Cloud computing is of growing interest due to its potential for delivering scalable and self-managed services. Financial institutions, as “critical users” of cloud computing services, are still slow-going and careful in the usage of clouds, since outsourcing data from a “secure” internal IT infrastructure to an external cloud poses multiple data privacy issues. This paper provides an assessment...

Contrary to some recent work on so-called 'globalisation', this paper argues that national and regional systems of innovation remain an essential domain of economic analysis. Their importance derives from the networks of relationships which are necessary for any firm to innovate. Whilst external international connections are certainly of growing importance, the influence of the national educati...

OBJECTIVES This study aimed to assess the research investments made to UK institutions for all infectious disease research and identify the direction of spend by institution. DESIGN Systematic analysis. Databases and websites were systematically searched for information on relevant studies funded for the period 1997-2010. SETTING UK institutions carrying out infectious disease research. P...

The authors review experimental evidence that religious conviction can be a defensive source of compensatory control when personal or external sources of control are low. They show evidence that (a) belief in religious deities and secular institutions can serve as external forms of control that can compensate for manipulations that lower personal control and (b) religious conviction can also se...

In the interest of reinforcing the relationship between academic research and professional practice, certain postgraduate design courses can serve as research think tanks for cultural institutions or projects which may not have access to inhouse research departments, either for organic reasons or as a result of limited resources. This approach, which we have been implementing since 2006 within ...

The transition to democracy and a free market economy in Hungary and other Central European nations has provided a unique opportunity to study rapid change in budget systems, institutions, and policies. This article examines budgeting in Hungary since 1989, beginning with an analysis of the comparative budgeting literature in an attempt to identify an appropriate theoretical framework for the s...

In Kantian political philosophy external freedom, understood as the ability to take up means toward the attainment of ends we have set for ourselves, is secured through the three branches of the republican state. Indeed, the state is necessary for the exercise of this freedom. However, in order to provide a condition consistent with the original contract, further institutions are required; in t...

This paper describes the external forces that motivate financial institutions to collect, aggregate, analyze, and mine data so that it can be transformed into information, one of a financial institution’s most valuable assets. In this paper we refer to this strategic information asset as “information currency.” In general, we describe the state of banking and the rapid global changes that affec...

Since the 1990s, a number of anti-corruption conventions have been adopted due to pressure from international financial institutions, donor countries and governments of major industrialised nations. One of these conventions is the Anti-corruption Protocol adopted by the Southern African Development Community. This article examines this Convention against the backdrop of the principal–agent–clie...