Empirical Research Strategies Research Articles

Law Enforcement for Fraud Offenders on behalf of Banks Through Online According to Islamic Criminal Law

This research aims to find out the modus operandi of criminal fraud on behalf of banks through online, to find out law enforcement for fraud perpetrators on behalf of banks through online at the North Sumatra Regional Police, and to find out the review of Islamic criminal law in fraud cases on behalf of banks through online. This research uses a qualitative empirical research strategy in the field of law. Interviews with members of the North Sumatra Regional Police became the main data source, while literature surveys of online journals, papers, and articles related to fraud legislation became secondary data. Data reduction, data presentation, and conclusion drawing are the three stages of qualitative data preparation. Article 378 of the Criminal Code can be used to regulate the crime of online fraud, according to the above study. To strengthen the legal basis, Article 28 paragraph (1) of the ITE Law can be followed. Islamic criminal law, which is based on hadith and the Quran, does not provide clear guidelines on how to deal with internet fraud involving banks. Islamic law includes general principles that should be followed, and their application depends on the interpretation of local scholars or religious authorities. In the case of online fraud on behalf of a bank, which is included in the crime of fraud, it can be subject to ta'zir punishment such as a stern warning, a material fine whose amount is adjusted to the victim's loss, imprisonment, flogging, or also exile from society for a while.

FINANCIAL INCLUSION IN RURAL ECONOMY: EXPERIENCES AND THE WAY FORWARD

The objective of this study is to examine the status of financial inclusion in the rural economy and to understand the extent to which the policies of financial inclusion have been successful, especially in rural areas. To increase banking penetration and to promote financial inclusion, the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) and the Government of India (GoI) have made substantial efforts to ensure that all the adult citizens of the country have a bank account. Various studies and reports have measured the financial inclusion or exclusion index. The existing financial indices are computed based on the supply-side information on financial services and they fail to capture the demand-side dynamics (Dev, 2006). The present study tries to adopt the demand-side approach of assessing financial inclusion. This approach is more of a micro-level analysis rather than a macro view of access to the financial sector. With this background, the present study assesses whether banking facilities have reached the rural areas? Have people of rural areas particularly disadvantaged and low-income groups availed the benefits of banking facilities for their monetary transactions? What are the factors affecting access to financial services? The study adopts the empirical research strategy to measure the extent of financial inclusion. The scope of the research is restricted to rural and unbanked areas of the Kachchh district of Gujarat.

TRANSFORMATION OF RURAL HOMESTEADS IN THE URBAN FRINGE AREAS OF BANGLADESH: A CASE OF KAKON HUT, RAJSHAHI

The early agrarian community was established in the northern part of Bangladesh because of its unique Barind tract formation. Rural homesteads were the core building block of these settlements. Though 70% of Bangladeshi still live in rural areas, the rural homesteads are being transformed rapidly. Many socio-economic indicators such as population density, limited expansion opportunity, access to modern technology and diverse types of materials and many more are working as a core driving force behind these changes. This article investigates the transformation pattern of the rural homesteads in Kakon Hut Paurashava of Godagari Upazilla in Rajshahi District, in terms of both spatial pattern and construction materials, to develop an in-depth understanding of the impact of adaptation of modern techniques, technologies, and materials in the urban fringe areas. This research is based on an empirical research strategy and consequently progressed through qualitative data collection, observation, questionary survey, and key person interviews. The study produces a thorough analysis of three core types of homesteads in the site area. Finally, a comparative analysis of traditional homesteads with the existing types that have gone through the transformation process is produced to identify the spatial and material transformation in these settlements.

LONGITUDINAL STUDY OF THE MENTAL HEALTH OF THOSE EMPLOYED AS TEACHERS IN A HUNGARIAN PUBLIC EDUCATION INSTITUTION IN THE LIGHT OF THE SITUATION CAUSED BY THE SARS-COV-2 PANDEMIC, WITH A 5-ITEM WHO WELL-BEING QUESTIONNAIRE (WBI-5)

Numerous studies have examined the effects of the rapidly globalized SARS-COVID virus. The Hungarian government's response to the pandemic required structural changes in education alongside changes in educational methodology. Moving away from traditional practices, educational processes have been placed in digital space - changing the practice of more than 100 years. Regarding the transformation, not only did its speed cause difficulties, but also the necessary systems and digital competences were lacking in many cases; most educators did not have the necessary ICT tools to perform everyday tasks. We used an inductive, empirical research strategy in our research. The aim was to conduct a longitudinal mixed-methods study of school teachers (2779 item were obtained) to evaluate 3 data sets and supplementary interviews for correlations between mental health indicators, burnout scale correlations, self-efficacy, and the use of online platforms. We gathered data from Hungarian teachers by using an online version of the 5 item World Health Organisation (WHO) welfare questionnaire (WBI-5) and analyzed it with SPSS 25.0 statistical software. The results confirmed our assumptions, as the average values of the subjective well-being of the teachers participating in the research were the highest at the time of the first data collection. Values for each subsequent survey show a lower value than the first and a larger standard deviation. Based on the results obtained, a decrease in the subjective well-being of educators completing questionnaires during the SARS-COV-2 virus can be reported. The sum of the average scores obtained during the completion of the WBI-5 questionnaire also confirms this trend. The peculiarity of the data collection is that the values obtained were the lowest during the second survey (when the participants were already past a wave of illness and the news reported new ones). Although the values of data set 3 are lower than the first time, they are better than the values of data set 2, which may be triggered by the appearance of vaccinations. Further data analysis is needed to establish this.

ЗВ'ЯЗОК МОТИВАЦІЇ ІЗ МЕТАКОГНІТИВНИМИ СТРАТЕГІЯМИ СТУДЕНТІВ ПІД ЧАС ВИВЧЕННЯ ІНОЗЕМНОЇ МОВИ

The article is devoted to the study of the metacognitive strategies. The article presents the results of empirical research, motivational and meta-cognitive strategies and their impact on students' learning activities. There are statistically significant relationships between intrinsic motivation and critical thinking. The average direct proportional statistically significant relationship between external motivation and repetition of material is identified, the average direct proportional statistically significant relationship between external motivation and organizational strategies of the organization, which helps students choose the necessary information and build relationships between information to be to assimilate.

Formation of Foreign language Communicative Competence of Bachelor Students in the Conditions of Remote Interaction

At present the requirements to the level of foreign language training in a non-linguistic higher school are determined by the necessity of students to master foreign language communication skills. One of the most significant methods of professional foreign language training optimization and intensification is an intensive use of new information and communicative technologies in the process of education. The purpose of the article is to consider the system of assessment technologies, in particular, training and control tests of the electronic course, implemented in blended and distance learning conditions, providing control and assessment of the formation of foreign language communicative competence of undergraduate students of non-linguistic profiles in conditions of remote interaction. The article reviews the problem through scientific-pedagogical and methodological literature. The article also provides an overview of theoretical and empirical research strategies. The results of the article discuss the peculiarities of the functioning of the electronic educational and methodical complex (EEMC) in blended and distance learning. The description of the system of test tasks for the development and control of lexical and grammatical aspect of speech; receptive and productive types of foreign language speaking activity (reading, listening, speaking) are given in the research. Theoretical and practical value, its correspondence to the aims and questions of the investigation concludes the article.

Risk premia and the European government bond market: new empirical evidence and some thoughts from the perspective of the life insurance industry

We study yield spreads between government bonds in the European Monetary Union. This segment of the global fixed income market is of particular importance for insurance companies in Europe. Our empirical research strategy is inspired by Gunay (2020) who has analyzed the relationship between credit and liquidity risk in the United States using Granger causality tests. More specifically, we employ the procedure developed by Toda and Yamamoto (1995) to test for Granger causality among yield spreads in five different member countries of the European Monetary Union (namely Austria, Belgium, France, Italy and Ireland) relative to Germany. We examine interest rate data from bonds with three different maturities (5, 10 and 30 years). Given the importance of long-term bonds as asset class for European life insurers and pension funds, the empirical results from the often ignored market for government bonds with a maturity of 30 years should be of interest. With regard to long-term sovereign debt, there is no evidence for Granger causality among the time series examined here. Consequently, the risk premia required by investors to hold government bonds of one specific member country of the EMU do not help to forecast the risk premia that have to be paid by other countries. Given the structure of their liabilities, this empirical finding should be of high relevance for portfolio and risk managers in the European life insurance industry and in pension funds. With regard to the yield spreads to be observed in the market for 10-year government bonds, there seems to be no clear picture. Focusing on fixed income securities with a maturity of 5 years, there is one very interesting empirical finding. The test results reported here seem to imply that there is unidirectional Granger causality running from the yield spreads in all other four countries to Austria. Given that Austria is a comparably small country which is assumed to be in a fiscally stable position, this result could be interpreted as evidence for credit risk premia as being helpful to forecast liquidity risk premia in the market for medium-term government bonds issued by member states of the European Monetary Union.

Security in microservice-based systems: A Multivocal literature review

Microservices define an architectural style that conceives systems as a suite of modular, independent and scalable services. While application design is now simpler, designing secure applications is in general harder than for monolithic applications and the current literature offers little orientation to architects and developers regarding solutions. This article describes the design and results of a multivocal literature review of the security solutions that have been proposed for microservice-based systems. The study yielded 370 academic articles and 620 grey literature; duplicates removal and the application of exclusion criteria left 36 from the academic literature and 34 from the grey literature. The security solution(s) proposed in each article were classified into variations of standard security mechanisms (e.g., Access Control) and scopes (Info Management, Threat Modeling, etc), and were associated to security contexts (detect, mitigate/stop, react, recover from attack). Our research questions addressed frequency of publications, research methodologies, security mechanisms, and security contexts. Key findings were that (1) both kinds of literature differ in their preferred empirical research strategies (examples, experiments and case studies); (2) The solutions proposed in the 70 selected articles correspond to 15 classifications of security mechanisms and analyses; (3) the most mentioned security mechanisms are Authentication and Authorization; (4) around 2/3 of solutions focused on Mitigate/Stop attacks, but none on reacting and recovering from them, and (5) the methodologies used are mostly block diagrams and code, with little use of models or analysis. These findings hold for both grey and academic literature. This study is a first step towards providing secure software researchers and practitioners a comprehensive catalog of security solutions and mechanisms, and where the clear identification of the most used security solutions will simplify their reuse to address security problems while designing microservice-based systems.

Political Consumerism as a Form of Political Participation: Challenges and Potentials of Empirical Measurement

Political consumerism features prominently as an increasing form of non-institutionalized and individualized political participation. The main challenge of empirical participation research is to integrate emerging alternative forms such as political consumerism into standard measurement instruments of participation. So far, serious deficits of existing survey instruments prevent political scientists to adequately assess the role of political consumerism within the repertoire of political participation. Originally apolitical activities such as conscious purchasing behaviour are all too easily interpreted as political participation, which undermines the political science concept of political participation. The aim of this article therefore is the presentation of an empirical research strategy to analyse political consumerism as an emerging form of political participation. I use a purposively designed online survey with more than 3500 randomly selected participants to analyse and reconcile current deficits of the empirical measurement of political consumerism as emerging form of political participation. Based on the empirical insights gained by our survey, I propose an innovative measurement instrument for political consumerism to be used in international comparative survey research.

Professional Communicative Competence of the Future Interpreters in View of Regional Specifications

The professional activity of a modern translator is characterized by participation in various spheres of intercultural interaction. Successful translation is about acquiring background knowledge of the culture of a particular region. The topical issue of language and translation training in a linguistic university is the formation of the proper level of foreign language communicative and intercultural competence of future translators in view of the regional specifications of professional activity. The purpose of the article is to substantiate and describe the component composition and essential characteristics of the professional communicative competence of future translators, considering the regional specifics, to clarify and expand the fundamental concept of the study. The review of scientific literature considers research data on the problem of teaching foreign language communication; the formation of foreign language communicative / intercultural competence among university students, determining the structure and essential characteristics of communicative competence. The methodology sets out theoretical and empirical research strategies. The research results formulated the pragmatic goal of language and translation training; the regional specificity is characterized, the composition and essential characteristics of the professional communicative competence of the translator are determined; the fundamental concept of the study is clarified and expanded. In the conclusion, the scientific novelty and theoretical significance of the article are formulated.

Space and Place in Alcohol Research.

To summarize the recent literature on social and physical environments and their links to alcohol use and identify empirical research strategies that will lead to a better understanding of alcohol use in contexts. Recent research has continued to describe the importance of neighborhood and regional contexts on alcohol use, while a smaller emerging scientific literature assesses the impacts of contexts on drinking. The dynamic, longitudinal, and multiscale processes by which social and physical structures affect social interactions and substance use have not yet been uncovered or quantified. In order to understand and quantify these processes, assessments of exposures (e.g., how individuals use space) and risks within specific locations are essential. Methods to better assess these exposures and risks include model-based survey approaches, ecological momentary assessment (EMA) and other forms of ecologically- and temporally-specific analyses, affiliation network analyses, simulation models, and qualitative/multi-methods studies.

Transformational Leadership as a Critical Success Factor for Enterprise Resource Planning System Implementation

The successful implementation of an enterprise resource planning (ERP) system has been described as a challenging strategic initiative for many organizations in varied business settings and different organizational cul-tures. During the past two decades, there has been massive investment in adopting ERP system, in addition to a substantial increase in focusing on the importance of users’ acceptance of utilizing such technological technique. Despite the many advantages of successful installing of ERP system demonstrated in literature but still the failure rate of ERP projects is re-markably high. Leaders of ERP implementation projects have the challenge of displaying effective leadership skills and traits to justify strategic and operational decisions taken during implementation of ERP system. To provide better understanding of what may positively influence a successful implementation of ERP system, this research study is an attempt to inves-tigate whether leadership style especially transformational leadership has a significant impact on successful implementation of ERP systems. The theory of transformational and transactional leadership was the foundations for the researched leadership style in this study. A quantitative, non-experimental correlational empirical research strategy examined the degree of significance of the direct relationship between the independent variable of transformational leadership style and the dependent variable, perceived as ERP success. Projects’ leaders, executives, information technology, business managers, and end users who involved in adopting and using ERP system within their Egyptian organizations representing various business settings, were the targeted population of this research. Structural Equation Modeling (SEM) was conducted to test the research hypotheses and analyze the findings and results. The results of the study supported the existence of a significant relationship between transformational leadership style and successful implementation of ERP system.

Practice and ideology of regional studies of religious security

The contemporary Russian map of threats to religious security is multifaceted. The first place in the hierarchy of threats is the activity of radical Islamists promoting extremist goals, while the second place belongs to the activity of non-traditional religions. This article is devoted to the analysis of methodological tools and results of regional and All-Russian sociological surveys aimed at determining the quality of interfaith relations and the place of religious risks in the national security system. Research into the religious sphere requires a certain sensitivity, which only complicates the process of compiling empirical tools. This article analyzes the experience of sociological surveys in the Volga Region (Bashkortostan, Penze, Ulyanovsk, Mordovia, Astrakhan) and the North Caucasus, using the data from All-Russian surveys. The purpose of this article is to identify the most effective methodological strategies for measuring sectarian tension and determining the risk of religious violence. The analysis of methodological tools shows that the high anxiety of mass consciousness can be recorded using questions on a number of issues. They include the admissibility or inadmissibility of violence in interreligious relations; the need to grant special rights to a denomination (to formalize its dominant position); the benefits or harms of the transition from one religion to another; the attitude towards the demonstration of religious symbols in the public sphere (e. g. hijab). The analysis of empirical research strategies allowed recording the tendency to present non-traditional faiths for Russia as a serious threat to the religious security, as well as to unite under a single cap such diverse phenomena as Wahhabism, the movement of Jehovah’s Witnesses, Protestantism, and Krishnaism. On the contrary, Russian political scientists consider traditional religions the main allies of the state in the field of maintaining religious security. The author concludes that the choice of methods can influence individual and collective perceptions of religious security.

A theory of contingent business process management

PurposeMany researchers and practitioners suggest a contingent instead of a “one size fits all” approach in business process management (BPM). The purpose of this paper is to offer a contingency theory of BPM, which proposes contingency factors relevant to the successful management of business processes and that explains how and why these contingencies impact the relationships between process management and performance.Design/methodology/approachThe authors develop the theory by drawing on organizational information processing theory (OIPT) and applying an information processing (IP) perspective to the process level.FindingsThe premise of the model is that the process management mechanisms such as documentation, standardization or monitoring must compensate for the uncertainty and equivocality of the nature of the process that has to be managed. In turn, managing through successful adaptation is a prerequisite for process performance.Research limitations/implicationsThe theory provides a set of testable propositions that specify the relationship between process management mechanisms and process performance. The authors also discuss implications of the new theory for further theorizing and outline empirical research strategies that can be followed to enact, evaluate and extend the theory.Practical implicationsThe theory developed in this paper allows an alternative way to describe organizational processes and supports the derivation of context-sensitive management approaches for process documentation, standardization, monitoring, execution and coordination.Originality/valueThe theoretical model is novel in that it provides a contextualized view on BPM that acknowledges different types of processes and suggests different mechanisms for managing these. The authors hope the paper serves as inspiration both for further theory development as well as to empirical studies that test, refute, support or otherwise augment the arguments.

Corporate Governance of SOEs and Performance in Transition Countries. Evidence from Lithuania

This paper investigates whether and to what extent corporate governance mechanisms affect the efficiency of State Owned Enterprises (SOEs) operating in transition economies. Furthermore, it examines the relationship between corporate governance practice and its impact on both wholly state run SOEs and majority state run SOEs. We employed a unique dataset of corporate governance ratings (related to quality of transparency, quality of board, and quality of strategic planning, implementation and control) of commercial Lithuanian SOEs relating to the period following the introduction of the corporate governance reforms in the years 2012-2013. In order to investigate our research hypotheses, we set-up a two stage empirical research strategy that combined a non-parametric efficiency estimator (i.e., Data Envelopment Analysis) with a bootstrapped truncated regression. We built two aggregate indexes of corporate governance ratings to represent one dimension of corporate governance quality. We then ran a battery of regressions using both the aggregated and the single corporate governance indexes as independent variables. First, the paper finds that the wholly state ownership model of SOEs is positively correlated to efficiency (i.e., wholly SOEs are more efficient than majority SOEs). Moreover, overall corporate governance practices are efficiency-enhancing; more specifically, board quality and strategic planning seem to be effective internal governance mechanisms in promoting overall organizational efficiency. Interestingly, we uncovered that there exists a relationship between concentration of ownership and corporate governance practices, but this mitigated efficiency enhancement in wholly state run SOEs compared to majority state run SOEs. This effect was driven by the lower quality of the board. Overall, our findings illustrate that corporate governance reforms have enhanced efficiency, but wholly SOEs require a better implementation in order to achieve full efficiency gains.

Panel Data Estimation in Finance: Testable Assumptions and Parameter (In)Consistency

We examine the strict exogeneity assumption, a necessary and often overlooked condition for consistency of many panel data estimators that are used in financial research. We test this assumption in several common settings and find that these tests very frequently reject. We offer guidance on detecting violations of the strict exogeneity assumption and provide evidence on the possible magnitude of the resulting estimation errors. Alternative estimation approaches when strict exogeneity is violated are discussed. We investigate the testable assumptions underlying these alternative approaches and characterize current practices. Implications of our findings for empirical financial research strategies are discussed.

Corporate Governance of SOEs and Performance in Transition Countries. Evidence from Lithuania

This paper investigates whether and to what extent corporate governance mechanisms affect the efficiency of State Owned Enterprises (SOEs) operating in transition economies. Furthermore, it examines the relationship between corporate governance practice and its impact on both wholly state run SOEs and majority state run SOEs. We employed a unique dataset of corporate governance ratings (related to quality of transparency, quality of board, and quality of strategic planning, implementation and control) of commercial Lithuanian SOEs relating to the period following the introduction of the corporate governance reforms in the years 2012-2013. In order to investigate our research hypotheses, we set up a two-stage empirical research strategy that combined a non-parametric efficiency estimator (i.e., Data Envelopment Analysis) with a bootstrapped truncated regression. We built two aggregate indexes of corporate governance ratings to represent one dimension of corporate governance quality. We then ran a battery of regressions using both the aggregated and the single corporate governance indexes as independent variables. First, the paper finds that the wholly state ownership model of SOEs is positively correlated to efficiency (i.e., wholly SOEs are more efficient than majority SOEs). Moreover, overall corporate governance practices are efficiency-enhancing; more specifically, board quality and strategic planning seem to be effective internal governance mechanisms in promoting overall organizational efficiency. Interestingly, we uncovered that there exists a relationship between concentration of ownership and corporate governance practices, but this mitigated efficiency enhancement in wholly state run SOEs compared to majority state run SOEs. This effect was driven by the lower quality of the board. Overall, our findings illustrate that corporate governance reforms have enhanced efficiency, but wholly SOEs require a better implementation in order to achieve full efficiency gains.

Evolution of library and information science, 1965–2005: Content analysis of journal articles

This article first analyzes library and information science (LIS) research articles published in core LIS journals in 2005. It also examines the development of LIS from 1965 to 2005 in light of comparable data sets for 1965, 1985, and 2005. In both cases, the authors report (a) how the research articles are distributed by topic and (b) what approaches, research strategies, and methods were applied in the articles. In 2005, the largest research areas in LIS by this measure were information storage and retrieval, scientific communication, library and information‐service activities, and information seeking. The same research areas constituted the quantitative core of LIS in the previous years since 1965. Information retrieval has been the most popular area of research over the years. The proportion of research on library and information‐service activities decreased after 1985, but the popularity of information seeking and of scientific communication grew during the period studied. The viewpoint of research has shifted from library and information organizations to end users and development of systems for the latter. The proportion of empirical research strategies was high and rose over time, with the survey method being the single most important method. However, attention to evaluation and experiments increased considerably after 1985. Conceptual research strategies and system analysis, description, and design were quite popular, but declining. The most significant changes from 1965 to 2005 are the decreasing interest in library and information‐service activities and the growth of research into information seeking and scientific communication.

O Processo de organizar em agências de viagens: influências estéticas, etnometodológicas e práticas

No contexto das organizações turísticas, a relação entre o processo de organizar com o de aprender e gerar conhecimento é algo latente, em especial, naquelas de pequeno e médio porte como são a grande maioria das agências de viagens no Brasil. Contudo, de acordo com Valtonen (2009) este tema vem recebendo pouca atenção do meio acadêmico nas áreas de administração e turismo. Este artigo adotou como questão norteadora: Como ocorre o processo de organizar de um grupo de lojas, de uma agência de viagens, analisado com as lentes da estética, da etnometodologia e do conceito de prática? O principal objetivo foi compreender como uma pequena empresa de turismo, agência de viagens, estabelece seu processo organizativo a partir das suas práticas cotidianas de forma naturalística e situada, influenciadas pelo uso da tecnologia. A pesquisa adotou como referencial teórico a estética organizacional, a etnometodologia e o conceito de prática. A estratégia de investigação empírica adotada foi a etnometodologia em uma agência de viagens com três lojas na grande São Paulo. Como principais resultados a pesquisa aponta que o uso da tecnologia como prática na organização pesquisada faz grande influência no seu modus operandi e no seu processo de organizar.

An investigation on the information systems research in supply chain management: an analysis of research topic and methodology

This study is designed to investigate the present status of information system (IS) research in relation to supply chain management (SCM) in order to provide how IS in SCM research is likely to develop in the near future. We attempted to investigate the existing literature about information systems in the fields of SCM that were selected from 91 journal articles published between 2006 and 2010, including the database of ScienceDirect. As a result, we found the current trend and future direction of research with the most popular research topics and methodologies were in the articles. The most frequent research keywords appeared in the sample articles are the characteristics and goals of supply chain, inventory, and the methods of data collection and analysis. And the major research methods in empirical research strategy are a lab experiment and survey. In addition, we found that the topics of research associated with IS in SCM are diversified, while the research methods are limited because of the lack of theoretical stance and qualitative study. Therefore, future research needs to focus on how or why question research which employs qualitative method to find the underlying theoretical mechanism. We conducted this research to determine the direction of future research in this field and such a direction would be helpful to suggest how it be further conducted. Our understanding of the ongoing issues discussed on current IS papers in the field of SCM will be beneficial for both academic and practical purposes.