J. Risk Financial Manag., Volume 14, Issue 8 (August 2021) – 55 articles

Many global shocks, including the renegotiation of NAFTA, the United States–China trade war, the Brexit, and the COVID-19 pandemic, may have recently influenced the inflation spillover in the G7 countries. The current literature overlooks the influence of these important events on the inflation spillover of the G7 countries. This study fulfills this gap and investigates the nature of inflation spillover in the short, medium, and long term. Using the monthly data from 1956:6 to 2020:12, the study finds that Japan and the United States are the main transmitters of inflation. International trade, purchasing power parity, low-cost technology, and the Abenomics policy were found to be responsible for the inflation spillover. We suggest that the central banks of these countries collaborate to achieve the targeted inflation rate. Full article

The global financial crisis of 2007–2009 caused major economic disturbances in the oil market. In this paper, we consider five variables that describe the microeconomics of the supply of and demand for oil, and evaluate their importance before, during and after the global financial crisis. We consider five dissimilar regimes during the period of January 1986 to the end of 2020: two regimes prior to the global financial crisis, the regime during the crisis, and two regimes after the crisis. The main hypothesis tested is that oil fundamentals of supply and demand remained important, even though the five regimes were dissimilar. We built five boosted and over-fitted neural networks to capture the exact relationships between spot oil prices and oil data related to these prices. This analysis shows that, while the inputs into an accurate neural network can remain the same, the impact of each variable can change considerably during different regimes. Full article

The COVID-19 pandemic brought a myriad of challenges and opportunities and has influenced the modern concept of sustainability as projected into the Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) and the underlying multi-stakeholder model. The new generation of consumers, Generation Z, has progressively increased its participation in the market and its shopping trends have been impacting the entire CSR scenery. However, little is known about their attitudes, consumption preferences and expectations. In Spring 2021, this induced a pioneering case study survey involving members of Generation Z, students from a private university in Prague, focusing on their (lack of) readiness to pay any “CSR bonus”. The principal research aim was to study and understand the rather surprising unwillingness of a solvent part of the new generation of consumers to support CSR during the COVID-19 era by paying at least a symbolic CSR bonus. A formal survey involving a questionnaire, replied to by 228 students, out of which 18 totally rejected the CSR bonus, was assessed via contingency tables. It was accompanied by a complementary questioning via an informal interview and glossing. This plethora of data was processed by meta-analysis and lead to an unexpected proposition: prima facie sustainability heretics denying to pay any CSR bonus can be conscious consumers and responsible and progressive supporters of the sustainability and CSR. Their rejection is a deontological cry in a desert for more transparency, trust and the rule of law. Full article

The aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic is not limited to human lives and health sectors. It has also changed social and economic aspects of the world. This study investigated the Islamic stock market’s reaction and changes in volatility before and during this pandemic. The market model of event study methodology was employed to analyze Islamic stock market reactions in nine different markets around the globe. To examine changes in volatility and persistence of risk, the generalized autoregressive conditional heteroscedasticity (GARCH) method was used. Nine Islamic stock indices were selected for this study from the Thomson Reuters data stream. The results suggest that, in the short run, the Islamic Australian stock index and Islamic GCC stock index remained stable for the first 15 days following news of the pandemic. The Islamic stock indexes of Qatar, UAE, ASEAN, MENA, MENASA, and Bahrain were significantly affected by the outbreak in the short-term. On the other hand, the volatility of Islamic stock indices was substantially amplified after the global health crisis was declared by the WHO. Moreover, volatility shocks tended to persist for a longer period after COVID-19. Full article

Measuring innovation is a challenging but essential task to improve business performance. To tackle this task, key performance indicators (KPIs) can be used to measure and monitor innovation. The objective of this study is to explore how KPIs, designed for measuring innovation, are used in practice. To achieve this objective, the author draws upon literature on business performance in accounting and innovation, yet moves away from the functional view. Instead, the author focuses explicitly on how organizational members, through their use of KPIs in innovation, make sense of conflicting interpretations and integrate them into their practices. A qualitative in-depth case study was conducted at the innovation department of an organization in the process industry that operates production sites and sales organizations worldwide. In total, 28 interviews and complementary observations were undertaken at several organizational levels (multi-level). The empirical evidence suggests that strategic change, attributed to commoditization, affects the predetermined KPIs in use. Notably, these KPIs in innovation are used, despite their poor fit to innovation subject to commoditization. From a relational perspective, this study indicates that in innovation, KPIs are usually complemented by or supplemented with other information, as stand-alone KPIs exhibit a significant degree of incompleteness. In contrast to conventional studies in innovation and management accounting, this study explores the use of key performance indicators (KPIs) in innovation from an interpretative perspective. This perspective advances our understanding of the actual use of KPIs and uncovers the complexity of accounting and innovation, which involve numerous angles and organizational levels. Practically, the findings of this study will inform managers in innovation about the use of KPIs in innovation and the challenges individual organizational members face when using them. In innovation, KPIs appear to be subjective and used in unintended ways. Thus, understanding how KPIs are used in innovation is a game of reading between the lines, and these KPIs can be regarded as misfits. Full article

Takaful operators are part of the Islamic financial institutions that are expected to achieve the commercial and social objectives by their stakeholders particularly the takaful participants (policyholders). First, this study aims to postulate a new framework to measure cost effectiveness by including the social and economic benefits of drone-assisted technology in the context of maqāṣid Shariah. Second, the study intends to investigate how the takaful industry can benefit from the drone-assisted technology, particularly in terms of cost reduction. This paper presents an early finding that forms part of a bigger research project which is focusing on the use of drone for disaster victim identification (DVI). This study employs thematic analysis of qualitative research method by engaging key informants who are Shariah expert, drone practitioner and accounting expert. In the context of emerging economies like Malaysia, the adoption of drone is sporadic when some industries such as military and agriculture are quite experienced with it; but for the takaful sector is almost none. This study provides preliminary findings that suggests there is potential of cost effectiveness for drone usage from the perspectives of SCBA in the maqāṣid Shariah framework. The main contributions from this paper are: (1) the new SCBA framework derived from the maqāṣid Shariah perspective and, (2) the application of this framework in examining the cost effectiveness on the use of drones by the takaful operators especially during disaster. Full article

Stock markets around the world experienced a massive collapse during the first wave of COVID-19. Roughly in the month of January 2021, the second wave of COVID-19 struck in India, reaching its peak in May, and by the end of May, the active cases started to decline. A third wave is again predicted by the end of 2021, and as such, the COVID-19 pandemic seems to have become a periodic phenomenon over the last couple of years. Therefore, the study of the behavior of the stock market as well as that of the investors becomes very interesting and crucial in this highly volatile and vulnerable market trend. Motivated by these facts, in the present paper, the researcher develops a model for portfolio management, using curve-fitting techniques and shows that this model can encounter the market volatility efficiently in the context of the Indian stock market. The portfolio is designed based on data taken from the National Stock Exchange (NSE), India, during 1 January 2020 to 31 December 2020. The performance of the portfolio in real-life situation during 1 January 2021 to 21 May 2021 is examined, assuming investments are made according to the proposed model. Full article

This paper aims to unbundle the antecedents of competence-based synergy in the strategic alliance formation process by employing the ARCTIC framework. The current research provides a new empirical application of the ARCTIC framework to reveal the success factors of reciprocal synergies of the Renault–Nissan–Mitsubishi strategic alliance in the automotive industry. By taking a resource-based view on the sources of competitive advantage, the current paper contributes to theoretical and practical issues of global strategic alliances as part of the existing literature on strategic management, international business, and corporate finance. By bridging qualitative and quantitative research methods, the paper provides validity to the ARCTIC framework with an application of the real option valuation. A conceptual model of research helps practitioners and scholars to explore critical success factors of alliance formation and to predict a competence-based synergy of strategic alliances. Future research may explore the institutional context of strategic alliances, specifically, exploring the impact of the French and Japanese governments on the Renault–Nissan–Mitsubishi alliance’s synergies. Full article

A definition of time based on the assumption of scale invariance may enhance and simplify the analysis of historical series with cyclically recurrent patterns and seasonalities. By enforcing simple-scaling and stationarity of the distributions of returns, we identify a successful protocol of time definition in finance, functional from tens of minutes to a few days. Within this time definition, the significant reduction of cyclostationary effects allows analyzing the structure of the stochastic process underlying the series on the basis of statistical sampling sliding along the whole time series. At the same time, the duration of periods in which markets remain inactive is properly quantified by the novel clock, and the corresponding returns (e.g., overnight or weekend) can be consistently taken into account for financial applications. The method is applied to the S&P500 index recorded at a 1 min frequency between September 1985 and June 2013. Full article

This paper considers the risks and opportunities inherent in a major national change process through a descriptive approach to the implementation challenges for Australian non-profit disability service providers as they grapple with the implementation of the transformational National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS). It highlights the leadership challenges associated with the newly developed NDIS Implementation Framework and, in doing so, recognises the risk and opportunity issues contained with that implementation process. The research used grounded theory coupled with framework analysis in a qualitative study that, in part, sought to identify leadership characteristics deemed necessary to minimize risks, capitalize on opportunities, and support positive change outcomes leading to successful NDIS implementations amongst several participating organisations, each with differing demographics and at different stages in the implementation process. The findings, which have been grouped into phases, suggest a range of leadership attributes at key phases of the NDIS implementation that are necessary to minimise implementation risks and maximise opportunities associated with the NDIS. These phases have been identified as: (i) An input phase where the emphasis must be on internal change preparedness and external environmental impacts and drivers; (ii) A process phase where the emphasis is on direct implementation issues; and (iii) An outcomes phase where active consideration needs to be on organisational mission sustainability, as well as the risk and opportunity challenge. The study is crucial in revealing leadership challenges and lessons for large scale change and risk management in the non-profit sector, within and beyond the specific case of Australia’s NDIS implementation, useful for both scholars and practitioners. Full article

This paper presents empirical evidence on factors influencing choices made by members of the Annapolis Group of Liberal Arts colleges regarding whether to operate primarily in-person, primarily online or some flexible alternative during the COVID-19 pandemic of 2020. This paper examines the tradeoff between public health risks and financial standing that school administrators faced when deciding reopening plans. Because in-person instruction at colleges and universities had large effects on COVID-19 case rates, it is critical to understand what caused these decisions. We used binary and multinomial probit models to evaluate an original data set of publicly available data as well as data from the College Crisis Initiative. Binary and multinomial choice model estimates suggest that conditional upon the prevailing level of COVID-19 in their county, financially distressed colleges were approximately 20 percentage points more likely to opt for primarily in-person operations than less financially distressed colleges. These choices highlight an important potential tradeoff between public health and financial concerns present in the higher education sector and emphasize the need for public spending to mitigate adverse health outcomes if a similar situation occurs again. Full article

This study examines the impact of capital structure, working capital, and governance quality on the financial performance of small- and medium-sized enterprises in Taiwan using a sample of more than 2000 firms from the Taiwan Economic Journal (TEJ) during the 24-year period of 1995–2018. Panel data are used to create statistics for the regression model. The result shows that a firm’s capital structure, represented by the debt ratio, has a significantly negative impact on the firm’s financial measures (return on assets (ROA) and return on equity (ROE)), where the working capital, represented by the cash conversion cycle (CCC), has a negative impact and governance quality, represented by the board size, cash dividend distribution, and the percentage of directors, has different impacts. Full article

Previous research on the effect of board characteristics mostly examines established firms. This raises the question of whether the findings from the board characteristics literature are applicable to rapidly growing enterprises, as their corporate governance landscape can be very different from that in large, mature companies. Our paper extends the corporate governance literature by investigating the performance implications of board characteristics in startups using a unique set of firms: 121 startups operating in the information technology industry listed on the Growth Enterprise Market (GEM) in China. Using a firm performance indicator constructed through the factor analysis method, we find significant correlations between firm performance and board size, age structure, board meeting frequency, and board ownership of shares. Our findings contribute to the corporate governance literature by shedding new light on the performance implications of board characteristics for startups operating in fast-paced industries. Full article

Since the collapse of the Metallgesellschaft AG due to hedging losses in 1993, energy practitioners have been concerned with the ability to hedge long-dated linear and non-linear oil liabilities with short-dated futures and options. This paper identifies a model-free non-parametric approach to extrapolating futures prices and implied volatilities. When we expand the analysis to implementing hedge portfolios for long-dated futures or option contracts over the time period 2007–2017, we utilize the useful benchmark of hedge ratios arising from Schwartz and Smith. With respect to the empirical consequences of hedging long-dated futures and options with their short-dated counterparts, we find that the long-term tracking errors are, on average, quite close to zero, but there is increasing risk entailed in attempting to do so, as the hedge-tracking errors for both futures and option contracts increase with time-to-maturity. Full article

This article presents how the COVID-19 pandemic affected the valuation profession in Poland in the early stages of its most severe restrictions and limitations. This study is the first to investigate the impact of COVID-19 on the professional activities of property valuers. In particular, it aims to identify the difficulties associated with valuers’ activities during the first lockdown and the impact of restrictions on business performance. The data analyzed come from a survey of Polish valuers in September 2020. The questions were of a closed-ended nature. Using a five-point Likert scale, respondents expressed their opinions on the difficulties and benefits of their work in the first COVID-19 period. The results show that the respondents experienced difficulties related to the pandemic and noted its negative impact on business performance. The most significant problem was the limited access to public institutions supporting the valuation process and providing market data on real estate transactions. The respondents also indicated other problems related to property valuation, as well as some positive effects for their business. Full article

Labour migration is a global trend that shapes communities and economies around the world. Growing economic migration carries a specific threat to children and youth. Long-term consequences threaten life outcomes such as educational achievement, career development, mental and physical health. The study examined the problems of children from migrating families in educational institutions. It was also important to determine what assistance is provided to children from migrant families and what institutions support such families. The respondents were class tutors/educators who were teachers of educational institutions: 2317 respondents took part in the study, including 2044 women and 273 men. Significant differentiation of the respondents according to gender is mainly due to the feminization of the teaching profession in Poland. The results of the survey were analyzed with the chi-square test of independence. As a result of the research, threats to children and adolescents resulting from the economic migration of parents were diagnosed. In secondary schools, a decrease in attendance is observed (unexcused absences, truancy, being late). In lower secondary schools there are problems with school results and a decrease in motivation to learn. Educational institutions find it difficult to stay in contact with parents. In the youngest children (kindergartens, primary schools), emotional instability is observed due to the absence of parents in everyday contact. Educational institutions respond to diagnosed problems by providing support to students. In primary schools, students are provided with help in learning and students’ free time is organized. There are also activities aimed at providing additional nutrition. In lower secondary schools, as in secondary schools, support focuses more on motivational interviewing, mediation in conflict situations and psychological assistance. In order to solve problems and help students, educational institutions cooperate with the Psychological and Pedagogical Counselling Centre, the Social Welfare Centre and the Probation Officer. Full article

The abundance of new innovative data sources creates opportunities and challenges for all professions and professionals working with information. One of these professionals is the management accountant (MA). Although their tasks have expanded over time and especially recently, MAs have not fully employed all the available internal and external data sources to describe, diagnose, visualize, predict and prescribe possible solutions that enable smart decisions with positive effects on businesses. Thus, the paper investigates the impact of Big Data, including Data Analytics, on MA’s job profile. Through a review of the most recent academic and professional publications, the paper contributes to the debate surrounding the redefinition of the role of MAs in organizations in a novel informational perspective of Abbott’s theory. The results could serve as a research agenda and incentive for further studies, as well as provide MAs with a guide on the topic of the enlargement of their role(s), respectively, the augmentation of their tasks and responsibilities regarding the analysis of Big Data. Furthermore, the research may provide both a rich and flexible framework to help practitioners in their analysis of potential risks, opportunities and challenges when handling Big Data, and a lens for professional accounting associations and bodies by helping them to prioritize the holding and seizing of jurisdictions as an imperative part of safety and security. Full article

We utilize the IBM Watson Personality Insights service to analyze CEOs’ verbal communication during conference calls to infer CEOs’ Big Five personality traits, which we employ to estimate their risk tolerance levels. We then explore whether the misalignment of CEO risk tolerance and governance structures is associated with company performance. Using a two-stage contingency approach, we test two hypotheses: (1) CEO risk tolerance and corporate governance structures are associated; and (2) misalignment of these structures with risk tolerance is negatively associated with financial performance. Based on a sample of 8208 firm-year observations during 2002–2013, we find support for both predictions. Our results support upper echelons theory and suggest that knowledge about CEOs’ inherent personality traits is important and relevant for governance mechanisms to work effectively. Full article

This paper aims to investigate the impact of various COVID-19 pandemic waves on real estate stock returns and their volatility in developed (US, Australia), emerging (Turkey, Poland), and frontier (Morocco, Jordan) markets. A study using a GJR-GARCHX model revealed that the pandemic outbreak had a limited impact on real estate company stocks. The first pandemic wave only in the US caused a decline in stock returns. In turn, this was the case in Poland and Jordan during the second and third waves. Furthermore, in the aftermath of the pandemic development, an increase in the volatility of stock returns can be observed in the Polish financial market. However, this effect mainly applies to the period of the first disease wave. Full article

Hydro One Inc. is widely regarded as having had one of the most successful implementations of enterprise risk management (ERM). The purpose of this article is to record the history of this successful implementation so that it will benefit other companies and organizations who are at the beginning or in the early part of their ERM journey. In this article, we delve deeper into the dynamics at work and the steps involved in the implementation of ERM. This article is an interview by Betty Simkins with John Fraser and Rob Quail so as to record the challenges, successes, and methods used at Hydro One. This article covers the period from 1999 to when John Fraser left the ERM function in 2014 but many of the processes they implemented have continued to the date of writing (2021). This article should also be of interest to academic researchers who seek to understand why some ERM implementations succeed while other flounder or fail to achieve their objectives. Full article

When stock markets are less liquid or illiquid, investors are expected to require compensation for taking the risk of not being able to sell quickly. Many studies have documented the existence of the co-movements (commonality) of market liquidity in equity markets as a priced factor. The primary objective of this paper is to introduce the oil market as a potential source of commonality in liquidity. We hypothesize that conditions specific to the oil market can contribute to commonality in liquidity affecting both supply-side and demand-side factors because of its importance to the global economy in general. To this aim, a sample of firms is drawn from 50 countries spanning the period from January 1995 to December 2015. We examine two channels that transmit the effect of oil market movements to the liquidity commonality in international equity markets, namely, oil price returns and oil price volatility. Seemingly unrelated regressions (SUR) are utilized to estimate the effect of oil factors on commonality in liquidity. We find that the returns and volatility of oil prices explain the commonality in liquidity in countries with higher integration with oil markets. In addition, we show that the effect of oil volatility is more pronounced for net oil exporters as opposed to net oil importers after controlling for oil sensitivity. These results are robust to controlling for possible sources of commonality in liquidity as found in the literature and alternative estimation specifications. Full article

We use a dynamic factor model to provide a semi-structural representation for 101 quarterly US macroeconomic series. We find that (i) the US economy is well described by a number of structural shocks between two and five. Focusing on the four-shock specification, we identify, using sign restrictions, two policy shocks, monetary and fiscal, and two non-policy shocks, demand and supply. We obtain the following results. (ii) Both supply and demand shocks are important sources of fluctuations; supply prevails for GDP, while demand prevails for employment and inflation. (ii) Monetary and fiscal policy shocks have sizable effects on output and prices, with no evidence of crowding-out of private aggregate demand components; both monetary and fiscal authorities implement important systematic countercyclical policies reacting to demand shocks. (iii) Negative demand shocks have a large long-run positive effect on productivity, consistently with the Schumpeterian “cleansing” view of recessions. Full article

Since Barnett derived the user cost price of money, the economic theory of monetary services aggregation has been developed and extended into a field of its own with solid foundations in microeconomic theory. Divisia monetary aggregates have repeatedly been shown to be strictly preferable to their simple sum counterparts, which have no competent foundations in microeconomic aggregation or index number theory. However, most central banks in the world, including that of Singapore, the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS), still report their monetary aggregates as simple summations. Recent macroeconomic research about Singapore tends to focus on exchange rates as a monetary policy target but ignores the aggregate quantity of money. Is that because quantities of money are irrelevant to economic activity? To examine the role of monetary quantities as potential monetary instruments, indicators, or targets and their relevance to predicting real economic activity in Singapore, this paper applies the user cost of money formula and the recently developed credit-card-augmented Divisia monetary aggregates formula to construct monetary services indexes for Singapore. We produce those state-of-the-art monetary services indexes from Jan 1991 to Mar 2021. We see that Divisia measures behave differently from simple sum measures in the period before the year 2000, while interest rates were high. Credit-card-augmented Divisia monetary services move closely with the conventional Divisia monetary aggregates, since the volume of credit card transactions in Singapore is relatively small compared with other monetary service assets. In future work, we plan to use our data to explore central bank policy in Singapore and to propose improvements in that policy. By making our data available to the public, we encourage others to do the same. Full article

In this paper, we deal with the possibility of using econophysics concepts in dynamic portfolio optimization. The main idea of the research is that combining different methodological aspects in portfolio selection can enhance portfolio performance over time. Using data on CESEE stock market indices, we model the dynamics of entropy transfers from one return series to others. In the second step, the results are utilized in simulating the portfolio strategies that take into account the previous results. Here, the main results indicate that using entropy transfers in portfolio construction and rebalancing has the potential to achieve better portfolio value over time when compared to benchmark strategies. Full article

The rise of financial technology (fintech) driven business models in banking poses a challenge for financial regulators. While the positive effects on the banking sector in terms of greater diversity and competition are generally recognized and encouraged by regulators, the nature of fintech business models may increase the risk of financial instability. Regulators are exploring ways to resolve this dilemma. The paper in hand makes a contribution to the literature by providing a framework for resolving the dilemma that is evaluated in the context of the regulatory response to the rise of fintech credit in the Netherlands. The semi-structured interviews which we conducted with four senior Dutch regulators resulted in three areas that–from their perspective–required urgent action: fintech credit companies need to lower the risk of overlending, increase pricing transparency, and improve lending standards. These findings were confirmed by the results of they survey among fintech credit clients. The current regulatory response to the rise of fintech in banking in the Netherlands provides an interesting case study that delineates the features of the future regulation of fintech in banking. Full article

This article explores an examination of industry clusters from a systems perspective. We analyze Russia’s pharmaceutical clusters and India’s automobile clusters in terms of the systems concepts of holism, emergence, and open systems. We further consider the aspects of human capital investment and the availability of professional labor, infrastructure, private–public sector collaboration, support for funding and commercialization, as well as innovation corporate culture, when examining the institutional pillars supporting the development and growth of industry clusters within the national innovation ecosystems. The findings illustrate how industry clusters can be viewed from a systems perspective. We also highlight how the institutional pillars underpinning national innovation ecosystems can be applied to an industry cluster level, particularly in emerging countries. The article provides implications for theory and practice in the application of a systems perspective as a way to foster industry cluster innovation and promote a more effective national innovation ecosystem. Full article

Literature shows that the regression of independent and (nearly) nonstationary time series could result in spurious outcomes. In this paper, we conjecture that under some situations, the regression of two independent and nearly non-stationary series does not have any spurious problem at all. To check whether our conjecture holds, we set up several situations and conduct simulations to justify our conjecture. Our simulations show that under some situations, the chance that the regressions being spurious is very high for all the cases simulated in our paper. Nonetheless, under some other situations, our simulation shows that the rejection rates are much smaller than the 5% level of significance for all the cases simulated in our paper, implying that our conjecture could hold under some situations that regression of two independent and nearly non-stationary series does not have any spurious problem at all. Full article

Theoretically, accounting earnings could be used to estimate the intrinsic value of equity. If accounting earnings could be predicted accurately, then, so could be the value of equity, thereby, creating much less risk in equity investment. However, earnings surprises are common, and therefore so is the risk in equity investment. To quantify the risk in the investment implied from accounting earnings, I propose to use financial statements to construct abnormal sales growth rates (ABG) and abnormal changes in profit margins (ABPM) to measure the uncertainty embedded in the accounting earnings. I measure ABG (ABPM) as the difference between the current value of sales growth rate (profit margin) and its benchmark, a weighted value of the three preceding years’ sales growth rate (profit margin). Then, I quantify whether and to what extent the news of ABG and ABPM are material enough to change the expected earnings (proxied by analysts’ forecasted earnings revisions [FREV] and predicted unexpected earnings [UE], and future stock returns [SAR]). Fama–MacBeth regression results show that, together, solely ABPM and ABG could explain 8.2% (2.3%) (5.4%) of the variation of FREV (UE) (SAR). The risk-predictability of ABPM and ABG is robust to the presence of abnormal growth in net operating assets and accruals quality, which, suggested by previous literature, might influence unexpected earnings. Further contingent analyses indicate that the capital market reacts more strongly to the bad news embedded in the ABPM/ABG (with negative signs) than the good news in ABPM/ABG (with positive signs). Full article

The study presented in the paper aims to analyze the Russian print media market before and during the COVID-19 pandemic, as well as the prospects of local media transformation in the challenging environment. In the pre-pandemic decade, there was a growing body of literature on media convergence in emerging markets confirming that this concept is growing in importance as a strategic path of conventional media transformation. Still, the research on the Russian conventional media transformation is scarce, the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic risks on Russian print media and their business models have not been investigated so far. To fill the gap, we combined desk research, processing of published industry statistics, and data obtained by means of expert interviews. The results confirm that in the first decades of the 21st century Russian print media paid less attention to the opportunities of media convergence than Western ones. At the same time, those Russian conventional media that set ambitious goals for their future considered the adoption of the media convergence approach as crucial, even before the pandemic. The findings show the lack of systemic measures to improve the overall situation on the national media market that faces difficult times, and the need to take into account pandemic risks in the print media management activities. Full article

Due to the rise in the demand for information communication technologies (ICT), the need for operational risk resilience within the European insurance market sector has grown exponentially. This study aims to use the case of blockchain to evaluate whether the five characteristics determined from the literature to be required for effective digital risk resilience (specifically, integration, flexibility, reliability, relevance, and timeliness) have an impact on effectiveness in addressing the requirements of the European Union’s proposed Digital Operational Resilience Act (DORA). To achieve this, we developed a survey with 29 statements, which participants were required to answer using a five-point Likert scale. In total, 513 valid responses were received from participants. These were analyzed using exploratory factor analysis (EFA), confirmatory factor analysis (CFA), and structural equation modeling (SEM). Results show that in the case of blockchain, reliability, flexibility, and relevance were found to significantly relate to its effectiveness in addressing DORA’s requirements, but relationships of effectiveness with integration and timeliness were found to be insignificant. However, when the experience variable was added to the model as the moderator variable, we found that timeliness and relevance have a significant relationship with blockchain effectiveness, while integration, reliability, and flexibility do not. Full article