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For Bangladeshi small and medium enterprises (SMEs), the COVID-19 economic shock is remarkable in both its complexity and intensity. SMEs need systemic inspiration to solve the crisis, aligned with a moral and authentic approach that serves both the leader and the follower’s interests. This study aims to conceptualize the innovation-focused success method of SMEs before and after the pandemic to manage the crisis by establishing spiritual leadership based on Islamic perspectives.

To discuss the impact of spiritual leadership on innovation-focused SME performance configuration through the lens of a crisis, a comprehensive literature study has been carried out in which over 360 articles are read and reviewed by the authors. It has also established the reliability and validity of literature analysis. Also, a qualitative investigation has been used to support the direction of the study.

For a subsequent process of scientific deployment and evaluation of its execution, a new applied strategic innovation-focused SME success configuration through spiritual leadership development is made available. The primary value of this paradigm is the potential to calculate and treat the aspects of spiritual leadership obtained from Islamic ideas.

Prior analytical or empirical attempts from multiple viewpoints are subsequently needed to inquire about the proposed conceptualization.

Among the realistic consequences of this analysis is that while a number of leadership paradigms have been embraced by a broad body of leadership studies, the findings indicate that this paper should pay heed to the influential spiritual style of leadership, taking into account Islamic perspectives on the context of crisis. Therefore, Bangladeshi SMEs need to develop and run leadership training programs focused on the Islamic viewpoint of spirituality to encourage the actions of leaders during and after crises.

The legal and moral values of the society would ultimately be upgraded from this conceptualization. Moreover, less corruption in corporate activities would improve the economic prosperity of a nation. It would also contribute to the cross-cultural portrayal of the positive picture of Islam.

This holistic conceptualization describes the mediating role of strategic innovation practices based on theoretical foundations, which have seldom been done in previous research, between the Islamic model of spiritual leadership and SME success during and after a crisis.

Small and medium-sized firms (SMEs) are typically reported to have a limited interest in broader societal concerns across the world. As a result, the purpose of this study is to develop a model of SME’s strategic philanthropic performance in light of the societal reactions to the COVID-19 issue, particularly in terms of the intervention of corporate spirituality and the solid regulatory motive behind these.

A systematic mixed review analysis has been executed to analyze the strategic philanthropic performance configuration triggered by the recent COVID-19 crisis, in which over 369 publications are read and reviewed by the authors. It has also established the reliability and validity of literature analysis. Also besides, a short form of qualitative investigation has been used to support the direction of the study.

Through regulatory adjustments, the study's findings effectively developed a strategic philanthropic performance configuration for SMEs. In this case, the strategic philanthropic convergence of corporate giving, corporate volunteering, corporate foundation and food bank has the potential to help SMEs thrive in the long run. The study also discovers that corporate spirituality might potentially mediate between appropriate regulations and strategic philanthropic performance of SMEs in the context of a supportive external environment.

Prior empirical attempts are subsequently required to inquiry about the proposed conceptualization from different perspectives.

The decision-makers of SMEs, with the efficient implementation of the proposed outline, will use the understanding given for their required actions to develop the competitive advantage in terms of social concerns. On this note, the outcomes of the study can also enhance business differentiation and competitiveness. It can also serve as a strategic guideline for firms to develop organizational values for long-term survival.

In the COVID-19 reality, SMEs will contribute to the concerns through philanthropy activities that are better suited for both enhanced social good and greater corporate advantages. The idea can also serve as a basis for SMEs to accomplish the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

To the best of the authors' knowledge, this is the first research that conceptualizes the influence of government regulation on the strategic philanthropic performance of SMEs while taking corporate spirituality into account in order to survive the COVID-19 crisis.

The informal segment compared to the formal segment is developing rapidly in urban areas of many developing Muslim countries. However, matter of fact, the contribution factor of the food cart business to the economic outline of the country has been vastly overlooked or neglected. The authority, policymakers, social organisations, vendors and the customers together need to play a contributing role based on intervention tactics regarding the major focus areas related to the development of this business segment. As a result, this study aims to explore concerns or issues that are hampering future business prospects considering the philosophy of halalan tayyiba.

The study has organised 16 semi-structured interview procedures with relevant food cart vendors of Chittagong, Bangladesh. The study selected participants (food cart vendors) from lower- to medium-income areas occupying at least one high school, one college in relation to several commercial premises (ex-mini shopping malls, offices and small factories) considering 6 out of 41 wards of Chittagong city corporation. All meetings with reflected participants were audiotaped and transcribed verbatim and transcripts were loaded into NVivo for coding and analysis procedure.

This investigation revealed that issues with food security, weather, lack of proper legislation, lack of awareness related with halalan tayyiba and erratic policies are the major challenges for the development of the food cart business in Chittagong. This study also advances how street food security well-being and hygiene practices are a piece of the halal idea and should in this way be adjusted by the halal food segment to accomplish halalan tayyiba affirmation. The outcomes also indicate an agenda for future research in this area.

More reflections from the different stakeholders do have both pertinence and potential for incorporation in suggestions.

The detected findings may help both authority and other concerned entities to identify the critical dynamics to initiate appropriate strategic activities towards local economic growth considering halalan tayyiba outlines.

It will ensure social well-being and food security.

This explorative research is one of few studies in the Bangladesh context, which is investigating halalan tayyiba-oriented business development outline for micro entrepreneurs.

SMEs that manage more sustainability focused initiatives into their core business strategy can possibly benefit from lower expenses, reduced threats and new business opportunities, but in Malaysia most of the SMEs are still far off in terms of adapting to a sustainable business growth outline from a holistic point of view. Hence, this study aims to serve deeper understanding about a strategic innovation focused sustainable growth model on basis of multidisciplinary QBL-QHIM theoretical perspectives where strategic innovation practices intervene in between desired growth and government support (regulations).

This conceptual investigation embraces a newly emerged concern of sustainable business growth in SMEs, considering ranges of literature reviews from the disciplines of management and entrepreneurship. The study also systematically explores the concepts of regulations, strategic innovation practices on basis of QBL and QHIM theories to adjust the sustainable business growth model from a holistic angle.

The outcomes show that multidisciplinary QBL-QHIM conjunction within the interrelationships of the selected constructs holds the potential for innovation focused business growth in a more sustainable, comprehensive and holistic manner. The study also detects that exploitative-explorative innovation practices can possibly mediate in between suitable regulations and sustainable business growth of SMEs, considering supportive external environment.

Researches are encouraged to test the proposed model.

The study indicates a conceptual configuration for policy makers as well as entrepreneurs to ensure sustainable business growth for SMEs. The outcomes of the study also provide useful direction on decision-making process of owner or manager considering social, economic, environmental and spiritual aspects of daily operations.

The conceptual model may possibly able to generate more social values, considering a holistic angle into business activities.

The conceptualization is a unique attempt, considering developing regions to extend the current understanding of strategic innovation focused sustainable growth process of SMEs from a holistic angle.

This study aims to identify how the involvement of female university students in volunteer organisations is contributing to their self-empowerment in Bangladesh.

A cross-sectional study with a qualitative approach was conducted. A total of 20 in-depth interviews with female student volunteers, two focus group discussions with student members of the volunteer organisation and ten key informant interviews with academics, gender experts and high-level representatives of civil society organisations were conducted. The data were collected from eight purposively selected universities in Dhaka. The data were collected between 1 January 2023 and 23 March 2023.

The inter-organisational environment appears to be supportive and welcoming, despite the fact that some male colleagues belittle women with insulting comments. Female students are predominantly involved in public presentation activities and their advice is rarely considered. To reach a top position, they have to show more commitment than their male colleagues. Subjective prejudices discourage women from taking on positions of responsibility. Participation in voluntary organisations strengthens the self-confidence, critical thinking, networking and social capital of female students, making it easier for them to gain employment. These factors contribute to the empowerment of female students.

This study is an excellent empirical document that establishes a link between the empowerment of female students and their participation in voluntary activities. The recommendations of this study pave the way for future research in different countries on how volunteering helps young people, especially female students, to shape their future by taking on social responsibility alongside their academic activities.

The aim of this research paper is to generalize the previous works on the design of accelerated life tests (ALTs) for periodic inspection and Type I censoring and to promote the use of an exponentiated Weibull (EW) distribution in accelerated life testing.

Statistically optimal ALT plans are suggested for items whose lifetime follows the EW distribution under periodic inspection and Type I censoring. It is assumed that the mean lifetime (scale parameter) is a log‐linear function of stress and that the shape parameters are independent of stress. Given shape parameters, design stress and high test stress, the test plan is optimized with respect to the low test stress and the proportion of test units are also allocated to this test stress. The asymptotic variance (AsVar) of the maximum likelihood estimator of log mean life at the design stress is used as an optimality criterion with equally spaced inspection times. A FORTRAN program was written to calculate the optimal plans. Procedures for planning of an ALT, including selection of sample size, have also been discussed. An illustration of the optimal ALT plans has been done through a numerical example.

Computational findings for various values of the shape parameters indicate that the AsVar of log mean life at the design stress is insensitive to the number of inspection times and to misspecifications of imputed failure probabilities at design and high test stresses. Computational findings also show that optimal designs of ALT previously obtained for exponential, Rayleigh, and Weibull distributions become special cases of the EW distribution. Thus, the EW distribution is a useful and widely applicable reliability model for optimal ALT plans.

The present investigation features the EW distribution of lifetimes of test items and it generalizes the previous works on accelerated life testing. Furthermore, the propose test plans can be applied to estimate the lifetime of highly reliable product or material, if a researcher designs a test under the assumption of this model.

The Purpose of this research is to initiate the “Fourth Industrial Revolution” by using the Internet of things (IoT), which can be applied to flammable gas condition monitoring and detection of gas leakage and activate fire extinguisher in case of fire accidents. Liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) leakage and explosions cause many injuries and death each year. By developing an automated and remote LPG ppm condition monitoring and fire extinguisher activation system with the help of a cyber-physical system, the rate of accidents and injuries can be reduced to a significant amount.

The IoT enabled the sensors to transmit LPG concentration value reading to a mobile app or cloud server and control actuators by connecting all in the same network. In case of a fire accident, the solenoid valve automatically or can be activated by an android application manually, which will be pre-installed in mobile phones. Another advantage of this system is that the gas cylinder or flammable particle source can be closed by closing the solenoid valves attached to their outlets. The first challenge of Industry 4.0 is to develop a cyber-physical system where all physical entities can be monitored and controlled over the internet or another way remotely or from a single point.

This fire extinguisher system can be used everywhere and in all types of firefighting because all types of fire extinguishers are commercially available in cylinders where solenoid valves can be used instead of conventional valves. This system will reduce human effort in the fire safety system and reduce the number of losses owing to fire accidents by taking all actions automatically and from a safe distance. The reliability analysis of this system indicated that the working condition for the best outcome is 20–35°C and the baud rate of the controller should be 11.5 kHz.

The study of pieces of the literature summarizes that this work is unique in terms of the application of Industry 4.0 in the fire safety system and reliability analysis of this system helped to determine the operating condition for the best performance of this system. Some LPG condition monitoring system was developed using IoT before but had many limitations such as working capability during load shading or emergency cases.

The objective of this study is to investigate how country risk, different political actions from the government and bureaucratic behavior influence the activities in industry supply chains (SCs) in emerging markets. The main objective of this study is to investigate the influence of these external stakeholders’ elements to the demand-side and supply-side drivers and barriers for improving competitiveness of Ready-Made Garment (RMG) industry in the way of analyzing supply chain. Considering the phenomenon of recent change in the RMG business environment and the competitiveness issues this study uses the principles of stakeholder and resource dependence theory and aims to find out some factors which influence to make an efficient supply chain for improving competitiveness. The RMG industry of Bangladesh is the case application of this study. Following a positivist paradigm, this study adopts a two phase sequential mixed-method research design consisting of qualitative and quantitative approaches. A tentative research model is developed first based on extensive literature review. Qualitative field study is then carried out to fine tune the initial research model. Findings from the qualitative method are also used to develop measures and instruments for the next phase of quantitative method. A survey is carried out with sample of top and middle level executives of different garment companies of Dhaka city in Bangladesh and the collected quantitative data are analyzed by partial least square-based structural equation modeling. The findings support eight hypotheses. From the analysis the external stakeholders’ elements like bureaucratic behavior and country risk have significant influence to the barriers. From the internal stakeholders’ point of view the manufacturers’ and buyers’ drivers have significant influence on the competitiveness. Therefore, stakeholders need to take proper action to reduce the barriers and increase the drivers, as the drivers have positive influence to improve competitiveness.

This study has both theoretical and practical contributions. This study represents an important contribution to the theory by integrating two theoretical perceptions to identify factors of the RMG industry’s SC that affect the competitiveness of the RMG industry. This research study contributes to the understanding of both external and internal stakeholders of national and international perspectives in the RMG (textile and clothing) business. It combines the insights of stakeholder and resource dependence theories along with the concept of the SC in improving effectiveness. In a practical sense, this study certainly contributes to the Bangladeshi RMG industry. In accordance with the desire of the RMG manufacturers, the research has shown that some influential constructs of the RMG industry’s SC affect the competitiveness of the RMG industry. The outcome of the study is useful for various stakeholders of the Bangladeshi RMG industry sector ranging from the government to various private organizations. The applications of this study are extendable through further adaptation in other industries and various geographic contexts.

The purpose of this study is to understand the practice of Dawah among Muslims by discovering its perceived motives and benefits that can be replicated to organizational settings. Furthermore, the motives and benefits of performing Islamic Dawah are tied together to establish a Dawah based framework to foster ethical decision making in organizations.

This qualitative study is based on interviews conducted among 40 male Muslims from Pakistan. The sample consists of Muslim scholars having strong religious knowledge, younger people and old-age Muslims. The data collected through the interviews are transcribed and content-analysed by using multiple coding schemes.

The Islamic Dawah-based framework is based on five elements, which are self-reform, transcendence, complacency, dutifulness and pridefulness. The findings reveal that Muslim scholars put much emphasis on sharing of Islamic faith and livelihood among the members of the community, while the common people, both from the younger and older generations, are more concerned with establishing their own understanding of the Islamic value system and self-improvement. Aside from the spiritual impact that Dawah has on them, the role of family members in stimulating the practice of Dawah is highlighted.

The study has managerial relevance in a way that the highlighted themes represented by a framework can be replicated to an organizational setting to impart a culture of ethicality which is purely based on Islamic tradition. The roles of peers, CEO and self-correction are pivotal to establishment of an ethical workplace culture.

This study extends marketing knowledge in general and internal marketing knowledge specifically by presenting a first-ever Islamic Dawah-based model to foster workplace ethics.