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This article examines why Universal Primary Education (UPE) has shifted from being a developing country challenge more broadly in the last half of the 20th century to become…
Abstract
Purpose
This article examines why Universal Primary Education (UPE) has shifted from being a developing country challenge more broadly in the last half of the 20th century to become largely a sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) challenge today. It discusses a number of national and education sector system-wide challenges that have constrained the implementation of UPE in SSA more so than in other developing regions.
Design/methodology/approach
This article reviews the literature and policy documents on a wide range of developing country issues, and discusses why most SSA countries have faced unparalleled challenges in achieving UPE.
Findings
SSA governments should take the opportunity offered by their post-pandemic “build back better” efforts to fundamentally reset education policies to address the key causes of this major development failure. The overarching objective must be to develop education systems that are more inclusive, equitable and responsive to national development needs by better serving the large population groups, parts of society and economic sectors that currently derive little benefit from public education spending. This article highlights the urgency and challenges associated with achieving this objective.
Originality/value
Although the main responsibility lies with SSA governments, this paper stresses that the global community will be affected in many ways by how effectively this crisis is addressed. Therefore, this effort merits sustained global support including through more catalytic use of aid.
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Charlotte Kroløkke, Thomas Søbirk Petersen, Janne Rothmar Herrmann, Anna Sofie Bach, Stine Willum Adrian, Rune Klingenberg and Michael Nebeling Petersen
Cong Zhao, Abu Hanifa Md. Noman and Mohammad Zoynul Abedin
As opposed to conventional promotional methods, Word-of-Mouth (WOM) communication, especially when negative, significantly shapes customers’ repurchase decisions and preferences…
Abstract
Purpose
As opposed to conventional promotional methods, Word-of-Mouth (WOM) communication, especially when negative, significantly shapes customers’ repurchase decisions and preferences. Therefore, this study aims to examine the interplay between negative WOM and bank service failures, with a focus on the mediating role of customer switching intentions and the moderating role of switching costs in this relationship.
Design/methodology/approach
Using an online semi-structured questionnaire survey, a dataset comprising 411 responses was gathered from retail bank customers in China. This dataset was subsequently analyzed using SPSS PROCESS.
Findings
Consistent with the social exchange theory, our study revealed a significant relationship between service failure and both bank customers’ intention to switch and negative WOM communication. Additionally, we observed that switching intentions significantly influence negative WOM communications, acting as a mediator between service failures and negative WOM. Furthermore, our findings indicated that switching costs moderate the direct effect of service failures on negative WOM and moderate the indirect effect of service failures on negative WOM through switching intentions.
Research limitations/implications
This study provides significant policy implications aimed at minimizing bank service failures and subsequent negative WOM communications among bank customers.
Originality/value
This study empirically investigates the role of service failures in promoting negative WOM communication, demonstrating a partial mediation effect of switching intentions in this relationship. Moreover, the study highlights that switching costs moderate service failures’ impact on customers’ switching intentions.
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Purpose – Using elective egg and sperm freezing as a case to compare representations of men and women as agents of biological reproduction, this chapter aims to understand how…
Abstract
Purpose – Using elective egg and sperm freezing as a case to compare representations of men and women as agents of biological reproduction, this chapter aims to understand how gender and risk are co-produced in the context of new reproductive technologies (NRTs).
Methodology – Through a content analysis of newspaper articles published between 1980 and 2016 about egg and sperm freezing, the author traces how fertility risks facing men and women are portrayed in the media.
Findings – Candidates for egg freezing were portrayed in one of the three ways: as cancer patients, career women, or single and waiting for a partner. The ideal users of sperm freezing are depicted in primarily two ways: as cancer patients and as employees in professions with hazardous working conditions. Threats to future fertility for women pursuing careers uninterrupted by pregnancy and child-rearing and women seeking romantic partners are largely portrayed as the result of internal risks. However, threats to future fertility for men working in dangerous professions are largely portrayed as external to them.
Research Limitations – Race and class did not emerge as dominant themes in these data; given the lack of accessibility to NRTs by class and race, this silence must be interrogated by further research.
Value – By comparing the constructions of at-risk groups, the author argues the medicalization of reproduction is gendered as fertility risks portrayed in the media take on a different character between men and women. This research shows how the gendered construction of infertility risk reinforces normative expectations around child-rearing and perpetuates gender inequity in parenting norms.
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The economic phenomenon of “globalization” has broadly affected the health care industry and the medical profession in the late 20th century. Governmental and private sector…
Abstract
The economic phenomenon of “globalization” has broadly affected the health care industry and the medical profession in the late 20th century. Governmental and private sector managed care reach is expanding globally, as patients are “ecuritized” and traded as covered lives. Arbitrage of health care goods and services is creating commoditization effects, including trans‐border parallel markets (i.e. black markets). Consumers and governments are becoming concerned about privacy issues and product standardization, while Third World challenges remain in the public health realm (i.e., infectious pandemics, sanitation, nutrition and overpopulation).
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Michael Abebe and David Anthony Alvarado
The purpose of this paper is to empirically examine the relationship between founder-chief executive officers (CEOs) and firm performance. Specifically, the paper explores two…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to empirically examine the relationship between founder-chief executive officers (CEOs) and firm performance. Specifically, the paper explores two opposing arguments on the performance implications of founder-CEO leadership. The first theoretical perspective argues that founder-CEOs positively contribute to firm performance since they bring passion, vision, and external legitimacy to the organization. The contrary resource-based perspective, argues that while founder-CEOs help in the early years of the firm, they become less effective as the firm evolves into a complex bureaucracy since they lack the necessary managerial skills.
Design/methodology/approach
In order to test these perspectives, the paper develops a matched sample of 82 US manufacturing firms and compared their performance using both accounting and market-based measures. Independent sample t-tests and analysis of variance were used to empirically test the opposing predictions. Data were obtained from the Mergent Online database as well as official proxy filings of sample firms.
Findings
The results of the data analysis indicate that there is a statistically significant performance difference between founder-led and non-founder led firms. Such performance difference is especially evident when the paper focusses on accounting-based firm performance measures such as return on assets and return on investment. Surprisingly, founder-led firms performed worse than those led by non-founder CEOs. The follow-up analysis indicates a significant difference in age and size among sample firms led by founders and non-founders such that founder-led firms tend to be younger and smaller in size.
Research limitations/implications
Unlike other studies in the literature that found a strong positive impact of founder-CEOs, the findings of the study provided empirical support for the resource-based explanation of founder-CEO impact on firm performance. Specifically, the findings reported here contribute to understanding the role of founder-CEOs in the context of executive succession, strategy selection as well as organizational evolution.
Originality/value
This study makes original contribution to the on-going research on strategic leadership by exploring the performance effect of founder-CEOs and the corresponding alternative theoretical explanations. In addition, the inclusion of both accounting and market-based (Tobin's Q) dependent variables provide a broader measure of firm financial performance.
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Arman Eshraghi and Richard Taffler
This paper aims to help explain the rapid growth in aggregate hedge fund assets under management until June 2008 followed by their subsequent dramatic collapse in terms of the…
Abstract
Purpose
This paper aims to help explain the rapid growth in aggregate hedge fund assets under management until June 2008 followed by their subsequent dramatic collapse in terms of the conflicting emotions such investment vehicles evoke, and, from this, to consider the implications of the excitement‐generating potential underlying all financial innovations.
Design/methodology/approach
Within the framework of critical discourse analysis, this paper explores how hedge funds were represented in the financial press, manager interviews, investor comments, and Congress hearings, before and after the burst of the hedge fund “bubble”. The authors then draw on the psychodynamic literature, and frame the human unconscious need for excitement in this discourse.
Findings
The paper finds evidence demonstrating how hedge funds were transformed in the minds of investors into objects of fascination and desire with their unconscious representation dominating their original investment purpose. Based on a psychoanalytic interpretation of financial markets, and dot.com mania in particular, the authors show how hedge fund investors' search for “phantastic objects” and the associated excitement of being invested in them can become dominant, resulting in risk being ignored.
Research limitations/implications
The authors take an interdisciplinary perspective drawing on the insights of the psychoanalytic understanding of unconscious fantasies, needs and drives as these relate to investment activity.
Practical implications
Public policy implications are that stricter ethical guidelines for the hedge fund industry need to be introduced, and suitability regulations that go beyond mandatory transparent disclosure of investment risks are required.
Originality/value
The paper is one of very few studies concerning investors' emotional attachment to financial innovations, and builds on the emerging field of emotional finance. The conclusions and implications discussed in the paper go beyond any single financial market or product.