Search results

Strategic decision importance has rarely been investigated as a decision-specific characteristic in the strategic decision-making process (SDMP) literature taking into consideration information management while taking important strategic decisions. Here, the ability of decision importance to predict decision effectiveness as an outcome of SDMPs in higher education institutions (HEIs) is examined in the context of Bahrain.

A conceptual model is developed relating decision importance to decision effectiveness indirectly via the SDMP characteristics intuition, rationality and decentralization. Data from a cross-sectional questionnaire completed by leaders of HEIs and academics involved in strategic decision-making in Bahrain are used to test the model and hypotheses via correlation analysis. The paper also considers a literature review of the use of information management while taking a strategic decision.

Decision importance is shown to positively influence decision effectiveness in Bahraini HEIs mediated by rationality and by decentralization in decision-making, although negative effects of decentralization are also demonstrated. However, decision importance does not influence decision effectiveness mediated by intuition.

Due to the small sample size, the results cannot be generalized to contexts beyond HEIs in Bahrain. Additional SDMP characteristics of significance in the context of HEIs could be future investigated, for instance, political behaviour and lateral communication, are not included in the model. Future research exploring the latter two aspects could provide deeper insight into the findings.

The findings of this paper could be considered by HEIs senior management and members of the governing body while strategic decision-making, which could be at different levels, including strategic planning or assessing a strategic decision in terms of effectiveness. This paper will also provide insight one the use of information while considering strategic decision-making.

A model leading for effective strategic decision-making could be used by leaders of HEIs and regulators including licensing bodies and QA agencies to set standards for HEIs for sustainable performance and quality education in line with United Nations Sustainable Development Goals and Initiative. Strategic decision-making will have an impact on the overall performance of HEIs and serve all relevant stakeholder’s including parents, students, employers and industry.

Little research conducted in relation to strategic decision-making in the Gulf Cooperation Council therefore, this research will add original findings and the outcome of this study will lead to future research related to SDMP and the use of information management in the overall strategic decision-making.

Given the systemic nature of climate change, there are many interdependencies between its primary components and feedback loops, emphasising the need to simultaneously consider the stock market implications of physical and transitional climate-related risks. More importantly, carbon emissions are expected to be reduced through various transition pathways. However, transitional climate risks have been validated as capable of predicting stock market behaviour, hence the motivation for the role of technology shocks.

We use a GARCH-MIDAS model to examine the relationship between climate change and stock return volatility since it enables data analysis at various frequencies within the same framework. We employ a novel dataset to track technology shocks, and the study spans decades of data from 1880 to 2018.

We find that the relationship between climate change and stock return volatility is episodic and varies with different degrees of intensity of high-temperature anomalies and technology shocks. Our results suggest that policy actions should include investing in climate technologies to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and encouraging investment in eco-friendly assets.

There has been little or no consideration for the probable complementary effects of physical and transition climate-related risks on stock markets. Hence, the novelty in the context of this study is the hypothesis that transitional risks, if explored from the point of view of technological innovations, can moderate the stock market’s vulnerability to physical climate risks.

The global economy is facing a steep challenge from volatility, risk and uncertainty associated with climate change, pandemics, regional conflicts and trade wars which are unprecedented and overlapping. These crises are leading to macro- and microeconomic imbalances. The immediate effects like rising inflation, shortage of energy and fertiliser, food insecurity, loss of jobs and poverty are looming large, leading to existential threat. It is evident that decades of progress are at risk and pursuing sustainable development goals (SDGs) requires dedicated and customised efforts by the governments and other relevant actors, especially in the low- and middle-income countries (LMICS). The concept of circular economy is considered to bring a paradigm shift by reducing the dependence on natural resource extraction and decoupling economic growth from use of natural resources. Bioeconomy is another emerging field which deals with the use of renewable biological resources such as biomass to produce renewable biofuels, bioproducts, and biopower for economic, environmental and social benefits. Circular bioeconomy (CBE) lies at the intersection and is defined as the production of recoverable biological (waste) resources and the conversion of these resources into high-value-added products, such as food, feed, bio-based products and bioenergy. It has been estimated that the economic opportunity for the sector to complement or even substitute conventional ones is estimated to be USD 7.7 trillion by 2030 for food and feed waste products, and energy. CBE is perceived as a pathway for development and has the potential to target different SDGs directly like 6, 7 and 12 and SDGs 2, 3, 11, 12, 13 and 15 indirectly. This study explores the linkages of CBE with the SDG goals and provides recommendations to stimulate the sector.

The global economy has already experienced recession in 1975, 1982, 1991, 2007 (the Great Recession or the Global Financial Meltdown), and 2020 (The Pandemic Recession). When hope of recovery has just started to emerge with real gross domestic product (GDP) growth reaching 5.7% in 2021, dark clouds are gathering ominously on the horizon again. In January 2022, the World Bank's forecasts (for global growth) were 4.1% for 2022 and 3.3% for 2023. Not only the indicators like industrial activity are shrinking, consumer and investor confidence is at a low point, workers are losing jobs, profit margins and global trade are showing a downward trend, after a period of post-pandemic expansion. But most worrying is the slowing down of the Big Trio of USA-China-Euro Zone that currently accounts for over 50% of real global GDP in Purchasing Power Parity (PPP) terms and contributed 62% to global growth over 2015–2019. Moreover, energy and food prices are showing rising trend, and Ukraine war is showing no sign of ending in the near future. In this context, the present chapter attempts to analyze whether with prices rising and productive activities (including trade) shrinking (described as “stagflation”), is the world headed for another serious slump, and if that happens, what will be its severity? It also tries to point out some limitations of the policy suggestions of the structural projection models used by the World Bank. It also tries to point out the policy suggestions of the models used by the World Bank.

The unorganised manufacturing sector contributes one third share of overall manufacturing employment and one fifth share of gross value added of the manufacturing sector. Despite its important role in large-scale employment generation, this sector is neglected by the researchers as well as by the policy makers as compared to the focus given on the organised manufacturing sector. The issues of energy intensity, environment emissions and growth of unorganised manufacturing enterprises (UMEs) remain unexplored. The present chapter attempts to estimate the CO₂ emission and emission intensity (EI) across UMEs on the basis of NSSO Unit Level data of 62nd, 67th and 73rd rounds. It also analyses the growth of UMEs in relation to CO₂ emission and EI. The nature of the sector is very much dispersed. Our study reveals that a portion of unorganised enterprises did not use any energy in their production activities and used manually operated instruments like – handlooms, weaving machines, hand-operated oil and rice mills, etc. The main energy inputs of UMEs are electricity and fuel & lubricants. The CO₂ emission is relatively less in UMEs compared to organised manufacturing enterprises. Across the unorganised manufacturing industries, the higher CO₂ emission are observed in manufacturing of food product industry and other non-metallic mineral industry. The study found that CO₂ EI of UMEs depends on firm-level characteristics like perennial nature, establishment type, urban location and expanding growth status. However, capital intensive UMEs are more polluting.

Introduction: In the modern period, environmental degradation has had negative effects on people’s health as well as the regular business environment. As a result, embracing a ‘Go Green’ philosophy has gained widespread acceptance among individuals and corporations worldwide. Going green is referred to as promoting eco-friendly ways and banks are essential in protecting the environment to improve our quality of life.

Purpose: This study will focus on the correlation between green banking practices (GBP), employee green behaviour (EGB), and banks’ sustainability performance and how this relationship will give a competitive edge in terms of sustainability to the banks adopting these GBP.

Methodology: EGB between GBP and bank sustainability occurrence is clarified by this study. The current study is descriptive and finds the relationship through previous literature reviews.

Findings: Employees are expected to be crucial in this transformation as the modern banking system adopts green banking initiatives and updates traditional banking processes. Employees help banks perform more sustainably by encouraging environmentally friendly banking practices.

Practical Implications: By understanding the mechanism, between GBP and bank sustainability, banks can adopt more effective strategies to enhance their sustainability performance while promoting environmentally friendly practices.

The issue of environmental regulation and productivity has received increasing attention among academics, but little research has focused on Chinese firms despite the serious state of pollution in China. This study aimed to fill that gap. Analyzing a sample of firms from 12 Chinese cities, we found that environmental regulation could improve firm productivity, but the responses to environmental regulation differed across industry sectors, firm sizes, and locations. In this paper, we discuss the implications of these responses toward the environmental policy in China.

Introduction: With the accelerated process of building metropolitans, more and more people tend to live in cities. So, to deal with this, the need has arisen to make smart everything that we have around us even when we arrived at the term of the smart city. All of this produces data we call big data that is generated by citizens.

Aim: So, cloud computing is the main idea implementation which we can use ineffective from all of these services which we call smart. And taking into account all of this, in this literature review, we have used different techniques to extract the most relevant papers on our topic. Mainly, we focus on smart cities and their taxonomy of it such as smart homes, smart buildings, traffic monitoring, security and emergencies, and so on. For a smart city, we discussed different proposed system architectures which represent the real work of researchers.

Results: In this way, we mention services that are offered and have the base services cloud services. Also, the articles we used are extracted and analysed from the most powerful and relevant databases such as IEEE, ACM, Elsevier, Science Direct, and so on. In total, we take 88 papers, and from all of these papers we have extracted 53 with different methods. This Systematic Literature Review presents building and using smart cities inside of cloud computing services.

Conclusion: However, a different implementation idea to do better life for all of us is by converting our lifestyle into a new form of living. The only form of implementation is by digitalising and implementing everything around us which means making every service in one place, where you can have access from anywhere, anytime. So, the smart city is the future.

Originality/value: This systematic literature review contributes to everyone who expresses interest to implement and provides additional evidence for existing studies in smart city patterns which used cloud services. Researchers offer various implementation forms of different models and express the impact of cloud services, especially for placements, where there are more people populated. Also, this study identifies a major weakness in existing smart city implementation by using cloud services, which have identified the main obstacles now and it needs to reanalyse the form of implementation for more complex systems in the future.

The COVID-19 pandemic has impacted companies both ways, negatively by testing their ability to adapt in uncertain situations and positively by accelerating the adoption of technology systems. One of the new technologies is represented by blockchain which brings decentralised control, transparency between the involved parties, and two-ways security checks on transactions. The Romanian market has been selected to provide an early assessment of the potential the market has on implementing blockchain technology and becoming more transparent within customer and state interactions. As part of the blockchain network, it brings both numerous benefits such as transparency in interactions with other parties and freedom as it is not regulated by any kind of authority yet.

Introduction: Blockchain technology is the method of storing the data systematically, such that it is impossible to change, defraud or hack the data. Distributed Ledger Technology is another name for this technology. It is like a digital ledger of numerous transactions stored or distributed throughout the Blockchain extensive network by a computer system. Banks offer critical services like payments, clearance and settlement systems, trade finance, securities, etc. Hence, there are fraud and mistakes in these key services due to many manual procedures and human mediators.

Purpose: The main purpose of this chapter is to study the emerging role of Blockchain in banking services. This chapter will attempt to examine the significance and applications of Blockchain in banking operations. This chapter will also investigate the challenges encountered by banks in adopting Blockchain technology.

Research Methodology: In this research chapter, secondary data are collected by studying the various journal papers and scholarly articles, with exact keywords like: blockchain, banking sector, applications and blockchain role. Data are collected from the Emerald, Springer Open, Google Scholar, and Science Direct databases.

Findings: This technology will enhance transparency in banking transactions in the coming future. The adoption of Blockchain will transform the banking system in many ways, such as faster payment and settlement systems, security management and fundraising.