Previous beliefs and continuance intention

This work analyses the role of previous beliefs and attitudes on the intention to continue using online platforms. Although the literature has ignored the role of those variables in determining the continuance usage, this work makes use of the mediated relationships to verify its relevance. The conclusion is that, although previous attitudes do not have an impact on the continuance usage, the previous beliefs about the effort expectation, the perceived usefulness and trust do have an impact on the continuance intention to use an e-learning platform.     

Understanding the determinants of crime

In this paper, we use an overlapping generations model where individuals are allowed to engage in both legitimate market activities and criminal behavior in order to assess the role of certain factors on the property crime rate. In particular, we investigate if differences in the unemployment rate, fraction of low human capital individuals in an economy, apprehension probability, duration of a jail sentence, and income inequality could be capable of generating large differences in crime rates that are observed across countries. We find that small differences in the apprehension probability and income inequality can generate quantitatively significant differences in the crime rates across similar environments.     

The intention of continued web-enabled phone service usage: A quality perspective

The cell phone industry is in a unique position that lies in the intersection of high technology and service industry. There is exponential growth in the mobile phone service market with new innovation and modern technology serving as the catalyst to this growth. The aim of this study is to provide insight into the importance of quality attributes to behavioral intentions. In this work we posit a research model based on the quality literature. The proposed model is compared with the predictive level of the Technology Acceptance Model (TAM). Using Partial Least Squares (PLS) our findings suggest that, as hypothesized, perceived service quality and perceived satisfaction in web access quality are essential in consumers?? intent of continued service usage (ICU). Also, our parsimonious model is a more highly predictive model than TAM in explaining an internet-enabled mobile phone user??s continued service usage intention.     

Entrepreneurial intention among University students in Malaysia: integrating self-determination theory and the theory of planned behavior

The present study endeavors to develop a deeper understanding of the motivational processes involved in intentional entrepreneurial behavior. For this purpose, it integrates the social cognitive approach of the theory of planned behavior (TPB) and the organismic theory of motivation of self-determination theory (SDT). More specifically, it tests the role of basic psychological needs of autonomy, competence and relatedness as defined in SDT in shaping university students’ attitudes and intentions toward entrepreneurship. The sample of this study consisted of 438 (Males?=?166, Females =272) 3rd and 4th year university students from four Malaysian Public Universities. The results of the study show that the model strongly explains about 71% of the variance in entrepreneurial intention. Basic psychological needs of autonomy, competence and relatedness have a strong indirect impact on entrepreneurial intention via their attitudinal antecedents: attitude, subjective norm, and perceived behavioral control. This indicates a full-mediational model, where the attitudinal factors operated as transmitters of effects from the distal constructs of SDT on entrepreneurial intention. These findings confirm that both SDT and the TPB provide complementary explanations of the motivational processes of entrepreneurial behavior. The study contributes to the existing knowledge by providing a theory-based understanding of the role of motivations in the formation of entrepreneurial intentions. It opens the way for future research to analyze how alternative motivations may affect new venture creation, survival and success.

     

Understanding relationship quality and online purchase intention in e-tourism: A qualitative application

This study explores the formation of relationship quality and online purchase intention in the service context of tourism, and a model is also introduced. This study tries to conceptualize a model based on a mediating mechanism of relationship quality that may be applied to understand online purchase intention in tourism. Learning the critical role of relationship quality in e-tourism can guide tour service providers to design different strategies for different online customers, and consequently achieve high customer online purchase to tourist service and product. In the proposed model of this study, the perceived incentive, perceived service quality, perceived ease of purchasing and perceived usefulness influence customer online purchase intention indirectly via the mediation of relationship quality. Additionally, five propositions are derived accordingly based on the proposed model and literature review. Finally, discussion, limitation and future research are also provided.     

HR practices and turnover intention: the mediating roles of organizational commitment and organizational engagement in a selected region in Malaysia

This study examined the mediating effects of organizational commitment (OC) and organizational engagement (OE) on the relationship between human resource (HR) practices (career management, performance appraisal, compensation, person–job fit and job control) and turnover intention. A total of 457 employees working in various sectors in a selected region in Malaysia participated in this study. It was found that all the variables used to measure HR practices have significant effects on OC and OE. However, multiple regression analyses indicated that career management and job control did not have any significant influence on turnover intention. OC and OE were discovered to give partial mediating effects on the relationship between HR practices and turnover intention.     

Understanding gentrification: an empirical analysis of the determinants of urban housing renovation

The “back-to-the-city” phenomenon presented an unpredicted countercurrent in the prevalent tide of suburbanization, and this process of upper-income resettlement in the inner city has been thoroughly analyzed in the urban economic literature. Housing renovation, a process that always accompanies gentrification and constitutes a significant portion of residential housing investment, has been studied much less. Contrary to the expectation that “location matters,” the existing empirical studies have concluded that most neighborhood amenities and structural attributes are insignificant as determinants of renovation. Using a detailed parcel-level data set that documents all residential renovation activity in Chicago between 1995 and 2000, this paper establishes that the characteristics of a building and its neighborhood do indeed influence the likelihood that it will be renovated.     

Understanding the determinants of sovereign debt ratings: Evidence for the two leading agencies

An analysis of the possible determinants of sovereign credit ratings assigned by the two leading credit rating agencies, Moody's and Standard and Poor's, is conducted in this paper by using linear, logistic, and exponential transformations of the rating scales. Of the large number of variables that can be used, the set of explanatory variables selected in this study is significant in explaining the credit ratings. Namely, six variables appear to be the most relevant to determining a country's credit rating: GDP per capita, external debt, level of economic development, default history, real growth rate, and inflation rate.     

Understanding the economic determinants of the severity of operational losses: A regularized generalized Pareto regression approach

We investigate a novel database of 10,217 extreme operational losses from the Italian bank UniCredit. Our goal is to shed light on the dependence between the severity distribution of these losses and a set of macroeconomic, financial, and firm‐specific factors. To do so, we use generalized Pareto regression techniques, where both the scale and shape parameters are assumed to be functions of these explanatory variables. We perform the selection of the relevant covariates with a state‐of‐the‐art penalized‐likelihood estimation procedure relying on L₁‐penalty terms. A simulation study indicates that this approach efficiently selects covariates of interest and tackles spurious regression issues encountered when dealing with integrated time series. Lastly, we illustrate the impact of different economic scenarios on the requested capital for operational risk. Our results have important implications in terms of risk management and regulatory policy.     

Hiring Managers in the Manufacturing Industry of Malaysia

Abstract

This paper aims to investigate the staffing practices of managerial positions among manufacturing companies in Malaysia. The results are based on responses from 68 hiring managers. A person needs to have at least three years of orking experience before the person can be selected for a middle-level managerial position. Sources for recruiting 60% of the managerial positions are determined by the human resource managers. The top management had the final say in hiring 69% of the managers. Media advertisement is the most highly utilized source to recruit managers. Testing is seldom used to choose managers.     

Evaluating the impact of prior experience in entrepreneurial intention

Although entrepreneurial behavior is proposed as part of the solution to fragile labor markets, in particular in periods of economic and social change, policy makers are struggling to find the right levers to promote it. Despite the extant prior research on entrepreneurial behavior, little is known on the entrepreneurial behavior drivers for the individuals of working age with experience. Prior research explores the influence of entrepreneurial knowledge to study the drivers of experienced individuals evaluating whether or not to engage in an entrepreneurial behavior. This research introduces entrepreneurial knowledge to study the impact of prior experience on entrepreneurial intention. Based on the theory of planned behavior (TPB), this research work analyzes the relationship between entrepreneurial knowledge and entrepreneurial intention, and the mediating effects of the TPB perceptual variables: personal attitude (PA), social norm (SN), and perceived behavioral-control (PBC). A structural equation model (SEM) has been used to analyze the responses of a sample of 431 experienced individuals of working-age that completed a questionnaire based on Liñan & Chen’s, Entrepreneurship Theory and Practice, 593–618, (2009) Entrepreneurial Intention Questionnaire (EIQ). The results showed that entrepreneurial knowledge positively influences entrepreneurial intention and that this influence is mediated by the perceptual variables of the TPB model (PA, SN, PBC). These findings contribute to the understanding of the entrepreneurial intention for experienced individuals and consolidate the use of the TPB model to study individual entrepreneurial intention. The findings suggest that policy makers should pay more attention to individual entrepreneurial knowledge, and strengthen the attractiveness of an entrepreneurial career, if they are interested in fostering entrepreneurial behavior among individuals of working age with experience.     

Entrepreneurial intention: the role of gender

There is general agreement in previous research, drawing on the Theory of Planned Behaviour, that attitudes towards entrepreneurship are determining factors on entrepreneurial intention and gender also seems to play a key role. This study supports the core entrepreneurial intention model and focuses on the role of gender in this process, showing that men are more likely to think about creating a firm than being determined to do it. However, of those men, the ones who perceive higher congruence between masculine and entrepreneurial attributes are more likely to have a firm entrepreneurial intention. Also, both men and women with a firm entrepreneurial intention perceive successful entrepreneurs to have feminine attributes. This, together with the characteristics of the sample, may explain the lack of a gender difference in entrepreneurial intention.     

北京城市总体规划修编的衔接、继承和创新

论述了北京城市总体规划修编过程中的衔接、继承和创新之间的关系.     

Commitment and turnover intention in the UAE oil industry

This paper aims to explore the links between two components of commitment – affective and continuance – and employees' intention to stay/quit in the oil industry. A self-administered questionnaire was used in order to collect study data from 600 employees representing three levels of management. Eight hypotheses were developed such as there is no significant relationship between affective commitment and intention to quit the organization, there is no significant relationship between affective commitment and intention to stay with the organization, there is no significant relationship between personal variables and organizational commitment and its dimensions, and there is no significant relationship between job-related variables and organizational commitment and its dimensions. These hypotheses were examined using various tests drawn from the SPSS program, for example, correlations, factor analysis and multiple regressions. Findings confirmed the multidimensionality nature of commitment. A significant negative relationship between organizational commitment and intention to quit was also reported. The results related to demographic factors and commitment show some evidences that support these links. The implications of the findings for both practitioners and researchers are discussed in the paper with some guidelines for future research in this field.     

Information source usage in the migration decision

This paper examines the characteristics of information source usage in the migration decision. Its first task is to put forth a conceptual frame-work. This draws upon a framework developed earlier by one of the authors, but extends it to include phases of the migration decision-awareness, interest, and evaluation-under the hypothesis that the intensity of information source usage and the type of information gathered varies by phase. The second task involves reporting the results of a survey based upon a questionnaire that incorporated the conceptual framework. This instrument was administered to 274 migrants to Columbus, Ohio. In reporting the empirical findings of the survey, three questions are addressed: (1) What is the pattern, frequency and effectiveness of information source usage by migrants? (2) What type of information is obtained from each information source? (3) Does information source usage and/or type of information obtained vary by phases of the migration decision process?     

Economic well-being and morbidity of the elderly in Malaysia

Studies about the elderly are mostly focused on morbidity and psychological conditions of the elderly. Effects of social relations have been noted to be important for the well-being of an elderly person. Later studies have begun to look at socioeconomic status of the elderly to see its relation to the level of morbidity. This paper is based on a nationwide survey. A total of 10 percent of elderly total population was interviewed to obtain socioeconomic and lifestyle information. A self reporting method was used as it was easiest to obtain the answers from the elderly. A total of 1410 elderly respondents aged 60 and above were interviewed from the regions of northern, eastern, middle and southern Peninsular Malaysia and also from Sabah and Sarawak. The data was analyzed using the SPSS 16. Quantitative analysis based on mean, standard deviation and multiple regressions was done. Findings show that higher morbidity rate lowers ones economic well-being. Females report higher morbidity then males, while those who are married and residing in rural area also reoort lower morbidity.     

Main Determinations of Female Entrepreneurs in the Construction Industry in Malaysia

This paper explores the determination of female entrepreneurs in the construction industry based on masculine and feminine characteristics in the Malaysian construction industry, using the Bem Sex‐Role Inventory (BSRI). The median split method determined that female construction entrepreneurs have masculine traits. The results are not robust because of the limited number of responses; nonetheless, the findings can be used as a platform for future research on female construction entrepreneurs in the construction industry in Malaysia. To enhance the findings’ contributions, this paper also discusses the industry characteristics, which are considered to have significantly contributed to the masculinity of female construction entrepreneurs.