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This study aims to examine how ethical leadership enhances the relationship between employee ethical behaviour and the job performance of employees in state-owned enterprises (SOEs).

This study was a survey, with data collected using a structured questionnaire. The study focused on employees from SOEs in Ghana. The sample covers 238 employees drawn from 10 SOEs. Data was analyzed using structural equation modelling.

The study concludes that employee ethical behaviour positively influenced the job performance of employees of SOEs in Ghana. The effect of ethical leadership on employee job performance was positively significant. Finally, ethical leadership positively moderated the effect of employee ethical behaviour on the job performance of employees of SOEs.

Future research should look at identifying the specific behaviours of ethical employees that influence improved job performance. Also, future research could conduct a comparative study of private-owned enterprises and SOEs.

Attention should also be paid to ethical leadership, as it strongly enhanced both employee job performance and the quality of employee ethical behaviour required for increased job performance of employees.

Extant studies have paid limited attention to understanding how the interaction between employee ethical behaviour and ethical leadership will enhance employee job performance.

Introduction: – Together with the increasing competition between businesses each day, the sales and marketing process of products and services have become increasingly difficult. For this reason, sales have become a marketing activity with an ever-growing importance to businesses. The performance of salespeople who undertake this challenge on behalf of the business is highly valuable for firms. Many researches have noted that there is a relationship between the performance of salesperson and motivation. The purpose of motivation in sales literature is to direct salespeople to exert more effort in reaching sales-oriented goals and aims. In order to ensure this, many businesses use various motivation tools/factors.

Purpose – The aim of this study is to analyse the effect of motivation factors on performance of salesperson.

Methodology – Quantitative research method was used in the study. A questionnaire was prepared with this aim in mind and administered to 315 employees working as salesperson in Çanakkale and Bursa provinces.

Findings – The findings from the analysis of the data show that the five dimensions namely satisfaction, image, relations, knowledge of product and service and advertisement related to motivation factors have a significant effect on the task performance of the salesperson.

This paper examined tax compliance and its impact on agrochemical traders in Ghana.

Based on the registered agrochemical lists obtained from the Plant Protection and Regulatory Service Department, 92 agrochemical traders were sampled for data collection. Probit regression was used to estimate determinants of tax compliance, whereas the Inverse Probability Weighted Regression Adjustment Model was employed to evaluate the impact of tax compliance on business performance.

The results revealed that age and gender relate positively to enforced tax compliance, while education positively impacts voluntary tax compliance. Nonetheless, tax rate, trust and monthly sales positively affect voluntary tax compliance but negatively impact enforced tax compliance. Inversely, while authorities’ power negatively impacted voluntary compliance, it positively influenced enforced tax compliance confirming the Slippery Slope Framework.

To the best knowledge of the authors, this paper is the first to investigate tax compliance determinants and impact among agrochemical traders, despite the tremendous growth of the agrochemical sub-sector in Africa and Ghana. Therefore, this study makes a modest contribution to empirical studies that validate the Slippery Slope Framework in promoting tax compliance in the agricultural and agribusiness sectors of a developing country. Similarly, it also unearths the impact of tax compliance on agribusiness growth which has yet to be highlighted in the extant literature.

In recognition of corruption as a major obstacle to the development processes of poor countries, the search for effective strategies in combating the phenomenon in developing countries has become a major preoccupation of the international donor community, particularly since the early 1990s. The purpose of this paper is to examine the role of “political will” in combating corruption in Hong Kong, Singapore and Ghana with the view to drawing significant lessons for all developing and transition countries in their anticorruption crusades.

The findings in this paper are based on an extensive review of relevant literature and personal experiences in Ghana.

This paper concludes that controlling corruption in a sustained manner requires a consistent demonstration of genuine commitment on the part of the top political elite towards the eradication of the menace. Where the commitment of the top political leadership to the goal of eradicating corruption in a country is weak, as has been the case in Ghana, governments are only likely to engage in “zero tolerance for corruption” talk but continue to play a “tolerant corruption” game. Anticorruption reforms, in this regard, are bound to fail.

The paper highlights a number of lessons from the successful anticorruption crusades of Singapore and Hong Kong that are significant for Ghana and other developing countries in their fight against corruption. These include the need for anticorruption reform initiatives to be participatory and inclusive of all stakeholders including public and private sectors as well as civil society; the need to provide adequate budgets and staff for specialized anticorruption agencies and grant them independence in the execution of their mandates; and the need to establish effective mechanisms for: providing positive incentives for those who comply with anticorruption laws; and exposing and sanctioning compromised individuals and institutions.

Whilst studies on the role of political will in combating corruption in developing countries abound, most of these have either not provided in‐depth country experiences or relied on single country cases. One major departure of this paper from extant literature is its cross‐country comparative nature.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the relationship between fiscal federalism and accountability in Nigeria. Corruption is a global plague and is endemic in nature. Several policies have been adopted by the Nigerian Government to institutionalize accountability and combat the scourge of corruption that have hindered socio-economic progress but to no avail.

Thus, this study examined fiscal federalism and accountability issues in Nigeria using secondary data and used the auto-regressive distributed lag econometric technique to analyse the data.

The results from this study reveal that fiscal federalism fails to mitigate corruption in the long run in Nigeria because of poor bureaucratic quality (BQ) and ineffective law and order (LOR).

Fiscal decentralization must be accompanied by legislations that will strengthen BQ of fiscal institutions at subnational levels and promote effective LOR.

This study recommends that for fiscal federalism to mitigate corruption in the long run, government must adopt appropriate policies to improve BQ and further strengthen LOR in Nigeria. The finding also suggests that to promote public sector accountability in Nigeria, government should ensure the simultaneous decentralization of expenditure and revenue to lower tiers of government. This study provides detailed empirical evidence that fiscal decentralization without accountability will accentuate public sector corruption, and in the long run, weaken local economic development initiative to boost growth and development.

This qualitative case study aims to investigate how current services meet the emotional needs of young women growing up with perinatally acquired human immunodeficiency virus (HIV). Young women (15–19 years old), caregivers and service providers were recruited through three multidisciplinary HIV management centres in Malawi.

In-depth interviews were used to collect data for 14 “cases” (each “case” involved a young woman, a caregiver and a service provider, for a total of 42 participants). The interviews with adolescents were conducted using an innovative visual method known as the “my story” book.

Thematic analysis revealed that young women experienced traumatic experiences and emotional neglect after being diagnosed as HIV positive. Lack of adult support networks and social isolation were identified as intersecting factors contributing to their mental distress. According to the findings of this study, HIV care should more explicitly include comprehensive mental health-care services. This provision should include ongoing individualised counselling sessions, supplemented by communication skills training to help break the prevalent cultural silence on HIV issues. Young people living with HIV, in general, and young women, are more likely to experience mental health issues than their non-infected peers. Integrating comprehensive mental health evaluation and treatment into HIV care for young people can be beneficial.

Mental health issues are critical and underserved challenges among young people living with perinatally acquired HIV. Women experience a higher prevalence of mental challenges than men. Integrating comprehensive mental health evaluation and treatment into HIV care for young people can be beneficial. Therefore, interventions to assist young people with mental health issues are needed within the context of HIV management in Malawi.

Many studies on mental health and HIV/AIDS have been conducted. However, there is very little information as regards the emotional needs of young women growing up with perinatally acquired HIV. This study fills the void.

The purpose of this paper is to establish a knowledge bank for the development of overall hospital processes. Description and analysis are used to show how process managers experience their situation and the various possibilities it offers for active management in the context of managing processes of inpatient care and treatment at Swedish hospitals.

A qualitative and explorative design with open-ended interviews with 12 process managers at three Swedish hospitals was used. Transcribed interviews were analysed by means of latent content analysis.

The two main categories emerging from the analysis were characteristics of process leadership and prerequisites of process management. Quality, relational and knowledge dimensions, and structure, time and information dimensions emerged as their respective sub-categories. The overall theme describes the interdependence between leadership characteristics and the prerequisites necessary for effective process management.

No generalizations could be made from the results of the qualitative interview studies but a deeper understanding of the phenomenon was reached, which in turn can be transferred to similar settings.

This study contributes qualitative descriptions of leadership characteristics and the prerequisites necessary for active process management in the context of managing processes of inpatient care and treatment at Swedish hospitals, a subject that has not been investigated earlier.

The issue of tax evasion through fraudulent financial reporting committed by companies is a major concern facing the tax authority in Malaysia. As such, the purpose of this study is to propose a cohesive model of predicting tax evasion from the perspective of fraudulent financial reporting amongst small- and medium-sized enterprise (SME) taxpayers.

The proposed model for this study is designed to explore the extent of the relationships between the independent variables: family ownership firms, company size, presence of tax professionals, company’s duration in business and frequency of tax audits and the moderating variable, i.e. tax audit officers’ level of competence; and the dependent variable, i.e. tax evasion from the perspective of fraudulent financial reporting. This study is grounded on four theories: agency theory, political cost theory, economic deterrence theory and competency theory. Data will be gathered from actual audit cases resolved by the Inland Revenue Board of Malaysia. Ordinary least square regression analysis is proposed for the investigation.

This study anticipates that family ownership firms, company size, presence of tax professionals, company’s duration in business and frequency of tax audits could be associated with tax evasion amongst SMEs in Malaysia. This study further proposes that highly competent tax audit officers could mitigate the relationship between frequency of tax audits and tax evasion practices amongst SMEs in Malaysia.

This study should be able to provide a cohesive model of predicting tax evasion from the perspective of fraudulent financial reporting amongst SMEs in Malaysia. Research on fraudulent financial reporting amongst SMEs is very limited, especially involving the level of competence of the tax audit officers; therefore, this study should contribute to the tax evasion literature by providing a comprehensive model of predicting tax evasion through fraudulent financial reporting using a Malaysian tax setting.

Ghana has implemented different kinds of pro-poor program and policies since its independence to reduce poverty. The Livelihood Empowerment Against Poverty (LEAP) is one of such program. LEAP is a social cash transfer program and its implementation has been under the auspices of the Ministry of Gender, Children and Social Protection since 2008. It provides direct cash and health insurance coverage for extremely poor households across the country to alleviate short-term poverty and encourage long-term human capital development. This paper examines the LEAP program in terms of how it has achieved its aim and the opportunities for improvement.

Primary data were obtained from interviews of 110 beneficiaries of the program. The study proposes a conceptual framework that links poverty reduction and social policies to assist researchers analyze pro-poor or social cash transfer program.

The findings show that the program is challenged with administrative bureaucracies, irregular inflow of funds, perceived political interferences, inconsistent implementation strategies and low value of the cash transfer (which results in little or no impact on consumption). However, the data also show that LEAP has positive impacts on nonconsumption spending like children's schooling. The program' exit strategy does not impact much on beneficiaries to allow them exit without the tendency of being poor.

This paper discussed the LEAP program as a social cash transfer to the poor in Ghana. The study constructed a conceptual framework to help researchers and practitioners analyze the implementation of pro-poor interventions. This conceptualization allows for cash transfer program to empower beneficiaries and exits them to allow for other beneficiaries to enroll, ensuring reduction in poverty over time. Generally, the beneficiaries have benefited from the LEAP in the areas of consumption, education and healthcare with few beneficiaries being able to accumulate some few assets. The LEAP program has no exit plan.

This study adds to literature by offering a conceptual framework to help researchers and policy makers in dealing with social assistance policies to the poor. The study also gave an insight into how pro-poor policy strategies could be crafted.