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THE parliamentary White Paper issued on May 2nd by the Minister of Local Government has not yet been debated by the House. It may have repercussions on public library control, although specific proposals on most of the matters involved, including this, have Still to be made. Our readers will know that its purport is to intensify the local side of local government; that is, to take certain powers that are exclusively the business of county councils and to place them in the hands of the non‐county borough, urban district, and other councils. Public libraries are to be considered by a committee to be appointed; they are probably unique in that they are a nationally universal service, or almost that, which has no specified Ministerial department concerned in their direction except in a few matters. A number of questions are therefore left in the air ; for example, the future of the county library system would differ considerably from the present set‐up if every local authority became independent in library matters. Complete independence would mean a locally‐raised and controlled rate, not one raised locally to the amount prescribed for county purposes by the county. Such independence is probably not expected as it would seem that the county is to exercise supervision; and those who are supervised can rarely be free agents, if ever. The Committee, if and when formed, might have many matters to debate, such as the desirability of an adequate local Standard of service which conformed to a reasonable national level, in book provision, the training and payment of librarians—the latter in scandalous need of settlement as advertisements of posts every week demonstrate—and in satisfactory accommodation. With these matters the whole national service should be considered ; the relations of the regional systems and their solvency and their workings with the National Central Library and, when founded, the National Science and Technology Library. Moreover, the interrelations of public libraries with the libraries of Schools, Colleges of all kinds, including Technical Colleges and the accessibility and liaison of all state libraries and others receiving public money with the whole system should be surveyed. Thus it might seem that a unique opportunity for great advance may be offered. On the other hand, unless those who know have access to and are heard by the prospective committee, many things that bitter experience shows to be evil may be done and what is almost as bad, many things may be left undone which ought to be done. We are sure the Library Association will be vigilant.

To identify the risks associated by consumers with renting clothes.

A descriptive research with a quantitative approach was carried out. First, the measurement models of the variables involved in the proposed model were validated. After verifying the existence of the variables, the resulting model was finally estimated through structural equation modelling.

The results obtained establish the six dimensions that make up the problems associated by consumers with the clothing rental business model. These problems encompass various types of risks: financial, physical, performance, psychosocial, inconsistency with values and lifestyle, as well as lack of trust in the service provider. The results obtained show that only inconsistency, financial risk and physical risk have a significant effect on attitude. These performance risks, together with the consumer's attitude towards renting, have a negative effect on the intention to rent.

Factors that have a negative effect on attitude have been studied less than the facilitators of attitude. This is the first study in Spain.

The results will help managers to understand the adoption behaviours of these models.

This study helps understand the social innovation needed to change consumers' relationship to clothing.

The purpose of this study is twofold. First, to investigate whether internal attributes of corporate governance such as board size, board composition, CEO duality, board meetings, blockholders' ownership, managerial ownership, CEO remuneration, and directors' remuneration affect the capital structure (i.e., total debt ratio, long-term debt ratio, and short-term debt ratio) choice of non-financial firms listed on Pakistan Stock Exchange Limited during 2009–2014. Second, whether theories relevant to corporate governance developed in western settings provide support to understand the financing behavior of firms in a developing country, Pakistan. In sum, results indicate that corporate governance measures have some role in shaping the financing behavior of firms. It is worth mention that each company is bound to explicitly confirm in annual report regarding compliance with code of corporate governance, but results indicate a different story. For instance, descriptive statistics indicate that five individual larger shareholders on average hold more than 68% shares.

Large classes pose challenges in managing different types of skills (e.g. maths, subject-specific knowledge, writing, confidence and communication), facilitating interactions, enabling active learning and providing timely feedback. This paper shares a design of a set of assessments for a large undergraduate economics course consisting of students from diverse cultural backgrounds. The benefits, challenges and learning experiences of students are analysed.

Students worked in groups to complete an assessment with several questions which would be useful as a revision for the individual assessment, the following week. Survey questionnaires with Likert-type questions and open-ended questions were used to analyse the learning and skill development that occurred because of the group work. Responses to the open-ended survey questions were coded and analysed by identifying the themes and categorising the various issues that emerged.

This assessment design developed group working skills, created opportunities to interact and enhanced learning. The analysis of the responses found that working with peers enabled the students to generate their own feedback, clear doubts and learn to solve problems. Effective communication, planning meetings and working around the diverse group members’ strengths and weaknesses are some graduate skills that are developed in this group assessment. The challenges were arranging meetings, finalising assessments, engagement of group members and unreliable technology. However, the students found ways to overcome these challenges.

This assessment design can be useful in higher education practice by introducing a mechanism for authentic collaborative practice. This paper adds to the literature on peer interactions and group work and enables effective learning at scale.

This study aims to examine how government policies have influenced the governance paradigm of Australian public universities from a historical perspective. In doing so, it addresses current uncertainty on government-governance connectivity.

The study draws on Foucault’s concept of governmentality and governance and uses a developed framework of three constituents of governance to explore government–governance connectivity through a critical discourse analysis.

The findings reveal that government policies have influenced the three constituents of governance differently since 1823, resulting in three distinct governance discourses. In the third governance discourse, the findings reveal a deviation from policy directions towards corporate managerialism, resulting in a hybrid governance control environment. This scenario has arisen due to internal stakeholders continuing to be oriented towards the previous management cultures. Other factors include structural and legalistic obstacles to the implementation of corporate managerialism, validity of the underlying theory informing the policy directions towards corporate managerialism and doubts on the achievability of the market based reforms associated with corporate managerialism. The totality of these factors suggests a theory practice gap to be confirmed through further empirical research. There are also policy implications for policymakers to recognize the hybrid control environment and ascertain the risk the hybrid control environment poses towards the expected outcomes of corporate managerialism.

The findings are limited to a critical discourse analysis of data from specific policies and journal publications on higher education and a developed framework of constituents of governance.

The study is the first to examine government–governance connectivity in Australian public universities and also the first to introduce a three-constituent governance framework as a conduit to explore such studies. The findings contribute to the literature in identifying a theory-practice gap and offer opportunities for further research to confirm them.

I SAW him only once—and that was in Edinburgh, thirty‐seven years ago. He had just arrived (as I heard later from one who knew him, and to whom I announced with youthful joy my glimpse of him) from St. Andrews, had been examining the bookshops, book‐dips, in the neighbourhood of the University and, with an armful of volumes, was returning from the auld toon to the new one on his way to Mackay and Chisholm's in Princes Street to buy an opal ring.

This paper aims to investigate the impact of the largest shareholder's voting stake on the firm's capital structure decision.

To empirically analyze the influence of the voting stake on leverage, a large sample of 814 exchange-listed firms is applied. The baseline regression analysis is complemented by several robustness tests and a difference-in-difference regression analysis to mitigate endogeneity concerns.

The authors find a negative relationship between the voting stake of the largest shareholder and leverage, consistent with the notion that large, undiversified shareholders have the incentive to reduce risk. Additionally, results reveal that family control has a positive moderating effect, indicating that the negative relationship is less pronounced for family controlled firms.

The authors contribute to the research by suggesting ownership concentration as another determinant of capital structure. Further, the authors add to the literature by showing how the association between ownership concentration and leverage is moderated by family control and that the identity of the largest shareholder is of great importance.

The paper provides important insights to the current debate on the proposal of the European Commission to reintroduce shares with multiple votes as part of the Listing Act. The authors expect the regulation to exacerbate the concentration of voting rights, which results in lower leverage and thus limits corporate growth.

The authors differentiate from previous studies by focusing the largest shareholders' voting stake, instead of using the ownership stake, to assess the impact of ownership concentration on leverage.

THE Funk Gerat 10 equipment is the latest standardized type, and is installed in all the later bombers and reconnaissance machines of the Luftwaffe.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the relationship between bilateral country reputation and export volume to the country in which that reputation is held.

The unique bilateral data set consists of 861 country pairs. Country reputation measures are from a global survey, in which respondents in 20 countries rate the reputation for products and people of 50 other countries. This data set is then analyzed against actual export data for each country-pair using the well-established structural gravity model of international trade.

The authors find that each improvement in a world ranking of a country’s reputation for products (in a target country) is associated with a 2 percent increase in exports to that particular country; the effect is equivalent to the importing country decreasing a tariff by as much as 2.9 percent. Furthermore, the authors find that different aspects of country reputation – for its products and its people – attenuate distinct forms of uncertainty, and thereby stimulate export volume in distinct ways.

This study shows that the relationship between country reputation and export volume is a substantive and empirically valid topic of study. For public policy makers looking to stimulate exports to a specific country, improving their respective country’s reputation in that country appears to be a viable alternative to other levers (e.g. trade negotiations, free trade agreements). For business leaders at international companies, the findings suggest that companies may consider country reputation as a factor when choosing to which countries they wish to expand.

The notion that country reputation can contribute to aggregate export volume has intuitive appeal. Yet, aside from research on country-of-origin effects which has concentrated on the individual consumer level, the notion of country reputation contributing to aggregate effects has so far been based mostly on conjecture and anecdotal evidence. This is the only study to the authors’ knowledge that empirically tests this relationship using a bilateral measure of reputation as a determinant of export volume within one of the most successful empirical frameworks, the structural gravity model of international trade. The findings suggest that for many countries, their reputation may contribute to billions of dollars in export volume.