International Journal of Management, Economics and Social Sciences

233 – 251

Authors: Solabomi O. Ajibolade; Oboh Collins Sankay

Persuaded by the pecking order assumptions, where internal fund is preferred over debt and equity when financing investment projects, this study provided empirical evidence on the interaction between working capital management and corporate debt structure, and the effect of this on corporate profitability. The assumption on which the study was based is that, if internal funds become the preferred source of finance for investment projects, then working capital composition is interfered, making both decisions co-dependent. A pool of time-series and cross-sectional dataset was constructed from the annual audited financial results of 35 manufacturing companies listed on the Nigerian stock exchange for a two-year period (2011 - 2012). Panel exploration and Factorial-ANOVA estimation techniques were used to estimate the econometric models developed for the study. The results suggested a significant negative relationship between firm's working capital composition and their debt structure choice. Additionally, on individual basis, the study found a positive significant relationship between debt structure and profitability but no significant relationship between firm's working capital composition and profitability. The results, however, showed that as the firm's working capital composition synchronously interacts with the debt structure, corporate profitability is positively affected. The study therefore recommends that, for firms to optimize profitability and to maintain good liquidity position, corporate financing decision should be considered side by side with their working capital composition.

265 – 273

Authors: Chia-Hui Ko; Mei-Ju Chou

Music technology is a term commonly used to refer to electronic form of the musical arts, particularly devices and computer software that enable the facilitation, playback, recording, composition, storage, and performance of various musical compositions. There has been a growing awareness of the importance of aesthetics in early childhood education, especially for the music technology that offers young children benefits from the implementation of an appropriately complete music technology curriculum in the early childhood educational environment and instruments application. The findings in this paper demonstrate such music courses encourage creativity and foster a sense of cultural understanding and appreciation amongst children in an early education program. In short, with the progress of developmentally appropriated program, this study demonstrates that music technology curriculum is not only valuable, but essential to the early education program for young children.

151 – 156

Authors: Tryfon Korontzis

So many books have been written on corporations but no one seriously thought about the impact on the poor, that is why the seriousness of the issue kept on growing, but the most alarming situation is, business schools and the institutes instead of realizing this issue, they are portraying the corporations as the country saviour (Madeley, 1999). Capitalism bully ascertains finds the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), which primarily deals with the most robust economies in the world. Wilder and widens the inequality between rich and poor. According to OECD in the period 2007-2010, the gap between rich and poor widened longer than the 12 years that have been preceded (Fraczek, 2013). In 33 countries covered by OECD, 10 percent of the wealthiest residents acquire income 9.5 times more than the poorest in 2010, compared with 9 times in 2007. The biggest differences between wealthy and poor citizens appeared in U.S., Turkey, Mexico and Chile. Countries with the smaller comparative deviations are Iceland, Norway, Denmark and Slovenia. Of course, OECD analysts point out that after taxes and social transfers, levels of income inequality and relative poverty in OECD countries was only slightly higher in 2010 as compared to 2007 (OECD, 2011). Data set from 1965 to onward explains that the wealth gap is constantly getting wider and wider between the developed and poor nations (Parente and Prescott, 1993).

187 – 204

Authors: Fadi M. Alkhateeb; David A. Latif; Rachel Adkins

Schools and colleges of pharmacy in the United States have struggled over the past several decades with identifying a consistent title for the broad body of knowledge related to the social, economic, behavioral, and administrative aspects of pharmacy. This paper examines the educational background and professional experience of those teaching Economic, Social, Administrative Pharmacy (ESAP) content in the United States, to identify the type, frequency, and extent to which ESAP courses are taught in United State's schools and colleges of pharmacy curricula, and to investigate the perceived importance of ESAP content among ESAP faculty. The data was collected by using a 23-item questionnaire was sent via email to 225 ESAP pharmacy faculties in the United States. 96 were returned completed for a 48 percent response rate. Most respondents are not housed in a standalone ESAP department, but would like to be. Both the educational backgrounds of ESAP faculty and the content taught within the discipline vary greatly. This may be because the content within the ESAP discipline is extremely broad. In addition, the diversification in content may be a result of both the diversity of instructor's educational backgrounds and the lack of a generally approved definition for the ESAP field.

54 – 75

Authors: Desmond Tutu Ayentimi; Anthony Ekow Mensah; Francis Naa-Idar

There has been profuse development in the stock markets all over the world in the past decades. The 21st century has seen intriguing changes in the stock markets in both developed and emerging economies. This paper examines the weak-form efficiency of listed firms on the Ghana Stock Exchange (GSE) by applying the Random Walk Hypothesis using weekly closing stock prices on the GSE from January, 2007 to June, 2012. The GSE financial market returns series exhibit volatility clustering that shows an indication of inefficiency on the GSE. The results of both the descriptive statistics of the weekly market returns and the normality tests show that returns from GSE did not follow the normal distribution. The study recommends that transaction cost should be reduced to improve the market activities of the GSE. Also, efforts should be intensified to get as many firms as possible to be listed on the stock market to enhance competition among stocks.

99 – 128

Authors: Shu Ling Lin; Dar-Yeh Hwang; Keh Luh Wang; Zhe Wen Xie

This study analyzes the relevance of capital adjustment and risk-taking adjustment during the financial tsunami when the banking industry was under capital regulation. Using the panel data of commercial banks in the USA and non-USA from 2003 to 2009, we consider the effects of financial freedom, concentration and governance control simultaneously by three-stage least square analysis. The results show that capital and risk adjustment are positively correlated for both USA and non-USA banking industry, which are consistent after the financial tsunami. This applies to the verification of the capital buffer theory. In addition, for banks with low capital adequacy ratio, capital and risk adjustment are negatively correlated. This applies to the verification of bankruptcy cost avoidance theory and managerial risk aversion theory. Finally, banks with lower capital ratio will be faster in the adjustment of risk-taking as compared with banks with higher capital ratio. This study recommended that supervision should be coupled with governance control to achieve the goal of reducing risk-taking.

1 – 5

Authors: Probir K. Banerjee

The community of researchers unanimously agrees that a code of ethics must be followed when engaging in research and consenting to publication of research findings in academic journals. However, unethical research practice continues to cause concern. In an effort to address the concern, several researchers have prescribed remedial action. Publishers and members of the research community have also tried to raise awareness of this malady plaguing the research community. For example, Ethics in Research & Publication, a website created by Elsevier, a trusted publisher of science and health information, aims to raise awareness in this regard by providing examples of scientific misconduct and breach of publications ethics, including plagiarism. Similarly, the iThenticate blog discusses plagiarism and other scholarly misconduct issues in a bid to promote integrity and ethical writing practices.

12 – 27

Authors: Souad Sherif; Kamel Fantazy

The purpose of this paper is to examine factors influencing export in bilateral trade in the Middle-East context. The study considers the bilateral trade flows across three Gulf Cooperation Council countries - the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA), Bahrain (BAH) and Qatar (QAT) - over the last 30 years (1981-2010). The study focuses on the relationships between BAH and QAT, combined as one group, and KSA, which has a relatively larger economic mass and population. Data related to bilateral trade was collected from the International Monetary Fund (IMF). The proposed model was tested using the Structural Equation Modeling (SEM) technique. Our results indicated that GDP, POP_GR, and GDP/CA have a positive relationship with the level of KSA_EX, while the DIST related negatively to the level of KSA_EX. The study shows that all factors are crucial to the success of bilateral trade flow between both parties (BAH and QAT) and KSA because they provide the facts that decision makers need to make the appropriate decisions. Lastly, the article discusses research contributions and limitations of the study that could be addressed in future research scope.