The wave of global financial crises(2008-2009)caused a surge in the capital flows of developed countries particularly,between developed and developing countries.The crunch hit all financial sectors with unanticipated ...The wave of global financial crises(2008-2009)caused a surge in the capital flows of developed countries particularly,between developed and developing countries.The crunch hit all financial sectors with unanticipated severity.The study evaluates the role of a country’s political practices in moderating the impact of global financial crunch on microfinance performance.Using the fixed effect panel regression method on the dataset comprising of 95 MFIs operating in South Asia from 2003 to 2012,we determine that microfinance operational capability shares a positive relationship with the institutional attributes of a country and our output reveals that impact of country’s political practices is pervasive on the financial output of MFIs,liable to different levels of implementation.The findings further reveals that MFIs situated in countries having vigorous political practices are less severely affected by the economic crunch.展开更多
Background: Adolescents who rely on social aid networks tend to be more socially competent and enjoy higher levels of quality of life than those who interact only with their own limited groups of family and friends. I...Background: Adolescents who rely on social aid networks tend to be more socially competent and enjoy higher levels of quality of life than those who interact only with their own limited groups of family and friends. In this light, the present study aimed to measure social capital and analyse its possible relation to adolescents’ quality of life. Methods: This is a cross-sectional analytical study with 363 adolescents from the Brazilian NGO. The instruments used included a short Portuguese version of the Integrated Questionnaire to Measure Social Capital (SC-QI) from the World Bank and its abbreviated Portuguese version from the World Health Organization Quality of Life Bref (WHOQoL-Bref) used to measure the quality of life. To measure social capital, the present study chose to use a segmentation analysis, along with the Two-Step Cluster method, applying Euclidian distance and the criteria of centroid aggregation. The Mann-Whitney test was used to compare the scores of WHOQoL-Bref domains among the clusters, at a significance level of 5%. Results: The segmentation analysis resulted in two clusters, with 160 (44.1%) adolescents classified as Low Social Capital (LSC) and 178 (49%) classified as High Social Capital (HSC). Participation in activities for the good of the community (p < 0.001), opinion regarding the differences between people in the community (p = 0.002), and number of community meetings (p < 0.001) constituted the decisive variables for determining the separation of the clusters. When quality of life among the newly formed clusters was compared, the highest average score in the HSC cluster was found in the Psychological Domain (75.4 ± 11.9), whereas in the LSC cluster, the highest average score was found in the Physical Domain (74.6 ± 12.6). Lower quality of life scores was found in the environmental domain for both the LSC clusters (51.3 ± 14.0) and the HSC clusters (54.7 ± 15.5). This difference proved to be statistically significant (p = 0.009). Conclusions: The results showed that adolescents with higher social capital also presented higher scores concerning quality of life. For the studied population, a positive relation between the two concepts was verified.展开更多
The primary objective of this research is to empirically probe the various aspects and variables that have been already addressed in the previous literature related to supplier selection criterion, supply effort manag...The primary objective of this research is to empirically probe the various aspects and variables that have been already addressed in the previous literature related to supplier selection criterion, supply effort management and firm performance. Further, this research aims to develop a measurement framework and pragmatically prove the framework through a measurement model. First, a factor structure for various constructs is made and the initial validity is determined from practicing managers and academicians. This research employs survey method and the data is collected from 358 supply chain professionals working in manufacturing firms in India. A measurement model is developed and proved with various tests of reliability and validity. Finally, three major latent constructs were formulated, namely, criterion of supplier selection, supply effort management and firm performance. The factor scores of these latent variables were used for further analysis. A six-stage approach was followed in the analysis of data. Firm performance was regressed against supplier selection criterion and supply effort management. The results indicate that the predictive variable has positive and significant effect on firm performance and they do not have any interaction and multicollinearity effects.展开更多
文摘The wave of global financial crises(2008-2009)caused a surge in the capital flows of developed countries particularly,between developed and developing countries.The crunch hit all financial sectors with unanticipated severity.The study evaluates the role of a country’s political practices in moderating the impact of global financial crunch on microfinance performance.Using the fixed effect panel regression method on the dataset comprising of 95 MFIs operating in South Asia from 2003 to 2012,we determine that microfinance operational capability shares a positive relationship with the institutional attributes of a country and our output reveals that impact of country’s political practices is pervasive on the financial output of MFIs,liable to different levels of implementation.The findings further reveals that MFIs situated in countries having vigorous political practices are less severely affected by the economic crunch.
文摘Background: Adolescents who rely on social aid networks tend to be more socially competent and enjoy higher levels of quality of life than those who interact only with their own limited groups of family and friends. In this light, the present study aimed to measure social capital and analyse its possible relation to adolescents’ quality of life. Methods: This is a cross-sectional analytical study with 363 adolescents from the Brazilian NGO. The instruments used included a short Portuguese version of the Integrated Questionnaire to Measure Social Capital (SC-QI) from the World Bank and its abbreviated Portuguese version from the World Health Organization Quality of Life Bref (WHOQoL-Bref) used to measure the quality of life. To measure social capital, the present study chose to use a segmentation analysis, along with the Two-Step Cluster method, applying Euclidian distance and the criteria of centroid aggregation. The Mann-Whitney test was used to compare the scores of WHOQoL-Bref domains among the clusters, at a significance level of 5%. Results: The segmentation analysis resulted in two clusters, with 160 (44.1%) adolescents classified as Low Social Capital (LSC) and 178 (49%) classified as High Social Capital (HSC). Participation in activities for the good of the community (p < 0.001), opinion regarding the differences between people in the community (p = 0.002), and number of community meetings (p < 0.001) constituted the decisive variables for determining the separation of the clusters. When quality of life among the newly formed clusters was compared, the highest average score in the HSC cluster was found in the Psychological Domain (75.4 ± 11.9), whereas in the LSC cluster, the highest average score was found in the Physical Domain (74.6 ± 12.6). Lower quality of life scores was found in the environmental domain for both the LSC clusters (51.3 ± 14.0) and the HSC clusters (54.7 ± 15.5). This difference proved to be statistically significant (p = 0.009). Conclusions: The results showed that adolescents with higher social capital also presented higher scores concerning quality of life. For the studied population, a positive relation between the two concepts was verified.
文摘The primary objective of this research is to empirically probe the various aspects and variables that have been already addressed in the previous literature related to supplier selection criterion, supply effort management and firm performance. Further, this research aims to develop a measurement framework and pragmatically prove the framework through a measurement model. First, a factor structure for various constructs is made and the initial validity is determined from practicing managers and academicians. This research employs survey method and the data is collected from 358 supply chain professionals working in manufacturing firms in India. A measurement model is developed and proved with various tests of reliability and validity. Finally, three major latent constructs were formulated, namely, criterion of supplier selection, supply effort management and firm performance. The factor scores of these latent variables were used for further analysis. A six-stage approach was followed in the analysis of data. Firm performance was regressed against supplier selection criterion and supply effort management. The results indicate that the predictive variable has positive and significant effect on firm performance and they do not have any interaction and multicollinearity effects.
