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Financial inclusion is considered one of the strategic tools for sustainable development and one of the types of corporate social responsibility disclosures. This study aims to focus on the association between the disclosure of financial inclusion activities and Syrian banking companies’ performance.

Different regression models were suggested to examine the hypotheses leading to a better understanding of the relationship between financial inclusion and Syrian banking performance for the period 2005 to 2020 using the STATA 17.

The results showed a positive association between financial inclusion disclosure and Syrian bank performance, with low participation in financial inclusion activities (8%).

The study recommends that the Central Bank of Syria work on developing an index of financial inclusion for the Syrian environment, with the issuance of legislation and laws that obligate all listed banks to disclose their financial inclusion activities as a part of their social responsibility.

This study incorporates the relationship between the disclosure of financial inclusion activities and the performance of Syrian banking companies, which has been neglected by most studies on financial inclusion. Therefore, this study sheds light on this positive relationship, which could have important repercussions in reviving the deteriorating Syrian economy following the crisis it went through, which, in turn, led to Syria’s high inflation affecting the poor and vulnerable disproportionately.

The specific teaching and learning objectives are as follows: to help students manage virtual communication in cross-cultural settings and developing the trust in virtual teams. To have them assess their effectiveness in the virtual collaboration process. To design the strategies to combat the challenges involved in working collaboratively on a common computing platform.

Higher education institutions in India are facing intense criticism for failing to impart employability skills to the students. Despite being one of the largest education systems in the world, Indian universities are not listed in the rankings of best international universities. It is grappling with the challenges of adopting the right teaching methodologies that foster deep learning, which may lead to sustainability in higher education. To gain relevancy, the higher education institutions must discover the ways to transit from the knowledge-intensive to skill-intensive institutions. By introducing a virtual collaborative professional project for international business students, Professor Bose proposed a small step of moving from a rote teacher-centric to more hands-on, student-centric teaching methodology. While virtual projects are a common and successful way of enhancing cross-cultural competence in students, Professor Bose is unsure how receptive Indian students will be with this methodology. He visualizes many challenges related to the execution of the project and is worried whether he will be successful in achieving his goal of skill-based knowledge creation. While systems and institutions of higher education in India struggle to address the pressures created by globalization, Professor Bose knew that the one-size-may not fit all. “Flexible pedagogy” and personalizing the methods to suit the requirements of a majority of the students was the way forward. However, he needs to know if the faculty and students will be open to change.

This case is immediately valuable for the students and faculty who are the part of the courses such as “International Business” in which the global leadership challenges, managing virtual communication in cross-cultural settings and developing the trust in virtual teams are main features of the curriculum. The case could also be used effectively in the seminars conducted for the managers working in international organizations and managing the tasks in virtual teams located globally.

Teaching notes are available for educators only.

CSS: 5 International Business.

The financial system of an economy, especially banking, facilitates efficient allocation of resources from savers to borrowers for productive investments, and thus promotes economic growth. State-wise bank credit in India shows a growing divergence, despite the aim of central planning to reach a degree of convergence in macroeconomic performance over time. This chapter analyzes how diverging bank credit affects macroeconomic performances of the Indian states, through an alternative approach of composite indicators-based rankings of states adopting the methodology of TOPSIS (Technique for Order Preference by Similarity to Ideal Solution) that is used in operations research or more specifically MCDM (multiple criteria decision-making). A composite indicator of the states’ annual macroeconomic performances has been constructed taking indicators of output growth, per capita state domestic product, inflation, and fiscal indicators for years 2006–2018. States are ranked by both macroeconomic performance and bank credit to states, and the correlation between the two indicators, known in the literature to be interlinked,is studied here to understand how the availability of credit or lack of it has influenced State level macroeconomic development in India. The results thus show that wealthier and better performing states continue to attract the larger chunk of bank credit, while weaker states have not been able to catch up. An important policy implication would be to place even more emphasis on higher levels of credit growth for weaker states, particularly infrastructure credit, to achieve a degree of income convergence throughout the Indian economy.

This study examines the effects of corporate governance mechanisms on voluntary corporate carbon disclosure in Bangladeshi firms.

To investigate the association between corporate governance mechanisms and corporate carbon disclosures, this study employs ordinary least square (OLS) methods. To mitigate the potential endogeneity concerns, the authors also introduce firm fixed effect (FE) and random effect (RE). Primarily, the study sample includes 250 firm-year observations over the period 2015–2019 for listed companies on the Dhaka Stock Exchange (DSE) in Bangladesh. Subsequently, corporate governance mechanisms that influence voluntary carbon disclosure were examined using both univariate and OLS models.

The findings of this study suggest that firms with a larger board size and more independent directors have a positive impact on the firm's intensity to disclose carbon-related information. However, no evidence has been found of the existence of an environmental committee, and the presence of female directors on the board tends to be associated with a higher level of voluntary corporate carbon disclosure.

The study offers necessary evidence of the determinants of corporate carbon disclosures, which will be useful for managers, senior executives, policymakers and regulatory bodies. To improve corporate governance practices and formulate separate sets of regulations and reporting criteria, disclosing extensive and holistic carbon-related information obligatory. Further, the outcomes of this study based on Bangladeshi firms can be comprehensive for other developing countries to take precautions to tackle the effect of global climate change.

Developing countries like India, accounts for about 40 percent of undernourished children in the World and it is largely due to the result of dietary inadequacy in relation to their needs. The purpose of this paper was to evaluate the changes in the nutritional status of the children, from their preschool days to the present primary school days.

The present investigation was conducted at 20 Integrated Child Development Service (ICDS) centers (Center-A) and 15 primary schools (Center-B) in Bali Gram Panchayat, Arambag, Hooghly District of West Bengal, India, at an interval of three to four years. A total of 1,012 children (boys=498; girls=514) aged two to six years old enrolled in these ICDS centers and a total of 603 children (boys=300, girls=303), aged five to ten years were studied from the 15 primary schools who were the beneficiaries of ICDS centers. Underweight (weight-for-age Z-score (WAZ)) and wasting (weight-for height Z-score (WHZ)) were used to assess the nutritional status.

The nutritional situation (both in case of underweight and wasting) was better in Center B as compared with Center A. In general, the nutritional condition of boys was better than girls. Center had a very significant effect on both WAZ as well as WHZ, irrespective of age and sex. Sex has a significant impact only on WAZ. Interestingly, there was no significant sex-center interaction for both WAZ as well as WHZ. The children of the area were getting Mid Day Meal supplied through the school authorities which was comparatively better than the ICDS centers’ food supplementation. Better monitoring of nutritional supplementation at primary schools may be an important factor.

In ICDS centers, only the Anganwari worker is responsible in running and implementing the programs offered by the Government. However, at primary schools, the active involvement of all the teachers to run the program may have effectively led to have better results. Furthermore, the Government's focus should not be only on the increase the area covered by the ICDS program, but focus should be to increase the quality of food supplied, proper monitoring of the implementation and increase the allocation of funds. Appropriate measures may be taken by the authorities regarding this.

The results of the study will help in policy making in reducing the prevalence of undernutrition.

The purpose of this study is to examine the effect of board characteristics on foreign equity ownership (FEO) in the listed public limited companies of Bangladesh.

The study collected data from 418 annual reports of listed companies of Bangladesh for the years 2015, 2016 and 2017 to examine the effect of board characteristics on FEO. Ordinary Least Squares (OLS) and Two-Stage Least Squares (2SLS) regression methods are used to test the hypotheses of the study.

The results show that board size has significant negative influence on FEO. Other board characteristics variables such as board independence and female directorship appear to have an insignificant influence on FEO. However, several firm characteristics variables such as return on assets, market-to-book ratio, firm size and firm age have a significant positive relationship with FEO. While presenting the regression results separately for manufacturing and non-manufacturing firms, the findings reveal a number of differences in the results between the two sectors.

The major limitation of the study is that it concentrates only on three years annual report data in analyzing the hypothesized relationships.

Policy makers, regulators and top management can get meaningful insights with respect to optimal board structure and firm characteristics to attract foreign investors as the results revealed significant effects of several board and firm characteristics variables on FEO.

The present study includes the presence of female directors on the board to represent board characteristics. No other study has examined the relationship between FEO and female directors.

Over a two‐month period, the editor of this review has searched worldwide for the most interesting and useful media articles on the topic of strategic management.

In addition to his own finds, the editor sorted through suggestions by a team of veteran top managers and senior academics.

The result is a surprisingly diverse set of media articles about strategy and leadership on such topics as promoting innovation, knowledge bridging, enabling change management, capitalism in failed states, building the no‐brand company, estimating the value of IT and the ignorance of crowds.

URL links and references have been provided for the articles so that managers can easily follow up this quick scan of the media by reading the articles in full.

Provides a snapshot of what managers are reading and a guide to trends and fresh thinking.

The study constructs a composite indicator to rank macroeconomic performance of countries and a separate composite indicator to rank countries by inequality using the TOPSIS methodology of Multiple Criteria Decision-Making Analysis. The intuitive idea of TOPSIS is to formulate an ideal solution with respect to each individual policy variable; the relative rank of any country is then determined, using a suitable distance metric, such that the best performer simultaneously has the shortest distance from the ideal solution and the farthest distance from the non-ideal. It uses the composite indicator based rankings together with the KOF Globalization Index and sub-indices based rankings to examine the overall relationship between globalization and macroeconomic performance of countries and reduction in inequality; the impacts of trade and financial globalization for 1990–2018 across countries and groups of the globe. It shows that though highly correlated with growth, globalization may not necessarily lead to an improvement in overall macroeconomic performances of countries when one also takes into account unemployment and inflation. Economic globalization is seen here to mostly coincide with rise in income inequality. Observations also support the fact that countries, even if they are not highly integrated may reap sufficient benefits of globalization for macroeconomic performance and inequality diminution given supportive policies.

This study examines the impact of chief executive officer (CEO) power, institutional investors and their interaction on green financing provided by Bangladeshi financial institutions and the moderating effect of government policy and CEO political connections on these relations.

We employ ordinary least squares (OLS) regressions and interaction terms among variables of interest for the empirical analysis.

Green financing decreases with CEO power, implying that CEOs of this country’s financial institutions are averse to green loans, whereas institutional investors increase green financing extended by these institutions. The government policy, which includes financial incentives for complying financial institutions, strengthens institutional investors' positive impact on green financing, but it does not change CEOs' aversion to green loans. Institutional investors have a positive moderating effect on the relationship between green finance (GF) and CEO power, but this positive moderating effect is negated in banks where the government owns a stake, possibly because CEOs of state-owned financial institutions are politically connected, which reduces institutional investors’ influence over them.

This study is unique in that it is the first to examine how the interaction among different stakeholders affects green financing in a unique setting. As the literature is almost silent on this topic, the findings of this paper are expected to raise policymakers’ awareness of the obstacles that hamper the efforts of developing countries to go green.

In an evolving business environment characterised by globalisation and a challenging competitive paradigm, it is imperative for strategic management processes to focus on the financial perspectives of value and risk in intellectual capital to create sustainability in long‐term value. This paper presents the key issues pertaining to the strategic management of value and risk in intellectual capital and presents some hypotheses for a strategic management framework based on identified underlying value‐drivers, which in turn helps to focus and address the issue of risk management more adequately. The pervasive value‐drivers in three intellectual capital‐intensive sectors in Australia are identified from an analysis of case studies, then specified and extrapolated to provide implications for the strategic management of value and risk in the knowledge‐based firms. The strategic management implications of these value‐drivers are discussed and explained.