based auditing (RBA). The variables under examination are the internal audit (IA), the audit committee (AC) and the cooperation between the RBA and the stakeholders (audit committee, external auditors, internal auditors, board of directors, fraud investigators, chief risk manager) (COOP).

A questionnaire survey was conducted among 176 Greek companies. The questionnaires were addressed to accountants, internal auditors, managers, chief risk managers and the board of directors. A total of 96 questionnaires have been collected and analyzed. PLS-SEM modeling was used as a tool to test hypotheses and analyze the findings.

The results show that three variables, i.e. the internal audit, the audit committee and the RBA cooperation with stakeholders have a statistically significant and positive effect on risk-based auditing (RBA). Additionally, the existence of partial-complementary mediation of the internal audit in the audit committee-RBA interaction is confirmed.

This study is an original research that identifies the essential variables of risk-based auditing in Greek companies. It attempts to analyze the perceptions of all stakeholders in risk-based auditing, including the internal audit, the audit committee, etc. and is not restricted only on internal auditors. Furthermore, the analysis is conducted with PLS-SEM Modeling, which is an innovative tool of testing hypotheses and analyzing results.

This paper demonstrates an application of the Arbitrage Pricing Theory using canonical analysis as an alternative to the conventional factor analysis. Following the traditional view that asset prices are influenced by unanticipated economic events, the systematic effects of the major composite economic indices on a wide spectrum of industry returns are explored. The main conclusion is that profitability may be considered as the single most important factor that influences security returns. Also, the composite lagging economic indicators appear to be more useful to investors in forming market expectations than the composite leading economic indicators. Finally, it is argued that the composite index of coincident economic indicators do not exhibit any significant influence in the pricing of capital assets.

Pervasive environments are mostly based on the ad hoc networking paradigm and are characterized by ubiquity in both users and devices and artifacts. In these inherently unstable conditions and bearing in mind the resource’s limitations that are attributed to participating devices, the deployment of Knowledge Management techniques is considered complicated due to the particular requirements. Security considerations are also very important since the distribution of knowledge information to multiple locations over a network, poses inherent problems and calls for advanced methods in order to mitigate node misbehaviour and in order to enforce authorized and authenticated access to this information. This paper addresses the issue of secure and distributed knowledge management applications in pervasive environments. We present a prototype implementation after having discussed detailed design principles as far as the communications and the application itself is regarded. Robustness and lightweight implementation are the cornerstones of the proposed solution. The approach we have undertaken makes use of overlay networks to achieve efficiency and performance optimization, exploiting ontologies. The work presented in this paper extends our initial work to tackle this problem, as this was described in (28).

Petro‐Flex, Superflexit and Avioflexus tubing used in civil aircraft must conform to the following D.T.D. Specifications:—