The Editorial

The Australian Academy of Business and Social Sciences (AABSS) and Tennessee State University (TSU) mutually signed a contract in the Summer of 2014. Under that contract, the Journal of Developing Areas – A TSU publication, commits itself to publish special issues with a selected number of manuscripts presented and/or accepted in the conferences organized by the AABSS. Accordingly, the first AABSS international conference in partnership with the JDA took place in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia during August 25-26, 2014.

In that conference, many more abstracts and papers were submitted for presentation than expected. All the submissions underwent a two-tier review process. At the first tier, AABSS experts screened the manuscripts and accepted about 200 for presentation. Finally, over 150 authors paid fees and got registered. At the second tier, the JDA editorial office reviewed them again as per the journals own standards and chose some as papers and others as notes for the JDA special issue. From this pool, a few were accommodated in the JDA regular issues. With the remainders, we are presenting to you this special issue.

We are pleased that the first JDA special issue has finally come out. The success of our conference and this issue is attributable to the participants of the Kuala Lumpur conference in August 2014. However, for all the loopholes and shortcomings this may have, I bear full responsibility on behalf of the AABSS and JDA editorial office, and offer my sincere apology.