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This study aims to investigate the impact of economic vulnerability upon entrepreneurial competencies (i.e. commitment competency, conceptual competency, opportunity recognition competency, organizing competency, relationship competency and strategic competency) among respondents from varied development initiatives established by the eKasih program (National Poverty Data Bank) in Peninsular Malaysia.

Upon adopting the cross-sectional design, data were randomly gathered from selected 300 micro-entrepreneurs from the list of development organizations available in the eKasih (National Poverty Data Bank), located at four states in Peninsular Malaysia. The quantitative data were gathered by performing structured interview sessions from September until November 2017.

The outcomes of the study displayed that economic vulnerability has a significantly negative effect upon commitment, opportunity recognition, organizing and strategic competency. On the other hand, the results showcased that economi c vulnerability has a significantly positive effect on competency, but insignificantly positive impact upon conceptual competency.

These study outcomes appear to extend the scope of the resource-based view, apart from enriching the existing entrepreneurial competency literature, particularly within the Malaysian context. Hence, it is recommended that the government of Malaysia and development organizations should focus on maximizing the level of competency among micro-entrepreneurs as a viable approach to decrease the effect of economic vulnerability.

This study aims to examine the effect of entrepreneurial skills, market orientation, sales orientations and networking on entrepreneurial competency and performance of micro-enterprises in Kelantan, Malaysia.

Adopting a cross-sectional design, this paper collected data through structured interviews from 403 micro-entrepreneurs from “Majlis Amanah Rakyat,” Kelantan and “Majlis Agama Islam dan Adat Istiadat,” Kelantan.

The findings reveal that entrepreneurial skills, market orientation and networking have a positive effect on entrepreneurial competency. Then, entrepreneurial competency, entrepreneurial skills and networking have a positive effect on enterprise performance. The findings show a significant mediation effect of entrepreneurial competency on the relationships between entrepreneurial skills, market orientation and networking and enterprise performance.

Addressing the understudied “human factor” in entrepreneurship, this paper extends the resource-based view and enriches the existing entrepreneurship literature in Malaysia. It provides useful insights into the improvement of micro-enterprise performance, which is crucial for promoting entrepreneurial activities and for enhancing socio-economic conditions among low-income households in Malaysia. Thus, the government and developmental organizations should focus on the development of entrepreneurial skills, market-oriented approach, networking traits and entrepreneurial competencies and subsequently encourage poor households to perform entrepreneurial activities.

Low-income households form a significant portion of the Malaysian population. To improve the socio-economic condition of low-income households, development organizations in Malaysia offer a wide range of development trainings, discussions and group or center meetings. This study aims to examine the impact of enterprise development training programs on entrepreneurial competencies among Peninsular Malaysia microentrepreneurs.

Adopting a cross-sectional design, the authors collected data from 300 randomly selected microentrepreneurs from the list of microentrepreneurs provided by eKasih (the National Poverty Data Bank), across four states of Peninsular Malaysia. Quantitative data were collected through structured interviews with the respondents from October to November 2017.

The findings revealed that enterprise development training programs significantly affected three of six entrepreneurial competencies (i.e. opportunity recognition competency, organizing competency and relationship competency). These findings highlight the importance of enterprise development training programs towards microentrepreneurs in increasing their competencies.

Through its insights, the study enriches the understanding of low-income communities in emerging economies, while offering significant practical implications. Based on findings, it is recommended that development organizations should therefore continue the current microenterprise development training programs. With improved entrepreneurial competencies, microentrepreneurs can thrive amidst competition yet sustaining business performance.

This study aims to examine the effect of creativity and innovativeness, risk taking propensity, proactiveness and autonomy on entrepreneurial competency and performance among micro-enterprises in Kelantan, Malaysia.

Adopting a cross-sectional design, the authors collected data from 403 micro-entrepreneurs who were registered under “Majlis Amanah Rakyat” and “Majlis Agama Islam dan Adat Istiadat”. Quantitative data were collected through structured interviews from September 2017 to December 2017.

The findings revealed that creativity and innovativeness, proactiveness and autonomy had a positive influence on entrepreneurial competencies. In addition, autonomy and entrepreneurial competencies had a positive effect on micro-enterprise performance. Then, entrepreneurial competencies showed a mediating effect on the relationships between creativity, innovativeness, autonomy and micro-enterprise performance.

The findings contributed to resource-based view and enriched the entrepreneurship literature, particularly in the context of small businesses in emerging economies. This study recommended underlying organizations to pay attention to the improvement of creativity and innovativeness, proactiveness, autonomy and entrepreneurial competencies among low-income entrepreneurs through useful policies and training programs, which were expected to improve micro-enterprise performance and encourage poor households to perform entrepreneurial activities for better socio-economic conditions.

This study aims to provide a foundation for the performance-focused micro-entrepreneurship development program; hence, this study is designed to investigate the effect of selected entrepreneurial competencies on micro-enterprise income and assets in Malaysia.

This study adopts the cross-sectional design, and the quantitative data was collected from 300 randomly selected micro-entrepreneurs from the list of participants of several micro-enterprise development programs offered in Peninsular Malaysia.

Findings revealed that micro-entrepreneur’s commitment competency and opportunity recognition competency have a significant positive effect on micro-enterprise income, whereas only opportunity recognition competency has a significant positive effect on the net worth of micro-enterprise assets.

This study examined the effect of key elements of entrepreneurial competencies on micro-enterprise income and asset, which provides the foundation for a performance-focused micro-entrepreneurship development program designed to enhance the performance of micro-enterprises in Malaysia.

This study aims to examine the factors affecting brand image and consumer satisfaction towards Islamic travel package in Malaysia.

This study used a cross-sectional design and quantitative method in examining the factors affecting the brand image and consumer satisfaction on Islamic travel package. This study has chosen Google form as a platform to collect the data.

The findings revealed that product quality, Islamic physical attribute and Islamic belief have a significant positive effect on brand image and consumer satisfaction. The findings confirmed that product quality, Islamic physical attribute and Islamic beliefs are the crucial tools for brand image that leads to the satisfaction of Muslim consumers on the Islamic travel package.

This paper addresses understudied aspects of brand image and consumer satisfaction towards Islamic travel package in Malaysia. It provided useful insights into the product quality, Islamic physical attribute and Islamic belief on brand image and consumer satisfaction towards Islamic travel packages. Tourism companies should improve and update their package based on the religious perspective to attract Muslim consumers.

This study aims to evaluate the current educational opportunities available to hermaphrodite (Hijra) students, analyze their difficulties while pursuing academic degrees and suggest potential approaches to address these issues.

This research used a qualitative method to analyze the challenges Hijra individuals face in pursuing education. A total of 20 interviews were conducted with two Hijra groups those who are pursuing an education and those who have abandoned it to collect primary data. The purposive sampling technique was used to identify and choose diverse sources of information. Moreover, the phenomena have been comprehended using the Access Theory and the Gender Stratification Theory.

The findings show that although every Bangladeshi has the right to a decent education, few Hijra youngsters attend schools. Numerous barriers, such as discriminatory views and remarks about third-gender people, physical and mental harassment, a lack of emotional and financial support, family issues, discrimination in the school community and hostility from classmates and teachers, make it difficult for hermaphrodite students to receive a proper education.

This research paper fills a gap in the current body of knowledge by presenting empirical evidence regarding young people’s perceptions of the third-gender, the societal barriers faced by Hijra individuals in their pursuit of quality education, their future opportunities, the root causes of these challenges and possible solutions.

This study intended to determine the effect of selected entrepreneurial traits on the attitude of Asnaf Millennials in Malaysia towards entrepreneurship.

This is a cross-sectional study that collected the quantitative data via structured interviews from 310 randomly selected Asnaf Millennials from Kelantan, Malaysia.

The findings confirmed the positive and statistically significant effect of innovativeness, internal locus of control, need for achievement and proactive personality on the attitude of Asnaf Millennials on entrepreneurship.

This study focussed on the development of non-cognitive skills for individual characteristics regarding entrepreneurship for the benefit of development practitioners and policymakers. The government and development organisations should focus on developing entrepreneurial traits that are expected to improve the attitude towards entrepreneurship and increase the entrepreneurial activities in Malaysia. This initiative can improve the socio-economic condition of Asnaf Millennials with low income.

The purpose of the present study is to determine how the cash conversion cycle (CCC) affects the financial performance of manufacturing companies in Bangladesh.

The authors have collected data of 61 Dhaka Stock Exchange (DSE)-listed firms from the 10 distinct manufacturing industries of Bangladesh for 18 years, from 2003 to 2020. The data have been analyzed through the two-steps system generalized method of moment (GMM) regression model, using profitability indicators return on asset (ROA) and earnings per share (EPS) as dependent variables, while CCC has been used as the independent variable, whereas asset turnover (ATO) and financial leverage (LEV) were used as control variables to assess the relationship between the CCC and financial performance.

The findings indicated that CCC has a negative connection with profitability – ROA and EPS, with the connection between CCC and EPS being highly significant. This indicates that reducing the inventory conversion time, reducing the period of receivable collection and making payments to creditors with potential delays might help Bangladeshi manufacturing firms boost their profitability. In addition, the firm-specific characteristics, namely ATO and LEV significantly affect the firm's profitability.

The research was based only on secondary sources and information was scarce. This research was conducted to determine the impact of the CCC on the corporate profitability of the manufacturing sector solely. There might be many other working capital variables that are still unexplored through this study.

The current study's findings are consistent with the traditional rule that minimizing the firm's days of the cash cycle may optimize financial performance. The results of this research have added to the existing body of knowledge on the topic of working capital management (WCM). Future research endeavors can be initiated for assessing the impact of the CCC on the firm's profitability in other industrial sectors or to identify other working capital variables that have much impact on corporate profitability.

This study is an original work of the researchers and adds value to the current literature in the domain of WCM and corporate profitability. The present study is the first one that covers firms in all the manufacturing industries in Bangladesh. The corporate managers, creditors, investors and other concerned stakeholders will be benefited from the findings of the present study.

In this paper, the authors show that ecological restoration potential through natural regeneration of degraded tropical rainforest is possible. This is significant because at present most of the tropical forest of the world, including of Bangladesh, are degraded.

Regeneration status of Chunati Wildlife Sanctuary (CWS) was assessed through stratified random sampling method using sample plots of 5 × 5 m in size covering 269 sample plots.

A total of 3,256 regenerating seedlings/saplings of 105 species belonging to 35 families were recorded from CWS. From regenerating tree species, maximum (37.83) family importance value (FIV) index was found for Euphorbiaceae followed by Myrtaceae (18.03). Maximum importance value index (IVI) was found for Aporosa wallichii (21.62) followed by Grewia nervosa (16.41). Distribution of seedlings into different height classes of regenerating tree species was also calculated.

Forest scientists are working to find out the best nature-based solution for ecological restoration of tropical rainforests to attain climate resilient ecosystem in a sustainable way. Tropical rain forest has huge plant diversity, and we find that ecological restoration is possible through natural regeneration from its rich soil seed bank. Natural regeneration is the best nature-based solution for sustainable management of the forest.

The authors believe that the findings presented in our paper will appeal to the forest and environmental scientists. The findings will allow readers to understand degraded tropical hill forest ecosystem and its management strategy.

The authors believe that this manuscript will give a clear picture about degraded tropical hill forest ecosystem and its genetic composition, diversity and soil seed bank status to apply appropriate management strategy.