Search

Grade III and Grade IV sacral pressure sores are required surgical closure. The gluteal fascio-cutaneous rotation advancement flap with V-Y closure was performed in our hospital on 50 cases of sacral sore from 2017 to 2019. The largest defects closed with a unilateral flap were up to 14 cm, and a bilateral flap needed to close 15-22 cm in diameter. In 1.5 to 24 months of follow-up time, none of the patients developed wound dehiscence or flap necrosis requiring repeated surgery. The V-Y rotation advancement flap technique is simple, can be performed quickly, has minimal associated morbidity, and has a good outcome. Furthermore, we can use the same flap design in recurrent cases. TAJ 2022; 35: No-1: 33-38

This paper investigates the relationship between legal origin and banks’ risk-taking behavior. We employ GMM to study a sample of both Islamic and conventional banks from 14 dual banking economies from 2005–2018. Our findings can be summarized as follows: (a) bank risk-taking and legal origin are negatively related in our sample countries, (b) Islamic banks are more stable in English law (common) countries, and (c) bank regulations have a differential effect on Islamic and the conventional banks. Our overall findings align with the dark side of the legal framework, indicating a robust legal framework to encourage bank risk-taking. The results have several implications for shareholders, regulators, and other key stakeholders.

The novel Coronavirus disease (COVID-19) has quickly evolved from a provincial health scare to a global meltdown. While it has brought nearly half the world to a standstill it has affected the financial markets in unseen ways by eroding a quarter of wealth in nearly a month. This paper investigates the reaction of financial markets globally in terms of their decline and volatility as Coronavirus epicentre moved from China to Europe and then to the US. Findings suggest that the earlier epicentre China has stabilized while the global markets have gone into a freefall especially in the later phase of the spread. Even the relatively safer commodities have suffered as the pandemic moves into the US.

The objective of this paper is to analyse the time-varying changes of the three parameters, volatility, efficiency and integration on stock markets across emerging markets. We do this using a four-step process with focus on Multifractal Detrended Fluctuation Analysis to measure its efficiency. Our analysis show that lower volatility was found in short-term for countries that experienced fast paced economic growth. This increase in volatility is supported by a decrease in efficiency for the short-term, while market integration rose during periods of crises, which represent higher volatility. Hence, a tripartite relationship between our parameters is observed.

A company's Information Technology (IT) infrastructure is a key factor in its sustainability and ongoing success and profitability. This paper explores the relationship between a company's investment in IT and its performance. Performance is measured, with the help of a Balanced Scorecard (BSC), in four ways; financial, internal business processes, innovation & learning and customer perspective. The relationship between each BSC category serves as indicators of the effect of IT investment on a company's performance. This will help establish the benefits of both financial and non-financial indicators. We focus on the Electrical and Electronic manufacturing performance of companies Malaysia. System Resource Theory (SRT) is used as the background theory to explain the concepts of organizational effectiveness, efficiency, productivity and multidimensional performance measurements and to link the variables used in this study. We conduct an empirical study in order to confirm the moderating effects of decentralized decision making. The results suggest that IT investment produces a significant relationship with all BSC perspectives, but the moderating effect is only significant only from a customer perspective.

This paper investigates competition and risk-taking behaviour of Islamic banks taking a sample of 59 Islamic banks and 149 conventional banks from 10 highly developed Islamic banking countries between 2006 and 2016. The level of competitiveness between the two types of banks is determined using Lerner index and estimations show that Islamic banks have lower market power than conventional banks. After controlling all the bank and country-specific variables, the results show that competition and risk are positively related for the overall banking system and inversely related for Islamic banks which undoubtedly emphasize that inherent difference between risk-competition relationships among these two distinct bank types. Overall, in the case of Islamic banks, the results provide evidence in favour of “competition stability view” where higher competitive market associated with fierce competition from conventional banks and its peers' reduce Islamic banks' risk-taking behaviour. Keywords: Banking, Competition, Risk taking, Islamic banking, Regulation, Risk management, JEL classification: G20, G21, G28

Literature is rife with studies on efficiency of stock markets and financial performance aspects. One such aspect is the measurement of sectoral efficiency amongst stock markets. While there are several studies analysing sectorial efficiency, there is no study on the efficiency of Islamic sector indexes. The rise of Islamic indices has raised the question and multiple studies have been undertaken in exploring and validating the better performance from a risk return framework for the Islamic indices. This study attempts to pioneer in this niche area by conducting a comparative analysis of 10 sectoral global indices for both conventional and Islamic counterpart spanning over 18 years. The sample time period runs from 1 January 1996 until 31 December 2014. To further validate our study, we have divided our data into four major time periods, to factor in different phases the world markets have gone through in the sample period, i.e. 1996–2000; 2001–2002; 2003–2006 and 2006 to 2014. The methodology selected in understanding the efficiency of these sectoral stock indices is the multifractal de-trended fluctuation analysis (MFDFA). Our analysis reveals that in the shorter horizon, efficiency tends to follow a similar pattern amongst the conventional and Islamic counterpart. Furthermore, Islamic sectoral indices generally tend to exhibit a higher efficiency regime across the last decade. Overall, Islamic index seems to have stayed attractive and resilient, allowing conformity with the weak form efficient market hypothesis.

This research was carried out mainly to find out the results on the relationship between transactional, strategic and informational IT investments with the multidimensional performance measurement in the electrical and electronic manufacturing setting in Malaysia. The second research objective was to study the moderating effects of decentralised decision making on the relationship between transactional, strategic and informational IT investment with firm performance. The data were collected from 74 electrical and electronic manufacturing firms in Malaysia. The results suggest that transactional IT investment has a positive and significant relationship with financial performance, but not with customer performance. The strategic IT investment has no significant relationship with any of the perspectives. Informational IT has a significant relationship with the internal business process perspective only. Although decentralised decision making was theoretically explained as a moderator, statistical interaction effects suggested otherwise.

We model two regimes using threshold cointegration and threshold vector error correction model for sovereign CDS and equity markets of thirteen emerging markets. We document evidence of momentum in cointegration relationships in CDS and equity markets of all countries. We find that positive and negative divergences adjust to equilibrium relationship at different speeds and magnitudes depending on the regime. Moreover, the short and long run adjustment process of each asset is nonlinear and regime dependent. Linear modeling may ignore the differential reaction of investors and policy makers and the time-varying market conditions under which economic and investment decisions take place

This study investigates the linkages between the banking regulatory and supervisory structures associated with the pillars of Basel III and the risk taking of banks. Given a well-established set of theoretical priors, the regulations considered in this study are official supervisory power, capital requirements, private monitoring and restrictions on bank activities. The analysis focuses on the dual banking system over the period 2006–2010. Our results suggest that higher capital requirements induce a lower level of risk behaviours for both conventional and Islamic banks. We observed the opposite effect in the case of restrictions on bank activities; higher restrictions had a positive influence on the risk-taking behaviour of conventional banks, whereas they reduced the level of riskiness of Islamic banks. Finally, official supervisory power has an insignificant negative impact on the risk-taking behaviour of both Islamic banks and conventional banks.

James Madison once said “ If men were angels, no government would be necessary ”. Madison’s view has direct implications for efficient bank supervisory and strong regulatory strategies. On the onset of 2007-08 subprime crisis banking system across the globe were left exposed to financial tsunami due to over-expansion and excessive risk concentrations. This incident should provide regulators wake up call to further develop and strengthen the regulatory system with new and strict monitoring mechanism. In the given context, this paper will investigates the linkages between bank regulatory and supervisory structures associated with Basel III’s pillars and various aspects of banks’ efficiency and risk. The analysis will be focussed on dual banking system over the period 2006-2010. Our results suggest that regulations and strict monitoring of banking operation, and higher supervisory power of the authorities, increase the technical efficiency for Islamic banks but decreases convention banks efficiency. We observe the opposite effect in the case of restrictions on bank activities, with higher restrictions having a reduction in risk taking of Islamic banks while increasing the risk taking of conventional banks. Results also indicate that Islamic banks are better prepared towards the implementation of Basel III guidelines compared to their conventional counterparts.

The concept of Continued Professional Development (CPD) through continuous learning calls upon organisations to encourage, support, and provide favourable environment for employees to engage in continuous learning. This will help to avoid ‘professional obsolete syndrome’; a syndrome faced by a majority if not all employees. This study intends to investigate the current practices of CPD in the Malaysian service-based industry. This article presents the results of an analysis of CPD practices using a qualitative approach based on several interviews with subjectmatter- experts from various sectors in the Malaysian service-based industry. Fifteen HR Directors and HR Managers were interviewed in order to gauge their perspectives on the current practices of CPD as this will depict the actual scenario on how they see; interpret; regulate; implement; and enforce CPD for staffs’ development. The data which was collected via interviews was transcribed and analyzed using thematic analysis. The findings revealed different approaches or practices of CPD among several service sectors in Malaysia.

This paper investigates the role of macroeconomic factors and firm characteristics in explaining stock return in big four South East Asian (SEA) countries, namely, Malaysia, Indonesia, Singapore and Thailand. The factors model is employed for two time intervals, namely, sub-period A (from July 2003 to June 2007) and sub-period B (from July 2007 to June 2011) to examine the change in relationship between macroeconomic variables and stock returns during pre and post Global Financial Crisis of 2007. Our empirical findings reveal that the significance relationship between macroeconomic variables and portfolio stock returns were not consistent for both sub-periods. The result is highly dependent on portfolio, country and sub-period.

Islamic bonds (Sukuk) emerged as an innovative capital market instrument over the last decade. This paper investigates the impact of conventional bonds and Sukuk announcement on shareholder wealth and their determinants using 79 Sukuks and 87 conventional bonds over the period of 2004–2012 in six developed Islamic financial market. The overall time frame is divided into three parts, 2004–2006 (before crisis); 2007–2009 (during crisis) and 2010–2012 (after crisis). It is revealed that the market reaction is negative for the announcements of Sukuk before and during 2007 global financial crisis. On the other hand market reaction is positive for announcement of conventional bond before the crisis period and negative during and after crisis periods. The size of bond offering appears to have a negative impact on the cumulative abnormal return in case of Sukuk and positive in case of conventional bond.