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The purpose of this study was to examine the effects of soft skill integration in the curriculum on quality of college life of diploma business students in Malaysian private higher educational institutions.

Descriptive quantitative survey research was used to assess the views and relationship between variables from 429 business students in Peninsular Malaysia. The adapted self-administered questionnaires were distributed through stratified random sampling method. Descriptive analysis, correlation and regression analysis were used in the findings.

The results advocated significant influence from soft skill integration on quality of college life. Soft skill integration in critical thinking and problem solving especially has significant positive influence on quality of college life in all the aspects from academic, social and also facilities.

Generalizability of the research as it was conducted in the northern region of Peninsular Malaysia only. It was also limited by subjectivity bias of the students who responded to the questionnaire.

The implication of this study was that it serves as an evidence-based information of soft skill integration and effects on college quality. In this way, it provides an empirical reference to the authorities for better guidelines, evaluation, control and development in the curriculum, delivery approaches, co-curriculum, campus environment or facilities.

Local education in particular is closely linked to the neighboring community and also dependent on the socio-economic needs of the state or region. According to Kayrooz and Parker (2010), greater engagement with local issues and higher local autonomy for spending could lead to greater effectiveness and efficiencies.

The study was a pioneering research in the context of Malaysian private higher education, guided by Devadason et al.’s (2010) soft skill integration study in Malaysian public higher education, plus Sirgy et al.’s (2007) study on quality of college life.

After completion of the case study, students are expected to demonstrate understanding of the process of strategy formulation (which include conducting situational analysis) and strategy implementation.

Perusahaan Azan, which trades under the brand name Roti Azan for its fresh bread and Azan for its dry bread or rusks, was established as a family business in 1968 by Haji Abu Bakar bin Ali in his hometown in Kuala Pilah, in the state of Negeri Sembilan in Malaysia. In the mid-1980s, the management of the business was passed on by Haji Abu Bakar to one of his sons, Haji Mohd Ghazali bin Haji Abu Bakar. Haji Ghazali was named managing director in 1985 and officially inherited his father’s company in 1987. By 2004, Perusahaan Azan breads had started to penetrate major grocery stores nationwide, and later the business began to expand internationally in 2010, with Oman and Iraq among the first countries it ventured into. The company sold both its fresh and dry bread in local stores; however, in the international market, only dry bread types were sold, specifically wholemeal rusks and long rusks, which had longer shelf lives. Post-pandemic, by 2022, the company had exited the retail fresh bread market and had focused only on its contractual fresh bread and retail dry bread markets. He thought about the main strategic choices he had of going forward, either to revive its retail fresh bread segment or venture into a coffee shop business. The former was the bread and butter of the company in the last 50 years. However, he knew that re-entering this market was getting more difficult, as it requires competing head-to-head with the giant breadmakers. There were also issues of rising costs and high wastage. For the latter coffee shop project, the company did not have experience in directly “serving” the customers, with its businesses so far had been mainly in production. He pondered on the best decision to undertake to sustain the company’s profitability into the next generation. Few family businesses can pass this crucial stage. He knew he had to act fast to ensure that the company’s plans for the future could be successfully implemented. The case study is suitable for use in teaching courses in strategic management, organisational management and integrated case study for advanced undergraduates and postgraduates in the programmes of business administration, Muamalat administration and accounting.

The case study is suitable for use in advanced undergraduate students in management, business administration, Muamalat administration and postgraduate students in MBA, Master in Muamalat Administration or other related master’s programmes with a course in strategic management, organisational management and integrated case study.

Teaching notes are available for educators only.

CSS 11: Strategy.

While previous studies find innovation to be an essential driver of export growth, the existing literature has neglected the role of different dimensions of technological innovation in export performance, especially in emerging countries. In particular, much less attention has been provided to investigate how enhancing innovation activities in more technical industries influence the relationship between technological innovation and export. Purpose of this paper is to present a unified framework to empirically investigate the integrated impact of the various technological innovation dimensions on export performance of industrial enterprises in China.

Using a panel dataset of enterprise-level data classified into China’s two-digit capital- and technology-intensive manufacturing industries for the 1998–2016 period and applying system-GMM regressions to control for the problem of endogeneity, the authors empirically investigate the integrated impact of a variety of the dimensions of technological innovation on export.

The authors find that: (1) Domestic R&D efforts and technology spillovers from foreign investment are critical determinants for capital- and technology-intensive exports. (2) External technology may not automatically contribute to export success whereas the interaction of external technology with domestic skill and expertise is a necessary condition for global competitiveness. (3) There exists complementarity between domestic and foreign innovation efforts when they jointly determine export. (4) Chinese government’s trade and innovation policies have significantly contributed to its export growth. Also, the authors examine that the extent of the effect of innovation on export depends upon the type of industry and it is found to be greater in capital- and technology-intensive industries.

This paper fills the research gap in existing literature by distinguishing between different dimensions of technological innovation and integrating them into a unified framework to empirically investigate their impact on export performance of industrial enterprises in emerging countries. The study provides important insights for policymakers.

In recent years, natural dyes have attracted significant attention globally because of growing public awareness of the environment and health hazards associated with synthetic dyes. Natural dyes can provide special aesthetic qualities as well as the ethical significance of a product which is environmentally friendly. By keeping this burning issue in mind, this study aims to explore the dyeing properties of various unexplored environmentally friendly natural dyes.

In this study, the aqueous extract of coconut leaves is used for dyeing purpose. The silk and jute fabrics were dyed with the extract alone as well as in combination with metal salts as mordants by employing pre-, meta- and postmordanting techniques. The dyeing properties of the colored samples were evaluated by measuring their color strength; CIEL*a*b* values; and color fastness to washing, light and rubbing.

A yellow shade was achieved when the fabric samples were dyed solely with the extract. However, shade variations were observed when different mordants and mordanting techniques were applied. In all the cases, metallic salts improved the color fastness properties of dyed samples to washing, light and rubbing especially for the silk fabric.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first report on a natural dye extracted from the leaves of coconut. Leaf as the source of dye has added an extra advantage, as it is reproducible and can be collected easily without harming the plants. The reported dye could be an attractive choice for sustainable and eco-friendly dyeing.

This study examines the drivers of marketing channel participation amongst smallholder rice farmers in the northern region of Ghana.

Using a sample of 397 smallholder rice farmers drawn from a multistage sampling procedure, the study employed multivariate probit (MVP) model in the empirical estimations. In this context, the model assumes that a rice farmer should at least participate in one market channel.

The study reveals that the wholesaler market channel is the most commonly used channel among farmers, followed by the aggregator channel. However, the processor market channel is the least patronized one in the study area. The results also show statistically significant correlation coefficients in four out of the six possible combinations, implying that market channel participation among smallholder farmers is not mutually exclusive. Rice market channel participation is positively and significantly influenced by age, gender, household headship, access to credit, extension service, irrigation, improved seed and access to price information.

This study is limited in extending the analysis to include the impact of market channels on some outcome measures. This is due to data limitation.

The findings of this study add to the growing literature on smallholder market channel participation in Ghana.

This study investigates the effect of earnings management (EM) and institutional ownership (IO) on investment efficiency (IE). It also investigates the effect of IO, as a governance mechanism, on the relation between EM and IE.

This study examines a sample of Egyptian firms listed on EGX100 during the period 2014–2019. The data are collected manually from firms’ annual reports and governance reports obtained from Egypt for Information Dissemination Company. We depend on the t-test, Pearson correlation, and OLS regression to test our hypotheses.

The results revealed a negative relationship between EM and IE. In contrast, IO has a significant and positive effect on IE. The results also show that IO mitigates the negative implications of EM for IE. Additionally, we find robust evidence for the governance role of pressure-insensitive IO, as it has a positive effect on IE and on mitigating the negative effects of EM on IE.

To our knowledge, this is the first study to examine the effect of IO as a governance mechanism on the relationship between EM and IE. The results of this study can be of interest to investors, regulators, and policy-makers due to highlighting the potential implications of EM and IO for firms’ investment decisions in Egypt–one of the important emerging markets in the Middle East and Africa.

Tourists often travel to different tourism destinations in advancing the knowledge of diverse cultures, environments, history and social aspects. The purpose of this study is to explore tourists’ perception of halal tourism and its impact on word-of-mouth towards halal tourism destinations.

A quantitative research approach was applied in this study. Data were collected via 375 survey questionnaires and were analysed using partial least square method. Data were collected from Malaysia’s capital city and tourist spots in Kuala Lumpur, the administrative capital city in Putrajaya, and several cities in Selangor, the richest state in the country.

The findings revealed that trip quality has a higher significant impact on satisfaction and trip value. The perception of a halal tourism destination is found to have a significant influence on satisfaction and trip value. Trip value is significantly related to satisfaction but not associated with word-of-mouth (WOM). Satisfaction of tourists has a significant impact on WOM towards travel destinations.

This study comes up with a novel understanding of the theory of tourism practices by estimating non-Muslim tourists’ perception and its significant influence of WOM towards tourism destinations. The results of this study are significant to industry practitioners, policymakers and marketers in promoting halal tourism. The results of this study provide useful insights for Malaysia’s tourism industry, particularly for the tourism marketing in Kuala Lumpur and Putrajaya cities as tourist destinations.

This study comes up with a novel understanding of the theory of tourism practices by estimating non-Muslim tourists’ perception and the influence of WOM towards tourism destinations. The results of this study are significant to industry practitioners, policymakers and marketers in promoting halal tourism.

This study examined the potential impact of non-Muslim tourists’ perception of halal tourism destinations and their WOM for halal tourism destinations.

This paper aims to provide a deeper understanding on social entrepreneurial behavior (SEB). Previous researchers mostly focused on social entrepreneurial intention leaving a gap between intention and behavior. The present study, however, tries to explore the issues related to actual SEB by taking data from those who are actively involved in social entrepreneurial activities.

For testing the hypothesized model of this study, a survey was conducted taking samples from 320 respondents who are actively involved in social entrepreneurial activities. The collected data were analyzed by SmartPLS version 2.0.M3 for validating the results.

The findings generated from the empirical data reveal that self-efficacy was found to be the most significant followed by moral obligation, innovativeness, social support and empathy (EM) in influencing SEB. In addition to that, perceived desirability partially mediated the relationship between EM, social support, innovativeness and SEB.

This study establishes the importance of some distinctive factors influencing SEB. It is believed that the present study has important implications for society as a whole for solving societal problems and it enriches existing body of knowledge as well.

This research seeks to reveal the mediating role of work engagement and affective commitment as individual aspects that have the potential to bridge the effect of empowering leadership on the task performance of Correctional Service counselors in Indonesia, especially due to the limited literature on these two aspects in the context of public organizations.

Quantitative research was conducted on 350 counselors throughout Indonesia. The data was collected by distributing questionnaires online. The collected data were then analyzed using Structural Equation Modeling to test the seven research hypotheses.

Empowering leadership significantly strengthens task performance, work engagement and affective commitment. For indirect effects, this study found that affective commitment partially mediates the effect of empowering leadership on task performance. Meanwhile, work engagement failed to act as a mediator because it did not significantly impact strengthening task performance.

Notably, the unexpected result of work engagement's inability to significantly boost task performance deviates from the prevailing trends observed in previous empirical research, thereby adding a novel dimension to the findings of this study.

This paper aims to explore how Sharīʿah-compliant instruments can be used to protect investments and attract investors to Islamic venture capital (IVC). Equity investments in Islamic finance are trailing behind their potential value. This is partly due to the limited instruments available to protect investors, as most of the tools used in conventional venture capital (VC) are deemed Sharīʿah non-compliant.

The research amends and uses Wright Robbie’s (1998) VC structure and how it can be used to finance small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). The study uses secondary data reported in the literature and the expertise of the Sharīʿah scholarship.

There are Sharīʿah-compliant instruments available for IVC that can be used to protect investments and incentivize potential investors to promote investments in SMEs. At the various stages of the IVC process, preference shares, perpetual mudharabah, diminishing musharakah, musharakah with murabahah, musharakah with qard, negligence clauses, liquidation preference, warrants and supermajority clauses can all be used with appropriate conditions to protect investors and offer incentives for them to invest in IVC.

The research provides a method for screening and evaluating potential deals for SMEs using an amended VC called an IVC scheme with a focus on Sharīʿah-compliant investment protection instruments. The method can promote SMEs and entrepreneurship and financial inclusion for Sharīʿah-compliant investors.

This study contributes new ideas to how IVC can be structured, taking into consideration Sharīʿah constraints. The paper addresses investors’ protection and incentives to attract Sharīʿah-compliant investors, which have been lacking in the literature.