The Role of Development Oriented Non-Governmental Organizations in Creating Shared Value in the Educational Sector of Ghana: The Mediating Role of Basic Needs

This paper employed a structural equation modeling technique to investigate how Development Oriented Non-Governmental Organizations (DONGOs) could complement government efforts through the concept of shared value creation in the educational sector of Ghana. To address this objective, we analyzed whether DONGOs could create shared value by pursuing both social and economic objectives and also how the growing basic needs of education could influence these relationships. The study concluded that basic needs fully mediate social value to shared value and partially mediate economic value to shared value. Moreover, the study revealed that economic value to shared value creation is statistically significant and also demonstrated a positive and significant relationship between social value and shared value. The results further indicate that basic needs have a positive and significant relationship with shared value.

     

Social insurance schemes in the Gulf countries

Being economically well established, the member countries of the Gulf Cooperation Council have unique social insurance schemes. Based on the defined benefit principle, they have succeeded in creating large reserves, which are managed and invested independently by the social insurance institutions. However, the schemes are facing a continuous escalation in their costs, due to their generosity rather than the population ageing observed in industrialized countries. This trend may well support the argument that the schemes in the region can cope with conventional reforms like increasing contribution rates, raising retirement age and restricting early retirement, rather than switching to a defined contribution system.     

Success Traps,Dynamic Capabilities and Firm Performance

Dynamic capabilities (DCs) are fundamental to the understanding of differential firm performance. However, the question remains why some firms are better at developing and applying DCs than others. In particular, successful firms have been warned against the tendency to fall into a success or competence trap, where success reinforces exploitation of existing competences and crowds out exploration of new competences, hindering the development of DCs. Therefore, this study examines the effects of success traps on DCs and consequently firm performance, taking into account firm strategy and market dynamism. To facilitate this, our study also identifies the commonalities of DCs across firms. Drawing on survey data from 113 UK high‐tech small and medium‐sized firms, we find that success traps have a significant, strong negative effect on DCs, which in turn have a weak positive effect on firm performance; DCs are manifested through absorptive and transformative capabilities as two common features across firms. We also find that the development and application of DCs is related to internal factors (such as success traps) rather than external factors (such as market dynamism).     

Bayesian prediction based on type-I censored data from a mixture of Burr type XII distribution and its reciprocal

This paper is concerned with the problem of obtaining Bayesian prediction bounds of future observables from a finite mixture of Burr type XII distribution with its reciprocal based on type-I censored data. We consider the one-sample and two-sample prediction schemes using the Markov chain Monte Carlo algorithm. Numerical examples are given to illustrate the procedures and the accuracy of prediction intervals is investigated via extensive Monte Carlo simulation.     

‘The orange was dried up and shriveled’: oranges and the crisis of nationalism in Ghassan Kanafani and Smilansky Yizhar

The year is 1948. Palestinians, the majority of whom lived in or near the coastal areas extending from Acre to the northern part of Gaza, were dispossessed of their land. The loss of coastal areas, characterised by the abundance of orange-groves and the citrus industry, is represented in Palestinian and Israeli post-nakba literature. Whilst Kanafani and Yizhar use the orange symbol to link between land, memory, belonging and the necessity of Palestinian/Jewish return, I offer a quintessential comparison between both writers who also employ this symbol to problematise the presence of Arab nationalism and to build an image of Zionism-in-crisis.