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Classification systems play a fundamental role in the organization, display, retrieval and access to the knowledge materials in libraries. These systems have served the purpose adequately in most of knowledge areas; nevertheless, some grey areas lack proper place and enumeration in these systems. Islamic knowledge is among the areas that have not been properly addressed. The purpose of this paper is to examine this problem and indicate a potential solution.

This paper expands on the author's earlier research which focused on Pakistan library collections. Empirical data have been collected from 16 LIS scholars who have interest in or expertise on this issue through interviews. Scholars are from Pakistan, India, Malaysia, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, the UK, the USA and Canada. A review of the literature is also presented.

A number of approaches have been taken to work around the deficiencies of the standard classification systems when it comes to Islamic knowledge and publications, including indigenous systems and expansions. Details of some of these are presented. A range of possible improvements to existing classification systems was suggested by scholars, and an outline of what is required in a new, independent system is discussed, along with ideas about the best way for this system to be developed.

The paper discusses an area of professional concern that has been discussed widely in Islamic countries, but only in a limited fashion outside of Islamic countries. Thus, the paper should be of interest to researchers and practitioners interested in cataloguing and classification theory.

Construction companies play a vital role in the development of any country. The objective of the study is to evaluate the influence of leadership and quality culture (QC) on quality management (QM) practices and operational performance (OP).

The questionnaire method was used to collect raw data from 325 construction companies in Oman. Confirmatory factor analysis was applied to evaluate the measurement, model reliability and validity. The relationship between the latent constructs was investigated by Partial Least Square – Structural Equation Modeling (PLS-SEM).

The findings indicate that, leadership significantly affected QM practices and OP. Moreover, while the QC has significantly influenced QM practices, QC had not influenced OP. One reason is the lack of knowledge of the employee that the quality procedures have the power to reduce rework, waste, and decrease the project's period. And the study found that the QM practices have significantly influenced OP.

The limitation of this research is that some construction companies have no quality assurance leaders in the project; therefore, the questionnaires were circulated to project managers or project management leaders and that negatively affect the quality of data collecting from the responses. Eventually, the framework is considered to be the main contribution and is recommended for usage in the project. This study gives guidelines for leadership and leadership's accountabilities to provide a keen decision that to improve OP and to ensure the competence of employees.

The limitation of this research is that some construction companies have no quality assurance leaders in the project and so the questionnaires were circulated to project managers or project management leaders, which could influence the value of the responses. Eventually, the framework appeared to be the main contribution to awareness and is recommended for use to ensure a successful construction project in both the public and private sectors. The current study lays out some relevant roles for leadership and its accountabilities to provide a keen decision to improve OP and to ensure the competence of employees.

The purpose of this paper is to draw an exact and accurate picture of classification problems being faced by libraries having a reasonable amount of collections on Islam. Different classification systems have been developed during the last two centuries to organize library materials. Where these systems provided libraries with better solution for organization of materials, the systems have also some limitations. Religious materials are one of the areas where these systems could not satisfy a reasonable number of libraries. The libraries that have rich collections on Islam are also facing such problems. This study has been conducted with the aim of addressing this problem.

The study comprises a precise review of literature relevant to this problem, along with the collection and analysis of data from such libraries from all the main cities of Pakistan. The data have been collected using the interview technique.

The review of literature and empirical data collected for this study show that the libraries are facing problems regarding the classification of materials where there are rich collections on Islam. The standard classification systems have not provided proper place and enumeration to Islamic topics in their schemes. There is no standard or uniform practice among the libraries to classify materials on Islam. Different libraries are using different systems, which has resulted placement of same materials at different locations. There is no coordination among libraries having rich collections on Islam for some common plan of action to resolve the problem in hand. No work on automated classification has been done in Pakistan so far and this is the area that needs working on in the future.

The paper focusses on materials in libraries in one country only, however highlights issues relevant to other Islamic countries in organizing such materials.

The paper discusses an area of professional concern that has been discussed widely in Islamic countries, but only in a limited fashion outside of Islamic countries. Thus the paper should be of interest to researchers and practioners interested in cataloging theory.

This paper aims to examine the functioning and organizational structure of the historic Andalusian water courts, institutions of Islamic origin whose basic model should be considered in light of the regulation of modern Islamic banking and finance.

The methodology of this study has been focused on the contextualization of al-Andalus during the European Middle Ages, highlighting its enormous contributions and implications in the creation of Western knowledge. In the same way, the ordinances of the Castilian-Aragonese kings, aimed at the persistence of the Andalusian water courts in the Southeast of Spain after the Muslim period, have been used as the main sources of reference.

This research has detected that the main features of the Andalusian water courts, i.e. integrity, democracy, transparency, credibility, moral authority or simplicity (among many others), can be conveniently replicated in the scope of the current Islamic banking and finance.

Several implications can be derived from this study: first, it highlights the total resilience of a regulatory model that “it was already there,” given by the history of the Andalusian civilization. This model will be always welcomed by the Muslim community in Western countries as it is a matter of regulating themselves according to the way their ancestors did. The main limitation faced by this research is the relative scarcity of original sources, which is justifiable given that most of the royal ordinances come from the 13th century, having unfortunately lost a good number of sources over time.

This paper seeks a feasible alternative to the controversy arising from the resolution of possible disputes in Islamic banking and finance taking into account that Western judges do not know (nor do they have to) the principles on which this discipline is based. The application of the historical Andalusian model would allow the creation of an independent jurisdiction, while subordinated to the established juridic power, without contravening the principle of “jurisdictional unity.” The last element that gives an added value to this research is spreading the achievements of the Andalusian culture and civilization, unjustly omitted by a great part of the existing literature.

Project delay is becoming a problem in the Sultanate of Oman as evidenced by many delayed projects across the country. The purpose of this study is to examine causes and effects of delays in megaprojects in the Sultanate of Oman with recommendations to mitigate same.

A systematic review of literature identifies through main stakeholders the numerous causes, impacts and methods of mitigating delay from previous studies. A questionnaire survey on Oman was carried out to sample opinions from the practitioners; 53 questionnaires were received and analysed using the relative importance index (RII) method.

The five most frequent causes of delay in the Sultanate of Oman, in rank order, are: selection of the lowest bid, instead of best bid for the client (RII: 0.698); the financial condition of the main contractor (RII: 0.664); delay in decision-making by the client (RII: 0.656); and poor construction planning by the main contractor (RII: 0.649). Also, the findings indicate that extra cost (RII: 0.754) and project time overrun (RII: 0.724) are the most significant effects of the delay in the Oman megaprojects. The use of experienced contractors and consultant (RII 0.675), efficient construction planning by the main contractor and effective site management and supervision (RII: 0.667) are essential mitigation methods of construction delay in Oman megaprojects.

The study recommends three-part novel solutions to mitigate delay in the Oman construction industry.

In Indonesia, subjective issues towards the fundamental of Islamic banks (IBs) have been arising. For example, they are claimed to be not in line with the Shari‘ah (Islamic law). Furthermore, the existing scholarly works have not much gained knowledge from the local IBs explaining their efforts in promoting maqasid al-Shariah (objectives of Islamic law). Hence, because religiosity drives the fundamental establishment of IBs, this paper aims to explore the knowledge of how IBs in Indonesia promote maqasid al-Shariah via their published reports.

This paper performs text mining from 24 official reports of 5 IBs in Indonesia published from 2015 to 2017. The sample contains 7,162 digital pages and approximately 3,021,618 words. Traditional text mining via human intelligence is first performed to analyse for the numerical data required in the maqasid al-Shariah index (MSI) analysis. Furthermore, a computer-driven text mining using the ‘Text Search’ feature of NVivo 12 Plus is conducted to perform qualitative analysis. These approaches are made to gain relevant knowledge of how the sampled IBs promote maqasid al-Shariah from their published reports.

The analysis using the MSI explains a quantified maqasid al-Shariah on the sample’s performance, which indictes the lowest and the highest performing banks. Furthermore, a qualitative analysis supports the evidence from the quantitative analysis. It explains the authors’ coding process that results in 2 parent nodes and 20 child nodes, which contain 435 references coded from the sampled unstructured and bilingual texts. These nodes explain the information that associates with maqasid al-Shariah from the IBs’ reports. These findings explain how maqasid al-Shariah is measured mathematically and represent relevant knowledge of how maqasid al-Shariah is informed practically via digital texts.

A positivist generalisation is neither intended nor established in this study.

This paper gains relevant knowledge of how the sampled IBs in Indonesia control and maintain the implementation of maqasid al-Shariah from large textual data. Such knowledge is practically important for IBs stakeholders in Indonesia; moreover to help navigate the Shari‘ah identity of Bank Syariah Indonesia (BSI), the new IB established from the merger of 3 state-owned IBs, which are among the sample of this study.

This paper provides evidence that might best challenge the subjective issue of IBs claiming that they are not in line with the Shari‘ah, particularly in Indonesia.

This paper is among the pioneers that discover knowledge of how IBs promote maqasid al-Shariah in Indonesia’s banking sector via a text mining approach.

Islamic banks, despite being Shariah-compliant, have long been criticized for mimicking conventional banks in terms of their products and processes (Khan, 2010; Kuran, 1996). However, several Islamic banks do engage in philanthropy (zakat and charity) and risk-sharing financing (mudarabah and musharakah) instruments that better meet their raison d'etre, the fulfillment of Maqasid al-Shariah (Jatmiko et al., 2023). These contracts, however, are more susceptible to moral hazard and adverse selection problems than traditional debt-based finance (Azmat et al., 2015) and may impair Islamic bank stability. This paper explores the relationship between social finance and the stability of Islamic banks, and whether institutional quality moderates this relationship.

Using hand-collected annual data on social finance from 12 Islamic banks in four countries: Bangladesh, Bahrain, Indonesia and Malaysia, between 2006 and 2019, the authors employ the feasible generalized least squares and the panel-corrected standard errors methods for the analysis. The Stata version 16 software was used to analyze the data for the study.

The results indicate that mudarabah and musharakah financing raises the stability of Islamic banks. The authors also found that mudarabah and musharakah expose Islamic banks to more risk-taking behavior amidst the conditioning effect of institutional quality. On the other hand, charity induces the stability of Islamic banks, while zakat increases the risk-taking behavior of the banks. Further, when the quality of institutions was used as a moderator, both zakat and charity induced the stability of Islamic banks. The results were robust when liquidity risk was used and partially robust when portfolio risks were employed as measures of stability.

One concern regarding the application of Islamic social finance is that it might be a risky strategy for Islamic banks. In terms of research implications, the available evidence suggests that the use of Islamic social finance instruments is not detrimental to the stability of Islamic banks. Hence, regulators and policymakers should not penalize Islamic banks for using Islamic social finance instruments that help provide financial solutions to the underserved and unserved. In terms of research limitations, the study could not include other relevant Islamic social finance instruments such as waqf and qard al-hassan. Furthermore, data availability restricts the analysis to only 12 Islamic banks in fourcountries. As more Islamic banks in different countries venture into Islamic social finance, and the quantity and quality of information improve, future studies could explore the issue further.

The available evidence suggests that the use of Islamic social finance instruments does not worsen the stability of Islamic banks. Given the dominance of sale- and lease-based contracts in Islamic financing (Aggarwal and Yousef, 2000; Šeho et al., 2020), these findings should encourage other Islamic banks to provide financial solutions using other Shariah-compliant contracts including those based on risk-sharing and philanthropy. This would be a better reflection of the Islamic banks’ value proposition as it helps boost social activities that have a high impact on the activities of small businesses, contributing to the real economy and promoting well-being in society.

Previous studies mainly relied on mudarabah, mushakarah and zakat separately as they relate to the performance of Islamic banks. This study explores the impact of social finance which includes charity and zakat to examine their impact on Islamic banks’ stability. Further, the authors use institutional quality as a moderating variable in the relationship between Islamic social finance instruments and the stability of Islamic banks.

The peer review history for this article is available at: https://publons.com/publon/10.1108/IJSE-06-2022-0441

Projects often face delays and unnecessary use of time due to various factors and reasons, and hence suffer from unfavourable consequences. The purpose of this paper is to identify the universal delay factors from an intensive literature review, complemented by delay factors in major Norwegian construction projects based on empirical data.

The study in which this paper is based includes an intensive literature review, and semi-quantitative open survey questionnaires. This paper addresses frequency and type of delay factors in construction projects, in Norway based on the survey, and worldwide based on the previous studies.

From the study, the causes of delays facing the Norwegian construction industry are: poor planning and scheduling; slow/poor decision-making process; internal administrative procedures and bureaucracy within project organisations; resources shortage (human resources, machinery, equipment); poor communication and coordination between parties; slow quality inspection process of the completed work; design changes during construction/change orders; sponsor/owner/client lack of commitment and/or clear demands (goals and objectives); late/slow/incomplete/improper design; office issues; and users’ issues. And the top 10 universal delay factors are: design changes during construction/change orders; delays in payment of contractor(s); poor planning and scheduling; poor site management and supervision; incomplete or improper design; inadequate contractor experience/building methods and approaches; contractor’s financial difficulties; sponsor/owner/client’s financial difficulties; resources shortage (human resources, machinery, equipment); and poor labour productivity and shortage of skills.

When it comes to the identification of delay factors in major Norwegian projects, the research is based on a sample of 202 respondents from an open survey questionnaire. It should be noted that analysing a large population of respondents that have been asked open questions can be challenging due to the vague findings it might lead to. Also, when it comes to the identification of the universal delay factors, there were different methods used by different authors, within different context. Similar future studies in Norway based on qualitative and quantitative methods will give better verification for the findings.

This paper has documented the critical delay factors/causes in Norway. The results of this study will help project managers, in Norway and elsewhere, to be aware and know about the potential causes of delay in their construction projects, which will help to identify the possible risks in the early phases of the project. Another practical implication is to make project managers and policy makers conscious that delays are quite universal, making it necessary to identify them as a first step.

The identification of delays factors and causes can permit projects to implement mitigation actions to avoid delays, thus allowing delivering schools, hospitals and other necessary infrastructure on schedule or ahead of schedule to society.

This paper highlights most (almost all) of the studies in the literature, including to the study done in Norway, concerning the delay factors in construction projects and large construction projects in general. This wide review of relevant literature will save time other academicians from having to conduct similar studies. This study will assist both academic and professional experts providing more insight about the delay causes in large-scale construction projects.

Construction project stakeholders can have a major effect on delivering projects on time. However, little attempt has been made to address the influence of internal stakeholders on delaying project delivery. This research aims to propose the internal stakeholders' influence as a solution to improving project delivery performance (PDP) in order to boost the value of investment in the construction industry's projects.

In Yemen, a structured questionnaire was distributed to owners, consultants and contractors, 283 of which were found usable after the data screening. A purposeful sampling technique was used and structural equation modelling (SEM) was adopted for analysis. The structural model was drawn up, based on seven categories of influencing factors: labour, supplier, designer, contractor, consultant, sub-contractor and owner.

The results of the structural model suggest that of these seven categories, designers, owners, suppliers and subcontractors have a significant p-value and impact on PDP, while the labour and consultant's impact was not substantiated. The findings support the proposal that internal stakeholders' influence contributes directly to construction PDP.

The influence of stakeholders on PDP is important. Nonetheless, few studies have focussed on their effectiveness, especially in developing countries. This paper's contribution is evaluating the cause–effect relationship between stakeholders' influence and construction PDP through analysis of moment structures (AMOS) analysis. The policy implications of the research are to encourage governments in general and construction companies in particular to take responsibility for improving PDP, as slow execution of construction projects leads to increased costs, failure and abandoning projects.

Waste is typically encountered during the building's life cycle, from the design phase, through the construction phase, to modification and demolition. Most of these construction wastes are unnoticed or unattended by project managers, which lead to serious environmental problems. Effective waste reduction strategies will require a thorough and detailed understanding of the causes of construction waste. Hence, this paper aims to explore critical waste factors (CWFs) affecting the performance of construction projects.

An extensive literature review was carried out to determine these factors based on previous studies, from which a questionnaire was developed. Series of statistical analyses such as reliability analysis, Spearman Correlation, Kruskal–Wallis and factor analysis were performed on a total of 330 valid responses to identify latent factors responsible for wastes occurrence.

This study reveals 31 CWFs through evaluation of prior relevant studies carried out in several countries and then adjusted and validated through semistructured interviews. The significant differences in views within various groups of respondents with different organizational characteristics are highlighted. The results of factor analysis showed that there are six principal components extracted with 66.3% of variance explained (material-related factors; subcontractors and workers; planning, communication and coordination; people involvement and financial issues; people development strategies; and external factors).

This study differs from other studies in the literature by gathering all relevant waste factors including those related to nonphysical waste such as time, budget, workers and equipment. Furthermore, this paper will be of great interest to both practitioners and researchers since it brings various recommendations concerning the prevention/reduction of waste through lean construction for more sustainable construction projects.