Diasporan students social entrepreneurship intention: The moderating role of institutional support

The daunting global challenges saddling polities and governments alike have resultantly created a situation whereby governments and corporate civil society have inadvertently reneged on delivering public good and services to citizens. In ensuring and strengthening a public–private actor synergy, with particular emphasis on leveraging acquired knowledge and skills of diaspora‐based students, social entrepreneurship activities could be harnessed to provide sustainable remedies to social challenges such as unemployment, famine amongst others by utilizing social entrepreneurship as a tool. Using the theory of planned behaviour as a theoretical framework, the study elicited data from 322 respondents to empirically investigate determinants of social entrepreneurship intentions of Ghanaian students, with the moderating role of institutional support. Study results revealed that sense of social responsibility and service learning have significant relationship with social entrepreneurship intention. However, social volunteering experience had no significant relationship. Moreover, whereas attitude to social entrepreneurship intention demonstrated a positive relationship, institutional support as a moderator was also revealed to influence the relationship between attitude and social entrepreneurship intention. From the study findings, we discourse on the implications for social entrepreneurship in Ghana to policy makers and stakeholders.     

IoT‐enabled services in online food retailing

The present study aims at understanding the application of Internet of Things (IoT) in online food retailing, influencing purchase frequency of ready‐to‐eat food products. The research is empirical in nature in which an internet based consumer survey was conducted to collect 329 valid responses on PAN India basis. This research comprehensively investigated, shortlisted, and finally selected the factors of consumer involvement and decision making using IoT in online food retailing. The binary logistic regression model revealed that the factors relative advantage, best deals, availability and information, consumer satisfaction, and channel efficiency significantly influences the consumer purchase frequency for ready‐to‐eat food products at various stages in online food retailing. The understanding, extrapolation, and proper management of these factors will help online food retail players in implementing IoT enable services effectively in their retail formats to gain consumer confidence.     

The New Gulf Order: Crisis,Mediation, and Reconciliation

The longevity and depth of regional challenges in the Middle East have elevated political and security concerns to a new level within the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) in recent years. Three conflicting worldviews have confronted one another, resulting in debilitating consequences for the region. Increasing fragmentation of Arab politics, in turn, has engendered attempts at enforced Arab unity that have ultimately failed, further dividing and destabilizing the regional order. This article delineates the background of the Gulf crisis of 2017 within the broader context of the Arab Spring and analyzes the ensuing attempts at mediation, the US role in the region, political developments in Kuwait and Oman, normalization efforts with Israel, and the recent resolution of the Gulf crisis by examining various actors’ political roles.     

Does the policy cycle reflect the policymaking approach in Ghana?

Based on two cases involving 60 interviews and secondary evidence, this paper investigated whether Ghana's policymaking approach accorded with the policy cycle. The evidence showed that the Ghana industrial policy was largely compliant with the model. But the free senior high school policy bore little resemblance to it. Factors that determined whether or not policymaking followed the policy cycle included the salience of the issue, the sponsor of the issue, the political environment at the time, and the timing of the introduction of the issue. Four conclusions can be drawn from the Ghanaian evidence. First, the rough edges of the policy cycle can be trimmed and applied as a best fit model rather than a best practice model in any jurisdiction. Second, the policy cycle like other policy process theories should not be written off as inappropriate or inefficacious simply because practice failed to adhere to one or two out of the several elements of the theory. Third, an integrated policy process model is likely to be more efficacious than a single one, but there is inattention to such an idea. Finally, drawing lessons from policy process theories is a neglected area, which needs to be emphasized.     

A comparative analysis of jails in the United States and Bangladesh

There are comparative analyses in the current criminal justice literature but few focus on Asian cultures and even fewer compare Muslim countries with the United States. While comprehensive comparative studies are needed, preliminary studies that correlate the functional similarities and differences are also necessary. Hence, the purpose of this paper is to conduct a comparative analysis of the jails in Bangladesh and the United States. The data for this study are taken directly from Bangladesh population summary reports and a matched sample of American Jails from the Bureau of Justice Statistics Jail Census (1990). The comparative data are key functional measures from each country and are used as the basis for classifying the jails into two groups. The findings indicate that there are key differentiating variables (crowding and population turnover) that allow one to classify the jails in the two nations. Although this study provides clear evidence for the differences between American and Bangladeshi jails, further in‐depth analyses should follow.     

Corruption protection: fractionalization and the corruption of anti-corruption efforts in Iraq after 2003

This paper argues that corruption protection arises because a central feature of Iraq’s institutional environment is its factionalised political system between groups (i.e. sectarian affiliation), and these groups both protect their members from corruption charges launched by other groups, and collude to protect each other from prosecution of corruption. The paper defines corruption protection as ‘action carried out to prevent perpetrators of corruption from being brought to justice’, which is a systematic attempt among corrupt agents seeking to evade accountability for primary corruption activity. The paper has identified two contrasting paths taken by these groups in power in the dynamics of corruption protection: (a) The competitive mode is illustrated by spurious allegations of corruption made by some groups against other groups. Tension between factions results in fake charges being brought against rivals which sometimes lead to wrongful imprisonment of the innocent; (b) collusive between intra-factional groups, corruptly conspiring to hide each other’s corrupt acts thereby constructing a shield which protects the entire elite in Iraq, an issue which I label ‘solidarity in corruption’. The paper will conclude that despite the apparent strength of anti-corruption framework, the reality tells us a very different story; the multiple institutions established to fight corruption and the system of accountability can also constitute a means for corruption protection.