The Effect of Black Tax on Employee Engagement: The Mediating Role of Idiocentrism-Allocentrism-A Case of Pharmaceutical Industry in Zimbabwe

Employees in the Pharmaceutical industry are coming late to work and knocking off early. These actions unveiled by the employees are likely to incur economic costs on the employer, occasioned by low employee productivity. Owners of production have expressed concern over the general low staff morale in the pharmaceutical sector. While most studies have concentrated on internal job-related factors as drivers of employee engagement, this study seeks to assess employee engagement as being influenced by black tax, an external factor. The main aim of the research was to establish the influence of black tax on employee engagement, being mediated by idiocentrism-allocentrism, particularly focussing on the pharmaceutical manufacturing and retailing industry in Bulawayo, Zimbabwe. The study employed the philosophical approach of pragmatism to guide the whole research. The researcher adopted a multi-stage sampling technique supported by the census technique to pick participants from the population. Closed and open-ended questionnaires were used to collect data from qualified pharmacists who are working in both the manufacturing and retailing industry in Bulawayo. Statistical Package for Social Sciences v23 (Process v3.5 by Andrew F. Hayes) was used to test the hypothesized relationship among variables. Qualitative data were analyzed using thematic analysis. The results suggest that black tax directly influence employee engagement in the presence of a mediator (idiocentrism-allocentrism). Furthermore, the results indicate that the indirect coefficient was partially significant, which means that idiocentrism-allocentrism has a partial influence on employee engagement. The researchers recommend that management should ensure that employees are motivated all the time. They should implement an open-door policy so that employees can share their issues that affect their engagement level at work.

Implementation of Accrual-Based Government Accounting Standards in Indonesia: A Review of Organizational Factors

The purpose of this quantitative research is to test and prove empirically the effect of applying accrual-based accounting standards in Indonesia. The population in this study is the head of the financial subdivision and the financial staff of the regional government organizational unit in the DKI Jakarta province. The study used the random sampling method and managed to collect 84 respondents. Structural Equation Modeling (SEM) is used in this study as a data analysis test tool using Smart PLS software version 3.0. The results show that the quality of human resources and organizational commitment has a significant effect on the application of accrual-based accounting standards in Indonesia. Meanwhile, training and organization culture does not have a significant influence on the implementation of accrual-based accounting standards in Indonesia. The contribution for local government to improve their performance in reporting local government financial statements (LKPD) and assess their conformity with accounting standards in accordance with PP No. 71 of 2010 and ensure that the adoption of accrual-based accounting standards has been thoroughly established in local governments.

Formal Female Entrepreneurship and the Shadow Economy

Although female entrepreneurship yields products, markets, and business models that might not exist otherwise and are relevant to economic growth and development as well as issues related to gender equality, the factors that drive female entrepreneurship is largely understudied. The primary objective of this study is to examine the relationship between the size of a country’s informal sector and the prevalence of female entrepreneurship in the formal economy. This relationship is empirically tested using a regression analysis that employs a cross-country data set of 70 countries. The analysis results indicate a significant inverse relationship between the size of the informal sector and the prevalence of formal sector female entrepreneurship. It is argued that a larger informal economy implies a greater number of women working in the informal sector due to discriminatory barriers to the formal economy. Both formal sector entrepreneurship and work in the informal economy can lessen the barrier to entry women face related to work-life balance by allowing greater flexibility in work hours; however, employment in the informal sector is a relatively poor substitute to formal sector employment as informal sector work does not include benefits, nor is it taxed or included in official statistics. Policy recommendations for encouraging formal female entrepreneurship are made. Promoting female entrepreneurship in the formal sector not only helps to close gender, inequality gaps, but also serves to improve tax systems, lessen distortions in national accounts and official indicators, and improve the provision of public goods.

Towards an Understanding of Low-Income Individuals’ Financial Resiliency: Exploration of Risk Preferences, Personality Traits, and Savings Behavior

The Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic has helped expose and exacerbate individuals’ and households’ financial vulnerability worldwide. Meanwhile, behavioral elements affecting low-income populations’ ability to save and become more financially resilient have yet to receive sufficient academic attention. This exploratory study aims at the beginning to help elucidate the determinants of low-income individuals’ real-life savings behavior by utilizing laboratory performance measures (to characterize participants’ risk preferences by using the Balloon Analog Risk Task – BART, in study 1), as well as self-report surveys (to characterize participants’ personality traits, in study 2). Combining results from both studies, latent personality traits (i.e., attitude towards risk, perseverance, distractibility, and state anxiety) are found to affect the risk preferences of low-income individuals (captured using a novel BART performance measure indicative of an individual’s strategic risk preference adaptation), which in turn impact their ability to successfully complete matched savings programs and, thus, their ability to save and enhance their financial resilience.

Strengthening of the Coal-Gasification Industry: Evidence from Indonesia

The purpose of this research is to analyze Indonesia's coal-gasification industry policy. This research needs to map the undeveloped coal-gasification industry. In fact, the coal-gasification industry can increase the economic value of coal, increase local income, absorb the labor force, and reduce pollution. It also has some strategic roles in national fiscal revenue and foreign exchange reserves and is of great significance to regional development. The research methods used are quantitative and qualitative. The results of this study indicate that government needs to provide some financial incentives for the coal-gasification industries, especially for pioneer companies for having coal-gasification works, and ensure that policies taken will be able to encourage economic growth and investment in Indonesia’s coal-gasification industry. To support investment in the coal-gasification industry, it is necessary to formulate policies and rules to provide a sign for its implementation.

The Harmonized Social Cash Transfer Program in Zimbabwe: Achievements and Challenges

The research article reviews the achievements and challenges that bewilder the harmonized social cash transfer (HSCT) program in Zimbabwe. World over HSCT programming has grown in terms of importance as a social protection service vehicle. Deploying a qualitative research design and documentary analytical framework corroborated by the capability approach, the study unpacks and brings to the fore the challenges and opportunities as nuances of HSCT programming in Zimbabwe. The study supports, adds another dimension to existing literature and challenges previous findings of HSCT programming in the Zimbabwean environment. Thus the study argues that HSCT programming in Zimbabwe registered noticeable achievements which make it a critical social protection program that ought to be integrated into the broader national framework of protecting the vulnerable groups. The study further argues that the HSCT program contributes immensely to raising the dignity of those on the margins through the promotion of resiliency and the general well-being of the communities. Thus the study recommends that the HSCT program in Zimbabwe be part of the government and not-for-profit organizations’ comprehensive package for administering social protection services.

Have-on-Mask and Maintain-Physical-Distance: Are they the Outcome of Lockdown-Laws in Corona-Virus Crisis Country-Wise?

The COVID-19 pandemic is an infectious disease that was initially detected in December 2019 in Wuhan City, China. Since then, it has been spreading country-wise on mild to severe scales, where Bangladesh, like most countries, was not prepared to meet the challenges. Addressing the crisis, Bangladesh, like many countries, starting with the philosophy of the traditional approach. In the 1st-wave of COVID-19, the government implemented lockdown laws and enforced to have-on-mask and maintain-physical-distance. However, no government effort was seen ensuring modern-approach for convincing people, making people for their way understanding consequences & preventive-measures thus people can take own decision facing perceived-risk. In the proposed approach, under Consumer Choice Theory, an individual’s utility received from using face-mask and maintaining distance is equal to expected utility. Here outcome depends on an individual’s efforts and the quality of the product individual uses. Any changes to these may risk getting infected, which may defeat the individual in fights with COVID-19. Rather than investing efforts only within main cities, the government could have reached out to rural areas by having local administration engaged. It could have weakened today’s trends of catastrophes. The proposed approach could have been appealing to people for their actions in choices. It could ensure peoples’ roles in society on moral-responsibility grounds. However, today's nation is witnessing the 2nd-wave and strict lockdown with provisions of arrest, penalties for violators. Since the number of death and infected people daily remained almost unchanged and since the mostly populated rural-area situation is not fully known, it is difficult to assess the effectiveness of government policies where the empirical study is warranted overcoming limitation. But people are now familiar with consequences and preventive measures in choices. This progression was not free-of-cost but with high-price-tag “so many lives”, which could have been curtailed if modern strategies were in place.

Regional differentials in early antenatal care, health facility delivery and early postnatal care among women in Uganda

This study aimed at examining regional differentials in maternal healthcare services in Uganda. Using a sample of 1,521 women of reproductive ages (15-49) from Eastern and Western sub-regions of Uganda, and non-linear Oaxaca’ Blinder Multivariate Decomposition method, we assessed differentials in utilization of early antenatal care, health facility delivery and early postnatal care services among the women, henceforth, establishing main predictors of regional inequalities that will enable policymakers to make better evenly interventions and focused decisions. The study reveals that differentials in the utilization of maternal healthcare services are not only hindered by social and economic barriers, but also widespread disparities in the utilization of existing services. Significant differentials were attributed to both variation in women’s characteristics and effects of coefficients. Findings showed that the gap in early antenatal care would reduce on average by 31.6% and 34.7% of differences in availability of community health workers and media exposure respectively, were to disappear. Furthermore, the gap would increase on average by 68.8% and 12.6% in absence of the variation in effects of maternal education, and wealth respectively. The gap in health facility delivery would reduce on average by 24.6% and 37.2% of differences in community health worker availability and media exposure were to disappear respectively and increase on average by 54.9% in the absence of variations in effects of maternal education. The gap in EPNC would reduce on average by 18.5% and 17.17% of differences in maternal education and community health worker availability were to disappear respectively and increase on average by 52.8% and 8.4% in the absence of the variation in effects of maternal education and wealth respectively. Progress towards equitable maternal health care should focus more on strategies that guarantee even distribution of community health workers, broad dissemination of maternal healthcare information and girl child education completion in Uganda.

A Performance Comparison of Various Bootstrap Methods for Diffusion Processes

In this paper, we compare the finite sample performances of various bootstrap methods for diffusion processes. Though diffusion processes are widely used to analyze stocks, bonds, and many other financial derivatives, they are known to heavily suffer from size distortions of hypothesis tests. While there are many bootstrap methods applicable to diffusion models to reduce such size distortions, their finite sample performances are yet to be investigated. We perform a Monte Carlo simulation comparing the finite sample properties, and our results show that the strong Taylor approximation method produces the best performance, followed by the Hermite expansion method.

Lebanese Investors’ Decision Making Analysis from Conventional and Behavioral Perspectives Simultaneously

The investment decision Process varies from one individual to another and from one country to another respectively. These decisions are usually taken based on either a Conventional basis or linked to the sentimental side of investors and reflected through behavioral finance gateway, where biases and psychological side of investors control their way of thinking and affect their investment decisions endlessly. Furthermore, based on previous literature the majority of investors tend to incorporate both gateways during their investment process as they don’t depend solely on Conventional gate, but their psychological part appears to play a big role while deciding and similarly for Lebanon. However, the main aim of this paper lies in investigating the main factors from both gates triggering Lebanese individual investors’ decision-making during their investment process. Moreover, the empirical part lies on focusing on a bunch of samples from individual Lebanese investors distributed along with most Lebanese districts; where 211 complete responses are interpreted within the SPSS program, undergoing factor analyses and Regression models. Results obtained indicates that Lebanese individual investors tend to incorporate both gateways in their investments decision, where the main goal stays utility and profit maximization; that to say tending to seek profits regardless of the investment field and approach. Nevertheless, during seeking profits Lebanese investor is being exposed to certain behavioral errors and biases that appear to impact and control his decisions significantly during investment making the process so far, and theses biases are affecting the Lebanese individual investors clearly more than that of conventional ones.