1,720,958 research outputs found
Small and Medium Enterprises\u27 Risk Exposures and Mitigation Approaches in Nigeria
Full text linkRisks militating against small and medium enterprises (SMEs) have been on the increase due to how risks mitigations are conducted by the owners/operators. Although thorough understanding of businesses undertaken by the owners of SMEs enables them to have a clear picture of risks affecting their businesses so as to act in proactive manner in order to mitigate or avoid the impending risks. To assess the risk exposures of SMEs, a random sampling technique was used to select 209 SMEs within Lagos and Benin City. Both descriptive and inferential statistics such as Phi and Gamma were used to analyse the data collected. The study revealed that the relationship between SMEs’ operators understanding of business with risk mitigation, and record backup system are significantly low. However, the understanding is moderately strong with availability of risk management team to mitigate risk after the event (ATE) by the operators of SMEs. The study concluded that SMEs’ risk exposures are significant with the operators’ understanding of the business which in turn affects how record backup system is maintained and how credit collection strategies are used. Consequently, the study recommended among other things that SMEs’ operators need to have thorough understanding of their businesses and they can even hire experts to train them on record backup of vital information of their businesses
Moral hazards and service delivery: Evidence from National Health Insurance Scheme in Jos Metropolis
No full textOperational efficiency of health sector in term of medical facilities and availability of vaccines is crucial to the performance of National Health Insurance Scheme (NHIS) accredited hospitals. At the same time, availability of qualified medical doctors and effective management of queue are also important to enrollees’ satisfaction. In order to determine whether the NHIS hospitals are efficient in service delivery, the impact of three key variables including operational efficiency, information asymmetry and moral hazard were tested on service delivery in health sector. The study revealed that th e selected hospitals are efficient in service delivery by 26.4%. However, the health care providers are found to exhibit a kind of moral hazards and nondisclosure of information about NHIS services which lead to reduction in service delivery by 5.2%. Similarly, information asymmetry and moral hazard were found to be responsible for 31.9% of health risk behaviour observed among the NHIS enrollees. Meanwhile, it was found that a small magnitude of efficient service delivery leads to reduction in health risk behaviour by 5.4%. Hence, the study concluded that the 32% of efficient service delivery is due to operational efficiency, information asymmetry and moral hazard while about 31.9% of health risk behaviour among NHIS enrollees is due to information asymmetry and moral hazard exhibited NHIS primary healthcare providers. We recommend that NHIS primary health care providers should try as much as possible to reduce their involvement in moral hazard that distorts the achievement of NHIS primary objective of making healthcare accessible to all enrollees.Keywords: moral hazard, health risk behaviour, health insurance, public hospital
Impact of service delivery in pension industry on fraud reduction and employees' motivation for quality service
No full textPension scheme is an important motivational tool for the protection of employees’ old age at retirement. To make this a reality, Pension Reform Act 2004 (PRA) was amended in 2014. This reform allows contributions between employees and employers. Following the implementation of this reform, there has been alleged irregular remittance of statutory pension contributions among employers due to weak monitoring to enforce compliance by the regulatory body. Hence, this study was designed to examine the extent of irregular remittances in public institutions and determine whether prompt remittances will motivate employees to offer efficient and quality service. Data were sourced from 211 employees in selected federal institutions in Jos Metropolis. Different inferential statistics were used to analyse the data collected. The result of the findings revealed that regulatory control has positive and significant impact on employers’ compliance to pension remittances; service delivery by employers has significant positive impact on fraud reduction among employers but not significant for the Pension Fund Administrators (PFAs) and Pension Commission (PenCom). Similarly, efficient quality service by PFAs and PenCom significantly influence employees’ motivation to offer quality service in their respective organisations; and that compliance with PRA has strong relationship with good investment performance which also serves as an incentive to employees to offer quality service. On the basis of these findings, this study concluded that a strong and efficient regulatory control will drastically lead to fraud reduction among key players. Hence, the study recommended among other things that the PenCom needs to intensify regulatory control to prevent fraudulent practices among employers and PFAs.Keywords: pension remittances, service delivery, defined contributio
Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
Full text linkThe present study examines one of the fundamental aspects of author co-citation analysis (ACA) - the way co-citation
counts are defined. Co-citation counting provides the data on which all subsequent statistical analyses and mappings
are based, and we compare ACA results based on two different types of co-citation counting - the traditional type that
only counts the first one among a cited work's authors on the one hand and a non-traditional type that takes into
account the first 5 authors of a cited work on the other hand. Results indicate that the picture produced through this non-traditional author co-citation counting contains more coherent author groups and is therefore considerably clearer. However, this picture represents fewer specialties in the research field being studied than that produced through the traditional first-author co-citation counting when the same number of top-ranked authors is selected and analyzed. Reasons for these effects are discussed
Variations on the Author
Full text link“Variations on the Author” discusses two of Eduardo Coutinho’s recent films (Um Dia na Vida, from 2010, and Últimas Conversas, posthumously released in 2015) and their contribution to the general question of documentary authorship. The director’s filmography is characterized by a consistent yet self-effacing form of authorial self-inscription: Coutinho often features as an interviewer that rather than express opinions propels discourses; an interviewer that is good at listening. This mode of self-inscription characterizes him as an author who is not expressive but who is nonetheless markedly present on the screen. In Um Dia na Vida, however, Coutinho is completely absent form the image, while Últimas Conversas, on the contrary, includes a confessional prologue that moves the director from the margins to the center of his films. This article examines the ways in which these works stand out in the filmography of a director who offers new insights into the notion of cinematic authorship
Appropriate Similarity Measures for Author Cocitation Analysis
Full text linkWe provide a number of new insights into the methodological discussion about author cocitation analysis. We first argue that the use of the Pearson correlation for measuring the similarity between authors’ cocitation profiles is not very satisfactory. We then discuss what kind of similarity measures may be used as an alternative to the Pearson correlation. We consider three similarity measures in particular. One is the well-known cosine. The other two similarity measures have not been used before in the bibliometric literature. Finally, we show by means of an example that our findings have a high practical relevance.information science;Pearson correlation;cosine;similarity measure;author cocitation analysis
Dispelling the Myths Behind First-author Citation Counts
Full text linkWe conducted a full-scale evaluative citation analysis study of scholars in the XML research field to explore just how different from each other author rankings resulting from different citation counting methods actually are, and to demonstrate the capability of emerging data and tools on the Web in supporting more realistic citation counting methods. Our results contest some common arguments for the continued
use of first-author citation counts in the evaluation of scholars, such as high correlations between author rankings by first-author citation counts and other citation
counting methods, and high costs of using more realistic citation counting methods that are not well-supported by the ISI databases. It is argued that increasingly available digital full text research papers make it possible for citation analysis studies to go beyond what the ISI databases have directly supported and to employ more
sophisticated methods
koamabayili/VECTRON-author-checklist: VECTRON author checklist
No full textWe have done our best to complete the author checklist relating to the use of animals in the hut study. Note that the objective for the hut study was to evaluate the IRS treatment applications for residual efficacy against Anopheles mosquitoes, including the local An. coluzzii mosquito population. Cows were only used to attract mosquitoes into the huts and no tests were carried out directly on the cows. The author checklist is intended for use with studies where experiments are carried out on animals, which is why we have had such difficulty in completing this for the hut study, as many of the questions do not relate to how the cows were used
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