Household Characteristics and Food Security in Low-Income Urban Areas of South Africa

In South Africa, food security at the household level is an issue still needing empirical attention. This study conducts an empirical analysis on the effect of household size, income of household head, gender of household head, location of the household, and distance from food markets on food security in the Gauteng Province of South Africa. A binary logistic regression model is estimated to analyze determinants of food security from 900 households randomly selected from three townships of Gauteng Province, South Africa. Data was collected using a survey questionnaire, with food security measured by the Household Food Insecurity Access Scale. This study shows that the income of the household head promotes food security while household size and location of the household contribute to food insecurity. Our results also show that the gender of the household head is essential in maintaining sustainable levels of food security. Furthermore, it was found that the distance from food markets neither makes households food secure nor insecure. This study validates that matriarchal households exhibited comparatively greater food security than male-headed households. The findings of this study are essential in formulating policy on food security in low-income areas.

Working from Home as a Human Resource Management Strategy during the COVID-19 Pandemic: Indonesian Workers' Experiences

Working from home (WFH) is a relatively new phenomenon in Indonesia, sparked by the COVID-19 outbreak. Having family members at home and being isolated from coworkers and bosses makes WFH a different work situation. WFH's physical interaction limits may also negatively impact employee performance. Therefore, this research aims to explore the experience of Indonesian workers who performed WFH during the COVID-19 pandemic and to evaluate how this work configuration affected employees’ performance. By utilizing phenomenology with 10 informants from several business sectors, we were able to focus on the common experiences of employees doing WFH during the pandemic. It was revealed that employees spent more time coordinating and communicating virtually during WFH, resulting in extended and even distorted work hours. Additionally, they ran into several challenges with their reliance on data to do their tasks. Then, in the absence of their supervisors, who are typically supervising of the work process, employees experienced a higher level of output control. Being at home also intensified work-family conflict, particularly for working parents. However, it was discovered that the workers' perceived flexibility was favorable when confronted with those previous conditions. Thus, while not all job objectives were met, perceived performance while working from home was comparable to working from the office. As a result, they intend to continue performing WFH, but in a hybrid way. With these findings, organizations may formulate a more comprehensive strategy for telecommuting as one of the global megatrends in human resource management (HRM).

The Challenges of the VUCA World in the Development of Sustainable Investment Projects

The volatility, uncertainty, complexity and ambiguity (VUCA) of the business environment require that investment projects carried out within organizations also include sustainability aspects, in order to maintain a superior competitive position. Investors as well as other stakeholders from organizations are more inclined to companies that implement sustainable investment projects compared to traditional ones for which only profit and financial benefits matter. Thus, the purpose of this paper is to reveal how the rapid and often unfounded changes specific to today's world, the VUCA world influences the way that projects are carried out within organizations. Particular attention was also paid to the way in which organizations implement project-specific activities and sub-activities, in order to ensure sustainable development, even in a crisis situation. In order to achieve these objectives, a bibliometric and systematic analysis of the specialized literature was carried out, analyzing the present studies and articles from the area, that revealed the influence of the VUCA world on the business environment. Thus, this paper aims to present how the VUCA world affects organizations, the effects that complex and rapid organizational changes specific to the VUCA world have on the sustainability of investment projects, the impact of crises of the sustainable development on organizations, the implications of the VUCA world on strategies organizations. Following the analyzes carried out, the results showed that the elements specific to the VUCA world have a great influence on the sustainable development of organizations and, implicitly, on the projects carried out within it.

Proposed Model of Business Retail Continuity Process during Pandemic Covid-19 Based on Risk identification and Response

Recognizing competitive strategies, the retail industry must anticipate business risks. Business risk is related to managerial risk, and it depends on its ability to adapt its policies to unforeseen events and changes. Currently, the whole world is facing the Covid-19 outbreak. In facing the challenges and risks from Covid-19, retail businesses must manage and respond to these risks so that their business can recover and business continuity is realized. This study seeks to identify the risks experienced by retail businesses in Indonesia during the COVID-19 pandemic and what risk management strategies are appropriate for business continuity and retail business recovery. Previous studies have explained the impact of Covid-19 on the retail industry. However, there is still a lack of research that tries to identify the risks and how to overcome them. This research will try to fill that gap. Semi-systematic or narrative review techniques were conducted in this study. The study’s result is a framework related to risk management in retail industries. This study contributes to knowledge and practical implication regarding the risk that the retail industry is experiencing during the COVID-19 pandemic.

“People for a Nation” (PFN) Model: How Can We Manage the Causes of the Discontent of Romanians Who Decide to Emigrate

We live in a world that is constantly changing and that requires from the individuals in the society a flexibility and a very high degree of adaptation. Every change, whether economic, political, social or otherwise, has a major impact on the lives of all people and often not a positive impact. Because many individuals are inflexible and do not embrace change with enthusiasm, courage, and looking to the future, this makes them adopt a position of rejection of the country, of the systems that make up that country, of reluctance toward politics, and a general state of dissatisfaction. All this, combined, increases the desire of individuals to leave their country of origin to take refuge in a country where they have greater security and where they can embrace or are helped by the state to embrace change much faster and more effectively, so that does not suffer. The tendency of people to go to an area that offers them greater opportunities is not something new for the study of the migration phenomenon, on the contrary, it is something that has been studied and understood. What is interesting is that we can develop a model for determining a nation's desire to migrate based on the inconveniences or shortcomings it encounters in everyday life. The research we propose aims to identify the proportions that make up the population's desire to emigrate, by areas and systems and which, put together, can develop a deterministic model that we have called PFN (People for a Nation). This model allowed us not only to determine the level of desire to migrate to another country, but also gave us the opportunity to characterize a country according to those elements that bother individuals more or less.

The Process of Recruitment of Managers: Formal Management Education or Management Experience?

In this paper we have analyzed 228 job announcements for the recruitment of managers within two online recruitment platforms most often used in Romania, named Ejobs and Indeed, regarding two important aspects: 1) recruitment of managers depending on management experience or formal management education and 2) recruitment of management graduates. The main objective is to describe the degree the practice of recruitment of managers takes into consideration the scientific advances in the management field and the formal management education. Through the mean of an archival data analysis research strategy, we found that for the recruitment of managers the companies asked almost exclusively for experience (91.2%). The companies in our sample almost did not require the management education. Only in ten announcements the recruiters asked for a formal management educational degree. Moreover, only half of companies asked for management experience (56.1%). Technical (39.4%), industry (25.2%) and working experience (7.7%) are the other types of experience valued by the recruiters. Most companies asked for management abilities, in addition to experience, however (e.g influence), but they did not require that these abilities to be formed during a formal educational program. The future manager only should possess these abilities acquired from somewhere. The paper aims to contribute to the academic debate regarding the criteria used by companies to hire managers. In addition, the paper has a strong practical orientation aiming at improving the recruitment practice of managers and equipping the companies and organizations with management teams with adequate managerial knowledge, abilities, and competences.

Improving the Performance Management of Public Institutions: Is it Difficult to Measure Performance in Public Institutions?

In recent years, measuring the performance of public institutions has become a topic much studied by researchers, as questions arise about its structure and role in the economy and society, whether it is effectively put in the public service and whether it is effective or not. To improve the management system, there is a need to introduce a performance management whose main goal is the evaluation of performance at individual and organizational level along with the improvement of the efficiency of public expenditures and the orientation towards achieving the results. This paper aims to highlight the importance of performance measurement and explain the role of it in the development of the public institutions. The results were obtained after analyzing numerous qualitative and quantitative data and an extensive research was conducted to filter the information found in various research platforms, official electronic resources and numerous books related to performance management, performance evaluation system, characteristics and possible barriers that may occur while trying to measure the performance in the public sector. Moreover, since public sector performance is closely linked to the overall economic performance of different countries this research paper comes to complete the existing literature, leaving room for further research on the topic discussed.

The Influence of Oil Prices on Stock Market Returns in Saudi Arabian Companies: The Implementation of Econometric Models

The countries in the sample are of special importance, as they have different rates of growth, different important characteristics of the financial system and levels of stock market progress. The research looks on equity market growth and measures its foreign economic effect, not in terms of profitability to investors (not beyond the scope of our study), but in terms of progress relative to the scale of these economies and the capital expenditure fund needs of those countries. The data used in this study were taken from GCC's monthly time series over the 2008-2018 period. Such factors are actual interest rates, global development level, commodity market returns on commodities and the true price of oil (in US dollars). Thomson Reuters DataStream, Bloomberg and OECD database gather data for this study. For this study, the actual interest rate was selected as this element illustrates market swings. The Industrial Production Index has defined it since the overall energy consumption in an economy is calculated by the amount of products and services generated in the region. The research implemented and econometric approach throughout addressing data from 2008 till 2018 which means 10 years to study the impact of oil prices, exchange rates and their impact on stock market, case Saudi Arabia. The key results showed that the contemporary and postponed impacts on economic development in either capital market liquidity, as measured by turnover or economic change, as measured by the institutional efficiency index. The relationship predictor (investment / Turnover ratio) was seen for the Arab countries to have an important result from the robustness measure. Implementing the strategy of gross capital expenditure expansion and the turnover partnership will lead to a positive impact on the connection between country expenditure and stock market liquidity during the competitive growth model.

Time-Budgets: A Tool for Evaluating Liveable Urban Planning in Smart Cities

It is said that time means money. But, in a world where time seems to be compressed, finding the time to complete all daily tasks and finding a balance between personal and professional life is becoming increasingly difficult. Even more, we live in a world of gadgets and devices that are meant to make our life easier, and more manageable and utilising smart tools and living in a smart city seems to be parts of the solution, if not THE solution. The equilibrium between personal and professional, with all the aspects that these two imply, makes a city more liveable in respect with others that may not offer the same opportunities, the same interest form the public administration sector to make the city appealing and use all the tools of smart urban planning to achieve this goal. Based on the bibliographic analysis in the field, using the method of fundamental research of materials retrieved from Scopus, Web of Science and Science Direct database, this article aims to take a step in showing that time budgets can become a viable assessment tool for quality of life in smart cities.

Indonesia’s Poverty Reduction: Driving Economic Growth through Foreign Direct Investment

Poverty reduction is one of the basic problems in national development. One of the sources of financing in development programs including poverty reduction is foreign direct investment (FDI). Wherewith sources of that funds initiate an increase in the production of goods and services by the community so that transactions related to capital and production resources also increase as one of the efforts to alleviate poverty due to an increase in nominal income per capita. This study examines the indirect effect of FDI on poverty in Indonesia, through the analysis of numerical data calculations. This quantitative research on the State of Indonesia was carried out domestically using panel data from 34 provinces during the 2007-2018 periods with a fixed effect estimation method. The estimation results with the selected calculation model show that all independent variables are statistically significant. It means that the ratio of FDI to GRDP, the number of the working population, GRDP per capita, and the realization of government spending have a significant and negative effect on poverty with a confidence level of 5 percent. Based on the calculation results, if the ratio of FDI to GRDP increases by 1 percent, it will reduce the poor by 0.037 percent, (ceteris paribus). This finding encourages the government to pay more attention to the flow of foreign investment into Indonesia so that funding is more targeted in reducing poverty in Indonesia. Through the provision of employment opportunities and improvement of supporting facilities, productivity can run more efficiently and effectively.