The present paper develops a sustainable framework under a supply chain environment by considering a vendor and a buyer. The vendor governs the manufacturing process to serve the demand of the buyer. The manufacturing system is imperfect which ends up producing some fraction of defectives. For the sake of maintaining the goodwill of the organization, it is imperative to maintain the quality standards. Thus, the buyer employs the screening process to bifurcate the perfect items from the imperfect ones. The imperfect items secluded after screening are reverted back to the vendor, for which a warranty cost is incurred. Further, in an attempt to achieve sustainability the model considers the carbon-emissions costs during the transportation process. A one-time discrete investment is also considered for minimizing the setup cost of the vendor for subsequent cycles. The models are developed for the case of the individual decision and for the joint verdict of the players under consideration. Moreover, it has been proved that the integrated model performs proficiently over the individual model. The objective is to jointly optimize the costs sustained by the two players. Numerical analysis and sensitivity analysis is done for imparting the validity and robustness of the model.

In this paper, we attempt to answer the question of whether or not bank capital affects profitability and risk. The paper forms an unbalanced panel with 354 observations using both data of 35 banks over the period 2007-2018. Two-step GMM is used to estimate the impacts of bank capital on profitability and risk in order to eliminate endogeneity and serial correlation issues. As a proxy of bank capital, the bank equity ratio, and equity level are used. Return on assets (ROA), return on equities (ROE), and net interest margin (NIM) are used to measure bank profitability, whereas nonperforming loan ratio and loan loss reserve ratio are used to measure bank risk. Bank capital displays significant impacts on profitability, which is measured by ROA and ROE, whereas capital shows no impact on bank NIM. When the loan loss reserve ratio is considered as proxy of bank risk, bank capital does not affect bank risk. The equity ratio, the proxy of bank capital, displays significant negative impacts on risk, whereas the equity level, the other proxy of bank capital, shows positive impacts on bank risk.

In the present paper, the theory of generalized photo-thermoelasticity under fractional order derivative was used to study the coupled of thermal, plasma, and elastic waves on unbounded semiconductor medium with a cylindrical hole during the photo-thermoelastic process. The bounding surface of the cavity was traction free and loaded thermally by exponentially decaying pulse boundary heat flux. The medium was considered to be a semiconductor medium homogeneous, and isotropic. In addition, the elastic and thermal properties were considered without neglecting the coupling between the waves due to thermal, plasma and elastic conditions. Laplace transform techniques were used to obtain the exact solution of the problem in the transformed domain by the eigenvalue approach and the inversion of Laplace transforms were carried out numerically. The results were displayed graphically to estimate the effect of the thermal relaxation time and the fractional order parameters on the plasma, thermal and elastic waves.

The purpose of this study is to explore the views of independent external auditors, financial statements’ preparers and financial statements’ users regarding the general responsibilities of auditors with a focus on their responsibility for fraud detection. A structured questionnaire survey was used as an instrument to collect data for this purpose. A total of 1,015 questionnaires were sent to three categories of respondents whereas 261 valid responses were received with an overall response rate of 26%. The findings of this study revealed a substantial audit expectation gap in Saudi Arabia with regards to auditors’ responsibilities in general and their responsibility for fraud detection in particular. Preparers of financial statements and users as well assume that auditors provide an absolute assurance that audited financial statements are free from material misstatements including fraud. In contrast to auditors’ perception, preparers and users of financial statements believe that auditors should be made liable to audit beneficiaries for losses if failed to disclose potential fraud in the audit report or for any subsequent discovery of misstated audited financial statements. This study contributes to the audit profession in Saudi Arabia by highlighting the presence of a serious expectation gap that may adversely affect the value of audit function and the reputation of auditors in Saudi Arabia. The implications of these findings should motivate professional bodies and other interested parties to cooperate and work closely to reduce the gap and find a convergence between auditors and audit beneficiaries about the role and responsibilities of auditors.

In the present research work, four different multi response optimization techniques, viz. multiple response signal-to-noise (MRSN) ratio, weighted signal-to-noise (WSN) ratio, Grey relational analysis (GRA) and VIKOR (VlseKriterijumska Optimizacija I Kompromisno Resenje in Serbian) methods have been used to optimize the electro-discharge machining (EDM) performance characteristics such as material removal rate (MRR), tool wear rate (TWR) and surface roughness (SR) simultaneously. Experiments have been planned on a D2 steel specimen based on L9 orthogonal array. Experimental results are analyzed using the standard procedure. The optimum level combinations of input process parameters such as voltage, current, pulse-on-time and pulse-off-time, and percentage contributions of each process parameter using ANOVA technique have been determined. Different correlations have been developed between the various input process parameters and output performance characteristics. Finally, the optimum performances of these four methods are compared and the results show that WSN ratio method is the best multiresponse optimization technique for this process. From the analysis, it is also found that the current has the maximum effect on the overall performance of EDM operation as compared to other process parameters.

In this paper, the edgewise and flatwise compressive behaviour of an innovative sandwich panel, mainly developed for quick assembly of post-disaster housing as well as load bearing panels for pre-fabricated modular construction and semi-permanent buildings, is investigated experimentally and by finite element modelling. The panel is composed of two 3-D high-density polyethylene (HDPE) sheets as the skins, filled with high-density Polyurethane (PU) foam as the core. HDPE sheets manufactured with a studded surface considerably enhance the stress distribution and buckling performance of the sandwich panel. Material characterisation tests and flatwise compression and edgewise compression experiments were performed in accordance with ASTM standards to evaluate the compressive strength and the load-carrying behaviour of the sandwich panels. A finite element analysis and validation were also conducted to model the compressive behaviour of sandwich structures. Results demonstrate that the developed sandwich panel exhibits very good compressive performance.

Most of the supply chain models have been developed under symmetric information structure i.e. players have complete knowledge of each other’s policies. But in most of the cases, players do not have complete information about the other players i.e. some information regarding their businesses is hidden. This paper studies supply chain model of imperfect quality items under asymmetric information in which unit price taken by the buyer and unit marketing expenditure are influencing product’s demand. This information is hidden to seller. The seller delivers the supply to the buyer. Each delivered lot goes through an inspection process at the buyer’s side. In the inspection process, the items are divided into two categories. The first category is perfect quality items while the second category is of imperfect quality items. After the inspecting the lots, the perfect quality commodities are to be sold at selling price and the imperfect items are supposed to get sold at a discounted price. The interaction between two constituents of the supply chain is modeled by non-cooperative Seller Stackelberg game approach in which the role of leader is played by the seller while the role of follower is played by the buyer. In our proposed model, the seller does not have information related to market demand but the buyer does. Numerical examples and sensitivity analysis explain the significance of the theory.

The purpose of this paper is to evaluate the differentials effects of the tax rate on transfer pricing activities in foreign direct investment enterprises in Vietnam. The study then suggests further research on the determinants over transfer pricing activities of these enterprises to have better solutions in dealing with transfer mispricing in Vietnam. A quantitative research method involving self-administered closed-ended questionnaires were extended to Managing Directors/Chief Executive Officers, Tax Managers/ Directors, Chief Finance Officers or Heads of Finance from foreign direct investment enterprises in Vietnam. Findings indicate a strong relationship between corporate tax rate differentials and the transfer pricing activities in foreign direct investment enterprises in Vietnam. The findings support Vietnamese policymakers, academic researchers, auditors, investors to have further study on the effect of the tax rate on transfer pricing activities of the enterprises. Nevertheless, tax officials and accounting representatives can have in-depth knowledge with regards to transfer pricing activities which the outcome of this study aspires as guidance for better understanding the aspects of transfer pricing while doing business in Vietnam.

Developing innovation, based on knowledge and technology, as a driving force of the economy, is necessary for survival and is required in having strong interactions within the globalized world of business. Innovation and technology development require an intertwined network of organizational interactions between public and private sector. The activities and interactions of these firms are the reasons for innovation development in the framework of innovation systems. Following strategies is of crucial necessity and importance in industries such as aerospace and remotely-piloted helicopters (RPH) with their complex characteristics, costly and time-consuming processes. Understanding the business environment and identifying the success factors is a significant step towards adopting innovative strategies and planning for technology development. The aim of this article is to evaluate the key success factors in technological innovation development of remotely-piloted helicopters (RPH) industry. The methodology used in this article is Best-Worst method which is considered as one of the most prominent and effective MCDM methods. Based on a case study and by reviewing the extant and relevant literature, the key success factors of technological innovation development of remotely-piloted helicopters (RPH) industry in Iran were identified. Then by applying the “Best-Worst” method and the experts’ opinions, the key success factors were analyzed and prioritized. Finally, some suggestions are made by considering the results of the study.

In this paper, we design a revenue sharing contract to coordinate pricing and inventory control decisions in a serial supply chain consisting of one supplier, one manufacturer and one retailer. We assume that the retailer faces Poisson demand and his unsatisfied demands will be lost. The retailer applies one-for-one period policy in which he constantly places an order for one unit of product to the manufacturer in a predetermined time interval which results in a deterministic demand for the manufacturer. Solution procedures are developed to find the equilibrium in the Vendor Managed Inventory (VMI) program with a revenue sharing contract, in which no party is willing to deviate from for the sake of maximizing his own profit. Furthermore, we formulate the total profit of the system and obtain the optimal retail price and order cycle for the retailer and the inventory policy of manufacturer which maximizes the supply chain’s total profit and at the end we will highlight the revenue sharing contract performance.