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This study aims to estimate the degree and nature of socioeconomic-related inequalities in sexual and reproductive health in Ghana and further assesses causes of these inequalities using decomposition technique. The authors assess the contribution of personal characteristics of the woman including access to health information and health seeking behaviours, household and locational characteristics to inequalities in sexual and reproductive health in Ghana. The study uses data from the three rounds of the Ghana Demographic and Health Survey conducted in 2003, 2008 and 2014.

Two indicators – use of modern contraceptives and intention to use modern contraceptives – are used to measure sexual and reproductive health of sexually active women. A wealth index, based on household ownership of assets, consumer goods and living conditions, is used as a measure of socioeconomic status. The paper estimates a concentration index to the relationship between cumulative health and socioeconomic rank. Paper procedures to apply decomposition techniques to determine the causes of socioeconomic inequalities in health based on a linear health regression model.

The study finds evidence of varying degrees of socioeconomic-related inequalities in sexual and reproductive health indicators. Specifically, the study finds that whilst use of modern contraceptives was concentrated among women in households with high socioeconomic status in 2003 and 2008, modern contraceptive use was prevalent among women in low socioeconomic status households in 2014. Equally, the study finds significant pro-poor inequalities in the intentions to use modern contraceptives in 2003 and 2014. The degree of socioeconomic inequalities in the intentions to use modern contraceptives increased between 2003 and 2014.

There is the lack of evidence on the degree, nature and causes of socioeconomic-related inequalities, which in tend impedes the design and implementation of sexual and reproductive health policies targeted at vulnerable and under-served populations. In addition, there is the need to study inequalities in health over time to monitor progress of health delivery systems towards equitable and universal coverage and understand the evolution of the determinants.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the relationships among role conflict, role ambiguity, the three dimensions of organizational commitment, and turnover intentions. In addition, the paper tests the moderating effect of perceived alternatives in the relationship between continuance commitment and turnover intentions.

The research was a cross‐sectional study of employees in the public sector in St Lucia. In total, 226 usable questionnaires were obtained. Hierarchical regression analyses were used to test the hypotheses.

It was found that role ambiguity and conflict were negatively associated with affective and normative commitment. Also, there were negative relationships between the three dimensions of organizational commitment and turnover intentions. There was no significant relationship between employees' role stressors and their continuance commitment. Employees with continuance commitment develop turnover cognitions when alternative jobs are available.

More research using data from the public sector in developing countries is advocated. Studies should incorporate three dimensions of organizational commitment and also assess pay satisfaction. Moderators that might change employees' normative and affective commitment should be explored.

It is suggested that the sector should reduce role stressors to enhance employees' commitment. Employees should be offered competitive salaries to minimize turnover of employees with affective and normative commitment. This will serve to minimize retention of mainly employees with high continuance commitment.

This is one of the few studies that have examined organizational commitment in the public sector using data from a developing country.

The purpose of this study is to provide new cross-country evidence on the relation between real estate investment trust (REIT) returns and idiosyncratic risk for samples of listed and unlisted REITs in the US and Australia.

Five alternative models with exponential GARCH enhancements were employed, in a Fama-MacBeth (1973) setup. The authors assess the statistical significance of the idiosyncratic risk variable and interpret the outcomes.

The results show that listed REITs in the US and Australia demonstrate a positive idiosyncratic risk-return linkage over the long period of January 1980-November 2013 and April 1994-December 2012, respectively. A further examination by sub-period reveals that this positive relation is only evident in the new REIT era (January 1993-September 2001), absent in the vintage era (before December 1992) and maturity era (November 2001-August 2008). The unlisted REITs in both countries show no relation with idiosyncratic risk. Further, the global financial crisis has no effect on the relation between idiosyncratic risk and REIT returns.

A key motivation of this paper stems from the mixed findings documented in the literature. Also very little research has been done on the idiosyncratic risk-REIT returns linkage in the Australian context. This study offers unique insights from comparisons: Australia vs the US; and listed vs unlisted REITs.

In the macroeconomic environment of the Iberian Peninsula, this paper aims to examine the influence of corporate governance characteristics on corporate sustainability performance. The purpose of this paper is to address corporate practices while determining which corporate governance characteristics can improve corporate sustainability, considering, for this purpose, three dimensions of sustainability: economic, environmental and social.

This sample comprises 99 non-financial companies of the Iberian Peninsula, during the 2013–2017 period. The authors have used the panel data methodology, specifically the generalized method of moments (GMM) estimation method proposed by Arellano and Bover (1995) and Blundell and Bond (1998) to test the hypotheses formulated.

The results obtained have shown that corporate sustainability performance is affected differently depending on the sustainability dimension that is considered. Specifically, the economic dimension is determined by public debt, the board size, board diversity and the existence of an audit committee. Regarding the environmental dimension, the board size and the presence of the audit committee, as well the corporate social responsibility committee, are the most important determinants. Finally, the social dimension was influenced by the board size, audit committee and the control variable of capital structure, which means that in this dimension, the sources of financing used by the company also help in determining its levels of social concern.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first time that a study has been carried out in the Iberian Peninsula on the corporate sustainability using GMM-system model for three dimensions of sustainability. Corporate sustainability depends on external and internal factors of companies. Therefore, regulators and managers should realize that they will have to be more effective in their statements.

This chapter will discuss diversity and discrimination within Trinidad and Tobago (T&T) (in employment and wider society) and critically assess the findings of the extant literature as it relates to such small island developing states. The chapter will examine race, sex, disability, and sexual orientation, specifically exploring current accepted practice and the effect of the recently enacted anti-discrimination legislation. This discussion is important as there is limited available literature as it relates to discrimination, diversity, inclusion and equality in the Caribbean region.

This chapter will rely on secondary data, primarily studies which focus on T&T, in the fields of management, psychology and sociology; as well as country reports published by international agencies including the United Nations and the World Health Organization; and T&T Equality Commission Reports.

Diversity exists within T&T, as does discrimination, within employment and wider society. This reflects an acceptance of the status quo as part of the culture of the twin island state, rather than challenging why it is still regarded as acceptable to treat some minority groups less favorably than others as a result of their immutable characteristics.

The use of secondary data may have limited the scope of the findings.

The development of the Equal Opportunity Act (2000) is a pivotal event in the trajectory towards equality; however, further action will be needed to reduce discrimination within society. The exclusion of sexual orientation from the Act and the criminalization of private sexual behavior must be addressed in order for Trinidadian society to become truly inclusive and diverse.

This discussion is important as there is limited available literature as it relates to discrimination, diversity, inclusion and equality in the Caribbean region and much of what is accepted as representative of reality is based on anecdotal evidence.

The possible effect of conflicts as the consequence of differences between personal and organizational values (OV) on organizational commitment (OC) of internal construction stakeholders was an unclear issue in the areas of organizational behaviour in the construction industry, especially in Malaysia. Therefore, the purpose of this paper is to focus on this issue in the Malaysian construction industry.

This paper targeted professional project consultants, who are identified as architects, engineers, and quantity surveyors, as the internal construction stakeholders. The personal-OV and the level of OC of the stakeholders were evaluated through a questionnaire survey. To achieve the research objective, comparative and hierarchical regression analyses were performed.

The results generated by the analyses indicated a high level of value conflicts in the construction organizations which significantly and negatively affected commitment of the internal stakeholders.

Value conflicts in construction organizations are the agenda of this paper while not many empirical studies have been conducted on this issue in Malaysia. This paper through investigating the potential effect of value conflicts on the stakeholders’ commitment reveals the importance of interaction between personal and OV in construction organizations which contributes to the extant literature of organizational behaviour as to the construction literature.

The purpose of this study is to attempt to fill a research gap by proposing an integrative model for studying employees’ turnover intention in Chinese joint ventures (JVs). The authors also examine the antecedents of turnover intention and its impact on employees’ performance.

A data set consisting of 247 employees in 3 JVs in the Peoples’ Republic of China is used to test the hypotheses.

The LISREL results support all hypotheses. The model examines how the contextual experiences of perceived organizational support and affective commitment might affect the turnover intention. It is proposed that employees’ perceived distributive justice, trust in management and job security are related to the organizational experience of perceived organizational support and affective commitment, which will affect turnover intention and, in turn, to job performance. The empirical results show that turnover intention has a significant and negative impact on employees’ performance, and both perceived organisational support (POS) and affective commitment have partial mediation effects between trust in management and employees’ turnover intention.

The Western POS scale was used in this study. It may not fully capture the meaning of POS in the Chinese setting. Future research may develop indigenous POS measurement. Additionally, the scale on turnover intention only showed employees’ intention to leave, it did not reveal their subsequent actual turnover. Future research should use a longitudinal design to study the actual employee turnover. It contributes to the literature by offering insights on how Chinese human resource management practices in JVs affect employees’ turnover intention and the impact of turnover intention on employees’ performance in Chinese JVs.

This study enhances the authors' understanding of the relationship among POS, affective commitment and turnover intention of Chinese JV employees.

Switching to public cloud enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems not only provides financial and functional benefits to organizations, but also results in sunk costs of incumbent systems and uncertainty costs of cloud systems. The purpose of this study is to investigate the enablers and inhibitors concerning switching to cloud ERP systems at the organizational level.

Data were collected from 212 top managers and owners of the enterprises in Taiwan, and 10 hypotheses were examined using structural equation modeling.

Technological (system quality), organizational (financial advantage), and environmental contexts (industry pressure) are found to be the antecedents of switching benefits. Perceived risk of cloud ERP systems and satisfaction with and breadth of use of incumbent ERP systems are found to be the predictors of switching costs. Switching benefits positively affect switching intention, but switching costs negatively affect switching intention.

This study develops a theoretical model grounded in a set of theoretical foundations, including two-factor theory, technology-organization-environment (TOE) framework, information systems (IS) success model, and expectation confirmation theory (ECT). Two-factor theory is used to characterize switching benefits and costs that affect switching intention. Technological factors come from IS success model, and the factors affecting benefits are organized based on TOE framework. Sunk costs of incumbent ERP systems are developed based on ECT.

Different from previous studies on cloud computing adoption, this study provides insights into switching intention to cloud computing. The study also proposes an integrated model grounded in multiple perspectives to explain organizations' decisions to switch to cloud ERP systems. These findings help cloud service providers better understand how to promote cloud ERP adoption from technical, organizational, and environmental perspectives.

This paper presents a systematic literature review aiming at analysing how research has addressed performance measurement systems’ (PMSs) ambiguities in the public sector. This paper embraces the ambiguity perspective that PMSs in public sector coexist with and cope with existing ambiguities.

The authors conducted a literature review in Scopus and ScienceDirect, considering articles published since 1985, and the authors selected articles published in the journals included in the Association of Business Schools' Academic Journal Guide (Chartered ABS, 2018). Of the 1,278 abstracts that matched the study’s search criteria, the authors selected 131 articles for full reading and 37 articles for the final discussion.

The study's key findings concern the elements of ambiguity in PMSs discussed in the literature. The study’s results suggest that ambiguity is still a relevant problem in performance measurement, as a problem that is impossible to be solved and therefore needs to be better understood by researchers and public managers. The analysis allows us to summarize the antecedents and consequences of ambiguity in the public sector.

The key findings of the study concern the main sources of ambiguity in PMSs discussed in the literature, their antecedents and their consequences. The study results suggest that ambiguity exists in performance measurement and that is an issue to be handled with various strategies that can be implemented by managers and employees.

Managers and researchers may benefit from this research as it may represent a guideline to understand ambiguities in their organizations or in field research. Researchers may also benefit from a summary list of the key issues that have been analysed in the empirical cases provided by this research.

This research may provide insights to limit ambiguity and thus contribute to improve performance measurement in the public sector.

This research presents a comprehensive review on the topic. It provides insight that suggests what future research should attend to in helping to interpret ambiguity, considering also what should be done to influence ambiguity.

This study aims to investigate and compare the relationships of affective commitment, loyalty to supervisor and guanxi among Chinese workers in joint ventures (JVs) and state-owned enterprises (SOEs).

In the proposed model, job security is considered as an antecedent of affective commitment, and subordinate–supervisor guanxi is viewed as an antecedent of loyalty to supervisor. The model further suggests that affective commitment will affect employees’ turnover intention and organisational citizenship behaviour (OCB) and that loyalty to supervisor will affect employees’ OCB. A data set consisting of 255 employees in three JVs and 253 employees in three SOEs in China is used to test the hypotheses empirically.

The LISREL results support the hypotheses and show the major differences of employees’ attitudes and behaviour in JVs and SOEs today.

This study shows the differences of effects of commitment on OCB in JVs and SOEs and also clarifies the mixed and inconsistent findings of the effects of affective commitment and commitment to supervisor on OCB in the previous literature.

Given that the effects of affective commitment and loyalty to supervisor on OCB are different in JVs and SOEs, different policies should be adopted to enhance the OCB in these two types of organisations.

The research results show the major differences of employees’ attitudes and behaviour in JVs and SOEs today. The comparison of the results has implications to the extant literature.