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Sustainability is essential to the ongoing operations of banks, though it is much less clear how Islamic corporate governance (ICG) promotes economic sustainability (ES) and thereby prevents bankruptcy. To explore the unexplored, this study aims to examine the efficacy of ICG in preventing bankruptcy and enhancing the ES of Islamic banks operating in Pakistan.

The current study measures ES through Altman's Z-score to analyze the level of the industry's stability and consequently examines the effect of ICG on the ES of Islamic banks in Pakistan for the post-financial-crises period. Using the country-level data, this study utilized a fixed-effect model and two-stage least squares (2SLS) techniques on balanced panel data spanning from 2009 to 2020 to provide empirical evidence.

The empirical results unveiled that board size and meetings have a significant positive influence on the ES while managerial ownership demonstrated an unfavorable effect on ES. Interestingly, the insignificant effect of women directors became significant with the inclusion of controlled variables. Overall, the findings indicate that ICG is an efficient tool for promoting ES in Islamic banks and preventing them from the negative effects of emerging crises.

The findings provide concrete insights for policymakers, regulators and other concerned stakeholders to execute a sturdy corporate governance system that not only oversees the economic, social and ethical aspects but also provides measures to alleviate the impacts of potential risks like the COVID-19 pandemic.

Examining the role of ICG in alleviating bankruptcy risk is an informative and useful endeavor for all social actors.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this study is one of the first efforts to provide evidence-based insights on the role of ICG in preventing bankruptcy and offers a potential research direction for ES.

The financial policies of the modern world corporations and their investment decisions are generally considered as interrelated because the agency problems, associated with the debt level and its maturity structure, give rise to incentives for overinvestment or underinvestment. The present study empirically investigates the linkage between debt maturity structure and firm investment in a financially constrained environment, using Pakistan as a case study, to determine how the institutional environment in which firms operate affect these decisions and their linkage.

The empirical analysis is carried in a panel data setting using panel regression models as the baseline methods. Moreover, generalized methods of moments (GMM) estimators are used, coupled with the instrumental variables approach, for robustness and improving the efficiency and consistency of estimates.

Results suggest that firms rely more on short financing in Pakistan. Thus, given the capital structure which is characterized by higher proportion of short-term financing, the higher level of leverage is less likely to cause underinvestment problem. However, the underinvestment problem do persists in the firms that have higher portion of long-term debt. These findings imply that the debt-overhang problem may persist even in the financially constrained environments where attractive investment opportunities are limited, and long-term financing is difficult to acquire.

This study contributes to the literature by revealing how corporate investment and financing decisions and their linkage is influenced by the institutional environment of the less developed countries which is characterized by underdeveloped financial markets, inefficient legal system and weak investor protection system.

The main purpose of this paper is to examine the mediating role of psychological capital in the relationship between perceived psychological empowerment and employee satisfaction, normative organizational commitment and turnover intentions.

To test the proposed research model, the authors collected field data from seven telecommunication companies located in the Islamabad Capital Territory of Pakistan. Through a two-wave data collection design, a total of 411 participants reported their perceptions about psychological empowerment and psychological capital at Time 1 and their job satisfaction, normative organizational commitment and turnover intention at Time 2.

Results supported the hypothesized relationships, showing that psychological capital fully mediates the relationship between perceived psychological empowerment and employee job satisfaction, normative organizational commitment and turnover intention.

This study relied on cross-sectional data, which does not fully satisfy the conditions of establishing causality.

Results of this study will help organizations and practitioners to understand the importance of psychological empowerment and psychological capital and how they positively influence organizational performance, including employee job satisfaction, normative organizational commitment and turnover intention.

Drawing upon the self-determination theory of Deci and Ryan (2000), this study contributes to organizational behaviour literature by proposing and testing psychological capital as an underlying mechanism that can explain the impact of psychological empowerment on employee satisfaction, normative organizational commitment and turnover intention.

Refurbishment is inherently more sustainable than building new. However, planned and actual costs of refurbishment projects are bound to vary due to the complex nature of most such projects. This can affect the performance of refurbishment work. The purpose of this paper is to examine factors responsible for elemental cost variations between the actual and planned costs of refurbishment projects. The study also examines factors that contribute to differences in actual and planned cost between refurbishment and new build projects.

A quantitative approach was adopted for this study. A literature review identified factors responsible for elemental cost variations in refurbishment projects, as well as factors responsible for differences in actual and planned cost of new build and refurbishment projects. This was followed by a questionnaire survey of refurbishment projects across Malaysia. A total of 55 respondents provided input through a questionnaire survey to identify these factors.

This study demonstrates that procurement strategy (PS), inappropriate contractors (IC), poor project management (PPM), availability of funding, materials and equipment, and force majeure (FM) significantly affect refurbishment cost performance. Electrical installations, firefighting equipment, and painting were the building elements most affected by cost variations. A regression model for refurbishment cost prediction indicates that PS, IC, PPM, availability of funding, materials and equipment, and FM were significant predictors of building refurbishment cost performance.

This paper provides insight into the major factors affecting elemental cost variation of refurbishment works, as well as building elements most affected by cost variations and provides a model for predicting refurbishment cost performance.

This paper discusses the challenges that two doctoral researchers faced while researching religious minorities and women in a culturally sensitive society such as Pakistan. Their shared interest in sensitive topics related to gender and minorities in Pakistan led both researchers to collaborate in this study to provide a better understanding of issues in qualitative research in the same research context. They discuss the challenges of interviewing participants within the educational context. They also suggest some ways to overcome such challenges.

Based on Foucualt's writings on regimes of truth, discourse and systems of exclusion, the authors in this study analyze how patriarchal and faith-based regimes of truth constrain some discourses that affect participants’ willingness and insights to reflect on the issues freely.

While reflecting on their experiences in data collection, authors report that qualitative researchers struggle to access participants to investigate issues related to gender subjectivities and minority faiths in educational contexts in developing societies like Pakistan. Researchers face a variety of problems, from their own positionality to participants’ access to their responses. The reason for this is patriarchal and religious regimes and also their intersecting relations that restrict participants’ ability to reflect on their issues. Minorities in Pakistan are often prevented from expressing their views freely by blasphemy fears. The discourses of gender are also sensitive. Therefore, the study suggests that in societies such as Pakistan, where religion and gender are emotive terms, the problem can be handled by counter-discourses that challenge truth regimes by conceiving research as a transformative practice. Moreover, such societies require a policy for protecting researchers and participants in the interest of knowledge production and dissemination.

This study is originally based on the primary data used in two doctoral studies.

Barge-type offshore floating wind turbine (OFWT) commonly exhibits an under-actuated phenomenon in an offshore environment, which leads to a potential vibration-damping hazard. This article aims to provide a new robust output feedback anti-vibrational control scheme for the novel translational oscillator with rotational actuator (TORA) based five-degrees of freedom (5-DOF) barge-type OFWT in the presence of unwanted disturbances and modeling uncertainties.

In this paper, an active control technique called TORA has been used to design a 5-DOF barge-type OFWT model, where the mathematical model of the proposed system is derived by using Euler–Lagrange's equations. The robust hierarchical backstepping integral nonsingular terminal sliding mode control (HBINTSMC) with an adaptive gain is used in conjunction with extended order high gain observer (EHGO) to achieve system stabilization in the presence of unwanted disturbances and modeling uncertainties. The numerical simulations based on MATLAB/SIMULINK have been performed to demonstrate the feasibility and effectiveness of the proposed model and control law.

The numerical simulation results affirm the accuracy and efficiency of the proposed control law for the TORA based OFWT system. The results demonstrate that the proposed control law is robust against unwanted disturbances and uncertainties. The unknown states are accurately estimated by EHGO which enables the controller to exhibit improved stabilization performance.

A new mathematical model of the 5-DOF barge-type OFWT system based on TORA is the major contribution of this research paper. Furthermore, it provides a new adaptive anti-vibration control scheme by incorporating the EHGO for the proposed model.

Intellectual capital (IC) is a paramount resource for competitiveness in the knowledge-based financial sectors of the economy. As financial technology advances, specifically in the banking industry, it is vital to understand the effect of IC on financial performance. This study aims to investigate the effect of IC on return on equity (ROE), with a unique emphasis on the moderating role of board attributes. Previous studies have overlooked this moderating role.

The study sample consists of 17 banks and a panel data set spanning 2016–2021, extracted from annual reports. Antel Pulic’s value-added intellectual coefficient (VAIC) model is used to compute IC. To analyze the data, a generalized least squares analysis is conducted. The robustness of the analysis is ensured by using the two-stage least squares (2SLS) econometric technique.

The findings indicate that both the VAIC and human capital efficiency (HCE) have a significant impact on the ROE of banks. In terms of moderation, it is observed that board size (BS) exerts a negative effect on the association between VAIC, HCE, structural capital efficiency and ROE. Additionally, BS positively compounds the connection between capital employed efficiency and ROE. Similarly, the presence of independent directors (IND) significantly moderates the effects of VAIC and its components on the ROE of banks in Pakistan.

Banks should focus on the HCE for a higher ROE. Moreover, banks ought to prioritize appointing more independent directors in the boardroom for effective utilization of IC and greater ROE.

The findings of the study, which analyzed data from Pakistan’s banking sector, are original and provide additional insights into the literature on IC and board attributes.

The latest mobile technology may shape consumers' motivations by allowing them to order a variety of foods using smartphone apps. Following the stimulus–organism–response (SOR) framework and using a mixed methods approach, this study investigates the impacts of different components of mobile dining on customers' perceived value, which leads to actual purchase intentions. Furthermore, this study examines the moderating effect of the restaurant type.

Data were collected via an online questionnaire survey from 351 individuals in the city of Jakarta (Indonesia) who actually used mobile apps to order food online. Data analysis was carried out using structural equation modeling.

The findings reveal that source credibility, review valence, the navigation system, food quality and service quality significantly impact customers' perceived value. Customers' perceived value, in turn, positively affects their purchase intentions. The findings also reveal that the impacts of review valence, the navigation system, food quality and service quality on customers' perceived value depend on the different levels of restaurants.

This study is among the first in the mobile commerce research that studies the impacts of mobile electronic word-of-mouth (eWOM), system quality and overall restaurant image on dining choices by considering actual mobile shoppers. Second, this study extends the SOR model to examine the impact of the mobile environment-based characteristics on the perceived value that leads to purchase intentions. Third, the current study examines whether the relationships that are discussed early on differ based on the restaurant type. The findings of this study could help practitioners achieve a deeper understanding of diners' behaviors due to the perceived benefits of mobile dining.

With a foundation in the conservation of resource theory, this paper aims to examine the validity of a conceptual model that explains the mechanism connecting perceived threat of terrorism to production deviance. The link between perceived threat of terrorism and production deviance was examined via emotional exhaustion. Notably, the study evaluated whether the relationship between perceived threat of terrorism and production deviance is mediated by emotional exhaustion and moderated by levels of emotional intelligence.

The study is cross-sectional in nature and data were collected from 432 pharmaceutical sales representatives who operate outdoors in the high-risk region. Two-step approach consisting confirmatory factor analysis and structural equation modeling was used for analysis. To examine conditional direct and indirect effects, the authors used model 8 in PROCESS.

Results were consistent with prediction made from the conceptual model in that emotional exhaustion partially mediated the relationship between perceived threat of terrorism and production deviance. This was particularly the case when emotional intelligence was low, but not when high. Likewise, perceived threat of terrorism exerted a direct effect on production deviance when emotional intelligence was low, but not when high.

The study is the first to examine the relationship between perceived threat of terrorism and production deviance. Moreover, no study to date has examined the mediating role of emotional exhaustion between perceived threat of terrorism and production deviance. Finally, up till now, it is unknown that emotional intelligence moderates the relationship of perceived threat of terrorism with emotional exhaustion and production deviance.

The purpose of this paper is to suggest that the effects of service quality (SQ) on outcome variables may shift over time. However, scant attention has been paid to capturing that shift. The current study uses the theory of relationship dynamics to capture the rate and direction of change in the effects of SQ attributes on customer satisfaction (CS) and emotional attachment (EA). For this purpose, the study takes CS-velocity and EA-velocity as dynamic outcomes of SQ.

A sample of 306 restaurant consumers responded to a structured questionnaire at three points in time. Confirmatory factor analysis was carried out, followed by analysis of the data through latent growth curve modeling using MPlus (Version 8.1).

SQ attributes positively affect CS and EA, but these effects diminish over time, as SQ attributes negatively influence CS-velocity and EA-velocity. In addition, the study demonstrates that dynamic elements strongly impact behavioral intentions (BI).

The study enables service and relationship marketing managers to better understand the role of SQ attributes in maintaining longitudinal satisfaction, attachment and BI. The insights from this longitudinal investigation help managers to formulate long-term service management and relationship management strategies.

This study is the first attempt to examine SQ’s dynamic outcomes using longitudinal panel data. It is the first study to introduce EA-velocity as a dynamic construct of EA and the first to examine the relationships of CS-velocity and EA-velocity with BI.