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Purpose: In reality, financial decisions are made under conditions of asymmetric information that results in either favorable or adverse selection. As far as financial decisions affect growth of the firm, the latter must also be affected by either favorable or adverse selection. Therefore, the core objective of this chapter is to examine the determinants of each financial decision and the effects on growth of the firm under conditions of information asymmetry.

Design/Methodology/Approach: This chapter uses data for the non-financial firms listed in S&P 500. The data cover quarterly periods from 1989 to 2014. The statistical tests include linearity, fixed, and random effects and normality. The generalized method of moments estimation method is employed in order to examine the relative significance and contribution of each financial decision on growth of the firm, respectively. Standard and proposed proxies of information asymmetry are discussed.

Findings: The results conclude that there is a variation in the impact of financial variables on growth of the firm at high and low levels of information asymmetry especially regarding investment and financing decisions. A similar picture emerges in the cases of firm size and industry effects. In addition, corporate dividen d policy has a similar effect on firm growth across all asymmetric levels. These findings prove that information asymmetry plays a vital role in the relationship between corporate financial decisions and growth of the firm. Finally, the results contribute to the vast literature on the estimation of information asymmetry by demonstrating that the classical and standard proxies for information asymmetry are not consistent in terms of the ability to differentiate between favorable or adverse selection (which corresponds to low and high level of information asymmetry).

Originality/Value: This chapter contributes to the related literature in two ways. First, this chapter offers updated empirical evidence on the way that financing, investment, and dividends decisions are made under conditions of favorable and adverse selection. Other related studies deal with each decision separately. Second, the study offers new proxies for measuring information asymmetry in order to reach robust estimates of the effects of financial decisions on growth of the firm under conditions of agency problems.

Purpose – The numbers of health care transparency initiatives are increasing. Despite the growing availability of quality data, there seems to be a shortage of evidence about the effects and effectiveness of such initiatives. The aim of this systematic review is to document the effects of transparency, defined as the public release of quality performance data, on hospital care outcomes.

Design/methodology/approach – Through a review of the literature, we chose 46 keywords to use in our searches and focused on empirical studies published in English between 2010 and 2015. The use of combinations of these keywords in searches of four databases (PubMed, Scopus, Web of Science, and the Cochrane Library) generated 13,849 publications. The removal of duplicates and exclusion of studies that were not empirical or not relevant to transparency and quality resulted in 39 studies to be reviewed.

Findings – Our review of the literature confirmed the growth of health care transparency efforts, led by the United States, and found mixed results regarding the effects of transparency on hospital care outcomes. For example, mortality, the most frequently researched performance measure (n = 15), exhibited this mixed pattern by having studies showing a reduction (n = 4), increase (n = 1), mixed findings (n = 4), and no significant relationship (n = 6) as a result of public release. We also found a limited number of articles related to unintended consequences of public reporting. When compared with earlier systematic reviews, there seems to be a trend in the reduction of unintended consequences. Therefore, we recommend exploration of this potential trend in future studies empirically.

Practical Implications – The research findings summarized in this systematic review can be used to understand the results of existing transparency efforts and to develop future transparency initiatives that may better enhance hospital quality performance.

Originality/value – This is the latest and most comprehensive systematic review summarizing the effects of transparency of quality metrics on hospital care outcomes.

The resin transfer molding process for composites manufacturing consists of either of two considerations, namely, the fluid flow analysis through a porous fiber preform where the location of the flow front is of fundamental importance, and the combined flow/heat transfer/cure analysis. In this paper, the continuous sensitivity formulations are developed for the process modeling of composites manufactured by RTM to predict, analyze, and optimize the manufacturing process. Attention is focused here on developments for isothermal flow simulations, and various illustrative examples are presented for sensitivity analysis of practical applications which help serve as a design tool in the process modeling stages.

Business Process Reengineering (BPR) eliminates non-value-added (NVA) and essential non-value-added (ENVA) waste through radical process redesign to improve organizational operations. Comprehensive research integrating BPR tools is needed to understand their benefits for manufacturing firms. This research presents an integrated BPR-simulation framework tailored to the manufacturing sector to maximize process improvements and operational excellence.

The BPR design methodology adopts a systematic, multi-stage approach. The first phase involves identifying a specific improvement process aligned with BPR's core objectives. This phase analyses and redesigns workflows to optimize task sequences, roles, and stakeholder interactions while eliminating redundancies and inefficiencies via Workflow Process Reengineering. Visual process mapping tools, including VSM and simulation, pinpoint areas of waste, delay, and potential enhancement. The second phase follows the workflow analysis and aims to improve efficiency and effectiveness by redefining roles, rearranging tasks, and integrating automation and technology solutions. The redesigned process undergoes evaluation against key performance indicators to ensure measurable improvements are achieved. The final phase validates the proposed changes through simulation models, assesses the impact on key performance metrics, and establishes the necessary infrastructure for successful implementation. The proposed model is empirically validated through a case study of a leading apparel company in Vietnam, confirming its effectiveness.

The findings reveal that NVA activities are being eliminated, and ENVA activities in key departments are significantly reduced. This yielded a substantial improvement, reducing 25 out of 186 combined ENVA and NVA operations in the sewing facility, involving a decrease of 15 ENVA operations and the removal of 10 NVA operations. Consequently, this led to an 8.5% reduction in the proportion of ENVA operations, accompanied by a complete 100% elimination of NVA activities.

The single case study limits generalizability; thus, expanded implementation across diverse manufacturing sub-sectors is required to establish validity and broader applicability of the integrated framework.

The experimental results highlight the proposed model's effectiveness in optimizing resource utilization and its practical implementation potential. This structured BPR methodology enables organizations to validate, evaluate, and establish proposed process changes to enhance operational performance and productivity.

The simulation of heat conduction inside a heterogeneous material with multiple spatial scales would require extremely fine and ill-conditioned meshes and, therefore, the success of such a numerical implementation would be very unlikely. This is the main reason why this paper aims to calculate an effective thermal conductivity for a multi-scale heterogeneous medium.

The methodology integrates the theory of reiterated homogenization with the finite element method, leading to a renewed calculation algorithm.

The effective thermal conductivity gain of the considered three-scale array relative to the two-scale array has been evaluated for several different values of the global volume fraction. For gains strictly above unity, the results indicate that there is an optimal local volume fraction for a maximum heat conduction gain.

The present approach is formally applicable within the asymptotic limits required by the theory of reiterated homogenization.

It is expected that the present analytical-numerical methodology will be a useful tool to aid interpretation of the gain in effective thermal conductivity experimentally observed with some classes of heterogeneous multi-scale media.

The novel aspect of this paper is the application of the integrated algorithm to calculate numerical bulk effective thermal conductivity values for multi-scale heterogeneous media.

Operating procedure synthesis (OPS) has been used to generate plant operating procedures for chemical plants. However, the application of AI planning to this domain has been rarely considered, and when it has the scope of the system used has limited it to solving “toy” problems. This paper describes the application of state‐of‐the‐art AI planning techniques to the generation of operating procedures for chemical plant as part of the INT‐OP project at the Universities of Salford and Loughborough. The CEP planner is outlined and its application to a double effect evaporator test rig is discussed in detail. Particular attention is paid to the issues involved in domain modelling, requiring the description of the domain, development of AI planning operators, the definition of safety restrictions, and the definition of the problem. There is then a presentation of the results, lessons learned and problems still remaining.

Grounded in lemon market theory, this paper aims to examine the influence of corporate governance (CG) on stock market liquidity in Bangladesh, where stock market manipulation because of speculative trading is a common concern.

This study is based on a sample of 2,420 firm-year observations covering all non-financial firms in Bangladesh from 1996 to 2011.

This study’s results show a significant relationship between governance and liquidity within firms over time. In particular, within firms, when governance quality increases, liquidity significantly improves. For instance, a rise in the governance quality by one standard deviation decreases the illiquidity ratio by 55.97%. The results are unlikely to be confounded by endogeneity.

The results have important policy implications for security regulators, investors, traders and managers. The results support the current regulatory trend of strengthening CG practices in the listed firms in Bangladesh.

This study contributes to the understanding of the role of effective firm-level CG on stock liquidity in the context of an emerging country. Consistent with prior research mostly conducted in the advanced economies, it provides further empirical support that higher CG quality reduces the information asymmetry problem and enhances stock liquidity even in a speculative market.

This paper aims to present a geometrical void model in conjunction with a multiscale method to evaluate the effect of interraster distance, bead (raster) width and layer height, on the voids concentration (volume) and subsequently calculate the final mechanical properties of the fused deposition modeling parts at constant infill.

A geometric model of the voids inside the representative volume element (RVE) is combined with a two-scale asymptotic homogenization method. The RVEs are subjected to periodic boundary conditions solved by finite element (FE) to calculate the effective mechanical properties of the corresponding RVEs. The results are validated with literature and experiments.

Bead width from 0.2 to 0.3 mm, reported a decrease of 25% and 24% void volume for a constant layer height (0.1 and 0.2 mm – 75% infill). It is reported that the void’s volume increased up to 14%, 32% and 36% for 75%, 50% and 25% infill by varying layer height (0.1–0.2  and 0.3 mm), respectively. For elastic modulus, 14%, 9% and 10% increase is reported when the void’s volume is decreased from 0.3 to 0.1 mm at a constant 75% infill density. The bead width and layer height have an inverse effect on voids volume.

This work brings values: a multiscale-geometric model capable of predicting the voids controllability by varying interraster distance, layer height and bead width. The idealized RVE generation slicer software and Solidworks save time and cost (<10 min, $0). The proposed model can effectively compute the mechanical properties together with the voids analysis.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the impact of market liberalization programs on firms' exchange‐rate exposure. We consider, in particular, the effects of the timing of the three liberalization events through which the government of Taiwan carried out explicit policies to gradually open its foreign exchange and stock markets. Although we cannot corroborate that most exporting firms are individually exposed to exchange‐rate risk, we cannot, however, reject that the exporting firms are jointly exposed to exchange‐rate risk in all sub‐periods. Furthermore, we find that Taiwanese exporting firms are greatly affected by timing of the three liberalization events.

Purpose – The purpose of this chapter is to examine methodological trends in emerging market strategy research and to provide a comprehensive review of methods of assessing group variation in comparative studies.

Methodology/approach – This comprises a systematic review of the methodology of emerging market research over the past 10 years, followed by methodological best practices for comparative studies involving emerging and mature markets, with exemplars from the past research.

Findings – Despite previous calls for more comparative studies in emerging market research, most of the literature is reporting on single-country studies. There is some confusion in terminology and the methods used in this area of strategy research. Increased attention to the “East” calls for a reevaluation of methods utilized in comparative studies. The methods described in this chapter present best practices for comparative research.

Social implications – More comparative studies would substantially expand our understanding of the differences between the emerging and developed markets, and the potential impact of emerging markets on global economy. Rigorous research methods extend validity and generalizability of the studies.

Originality/value – This chapter is the first study to date to analyze the methodological trends of the entire field of emerging market research over the span of 10 years and to provide systematic methodological recommendations tailored to analyzing variation in comparative studies.