Volatile Environment Research Articles

Effective motivation, effective personnel management in rehabilitation centers of Kazakhstan

This article discusses effective personnel management in rehabilitation centers in Kazakhstan. In modern business, with its inherent volatile competitive environment, the implementation of effective activities is impossible without effective personnel management. As a result of sociological research, the degree of satisfaction with the incentive system for medical personnel of the Rehabilitation Center Kokshe was revealed. From these data it can be seen that for the employees of the rehabilitation center, the most significant motivational factors are economic methods, and among the preferred motivational methods are socio-psychological ones. To substantiate the importance of applying socio-psychological methods in the system of medical personnel management and the formation of a personnel management model, methodological approaches of classical theories of motivation were considered: a questionnaire according to A. Maslow's theory and F. Herzberg 's tests. The effectiveness of the organization's activities is determined by the ratio of the results achieved and the resources expended on this and is made up of the efficiency of using various factors, one of which is motivated work. The success of healthcare institutions, including rehabilitation centers, depends on the extent to which medical workers realize their professional potential. We have proposed a more advanced and effective management approach – the KPI method for motivating medical personnel in Kazakhstan, which allows us to organically combine material and non-material incentives with the motivational impact of all healthcare workers. The presented calculations showed that the introduction of personnel assessment according to the KPI system for all medical services will provide a multiplier effect and improve the competitiveness of rehabilitation centers and healthcare in general.

Fintech innovations and Islamic banking performance: Post-pandemic challenges and opportunities

This study explores the pivotal role of financial technology (FinTech) in the performance of Islamic banks and financial institutions, considering both challenges and opportunities encountered during the pandemic-induced market disruptions. Amid lockdowns and economic uncertainties, the study delves into the strategies adopted by several countries, with a particular emphasis on Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries, along with Jordan, Indonesia, Malaysia, and Pakistan, underscoring the importance of technological innovation in fostering a dynamic Islamic finance sector. Utilizing a data analysis approach, the study assesses the impact of heightened digitalization and the integration of FinTech on the resilience of the Islamic finance industry within an inherently volatile environment, marked by challenges during pre and post pandemics. The findings reveal that the adoption of FinTech fortifies the industry’s resilience and unveils novel growth prospects. However, the study also identifies potential avenues for expansion, particularly in Sukuk issuance, through the implementation of regulatory guidelines and faster adoption. The research underscores the transformative influence of financial technology reforms on the growth trajectory of Islamic banks. In light of the superior performance of Islamic banking in selected domains, this study advocates for a paradigm shift within the industry, encouraging the robust development of FinTech solutions to enhance its global market presence. AcknowledgmentThe authors would like to acknowledge that this research work was partially financed by Kingdom University, Bahrain from the research grant number: 2023 - 10 - 012.

SATISFACTION OF THE JOURNALISTS WITH INTRA-ORGANIZATIONAL RIGHTS IN AFGHAN PRIVATE BROADCAST MEDIA

This study delves into the satisfaction of journalists with intra-organizational rights in Afghan private broadcast media. The aim is to explore the extent to which journalists in the Afghan private media sector are satisfied with the rights and privileges provided within their organizations. The research examines the impact of these rights on journalists' overall job satisfaction and ability to fulfill their professional responsibilities effectively. Considering the challenging media landscape in Afghanistan, where journalists operate in a volatile environment, understanding their satisfaction with intra-organizational rights becomes crucial. This study employs a comprehensive approach to analyze the multifaceted factors influencing journalists' satisfaction, including but not limited to editorial independence, freedom of expression, access to information, fair remuneration, job security, and opportunities for professional growth. The quantitative research method was utilized to achieve a comprehensive analysis. A structured survey is administered to a representative sample of journalists to gather quantitative data and measure satisfaction levels quantitatively. The result of this study will shed light on the overall satisfaction levels of journalists with intra-organizational rights in Afghan private broadcast media. The results provided valuable insights for media organizations, policymakers, and stakeholders to identify areas of improvement and develop strategies to enhance journalists' satisfaction, which, in turn, can positively affect their productivity, professional development, and the quality of media content produced. This research contributes to the existing literature by specifically focusing on the satisfaction of journalists with intra-organizational rights in the Afghan private media sector.

Investment project management paradigm: budgeting challenges

Introduction. The paper discusses methods of investment capital budget management, which adapts budget management practices and increases synergy with project management, adjusting the allocation of resources in accordance with the constraints and operational risks of business processes. Businesses regularly use project management to achieve unique results with limited resources under critical time constraints. In the service sector of the economy (in particular, trade), the use of project management to achieve organizational goals is even more common. The purpose of the paper is the application of the budgeting system in the management of the investment project. Results. As a result, it encourages flexibility in dealing with contingencies, focus on a strategic perspective, speed of budget management, cost-effective budgeting, added value to the enterprise and encouragement of collaboration. Thus, constraints can be operational or managerial, related to organizational politics and culture. To identify constraints in an organization, you must understand how the organization works as a system. In the business sphere, the functioning of the company is a vision of business processes. Business processes are sets of activities that create results (products and services) whose value is perceived by interest groups (stakeholders). The impact of deterministic decisions in the short term on the overall result of the organization decreases. However, budget management methods do not represent a probabilistic approach, as seen in the proposal of the critical path method as a means of improving project management in a volatile business environment. Conclusion. It is recommended that each capital investment of the organization be structured in the form of projects, and the method of rewarding managers should also reward those who achieve goals with minimal use of investment resources. If possible, the manager should strive to evenly return resources to investment capital. Finally, it is suggested for future research to identify other business practices that can benefit from this paradigm shift.

The Impact of Debt Restructuring on Debt Maturity, Cost of Capital and Cash Holding of Non-Financial Institutions in Developing Countries: A Conceptual Framework

This paper delves into the integral role of debt restructuring in shaping the financial architecture of non-financial firms, particularly within developing nations. In volatile economic environments, understanding the nuances of debt restructuring becomes paramount for these entities. Key findings indicate that smaller non-financial enterprises, often constrained by financial limitations, rely on debt as a tool for operational continuity, with a marked preference for long-term maturity. The research further elucidates the broader repercussions of debt restructuring on a firm's cost of capital. For nascent enterprises, immediate capital for new ventures is challenging to procure. Debt restructuring, especially with extended debt periods, emerges as a strategic fulcrum, enabling these firms to navigate fiscal challenges and capitalize on future growth prospects. The nexus between debt restructuring and a firm's cash reserves is accentuated during economic downturns. Effective liquidity management becomes vital, as companies balance between expenditure and savings. The technological disparity between firms in developed versus developing nations further complicates this dynamic. While advanced entities harness cutting-edge technologies, their counterparts in developing regions grapple with outdated infrastructures and, at times, lax corporate governance. This study underscores that for many firms in developing nations, debt restructuring transcends its role as a mere financial tool, evolving into a critical lifeline that facilitates economic resilience and growth.

Fashioning the Armenian City in Lebanon: Anjar as a Microcosm of Lebanese-Armenian Identity

The town of Anjar in Lebanon is a microcosm of Armenian-Lebanese identity. This article analyzes how the politics of space in Anjar reflects a double necessity: on the one hand, the preservation of a traumatic memory of the 1939 displacement from Musa Dagh, forced resettlement and resilience; on the other hand, the adaptation to the highly volatile political environment of the Bekaa Valley, which requires fluid alliances and negotiations with multiple local actors. The article provides a brief history of the urban development of the town with its unique design, as well as the lengthy processes of identity-building, affective investment, and memorial practices that remain relevant to this day.

Placing career resilience: Collaborative workspaces as situated resources for adaptation and adaptability

Processes of creation and innovation become increasingly mobile and temporarily make use of collaborative (work)spaces for paid and unpaid work, tinkering, social experimentation, collaboration, and entrepreneurship. Diverse forms of collaborative workspaces (CWSs) proliferated in many cities worldwide in the past 15 years and manifested in a diversity of forms, such as e.g. fablabs, maker-, hacker-, or coworking spaces. Despite the diversity, these spaces share three distinctive features: openness for a diversified set of users, aspiration to promote creative processes, and potential to allow for societal experimentation. So far, empirical research either highlights their functions in safeguarding the deficiencies related to new work regimes or the affordances for fostering collaborative creativity and innovation. We propose career resilience as a concept to integrate both perspectives. We investigate CWSs as locally situated contexts enabling users to combine stabilising and transformative resources to advance their careers. The paper draws on more than 100 qualitative interviews with operators, managers, and users of CWSs in the metropolitan regions Amsterdam, Berlin, and Detroit. We inductively develop five different types of practices that address fundamental career related uncertainties to individual and collective measures to create career resilience. In CWSs, users seek company, focus, assets, guidance, and meaning. CWSs are thus spatial and organisational settings that complement multisited, mobile work practices and that illustrate the importance of permanent organisational and material places in increasingly volatile working environments.

Counterproductive evolution: the long-term effects of short-term interventionism following the Great Financial Crisis

Following the 2008 financial crisis, policymakers in advanced economies employed unconventional economic interventions that were meant to be short-term but continued for more than a decade and were followed by unconventional interventions in non-financial markets. What causal mechanisms connect short-term unconventional interventions with long-term policy change? By developing a constructivist-evolutionary framework, we suggest that employing unconventional policy ideas for the sake of securing the pre-crisis growth regime, in a volatile economic environment, has repeatedly failed policymakers’ expectations. The gap between expectations and outcomes expanded the policy space for unconventional policy ideas, and activated an evolutionary process, through which expanding ‘temporary’ interventions have been adopted in additional areas, became hard to reverse and modified macroeconomic priorities. A comparative process-tracing analysis of two case studies – the UK and Israel – demonstrates how short-term employment of innovative policy ideas and long-term change in economic policy are tightly connected via causal ideational evolutionary mechanisms.

Optimal financing and sales channel strategies for a capital-constrained supply chain with different risk preferences

In a volatile market environment, it is an important issue whether a manufacturer with capital constraints should establish an online direct sales channel to encroach the retail market. In addition to loans from financial institutions, third-party logistics (3PL) financing provides an alternative way for the manufacturer to solve its capital difficulties. Considering that the manufacturer exhibits diversified risk preferences for uncertain demand, we build an analytical model to examine the financing and sales channel decisions of the manufacturer, retailer and 3PL. Further, the impacts of differentiated freight rates and portfolio financing on key decisions are explored. Our results mainly contribute to the literature in two aspects: In terms of financing strategies, the 3PL tends to conduct financial business at a lower interest rate under a single-channel strategy, but a reduction in the 3PL interest rate prevents the manufacturer from adopting 3PL financing. In contrast, a larger financing need promotes the 3PL to offer a loan with a higher interest rate under a dual-channel strategy, which in turn drives the manufacturer to enhance its preference for bank financing. 3PL financing is always more conducive to improving the retailer’s profit. In terms of sales strategies, a smaller establishment cost of the online channel or greater risk tolerance encourages the manufacturer to implement the dual-channel strategy, while lower price competition and online channel preference prevent the manufacturer from encroaching so that it only employs a single offline channel for sales. An increase in price competition between channels encourages the manufacturer to establish the online channel, and manufacturer encroachment weakens the retailer’s profit. Furthermore, differentiated freight rates reduces the participants’ propensity for 3PL financing, while portfolio financing enhances the manufacturer’s motivation to develop the online sales channel.

Sensory processing in humans and mice fluctuates between external and internal modes.

Perception is known to cycle through periods of enhanced and reduced sensitivity to external information. Here, we asked whether such slow fluctuations arise as a noise-related epiphenomenon of limited processing capacity or, alternatively, represent a structured mechanism of perceptual inference. Using 2 large-scale datasets, we found that humans and mice alternate between externally and internally oriented modes of sensory analysis. During external mode, perception aligns more closely with the external sensory information, whereas internal mode is characterized by enhanced biases toward perceptual history. Computational modeling indicated that dynamic changes in mode are enabled by 2 interlinked factors: (i) the integration of subsequent inputs over time and (ii) slow antiphase oscillations in the impact of external sensory information versus internal predictions that are provided by perceptual history. We propose that between-mode fluctuations generate unambiguous error signals that enable optimal inference in volatile environments.

Keeping the Liancourt Rocks Dispute Afloat

Originating in its modern form during the postwar period, the Lian-court Rocks dispute between South Korea and Japan has long exasperated observers who recognize the need for cooperation in an increasingly volatile regional political environment.1 While the existing literature centers on variables ranging from nationalism in the public sphere to resource acquisition, this study argues that a more powerful explanation lies in the interactions between the two governments and their respective publics. Specifically, each state has actively engaged in a major nation-building process to integrate the dispute into their national identities in order to rally the public around perceived territorial transgressions. Through these consolidated identities, the Korean and Japanese publics later compel their governments to sustain more hostile policies even during periods where the two governments may desire reconciliation or compromise, and punish them in instances of perceived defection. This dynamic between the two governments and their citizenry suggests that conventional explanations grounded in material variables—such as competition over resources—are insufficient in explaining the severity and longevity of the dispute, leaving room for identity to occupy a major role.

3D real-time dynamic path planning for UAV based on improved interfered fluid dynamical system and artificial neural network

In complex and volatile unknown flight environments, the limited environmental information obtained by sensors in the face of sudden dynamic and static obstacles makes it extremely challenging for unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) to obtain a safe and efficient path to avoid obstacles and reach a designated target point. Therefore, a real-time dynamic path planning method based on an improved interfered fluid dynamical system (IFDS) and artificial neural network (ANN) is proposed to enhance path quality and computational efficiency. Firstly, to address the issue of insufficient sample quality and quantity, IFDS is employed as the fundamental method for path planning to simulate and generate an adequate amount of sample data for the ANN training. Then, an enhanced sand cat swarm optimization algorithm (ESCSO) with an adaptive social neighborhood search mechanism and Lévy flight strategy is proposed to improve the sample quality. Secondly, the information between the UAV and the target points and obstacles is extracted from the sample data as the input for the network, the parameters of the IFDS are used as the feature extraction at the output of the network, and the ESCSO is applied to optimize the weights and biases of the ANN, enabling offline training of the neural network. Finally, the trained neural network is utilized to dynamically output IFDS parameters based on the real-time environmental information obtained from the sensors, enabling the generation of real-time obstacle avoidance paths. Experimental results in a series of complex simulated environments demonstrate that the proposed method outperforms other algorithms in terms of path quality and meets real-time requirements. It provides excellent obstacle avoidance characteristics for the UAV.

Coexistence of Competing Microbial Strains under Twofold Environmental Variability and Demographic Fluctuations

Microbial populations generally evolve in volatile environments, under conditions fluctuating between harsh and mild, e.g. as the result of sudden changes in toxin concentration or nutrient abundance. Environmental variability (EV) thus shapes the long-time population dynamics, notably by influencing the ability of different strains of microorganisms to coexist. Inspired by the evolution of antimicrobial resistance, we study the dynamics of a community consisting of two competing strains subject to twofold EV. The level of toxin varies in time, favouring the growth of one strain under low drug concentration and the other strain when the toxin level is high. We also model time-changing resource abundance by a randomly switching carrying capacity that drives the fluctuating size of the community. While one strain dominates in a static environment, we show that species coexistence is possible in the presence of EV. By computational and analytical means, we determine the environmental conditions under which long-lived coexistence is possible and when it is almost certain. Notably, we study the circumstances under which environmental and demographic fluctuations promote, or hinder, the strains coexistence. We also determine how the make-up of the coexistence phase and the average abundance of each strain depend on the EV.

Analysis of the Use of Agile Methods, Tools and Techniques in Foundry Enterprises

Abstract In an increasingly volatile environment, the importance of agile management, which should be based on flexible procedures and agile strategy, is increasing. The purpose of the study was to analyze the trend of development, level of knowledge and implications with the application of agile methods, techniques in project, program and manufacturing process management tools, as well as to identify areas of activity of foundry companies in the context of increasing the efficiency of their operations through the use of agile project approach. The completed research indicated that the knowledge and variety of application of agile methods, tools and techniques is at a relatively low level within the framework of project, program and manufacturing process management in the surveyed foundries. Among the most commonly used instrumentation are: PDCA, Kanban, SCRUM, SCRUMBAN, Lean Development, DMAIC and XP. The research showed that the use of agile instrumentation in the areas of projects, programs and manufacturing process management allows work to be done in an orderly and transparent manner. Foundries that consistently use agile instrumentation produce high-quality and non-conformity-free products with short time-to-market. Future research directions will be to perform a comparative analysis of the level of knowledge and implications of agile instrumentation in foundries located in Poland and selected neighboring countries.

Best practices to successfully integrate the strategic and financial objectives with the S&OP/IBP model

The recent global disruptions that affected the industrial dynamics, from trade wars to the COVID-19 pandemic, from geopolitical tensions to the steep increase in energy cost and disruptions in the raw material sourcing and logistic dynamics, placed an unprecedented challenge on organisational supply chains, which had to reinvent themselves to maintain competitiveness, flexibility and reliability in an extremely volatile environment. Historically, supply chains relied on industry-standard planning models, such as sales and operations planning (S&OP) or integrated business planning (IBP), as a foundation of their planning process through a cooperative connection between demand and supply planning, and through an established process to collect all the key data and information in a consistent form to support all the critical decision-making processes. Nonetheless, in most cases, poorly or partially implemented S&OP/IBP models have failed to keep their promises, as companies struggled to achieve a full integration of processes, functions or key performance indicators (KPIs), while a robust integrated business process is able to guarantee a holistic and comprehensive planning and performance management system supporting the decisionmaking process and ultimately delivering a positive impact to the organisation’s profit and loss (P&L). A mature planning model should therefore embrace both a tactical and a strategic time frame, thus ensuring a strategic alignment, a ‘vertical link’, between the short to mid-term operational plans and the organisation’s long-term strategic objectives. The whole process consequently must be designed as a robust operating model allowing the organisation to monitor, update, execute and eventually deliver its strategic goals. This paper focuses on the best practices adopted by AkzoNobel to implement a mature IBP model across the whole organisation, and to achieve a full integration with the pre-existing financial planning processes in its journey that started in 2018 and is still ongoing today.

Scholarship in Times of Constitutional Transformation: A View from Hong Kong

Abstract Hong Kong's constitutional order has been undergoing a momentous transformation since 2020. The introduction of the Hong Kong National Security Law and the use of a plethora of other security tools have pushed Hong Kong's largely liberal legal order in an increasingly authoritarian direction. This article examines the implications of these changes for academic freedom in the territory. Through the lens of Hong Kong, it examines the unique challenges facing constitutional law scholars in authoritarian or liberal backsliding contexts, as well as the distinct contributions they can make. It concludes with reflections on the relevance of arguments against `scholactivism' to authoritarian contexts. The analysis in this article will help us to understand what scholars should and can do in politically volatile environments more generally.

Integrating the Concept of Situational Leadership and V.U.C.A. in Formulating Adaptive and Responsive Defense Policies

The effectiveness of defense policies is crucial in today's volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous (V.U.C.A.) global security environment for maintaining national security. This study uses qualitative research and secondary data analysis. The study suggests that situational leadership principles can improve defense policies' effectiveness in V.U.C.A. environments, but challenges remain in integrating these theories. The research identifies barriers to change, including resistance, bureaucratic inertia, limited resources, and a lack of situational leadership training, necessitating understanding, capacity-building, interdisciplinary collaboration, and stakeholder engagement. Policymakers must prioritize agility, flexibility, and innovation in developing adaptive defense policies, incorporating situational leadership, effective communication, shared leadership, and continuous monitoring and evaluation.

Fruit bats adjust their decision-making process according to environmental dynamics

One of the main functions of behavioral plasticity lies in the ability to contend with dynamic environments. Indeed, while numerous studies have shown that animals adapt their behavior to the environment, how they adapt their latent learning and decision strategies to changes in the environment is less understood. Here, we used a controlled experiment to examine the bats’ ability to adjust their decision strategy according to the environmental dynamics. Twenty-five Egyptian fruit bats were placed individually in either a stable or a volatile environment for four consecutive nights. In the stable environment, two feeders offered food, each with a different reward probability (0.2 vs. 0.8) that remained fixed over two nights and were then switched, while in the volatile environment, the positions of the more and the less rewarding feeders were changed every hour. We then fit two alternative commonly used models namely, reinforcement learning and win-stay-lose-shift strategies to the bats' behavior. We found that while the bats adapted their decision-making strategy to the environmental dynamics, they seemed to be limited in their responses based on natural priors. Namely, when the environment had changed slowly, at a rate that is natural for these bats, they seemed to rely on reinforcement learning and their performance was nearly optimal, but when the experimental environment changed much faster than in the natural environment, the bats stopped learning and switched to a random decision-making strategy. Together, these findings exemplify both the bats’ decision-making plasticity as well as its natural limitations.

Volatility-dependent probability weighting and the dynamics of the pricing kernel puzzle

In order to estimate volatility-dependent probability weighting functions, we obtain risk neutral and physical densities from the Pan (J Financ Econ 63(1):3–50, 2002. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0304-405X(01)00088-5) stochastic volatility and jumps model. Across volatility levels, we find pronounced inverse S-shapes, i.e. small probabilities are overweighted, and probability weighting almost monotonically increases in volatility, indicating higher skewness preferences and crash aversion in volatile market environments. Moreover, by estimating probabilistic risk attitudes, equivalent to the share of risk aversion related to probability weighting, we shed further light on the pricing kernel puzzle. While pricing kernels estimated from the Pan (J Financ Econ 63(1):3–50, 2002. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0304-405X(01)00088-5) model display the typical U-shape as documented in the literature, pricing kernels—net of probability weighting—are strictly monotonically decreasing and thus in line with economic theory. Equivalently, we find risk aversion to be positive across wealth levels. Our results are robust to alternative maturities, wealth percentiles, alternative functional forms, a nonparametric empirical setting and variations of the Pan (J Financ Econ 63(1):3–50, 2002. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0304-405X(01)00088-5) coefficient estimates.

How do transport companies execute strategies in a volatile environment? A qualitative inquiry

PurposeThe purpose of this study was to explore how transport companies in Uganda execute strategies in a turbulent business environment.Design/methodology/approachThe study adopted an exploratory qualitative methodology using the data collected through an open-ended instrument. Utilizing the qualitative data analysis software QSR NVivo9, the data were analyzed following the Gioia's methodology. Verbatim texts were used to explain the emergent themes.FindingsThe study's findings show that to successfully execute strategies, companies in Uganda communicate, coordinate and put control systems in their operations. The activities undertaken include customer care, timely settlement of complaints, comfortable seats, playing local music, partnerships with reliable fuel stations, setting up strategic offices, cost management, use of experienced drivers, sub-renting vehicles and inspections.Originality/valueThe study produces a pioneering result of how transport companies execute strategies in a turbulent business environment, an aspect that has not been adequately highlighted in previous studies.