An Empirical Investigation of the Factors Affecting the Use of Social Networks in Human Resources Recruitment

ABSTRACT

The main objective of this study is to investigate the factors affecting the use of social networks towards recruiting human resources for organizations. Through an in-depth review of the relevant literature, a questionnaire was designed and distributed among the sample and collected data were analyzed using PLS-Software. Results revealed that 50?75% of organizations use social networks in their organizations and all the identified effective factors in the use of social networks for human resources recruitment were confirmed, except for “hope for performance”. “Facilitating conditions” have the highest impact on the usage of social networks in recruiting, “Social influence” identified as one of the most important factors in people’s behavioral intention for the usage of social networks in recruitment and “Effort expectancy” had the least impact on behavioral intention. In addition, Gender and the level of education have no impact on the behavioral intention and the behavior of usage of social networking.     

Parties’ legal capacity in electronic commerce transactions

The aim of this article is to scrutinise the uncertainty of the Iranian Electronic Commerce Law (IRI ECL 2004) provisions especially on the issue of capacity of parties. Issues of parties’ legal capacity have been resolved in traditional contracts but they are still debatable in electronic commerce transactions. Under UK law, contracts formed by minors for things other than necessities are unenforceable against the minor but enforceable against the merchant (seller) while according to US uniform commercial code in online contracts capacity is not recognized as a legal excuse to nullify a contract. At the mean time, contracts made by incapacitate person is considered null under Iranian law. In spite of technical developments such as digital signatures and smart cards used in verifying the identity and capacity of parties in electronic commerce transactions, the legal certainty on capacity of parties is still questionable. The article also examines the application of traditional contract general rules on parties’ legal capacity in Iran to electronic commerce with reference to EU law. The EU law which is already at an advance stage serves a guide for future development of e-commerce law in Iran.     

Ex Ante and Ex Post Allocation of Risk of Illegality: Regulatory Sources of Contractual Failure and Issues of Corrective and Distributive Justice

The pursuit of welfare objectives through contract law rules could be exemplified in the case of illegality and subsequent nullity sanctions attached to a contract that violates certain regulatory rules. The effectiveness of contractual allocation of risk of illegality (regulatory prohibitions), therefore, varies, depending on which contract theory prevails. Maintaining the validity of a prohibited and failed contract, and allocation of the relevant risks, is crucially dependent on whether we adhere to a welfare or rights-based theory of contract. In this paper we argue that impossibility of ex ante and ex post allocation of risk of illegality is the logical outcome of the adherence to a welfare theory of contract law, as maintaining even a minimum validity of the failed contract would result in some welfare losses. According to this approach unjust enrichment could not be rectified because it would diminish the optimal enforcement of welfare objectives. On the other hand, and despite such prohibition and illegality, a rights-based theory would resist opportunistic and rent-seeking behaviour and would ensure the validity of the contract and just allocation of losses and gains, which arise from the failure of the prohibited contract.     

The application of the Khiyar al-‘Aib (option of defect) principle in on-line contracts and consumer rights

This paper scrutinises the legal protection of consumer rights in on-line contracts through the application of Khiyar al-??Aib (option of defect). Khiyar al-??Aib is a legal Islamic mechanism by which, one party, both parties or even a third party can nullify a contract, electronically or conventionally. Khiyar (option) means the authority to nullify a contract and Aib means defect. In fact, it is a right given to the purchaser to cancel the contract if he discovers that the object acquired has defect that diminishes its value. In on-line contracts, the consumer has no direct contact with the merchant and cannot easily verify the quality of the goods, thus creating a situation in which contracting parties are not at equal bargaining strength. Therefore, application of Khiyar al-??Aib (option of defect) would be helpful in protecting consumer rights in the virtual world. This paper explores the Islamic principles by taking Iranian laws as well as the European law as a point of reference.     

Political institutions and Central Bank independence: A cross-country analysis

Using three quantitative measures of Central Bank independence, we apply OLS and TSLS regression methods to investigate the possible correlation between political liberty, political instability and central bank independence. For a sample of Western democracies and highly democratic developing countries we show that Cukierman's legal independence index is positively correlated with political freedom and regime political stability. It is negatively correlated with party political stability. For a sample of developing countries that excludes dictatorships we show that a special index of legal central bank autonomy is positively associated with political freedom and political stability. Finally, we observe that, for the same sample of nations, the turnover index of central bank independence is not sensitive to our political variables.     

Globalization and extraterritorial application of economic regulation: crisis in international law and balancing interests

There are two developments the combination of which has led to new challenges to international law: the growth of economic regulations and globalisation. While the modern economies are associated with the proliferation of regulatory laws which are rooted in the national economic and social policies, the loosening of the national borders and globalisation has led to conflicts of economic regulations. Such developments have posed various risks of violations of national economic regulations by the economic actors and could lead to tension among national states which have jurisdiction over multinational enterprises in one way or another. The private parties involved in such a situation could somehow avoid such risks by their own initiatives and contractual arrangements but in most cases such measures do now work and the conflict has to be resolved through the cooperation between the countries involved. The paper investigates the potentials for public international law to come up with rules, principles and norms to resolve such complex disputes which touch up issues such as non-intervention, equality of sovereign states, state immunity, self-determination and other principles of international law. Unlike certain area of international law such as law of sea where a few factors involved and the disputes could be resolved by relying on simple facts and rules, the application of national economic regulations extraterritorially creates tensions among the nation states in respect of the demarcation of national jurisdictions. It is here that public international faces a new challenges and need to come up with new approaches such a balancing of interests of the states involved in the conflicts.