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Management soundness is essential for the effectiveness of any industry, most especially in any Islamic financial sector, whereby fairness and justice are the key factors to be observed. This paper aims to examine the management soundness of the takaful industry regarding their asset quality, re-takaful and actuarial and earning and profitability.

This study obtained quarterly data from 2019Q1 to 2021Q4 from the Islamic Financial Services Board across Malaysia, Brunei, Saudi Arabia, Jordan and the United Arab Emirates. The panel data modelling with random-effect and fixed-effect estimators were used for the analysis.

The finding revealed a strong relationship between re-takaful and earnings with management soundness and a weak relationship between asset quality and management soundness. In addition, the result established a significant and strong association between management soundness and earnings and profitability. Therefore, re-takaful and profitability contributed more to the management soundness of the takaful industry than asset quality during the study. An increase in earnings and profitability to enable the takaful industry to pay the claims, especially in calamity, and more focus on the quality of the asset they invested in could enable the smooth running of their day-to-day business affairs.

More attention is required on the quality of assets in their portfolio for the sustainability of the takaful industry to fulfil their underlying objectives. Management soundness in the takaful industry should address the challenges of managerial lathery, which some studies linked with operational inefficiency because of unskilled personnel in the takaful industry. This could benefit takaful clients, irrespective of religion, to attain their associated share of benefits from the Islamic insurance industry.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first empirical study that examined the effectiveness of takaful management across Malaysia, Brunei, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, and the United Arab Emirates.

Many countries around the world are facing great challenges from their ageing population with shrinking workforce, this will put more pressure on their financial system and will increase the public spending on care costs provided to older people. Egypt is in the phase of establishing a new law for older people care's rights, a law that will organise how older people in need for care would benefit from access to government financial support and how will families support their older relatives financially and how the care costs will be shared between the older people, their families and the government.

The paper examines the suitability two cost-sharing methods and applying them to assess the effect on the individuals and families' income strain.

The preferred approach can be used for sharing costs as it applies a gradual funding withdrawal by the government and provide more fairness and flexibility for application in different regions. Besides, the parameters of this approach can be used by policy makers to control the levels of funding.

The paper will be the first to discuss the intergenerational fairness from a financial perspective in Egypt to avoid forcing older people into poverty or resorting to poverty trade-off.

The paper investigates whether a family firm's control context is directly associated with a manager's stewardship attitude or whether this relationship is mediated by the manager's perception with respect to the fairness of the control processes.

The authors have sent a survey to family businesses in Brazil. The authors tested the hypotheses with the data collected from 141 responding family and nonfamily managers with the use of structural equation modeling (SEM) analyses (SmartPLS).

The authors find that more participative and more formal controls are associated with higher procedural justice perceptions. Zooming in on the types of control, namely forward-looking action controls, like target setting (TS), and backward-looking results controls, like performance measurement (PM), the authors observe that TS is significantly positively associated with stewardship identification through a manager's procedural justice perceptions for both control characteristics (partial mediation for participative TS and full mediation for formal TS). PM on the other hand is only significantly directly related to a stewardship identification if it is of a participative character. In addition, the authors find a significant moderating effect of family affiliation, increasing the strength of the association between PM procedural justice and stewardship identification for nonfamily managers.

Prior literature focused on discussing stewardship attitudes and behaviors in family firms, but few provided empirical evidence that a stewardship attitude in a family firm is associated with contextual factors, like the design of controls in family firms in combination with a manager's individual perception of family firm's process factors.

Teaching effectiveness is essential to student learning, engagement and success. This study aims to identify the perceived teaching effectiveness attributes from the student’s perspective through a pilot study.

A comprehensive literature review identified 6 demographic and 25 teaching effectiveness characteristics. The Kano model was used to gather and analyze the student’s voices. The research validated the survey instrument using Cronbach’s alpha to ensure internal consistency and Chi-square goodness of fit to test the data distribution. Differences in response patterns were analyzed using Fisher’s exact test. Furthermore, the magnitude of the effect between the teaching effectiveness attributes was determined using Cramer’s V test.

This study determined that students perceived 19 attributes as one-dimensional, 3 as indifferent, 2 as attractive and 1 as one-dimensional and attractive. The analysis found differences in response patterns concerning readings and materials, grading rubrics to set assignment expectations and group/teamwork on projects.

As a pilot study, the sample size was small. Additional research should validate the survey using a larger sample. While the study results are specific to the college surveyed, other educators can use the methodology to identify the attributes important to their students.

Categorizing attributes based on the student’s voice enables instructors to focus on attributes that will improve the learning experience.

This research provides a comprehensive methodology for identifying critical teaching effectiveness attributes from the student’s perspective.

Increasing longevity and lower birth rates put pressure on the sustainability of pension systems. This compels countries to reform pension schemes. Different countries opt for different types of reforms. This article examines the scope of possibilities for a pension reform in two countries with distinct institutional and ideational setup: Finland and France.

The authors utilise the framework of different modes of justification presented by Boltanski and Thévenot to reveal the reasoning used in pension reform discussions in both countries. The authors study expert reports to analyse how nationally constructed ideas and local institutions frame and shape the different logics and justifications.

In Finland, the approach to pensions is dominated by industrial and market justifications. The pension system is institutionally separated into two different blocks: one addressing poverty and the other income maintenance. The separation enables the prevalence of these logics and makes it easier to promote reforms that emphasize efficiency and individual responsibility instead of income distribution. The French report is concentrated around civic and domestic dominated justifications by stressing solidarity and the role of pension systems connecting individuals and generations together. Any reform needs to consider these issues.

The article uses a novel research design to study pension reform processes. The article distinguishes the roles that ideas and institutions have in shaping expert reasoning and reform options. The authors show how ideas and institutions form a mutually reinforcing loop which helps to explain path-dependency in pension systems.

This article aims to link discussions of the role of earnings-related pension measures with time in Hong Kong (HK) and the United Kingdom (UK). It presents a new conceptual “time-based framework” to explore two related types of government response to the way people accumulate pension incomes through participation in paid work. The first is to consider governments' perceptions of appropriate time in work and retirement. The second is to consider how governments use pension measures to influence the connection between the amount of time people spend in paid work and retirement.

This is a conceptual paper. The time-based framework is developed using literature concerning discretionary time and the social construction of time. To explore the empirical significance of this framework, the authors discuss how it can be applied to the analysis of earnings-related pension measures in HK and the UK.

The evidence generated from the discussion of the earnings-related pension measures in HK and the UK shows that pension policies can serve both as a financial and time instrument. At the same time as influencing the connection between the amount of time people spend in paid work and the pensions they can accumulate, pension policies can be used to convey the government's views on important time issues, namely the appropriate length of time in work and retirement, and the relative value of the time spent in paid work and providing informal care.

A new framework is developed to explore the connection between the studies of earnings-related pension measures and time, which is an understudied area.

The purpose of this study is to examine public perceptions and attitudes toward using artificial intelligence (AI) in the US criminal justice system.

The authors took a quantitative approach and administered an online survey using the Amazon Mechanical Turk platform. The instrument was developed by integrating prior literature to create multiple scales for measuring public perceptions and attitudes.

The findings suggest that despite the various attempts, there are still significant perceptions of sociodemographic bias in the criminal justice system and technology alone cannot alleviate them. However, AI can assist judges in making fairer and more objective decisions by using triangulation – offering additional data points to offset individual biases.

Other scholars can build upon the findings and extend the work to shed more light on some problems of growing concern for society – bias and inequality in criminal sentencing. AI can be a valuable tool to assist judges in the decision-making process by offering diverse viewpoints. Furthermore, the authors bridge the gap between the fields of technology and criminal justice and demonstrate how the two can be successfully integrated for the benefit of society.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is among the first studies to examine a complex societal problem like the introduction of technology in a high-stakes environment – the US criminal justice system. Understanding how AI is perceived by society is necessary to develop more transparent and unbiased algorithms for assisting judges in making fair and equitable sentencing decisions. In addition, the authors developed and validated a new scale that can be used to further examine this novel approach to criminal sentencing in the future.

This study aims to identify specific factors that facilitate engagement and stay intention among Generation Z employees in the Indian banking, financial services and insurance (BFSI) context. Furthermore, using the frequency distribution of the identified factors, this study has ranked them in order of their association with stay intention.

Data were collected from 22 Gen Z employees working in the Indian private BFSI sector using unstructured interviews. Inductive content analysis was applied to identify the factors improving engagement and stay intention. Moreover, quantitative content analysis was applied to calculate the frequency distribution of the identified factors.

The study identified six prominent factors, namely, transformational leadership, employee investment practices, egalitarian practices, work-life balance, job crafting and sustainability, which significantly enhance employee engagement and stay intention among Gen Z employees. Moreover, based on the results of quantitative content analysis, it was found that transformational leadership exhibited the highest frequency in association with employee engagement and stay intention. Following this were employee involvement, egalitarian practices, work-life balance, job crafting and sustainability.

In the coming days, Generation Z will contribute to almost one-third of India’s workforce, of which the BFSI sector will be the major employer. However, the issue with this generation is their retention. Hence, the study identifies factors ensuring engagement and stay intention.

Owing to the paucity of research on stay intention as a variable of interest, this study tries to capture the perceptions of Gen Z towards factors inducing their engagement and stay intention. This study assesses intention to stay (ITS) as compared to intention to leave (ITL) as it is a proactive indicator of turnover. Lastly, this study uses a qualitative approach to identify factors influencing stay intention and engagement based on interactions with employees, which, to the best of the authors’ knowledge, no prior study has attempted.

Artificial intelligence (AI) is revolutionizing product recommendations, but little is known about consumer acceptance of AI recommendations. This study examines how to improve consumers' acceptance of AI recommendations from the perspective of product type (material vs experiential).

Four studies, including a field experiment and three online experiments, tested how consumers' preference for AI-based (vs human) recommendations differs between material and experiential product purchases.

Results show that people perceive AI recommendations as more competent than human recommendations for material products, whereas they believe human recommendations are more competent than AI recommendations for experiential products. Therefore, people are more (less) likely to choose AI recommendations when buying material (vs experiential) products. However, this effect is eliminated when is used as an assistant to rather than a replacement for a human recommendation.

This study is the first to focus on how products' material and experiential attributes influence people's attitudes toward AI recommendations. The authors also identify under what circumstances resistance to algorithmic advice is attenuated. These findings contribute to the research on the psychology of artificial intelligence and on human–technology interaction by investigating how experiential and material attributes influence preference for or resistance to AI recommenders.