Origins and Rationale for the African American Economic Summit

African American economists and related social scientists have an indispensible role to play in providing culturally-informed insight into the role of economic disadvantage in the current crisis in African American health, incarceration, wealth, housing, and education. The African American Economic Summit co-sponsored by the Institute of African American Research at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and the Research Network on Racial and Ethnic Inequality at Duke University brought together over 30 experts who provided insights into the roots of the current economic status of African Americans, its broad impact on the quality of African American life, and possible remedial solutions. This volume reports on the deliberations in this first Summit.     

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.     

Quality_Marriage Deployment in determining priority needs for initiating marriage loyalty

Marriage life is an abstract and complex matter that even for husband and wife themselves find not as easy as they expect in achieving a long term marriage. The differences between spouses may lead to disabilities to see clearly their spouse needs. The disabilities may implicate to a bigger issue which is loyalty. In this study, the analysis have been carried out to determine priority needs in marriage for initiating loyalty. In using Quality Function (QFD) adaptations, we created “Quality_Marriage Deployment” by deploy the marriage in quality perspectives. As result, we succeed to identify 7 of 15 variables with the lowest performance value that make them as the priority needs. Based on the needs, we proposed some actions both in perspective of marriage and quality knowledge. Furthermore, the result shows Quality_Marriage Deployment matrix may generally easier for any user to read and know directly what variables need to be improved. Each solutions were presented to allow the users to act in a more efficient and effective in time and energy.     

The development of FFMD Pyramid: Fuzzy Family_Marriage Deployment as decision support method to improve human resources performance

Improvement action to human resource (HR) in organization plays important role in determining the success of organization. Many studies have been done to discuss on how the organization may improve their HR performance. However, not many studies yet discuss the level of improvement that organization shall taken appropriately. Identification of organization’s priority level of improvement seems found to be a complicated work to do in most emerging organizations. High intangible and invisible variables and attributes contribute to unclear situations and perceptions in the organization itself. The complexity and limitation in tools and techniques, make each solution taken is less efficient and effective. Therefore, this study will discuss the development of Fuzzy Family_Marriage Deployment (FFMD) Pyramid. FFMD Pyramid is a new method for decision support in organization especially for HR by equally deploy dimension and variable of family and marriage to quality dimension and variable in organization then identify priorities by considering the deployment value (crisp value) and fuzzy value (non-crisp value) as decision support for organization to plan and decide proper improvement action with proper percentage (%) level of priority of improvement action. As result, a concise and simple pyramid shall present an informative yet effective and efficient to the decision maker to support their better decision especially with regard to the improvement action for HR performance. In addition, the Family_Marriage value that utilize in this study may bring about a new perspective that decision maker shall consider to support their decision process especially for the HR improvement action.     

Value-relevance of accounting numbers for valuation

Recent empirical work suggested that the ability of accounting numbers to explain the relationship between accounting numbers and stock prices has deteriorated over the past four decades. The findings of this study suggest that the accounting earnings and book value are capturing most of the information that is relevant to assess the values of firms. At the same time, it also suggests that earnings and book value as well as non-accounting beta are more valued during the financial crisis as compared to after the financial crisis. Overall, the accounting estimate of the value of the firm is not deviating from the markets＇ estimate, which suggests that accounting numbers play an important role in the valuation of firms in Malaysia.     

Foodservice hygiene factors—The consumer perspective

Food safety is important to today's food industry operators as consumers have become increasingly concerned about risks related to food. Unlike foodservice operators or health inspectors, consumers can only rely on the visible cues, particularly those associated with food hygiene to judge the level of food safety in eating establishments. While previous research highlighted the influence of foodservice hygiene perception on consumer dining out decision, study examining the constructs of food safety cues that consumers employed is scant. This research aims to bridge the gap by exploring the topic from the consumer perspective. Results indicate that foodservice hygiene is one of the top three considerations when consumers select a dining place. Results of confirmatory factor analysis reveal a four-factor model encompasses staff and handling, food and location, premise and practices, and scent aspects. Further substantiation in different settings is needed for generalization purpose.     

Spatial Integration in the Broiler Market in Peninsular Malaysia

The broiler sector in Peninsular Malaysia is marked by many structural elements of imperfect competition, particularly increasing vertical integration. This study adopts the Enders and Granger (1998 Enders , W. , & Granger , C. W. J. ( 1998 ). Unit root tests and asymmetric adjustment with an example using the term structure of interest rates . Journal of Business and Economic Statistics , 16 ( 3 ), 304 – 311 .[Taylor & Francis Online], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]) threshold autoregressive model to analyze market integration and pricing efficiency in the broiler sector. Results indicate that market integration exists in the broiler sector in spite of the structural rigidities that are present. However, asymmetries in price transmission are evident between the central market and regional wholesale markets.     

Assessing Dynamics of Palm Oil Import Demand: The Case of Six Asian Countries

This article uses annual data to investigate the palm oil import demand in selected Asian countries (India, China, Japan, Bangladesh, Korea, and Pakistan) through using the autoregressive distributed lag (ARDL) technique. The findings of the study show that the palm oil and substitute oils prices and the national income of the importing countries are significant determinants of palm oil demand across the six models. Other factors such as biofuel mandate, trade policies, and exchange rate also proved to be important factors affecting import demand for palm oil in some of these countries.