Current Topics on Business, Economics and Finance Vol. 3

The Department of Health in South Africa has a constitutional mandate to provide effective, efficient and quality healthcare to all citizens who reside in the country. However, the country’s healthcare system is impacted by various negative factors that hamper service delivery, particularly at regional hospitals. Consequently, the healthcare system in South Africa is in urgent need of reforms in order to provide optimal healthcare. This research examined the key service delivery challenges and the role of leadership in addressing these challenges at four public hospitals in the province of KwaZulu-Natal in South Africa. The literature review focused on current public healthcare leadership in South Africa and also attempted to draw insights from international studies. A quantitative research approach was employed in the study and stratified random sampling was used, with mid-level managers and employees constituting the sample. The results indicated that the majority of respondents agreed that leadership plays an important role in optimising organisational performance at regional hospitals. Leading with a purpose was found to be particularly important since the healthcare needs of the population are dependent upon effective and efficient healthcare service delivery. The recommendations emanating from the study could benefit healthcare leaders in that these leaders will be able to develop a better understanding of the relevance of effective leadership in public healthcare.

The topic of the article is to emphasize controversial aspects or those that may appear to be controversial in the conduct of the economy in the light of the principles of sustainability. From this point of view, the economic cycle is not an ordinary movement of the economic scenario, but an anomaly, a disease of the economic system due to errors in the management of government programs. According to this point of view, they are not even a penalty but an imposed attempt from the natural orientation for a return of the economic system to the classic growth, constant and with less damage to nature. In this rectification process, an important role belongs to the majority of the community who are the spokesmen of nature, from which they receive general guidelines on the correct line of development. Therefore, it is a model of care that develops between the community and the government leadership on the issue of the economy, with the aid of the natural constants. For the return to the state of grace on the path of development, the cure is the recession. Recession intended as a tool to bring the deviated system back to the natural condition of stability. According to this point of view, the recession is a sin to be paid in the economy management and there would be no way to avoid paying this price. Therefore, attempts to avoid the penalties imposed to correct the system may be reckless. Trying to avoid the penalty means only to refuse now that damage, which would allow the following return to the serenity of natural stability. In the scenario under treatment, two handmaids of the conjunctural cycle can move in the scenario: Inflation or Deflation. They are indicators of greater malaise. Going against the cycle and its handmaids can mean going against the grain, postponing growing damage to the economy to the future. Better to follow the natural orientation and indications of the majority in the community, which is the arbiter of changes in the state of the economy. In such a complex framework, monetary policy must correct the market and curb the logic of speculation which goes against the interests of the community. Unchecked, speculation can accentuate the two formidable monetary anomalies that have long raged on the markets.

This chapter is about the study of the Saving and Credit Co-operative Societies (SACCOS) employees’ personality traits, self-efficacy, and organizational commitment of Kathmandu district. The five-factor Mini-IPIP personality model was employed by the researchers. The 20-item short form of the 50-item IPIP-FFM makes up the scale. Employee agreeableness, conscientiousness, emotional stability, extraversion, and intellect have been measured using the Big Five personality traits. The affective, normative, and continuance commitment of the employee are assessed using the organizational commitment scale. No one could have imagined the current digital world without the contribution of the employees, who represent human capital. The Self-efficacy scale is used to identify employees' confident beliefs in their ability to handle a range of stressful situations effectively. There are 260 workers in the total sample size (127 men and 133 women). The samples were only taken from the district of Kathmandu's sixty-three SACCOS. This study uncovers the connections between the personality traits, commitment, and self-efficacy of SACCOS employees in order to effectively manage their behavior for an organization's overall productivity.  

The purpose of this study was to examine how the workforce in a logistics company in Durban, South Africa, transitioned from a manual to an automated process, to  manage short shelf-life inventory stock. The previously implemented manual inventory control system to monitor shelf-life was replaced with the Systems Applications and Products in Data Processing (SAP), which automatically reported stock approaching shelf-life expiry dates. To understand the process of change, Kotter’s 8-step model of change was utilised in conducting this study.  A qualitative research approach was applied due to the exploratory nature of the research. Interviews and focus groups were conducted, and data were analysed using thematic analysis. The study findings contribute to broadening the understanding of the emerging development opportunities to enhance the capabilities of the logistics workforce.

Extensive studies in the extant literature of market microstructure explore the informational efficiency of the specific financial market and the relative efficiencies across different markets. However, relatively less research has accumulated to date regarding whether or not institutional details of firm and management team are related to the liquidity of financial securities. Accordingly, this study strives to investigate whether and how the intraday corporate bond liquidity is associated with corporate internal governance, a governance mechanism stemming from the structure of the top management team. In particular, it is focused on the time window shortly before earnings announcements when the information asymmetry is heightened. Consistent with the implications of the theoretical model of internal governance, the paper uncovers a hump-shaped relationship between internal governance measure and corporate bond liquidity before earnings announcements. The empirical results are generally persistent across a battery of robustness checks such as sensitivity check by trading frequency and window size, subsample test by corporate bond rating, and firm level aggregation analysis. Specifically, it is found that the hump-shaped functional form becomes more salient for shorter windows, non-investment level bonds, and bonds of higher trading frequency. As the primary identification strategy, I use the 2008 financial crisis. The hump-shaped relationship persists in the face of exogenous shock to internal governance measures.  This novel study contributes to the literature of financial economics, corporate governance and market microstructure. The research also supports the claim that the corporate bond market is informationally efficient.

Bandar Anzali is one of the most beautiful cities of the Gilan province in Iran. Its area is 308,1 square kilometers and its population is 118,564 people. Also it has two Rural districts, Chahar Farizah, and Lijarki Hassan Rood, and it has 28 villages. Its sandy beaches and lagoons have always welcomed crowds of tourists.The presence of natural attractions in this city has made it one of the most attractive tourist spots in Iran. While tourists do not know much about the existence of green and beautiful villages in this city. The current research aims to identify and rank rural tourism potentials using the planning model. The statistical population of the current research is all the villages of Bandar Anzali city. The research method is descriptive and analytical. According to the topic of the research, two methods have been used to collect information: in the first part, the use of library documents to present theories and theories in the field of tourism of the studied villages has been given. In the second part, based on 27 indicators of rural tourism capability, information on the potentials in the villages in the form of field and questionnaire, identified and collected, and then, using the innovative planning model derived from the Gutman model, the ranking of the villages in terms of the number of potentials Rural tourism activities have been carried out and the villages have been identified on the map of the city in 3 levels. The findings show that the villages of Abkanar, Bashman, Sangachin, Jafraward Payan, and Ali Abad (level 1) have the highest and Kechlak, Khimran, Kochk Mahaleh, Siah Khale Sar, Shile Sar, Maaf, Tarbgode and Karbalai Gode (level 3) have the lowest. There are rural tourism potentials. To plan for the development of tourism in villages, facilities should be provided based on the existing tourism potential.

The objective of the study aimed to examine the connection between a leader's style and the performance of his or her transport industry. The majority of parastatals in Zimbabwe perform poorly. The management methods employed by these parastatals may be a contributing cause in their subpar performance. Performance is a relative concept defined in terms of some referent employing a complex set of time-based measurements of generating future results. Data was collected through administering a Multifactor Leadership Questionnaire (MLQ) for the leadership style and analysis of the employee performance appraisal records of the 178 respondents (34 managers and 144 raters/subordinates) in the selected parastatals. The data was analysed using the statistical package SPSS version 20. It was found that transformational and transactional leadership styles were the two most prevalent ones used in this industry. Employee performance was positively connected with both leadership philosophies, but the correlation for transactional leadership was substantially larger. This suggests that a key factor in the effectiveness of parastatals is their leadership styles.

This chapter aims to analyze the factors influencing the consumers behavior of branded milk and milk products in Tirupati City of Andhra Pradesh, India.  Tirupati City, an important Tier-II city in the Rayalaseema region of Andhra Pradesh, was purposefully chosen for the study. Based on the highest population in descending order, twelve wards were chosen. From each ward, 10 consumers were chosen, totaling a sample size of 120 consumers. The variables influencing consumer behavior for branded milk and milk products were gathered using a well-defined schedule through personal interview method. The current study, which focuses on the factors that have the greatest impact on consumes purchasing decision for branded milk and milk products, may be useful to the business community involved in the branded milk and milk product channel. The findings of Principal Component Analysis inferred that the consumer behavior of branded milk and milk products was influenced by five factors namely Consumer preference factor (Family, Advertisement, Quality, Offers, Package Design, Hygiene in production and Fat content) All factors affecting consumer preference had factor loadings that were (4.966), Product attribute factor (Price, Flavor, brand Image) and factor loadings were (1.993), Perishable factor (Freshness, appearance) with factor loading (1.427), Referral factor  (Friends and Relatives, Wide Pnroduct Range and Product Availability) total factor loadings of Referral Factor (2.066) and Convenience factor (Packs in suitable quantities and Texture). Factors influencing convenience with total factor loading were (1.407).