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A decline in participation in research studies as people age is inevitable as health declines. This paper aims to address this by collecting data from a group of participants to examine their reasons for declining attendance and suggestions for maintaining attendance as participants age.

This research used a postal self-completed questionnaire including open and closed questions. The questionnaire was sent to those participants who have declined to attend further clinic visits. Results were analysed using thematic content analysis.

The study had a 51% response rate. Participants reported difficulty with travelling to the clinic, and health as the main issues in addition to family demands and a lack of understanding regarding the continuing participation of a singleton twin.

This study could only include data from responding participants, answers to open question also included comments from participants regarding their twin.

An anonymous questionnaire was sent to all individuals in the Keeping Together project. It was therefore not possible to identify if responses were from both members of a twin pair.

Maintaining participation in longitudinal studies is of crucial importance to enhance the value of data. Retention of participants in studies may change as people age and health becomes impaired. Suggestions for maintaining and improving the retention of older participants have been identified and are generalisable to other longitudinal studies of ageing.

This study aims to assess the board of directors’ effectiveness in curbing earnings management (EM) in Jordan, a country where Islamic religious values strongly influence corporate practices.

Using a sample of 51 Amman Stock Exchange-listed firms from 2012 to 2022, generalised least squares regression is used to examine the association between board characteristics and EM.

Most board characteristics do not significantly affect EM. Interestingly, board activity is significantly and positively associated with EM, suggesting that the board’s monitoring function has been relegated to a secondary role.

Formal corporate governance mechanisms may prove ineffective, as their effectiveness in limiting EM is undermined by informal rules.

Regulators should adapt corporate governance rules to the context in which they are embedded. Greater attention to religious dynamics could improve board oversight effectiveness.

This study provides a new perspective to analyse the relationship between corporate governance and EM. To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is among the first studies to explore this issue within the context of Islamic countries.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the three fundamental flows (namely, both the plates moving in opposite directions, the lower plate is moving and other is at rest, and both the plates moving in the direction of flow) of the Ree-Eyring fluid between infinitely parallel plates with the effects of magnetic field, porous medium, heat transfer, radiation and slip boundary conditions. Moreover, the intention of the study is to examine the effect of different physical parameters on the fluid flow.

The mathematical modeling is performed on the basis of law of conservation of mass, momentum and energy equation. The modeling of the present problem is considered in Cartesian coordinate system. The governing equations are non-dimensionalized using appropriate dimensionless quantities in all the mentioned cases. The closed-form solutions are presented for the velocity and temperature profiles.

The graphical results are presented for the velocity and temperature distributions with the pertinent parameters of interest. It is observed from the present results that the velocity is a decreasing function of Hartmann number. Temperature increases with the increase of Ree-Eyring fluid parameter, radiation parameter and temperature slip parameter.

First time in the literature, the authors obtained closed-form solutions for the fundamental flows of Ree-Erying fluid between infinitely parallel plates with the effects of magnetic field, porous medium, heat transfer, radiation and slip boundary conditions. Moreover, the results of this paper are new and original.

This study aims to examine the impact of firm indicators on litigation risk in the Jordanian financial sector from 2017 to 2021, where the relationship between firm indicators and litigation risk in the Jordanian financial sector is a crucial area of research that can help financial institutions understand the factors that increase their probability of litigation risk.

The sample for this study comprised 92 publicly traded financial firms listed on the Amman Stock Exchange. The study used a quantitative research approach to analyse the relationship between four firm indicators (profitability, firm size, leverage and age) and their impact on litigation risk in the Jordanian financial sector from 2017 to 2021.

Our findings reveal that firm size has a significant positive impact on litigation risk, whereas profitability was found to have no significant impact on litigation risk. Moreover, the authors found that financial leverage substantially positively impacts litigation risk levels. However, the firm age was found to have no significant impact on litigation risk.

The results provide valuable insights into factors contributing to litigation risk in the Jordanian financial sector and the findings can inform strategic decisions for financial firms as they seek to manage litigation risk and improve financial performance. The study contributes to the existing literature on litigation risk by examining the impact of multiple firm indicators on litigation risk in the context of the Jordanian financial sector.

Continuous process improvement is a hard problem, especially in high variety/low volume environments due to the complex interrelationships between processes. The purpose of this paper is to address the process improvement issues by simultaneously investigating the job sequencing and buffer size optimization problems.

This paper proposes a continuous process improvement implementation framework using a modified genetic algorithm (GA) and discrete event simulation to achieve multi-objective optimization. The proposed combinatorial optimization module combines the problem of job sequencing and buffer size optimization under a generic process improvement framework, where lead time and total inventory holding cost are used as two combinatorial optimization objectives. The proposed approach uses the discrete event simulation to mimic the manufacturing environment, the constraints imposed by the real environment and the different levels of variability associated with the resources.

Compared to existing evolutionary algorithm-based methods, the proposed framework considers the interrelationship between succeeding and preceding processes and the variability induced by both job sequence and buffer size problems on each other. A computational analysis shows significant improvement by applying the proposed framework.

Significant body of work exists in the area of continuous process improvement, discrete event simulation and GAs, a little work has been found where GAs and discrete event simulation are used together to implement continuous process improvement as an iterative approach. Also, a modified GA simultaneously addresses the job sequencing and buffer size optimization problems by considering the interrelationships and the effect of variability due to both on each other.

The purpose of this paper is to obtain the nonlinear Schrodinger equation (NLSE) numerical solutions in the presence of the first-order chromatic dispersion using a second-order, unconditionally stable, implicit finite difference method. In addition, stability and accuracy are proved for the resulting scheme.

The conserved quantities such as mass, momentum and energy are calculated for the system governed by the NLSE. Moreover, the robustness of the scheme is confirmed by conducting various numerical tests using the Crank-Nicolson method on different cases of solitons to discuss the effects of the factor considered on solitons properties and on conserved quantities.

The Crank-Nicolson scheme has been derived to solve the NLSE for optical fibers in the presence of the wave packet drift effects. It has been founded that the numerical scheme is second-order in time and space and unconditionally stable by using von-Neumann stability analysis. The effect of the parameters considered in the study is displayed in the case of one, two and three solitons. It was noted that the reliance of NLSE numeric solutions properties on coefficients of wave packets drift, dispersions and Kerr nonlinearity play an important control not only the stable and unstable regime but also the energy, momentum conservation laws. Accordingly, by comparing our numerical results in this study with the previous work, it was recognized that the obtained results are the generalized formularization of these work. Also, it was distinguished that our new data are regarding to the new communications modes that depend on the dispersion, wave packets drift and nonlinearity coefficients.

The present study uses the first-order chromatic. Also, it highlights the relationship between the parameters of dispersion, nonlinearity and optical wave properties. The study further reports the effect of wave packet drift, dispersions and Kerr nonlinearity play an important control not only the stable and unstable regime but also the energy, momentum conservation laws.

This study aims to explore the corporate social responsibility disclosure (CSRD) practices of the Islamic banks in the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries during the period 2010-2014 and examines the determinants of CSRD and its effects on firm value.

Based on the Accounting and Auditing Organization for Islamic Financial Institutions Governance Standard No. 7 guidelines and using content analysis, the paper develops a comprehensive CSRD index for GCC Islamic banks. The study applies ordinary least squares regression analysis for hypothesis testing and for finding determinants of respective dependent variables.

The results show a very low level of CSRD among the sample Islamic banks in GCC countries. When using corporate governance characteristics to examine the determinants of CSRD, this study provides evidence of a significant positive association between board size and CSRD practice in Islamic banks and a significant negative relationship of chief executive officer (CEO) duality with CSRD, as per expectation. For the economic consequences of CSRD, the study documents an inverse performance effect of CSRD while board size, board composition and CEO duality indicate significant positive effects on firm value.

The relatively small sample size of GCC Islamic banks may limit the application of the findings to other Islamic financial institutions such as Takaful and the Islamic unit trust company.

The findings of this study initiate the global debate on the need for corporate governance reform in Islamic banks by providing insights on the role played by corporate governance mechanisms in encouraging and enhancing CSRD practices among Islamic banks. The findings also have important implications for investors, managers, regulatory bodies, policymakers and Islamic banks in the GCC countries.

The results of the study do not support the idea that Islamic banks operating on Islamic principles can meet their social responsibilities through promoting corporate social responsibility (CSR) activities and by differentiating themselves from non-Islamic banks.

This is the first study to examine the determinants of CSRD in GCC Islamic banks using comprehensive CSRD and corporate governance variables and, therefore, adds value to the existing CSR literature in banking.

The purpose of this paper is to analyse the relationship between outpatient satisfaction and the five constructs of healthcare projects’ service quality in Pakistan using Deng’s grey incidence analysis (GIA) model, absolute degree GIA model (ADGIA), a novel second synthetic degree GIA (SSDGIA) model and two approaches of decision-making under uncertainty.

The study proposes a new synthetic GIA model and demonstrates its feasibility on data (N=221) collected from both public and private sector healthcare projects of Punjab, the most populous province of Pakistan, using a self-administered questionnaire developed using the original SERVQUAL approach.

The results of decision analysis approach indicated that outpatients’ satisfaction from the private sector healthcare projects is higher as compared to the public healthcare projects’. The results from the proposed model revealed that tangibility and reliability play an important role in shaping the patient satisfaction in the public and private sectors, respectively.

The study is pioneer in evaluating a healthcare system’s service quality using grey system theory. The study proposes the SSDGIA model as a novel method to evaluate parameters comprehensively based on their mutual association (given by absolute degree of grey incidence) and inter-dependencies (given by Deng’s degree of grey incidence), and tests the new model in the given scenario. The study is novel in terms of its analysis of data and modelling. The study also proposes a comprehensive structure of the healthcare delivery system of Pakistan.

The purpose of this paper is to review the literature on total productive maintenance (TPM) implementation practice to present an overview of TPM implementation practices adopted by various manufacturing organizations and suggest possible gaps from researchers and practitioner’s point of view. This study tries to identify the best strategy for improving competitiveness of small and medium enterprises (SMEs) in globalized market and evaluates TPM implementation practice in SMEs.

The objective of this paper is to study the role of TPM program in context of Indian industries either from SMEs to large-scale industries. The approach has been directed toward justification of TPM implementation practice for its support to competitive manufacturing in the context of Indian manufacturing industries.

TPM implementation improves productivity and working efficiency of employees and also improves equipment effectiveness and a positive inclination toward company is registered. Therefore, equipment maintenance is an indispensable function in a manufacturing enterprise. In this highly competitive environment, manufacturing organizations should consider maintenance function as a potential source for cost savings and competitive advantage. SMEs must be considered as an engine for economic growth all over the world (Singh et al., 2008). A total of 148 papers related to TPM implementation in large-scale industries and SMEs were collected, analyzed and classified on the basis of their applications, broadly into large industry and SMEs and further divided into Indian and Non-Indian, then case study, implementation, model, literature review, maintenance, service, etc. This classification has clearly shows that SMEs are in a need to adopt TPM implementation practice to compete in this global market and changing requirements of large industries. Maintenance is an indispensable function in a manufacturing enterprise. In this highly competitive environment, manufacturing organizations must be considered maintenance function as a potential source for cost savings and competitive advantage. Singh et al. (2008) have concluded that SMEs must be considered as an engine for economic growth of all over the world. Following are the objectives of this study: to suggest a classification of available literature on TPM implementation; to identify the need of TPM implementation in SMEs; to identify critical observations on each category of classification; to identify the potential of SMEs in India; to identify emerging trends of TPM implementation in India; to suggest directions for future researchers in the field of TPM implementation on the basis of above mention points; and to consolidate all available literature on TPM implementation practice.

The challenges of stiff competition and the drive for profits are forcing the organizations to implement various productivity improvement efforts to meet the challenges posed by ever-changing market demands. In the dynamic and highly challenging environment, reliable manufacturing equipment is regarded as the major contributor to the performance and profitability of manufacturing systems.

In this dynamic world, importance of SMEs in the growth of the nation needs more attention of researchers and industrialists. After the globalization of market, SMEs have got many opportunities to work in integration with large-scale organizations. All the organizations from SMEs to large-scale industries can adopt effective and efficient maintenance strategies such as condition-based maintenance, reliability-centered maintenance and TPM over the traditional firefighting reactive maintenance approaches (Sharma et al., 2005).

In our view, this paper clearly identifies implications for research which will be useful for society. The gap discussed by authors needs to be addressed by future researchers.

This implementation strategy can help to save huge amounts of time, money and other useful resources in dealing with reliability, availability, maintainability and performance issues. On the basis of available literature, it can be understood that SMEs should change their maintenance strategies to cope up with global competition so that a lot of resources can be utilized in a better direction.