Multinational corporations as the primary holders of foreign direct investments have a significant impact on the national economy with a well-developed and prepared institutional infrastructure, but they have even stronger impact on the transition economies and developing countries. Expanding into new markets, multinational corporations create new jobs; therefore unions have an important role in protecting employees' rights and their representation towards employers. The role of unions in the lives of all employees is even more noticeable because the situation on the labor market is extremely unfavourable and in many countries employees' rights are threatened. But researches also show that the proportion of union membership in the developed countries is decreasing, and also in developing countries and this trend has not bypassed Croatia. The aim of this paper is to investigate the role of unions in the subsidiaries of multinational corporations in Croatia. In more than half of the analyzed subsidiaries of multinational corporations we identified one hundred percent coverage of employees by collective agreements. We analyzed the most common reasons for joining the union and evaluated the relationship between unions and human resource management departments.

Escalating competition among destinations has become more obvious. Shopping for handicrafts is one of important activities in tourism. Handicraft industry is a low technology, labor intensive, and run dominantly by small medium enterprises (SMEs). Handicraft industry is one of creative industries sector in Indonesia that promises to accelerate the growth of the Indonesian economy. To remain competitive, understanding on the competitive nature of handicrafts market need to be continuously monitored and adjusted to SMEs strategies. Using partial least squares path modeling on a cross-sectional sample of 54 SMEs owners in Bantul Yogyakarta, this study examines relationships among factors of destination competitiveness with clusters competitiveness and socio-economic welfare. The predictors assessed include given resources, created resources, related-supporting factors, demand conditions and strategy-structure-rivalry. Results indicate that supporting factors and strategy-structure-rivalry are not significantly impact on cluster competitiveness. The new final model was found that clusters competitiveness mediates the relationships between three destination competitiveness factors and socio-economic welfare. This study enriches theories on destination competitiveness, particularly in assessing clusters as the object of the study. The results are also important for policymakers in strengthening destination competitiveness strategy.

The study examines Lesotho’s demand for holding international reserves and assesses the country’s reserve adequacy position over the period 1981-2012. The results from the standard reserve adequacy benchmarks reveal that Lesotho generally has sufficient stock of foreign reserves to satisfy the minimum adequacy requirements, with the level of reserves in other periods being relatively higher than what is required. Furthermore, the estimates of Lesotho’s reserve demand function from the cointegration analysis suggest that the long-term reserve demand policies for Lesotho are positively related to average propensity to import, economic growth and export volatility while negatively associated with exchange rate volatility and opportunity cost of holding reserves. The former finding confirms that the precautionary motive plays a significant role in determining Lesotho’s demand for holding international reserves, while the latter indicates that reserve accumulation in Lesotho is based on profitability considerations. The results also show that although the demand for foreign reserves increased in the years of democracy, the country sometimes uses part its international reserves to finance government infrastructure projects.

The increasing of internet users affecting the choice of browsers and for now, desktop users still dominate the usage. The research’s goal is to analyze the well-known browser such as Mozilla Firefox, Google Chrome, Internet Explorer, Opera, and Safari from the Indonesian customer point of view. The variables used in the analysis are the speed to display HTML, the speed of executing ECMA Script, the browser security, the need of hardware resource, and the general feature of each browser. We distribute questionnaire to 400 users of the five browsers in Indonesia. The multivariate statistics of multidimensional scaling used to process the data. The research found that Mozilla Firefox is the best browser on speed criteria when displaying the HTML and general feature, as the Google Chrome win the heart of Indonesian users on the speed criteria when executing ECMA Script. As usual, the Apple Safari excels on the security and the hardware resources consumption (KHR1). The Internet Explorer considered the best on the hardware resources consumption criteria.

The Nigerian University administration is a collection of specialized academic faculties established by law, financed by private and public funds, and staffed by professionals in various disciplines for the purpose of achieving their overall goal (teaching, research, and community service) of service delivery. Since good work ethics represents a critical determinant of effectiveness and productivity vis-à-vis service delivery in all formal organizations, this paper utilizes the “person-situation” theoretical model to assess the level of service delivery in selected public universities in the South-south geo-political region of Nigeria. The present investigation adopted the survey research design. Six hundred and sixty (660) academic and non-academic staff and three hundred (300) students were purposively and randomly sampled respectively. The instrument used for data collection was titled: “good work ethics and service delivery questionnaire”. Data was analyzed using population t-test, multiple regression and Pearson product moment correlation. The study revealed that almost all the public universities under consideration have witnessed poor service delivery in terms of delay in the release of students’ results, delay in the preparation of transcript, failure to adhere to time-tables (crash programme) – leading to frustration by students. The overall consequences of this have been the poor rating of these universities. It was recommended among other things that effort should be made to address the poor work ethics (in terms of initiative, dedication, high standard of responsibility, loyalty, accountability, and self-discipline) among staff and students in the selected universities with a view to strengthening its performance index and therefore service delivery.

In 1986, Nigeria introduced a structural adjustment programme (SAP) and one of the policy implications of the programme was the deregulation of the economy. And so the banking sector was also deregulated. This led to sudden increase in the number of banks. However, distress soon hit the financial sector of the economy. In order to avoid the bitter consequences of bank failure, the government established the Nigeria Deposit Insurance Corporation (NDIC) to augment the regulatory power of Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) as a watch dog over banks and ensure stable, safe and sound system of the banking sector. Various attempts aimed at revamping the banking sector, ranging from recapitalization to outright liquidation failed.In July 2004, a new method aimed at salvaging the banking sector was announced by the CBN. This method includes banking sector reform and bank consolidation. The main thrust of this study is to examine the impact of consolidation on Nigeria economy. To achieve this, SPSS Version 19 econometric software package regression method was adopted. The ordinary least squares (OLS) analytical technique was applied to estimate the empirical relationship between the dependent and independent variables. The study also carried out chow test in order to determine the structural stability of the regression. The study revealed that Nigeria bank consolidation has not impacted significantly on Nigeria’s economic growth under the study period. The study therefore recommended that banking regulations such as bank consolidation needs to be a component of total reform framework of monetary authority to ensure effectiveness in Nigeria banking sector performance.