Protected Sites: Reconceptualising Secret Societies in Colonial and Postcolonial Singapore

Street gangs in Singapore are commonly known as secret societies. The irony behind this term is that these secret societies have not only been contributing to the making of modern Singapore for more than a century, they have often carried out their dealings in the public sphere. These overt operations of the underworld are possible, in part, due to the symbiotic relationship forged between the Chinese triads and the police which have continued till today. Through examining the notion of protected sites, this article explores how the postcolonial state has taken on a similar pragmatic approach as that practised by its colonial predecessor in the management of the criminal underworld.     

Evaluating the Cost,Safety, and Proliferation Risks of Small Floating Nuclear Reactors

It is hard to see how our energy system can be decarbonized if the world abandons nuclear power, but equally hard to introduce the technology in nonnuclear energy states. This is especially true in countries with limited technical, institutional, and regulatory capabilities, where safety and proliferation concerns are acute. Given the need to achieve serious emissions mitigation by mid‐century, and the multidecadal effort required to develop robust nuclear governance institutions, we must look to other models that might facilitate nuclear plant deployment while mitigating the technology's risks. One such deployment paradigm is the build‐own‐operate‐return model. Because returning small land‐based reactors containing spent fuel is infeasible, we evaluate the cost, safety, and proliferation risks of a system in which small modular reactors are manufactured in a factory, and then deployed to a customer nation on a floating platform. This floating small modular reactor would be owned and operated by a single entity and returned unopened to the developed state for refueling. We developed a decision model that allows for a comparison of floating and land‐based alternatives considering key International Atomic Energy Agency plant‐siting criteria. Abandoning onsite refueling is beneficial, and floating reactors built in a central facility can potentially reduce the risk of cost overruns and the consequences of accidents. However, if the floating platform must be built to military‐grade specifications, then the cost would be much higher than a land‐based system. The analysis tool presented is flexible, and can assist planners in determining the scope of risks and uncertainty associated with different deployment options.     

Preservation properties for the mean residual life ordering

Sereral preservation results for the mean residual life (mr) ordering are given. In particular, we show that the mr-ordering is preserved under convolutions, mixtures and weak convergence.     

Financial Contracting,Governance Structures and the Accounting Regulation of Islamic Banks: An Analysis in Terms of Agency Theory and Transaction Cost Economics

Because Islamic banks are prohibited from entering into transactions based on riba (interest), they mobilise funds mainly on the basis of the mudaraba (profit-sharing) form of contract. Thus, in the place of interest-bearing customer deposits, Islamic banks offer investment accounts the return on which depends on the return on the pool of assets in which the customers' funds are invested by the bank. In contrast to conventional deposits, such investment accounts therefore yield a variable periodic return which may be negative (a loss). Islamic investment accounts are thus a form of limited-duration equity investment.This type of investment account raises a set of issues concerning the contractual relations between the bank and the holders of such investment accounts. These issues may be addressed from the perspectives of both Agency Theory (principal-agent and principal-principal relations) and Transaction Cost Economics (contractual forms and governance structures), and it is the purpose of this paper to do so. In particular, we focus on governance issues such as the monitoring possibilities which may or may not be contractually available to investment account holders. We conclude that, under present contractual arrangements, investment account holders depend unduly upon 'vicarious' monitoring by or on behalf of shareholders, a situation aggravated by current shortcomings in financial reporting and limitations of the scope of external auditing. The latter have implications for accounting regulation as applied to Islamic banks. The paper concludes with some suggestions as to how this situation could be ameliorated.     

Halal value creation: its role in adding value and enabling logistics service

Abstract

The need to implement halal value creation into logistics and supply chains has been recognised recently. Yet, there is a lack of efforts to leverage resources and capabilities in contributing to the halal value creation for competitive advantage and subsequently firm performance. The purpose of this paper is to understand the halal value creation of current practices and its role in adding value and enabling logistics service. A structure interview of seven third-party logistics (3PL) providers is conducted to provide more precise perception about works by viewing with the lens prescribed by practitioners rather than reviews. The results draw the novel practices of halal value creation in logistics, that have not been revealed and further identifies five emerging resources of ‘resource-based halal logistics’. These create innovation capability (ability to launch successful halal goods/services) in logistics services, which are transformed into benefits of profits for 3PLs and value for customers.     

The Impact of Transformational Leadership on Organizational Citizenship Behaviours: The Contingent Role of Public Service Motivation

In this paper we examine whether the relationship between transformational leadership and organizational citizenship behaviours (OCBs) is contingent on public service motivation (PSM). We propose that PSM may reduce the motivational influences of transformational leaders’ behaviours on followers’ OCBs in public sector organizations. Using a sample of Mexican employees we tested this proposition with structural equation modelling. Our results show that the motivational effects of transformational leadership were less for public sector followers higher in PSM than for those lower in PSM. A follow‐up study in private sector organizations did not reveal a similar interaction effect. These findings appear consistent with previous research demonstrating that PSM is more aligned to the goals and values of public rather than private sector organizations. Nevertheless, the direct effects of PSM on OCBs remained in the private sector.     

On periodic time-varying bilinear processes: structure and asymptotic inference

This paper is devoted to the bilinear time series models with periodic-varying coefficients \(\left( { PBL}\right) \). So, firstly conditions ensuring the existence of periodic stationary solutions of the \({ PBL}\) and the existence of higher-order moments of such solutions are given. A distribution free approach to the parameter estimation of \({ PBL}\) is presented. The proposed method relies on minimum distance estimator based on the first and second order empirical moments of the observed process. Consistency and asymptotic normality of the estimator are discussed. Examples and Monte Carlo simulation results illustrate the practical relevancy of our general theoretical results are presented.