Entrepreneurial intention and startup preparation: A study among business students in Malaysia

Intention, as the starting point of pursuing self-employment and creating new ventures, is crucial before actually establishing a business enterprise. Entrepreneurship is understood to be an essential ingredient for enhancing a country's economic competitiveness, growth, and sustainability while confronting the escalating challenges of globalization, such as increasing unemployment. This study provides empirical evidence on the factors influencing entrepreneurial intention and startup preparations among university students in Malaysia. The findings provide scholars and academic policymakers with insights into the effectiveness of Malaysia's entrepreneurial education as designed and practiced by public universities. The Malaysian government should apply these findings to fortify existing policies and programs and formulate new ones to support graduate entrepreneurs, while universities and other higher education institutions should provide high-quality entrepreneurial courses and programs to young Malaysians to foster an inclination toward entrepreneurship.     

Family networks and school enrolment: Evidence from a randomized social experiment

We present evidence on whether and how a household's behavior is influenced by the presence and characteristics of its extended family. Using data from the PROGRESA program in Mexico, we exploit information on the paternal and maternal surnames of heads and spouses in conjunction with the Spanish naming convention to identify the inter- and intra-generational family links of each household to others in the same village. We then exploit the randomized research design of the PROGRESA evaluation data to identify whether the treatment effects of PROGRESA transfers on secondary school enrolment vary according to the characteristics of extended family. We find PROGRESA only raises secondary enrolment among households that are embedded in a family network. Eligible but isolated households do not respond. The mechanism through which the extended family influences household schooling choices is the redistribution of resources within the family network from eligibles that receive de facto unconditional cash transfers from PROGRESA, towards eligibles on the margin of enrolling children into secondary school.     

Herding behaviour and the declining value relevance of accounting information: evidence from an emerging stock market

This article sheds light on the underlying mechanisms behind the changes in the value relevance of accounting information in the Karachi Stock Exchange (KSE) during the 1999–2010 period. We find that neither changes in earnings quality nor the earnings lack of timeliness hypothesis can explain the decline in the value relevance of accounting information in the KSE. Based on the stylized facts associated with the growth of the KSE and the broader economics literature, we argue that the reduction in the explanatory power of accounting information vis-à-vis stock returns was caused by herding behaviour. Empirical estimates from state-space model of herding behaviour confirm the existence of herding, and we find that the value relevance of accounting information is significantly lower in periods characterized by herding behaviour. This article is also amongst the first attempts to empirically demonstrate that an expansionary monetary policy and increases in foreign portfolio investment lead to increased levels of herding.     

Is television advertising being placed to reach product users?

Several textbooks, journal articles, and advertising practitioners indicate that the advertising for many products should be directed toward the heavy users of the product category. Other works suggest that advertising should be directed at current users of a brand to retain them or to users of competitive brands in an effort to attract them. The purpose of this article is to compare these directions for how advertising should be placed with data showing how advertising is being placed. The comparison is made using supermarket scanner panel data and household advertising exposure data. Examples are also provided to indicate the extent to which advertising could be targeted to heavy users of the product category and users of a brand, given the actual viewing and consumption patterns. Several implications for the placement of advertising are discussed.     

Focusing on white space to improve patient throughput

When designing a new patient care process or modifying an existing one, healthcare leaders should: Set specific goals for frontline staff, Move beyond gathering and discussing data to acting on the data, Issue data reports frequently, Prepare to take advantage of success, Do not expect a silver bullet.     

Tree‐Based Intercropping in Southern Ontario,Canada

Tree‐based intercropping (TBI) integrates tree production within annual grain cropping. The system is widely used in tropical regions, but is not common in temperate regions. This study evaluates the annualized return from TBI systems in southern Ontario, Canada against annual grain crop production. The TBI systems include hybrid poplar, Norway spruce, and red oak. The annualized return for all TBI systems is less than for annual cropping using the base prices; however, when tree prices are high and grain prices low the hybrid poplar TBI system has a higher return than annual cropping. Grants for planting trees, technologies to reduce the cost of establishing and maintaining trees, and improving the returns from tree production will be required for producers in temperate regions to adopt TBI systems. Un système de cultures intercalaires (SCI) intègre la production d’arbres dans la culture annuelle de céréales. Ce système est largement utilisé dans les régions tropicales, mais peu courant dans les régions tempérées. La présente étude évalue le rendement annualisé des SCI dans le sud de l’Ontario, au Canada, par rapport à celui de la production annuelle de céréales. Les SCI intègrent le peuplier hybride, l’épinette de Norvège et le chêne rouge. Le rendement annualisé des SCI est inférieur à celui des cultures annuelles si l’on utilise les prix de référence. Toutefois, lorsque les prix des arbres sont élevés et que les prix des céréales sont faibles, le SCI qui intègre le peuplier hybride obtient un rendement supérieur à celui des cultures annuelles. Pour que les agriculteurs des régions tempérées adoptent les SCI, il faudra offrir des subventions à la plantation d’arbres, offrir des technologies qui permettront de réduire les coûts de plantation et d’entretien des arbres et améliorer les rendements/revenus de la production d’arbres.     

Implicit Leadership Theories of Bruneians

A leader's effectiveness is affected by the followers’ acceptance of the leader as their leader. Followers rely on their cognitive schema to judge whether someone deserves to be considered a leader. This cognitive schema is the implicit leadership theory (ILT) individuals have on the qualities of a leader. When leaders are perceived as conforming to this ILT, they are seen as leaders, and followers accept their influence attempt. This study examined the ILT of Bruneians. The findings indicate that Bruneians are associated with a distinct ILT and shows that gender and personality variables predict the variation in ILT.     

Supplier evaluation in the context of circular economy: A forward step for resilient business and environment concern

Resource depletion is a concern for the global economy; many think that available resources on the planet will not be able to cater to an ever-growing population. Thus, economies are trying to become circular, leaving behind the linear tradition linear approach. In the circular economy (CE), physical resources and energy are made to loop back into the supply chain (SC) for a more extended period. Proper selection of suppliers is an essential criterion towards proper execution of the CE principle in SC. In this research, we have constructed a framework for evaluating the supplier concerning the CE implementation. Further, this research identifies the criterion and sub-criterion, which are pertinent for evaluating the supplier in CE context. Fuzzy-based ‘Criteria Importance Through Inter-Criteria Correlation (CRITIC)’ method is justifiably applied to determine the aggregated weights of the criteria. Finally, ‘Technique for Order of Preference by Similarity to Ideal Solution (TOPSIS)’ method is used to determine the suppliers' ranking in the Indian automobile industry. Six criteria and 24 sub-criteria are obtained as per recent literature and then inputs from experts. ‘Environment’ criterion came out as the most favourable criterion with a subjective weight of 0.230. The current research is one of the first such attempts to provide criteria for supplier selection in a CE environment. The developed framework would help organisations in implementing CE-based supplier selection. The identified criteria and sub-criteria would provide organisations with means to evaluate suppliers and help suppliers develop an effective and efficient CE based on the SC.     

Entrepreneurship in the tourism industry: Issues in developing countries

The tourism industry in Malaysia is one of the most important sectors in terms of its contribution to the growth of the nation. The extensive demand on the tourism industry has stimulated the emergence of many small and medium hotels, resorts, and chalets in Malaysia. According to the literature, small and medium hotels are an extension of the entrepreneurial characteristics of the owners/managers of the hotels. In Malaysia, small and medium hotel entrepreneurs (SMHEs) have not been given much attention. Looking at this gap, this study aims to provide a significant result on entrepreneurship issues in Malaysia. The main objective of this study is to examine the characteristics of small and medium hotel owners/managers and the issues and problems they confront in relation to their survivability in the industry. The result revealed that the majority of owners/managers of small and medium hotels were male, middle-aged and older, with secondary and upper level of education, and whose prior specialisations or knowledge were not related to tourism. With strong self-confidence and independent personality characteristics, the majority started to establish their businesses after the financial crisis in 1997–1998. The result also defined small scale to mean hotels with less than 50 rooms, which had been constructed with limited personal funding and bank loans. Information technology was found to be an important tool to promote their hotels, but conventional techniques such as word of mouth and signboards were still significant. The owners/managers of small and medium hotels were in agreement over their weaknesses in terms of lack of knowledge and skills in running the business. At the same time, they also felt that the government should play a more proactive role in promoting the tourism industry.     

Does insurance‐growth nexus hold for Malaysia?

The study investigates the impact of insurance activities on economic growth in Malaysia over the period 1990–2015. Combined cointegration in the presence of identified structural breaks was used to confirm the existence of long‐run relationships among economic growth, insurance activities, human capital, physical capital, and industrial production. The findings indicate feedback effects between insurance activities and economic growth in the long run. The study provides new insights for policymaking to enhance economic growth via insurance activities.