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The purpose of this study is to frame the dimensions of the external institutional environment, namely, cultural-cognitive, normative and regulative dimensions as the main actors in the organisational field. More precisely, Libyan commercial banks have been identified as empirical evidence, to identify constraints of the institutional environment governing the behaviour and decision-making of commercial banks, when adopting Islamic financial transactions.

A questionnaire has been designed for 14 Libyan commercial banks which is distributed to the Board of Directors, managers, directors of departments, and personnel. The exploratory factor analysis (EFA) and the measurement model by using the first-order and second-order confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) have been applied as essential steps to embody the conceptual framework and test the research hypotheses.

The results of the EFA indicated sufficient correlation among the dimensions of the external environment. The CFA supported this study’s hypotheses. The modelling showed that the cultural-cognitive, normative and regulative dimensions are institutional constraints impeding Libyan commercial banks’ adoption of Islamic financial transactions. Interestingly, the findings of the CFA align with the EFA findings in supporting the conceptual framework of the research. They portrayed that the cultural-cognitive dimension has been identified by explicit and implicit cognition.

This study systematically embodies the dimensions of the external institutional environment, namely, cultural-cognitive, normative and regulative dimensions, as the main factors in the organisational field to be conceptually rich lenses to investigate social considerations to reinforce institutional thought broadly. The results of this study were consistent with extant Islamic financial literature, reflecting symmetry and similarity across commercial banks, particularly at the first stage of adopting Islamic financial transactions.

This study aims to explore the impact of hybrid learning on the satisfaction, effectiveness and academic performance of faculty and students in private universities in Kuwait. The study specifically addresses the challenges and experiences confronted by students and faculty members in utilising hybrid learning, assesses whether hybrid learning leads to improvements in academic performance and proposes measures for providing quality hybrid learning models in post-coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) situations.

This study employed a quantitative method by collecting data via a questionnaire targeting private university students and faculty members in Kuwait. A total of 311 participants completed the survey.

The results show that students were in favour of the hybrid learning method and viewed this as being efficient when coming to satisfaction, academic performance and overall effectiveness; whilst faculty members have voiced the members' disfavour of the hybrid model of teaching as the members believe that the system is unjust, especially when coming to student's academic performance.

Although research related to hybrid learning in different parts of the world has existed for many years, the research only recently gained prominence in Kuwait due to the COVID-19 pandemic. This paper will likely be of interest to academics, policymakers, the government and universities as the pandemic continues to make hybrid learning more popular and, therefore, would increase awareness with regards to students' and faculty members' opinions about the system and proposed ways to resolve any issues.

Evaluating the implementation of environmental management plans (EMPs) in highway construction projects is essential to avoid climate change. Public evaluations can help ensure that the EMP is implemented correctly and efficiently. To allow public evaluation of EMP implementations, this study aims to investigate performance indicators (PIs) for assessing EMP implementation in highway construction projects. To that end, the study objectives are to compare the critical PIs between environment auditors (EAs) and environment officers (EOs) and among the main project stakeholders (i.e. clients, contractors and consultants), create components for the critical PIs and assess the efficiency of the components.

The paper identified 39 PIs from interviews with environmental professionals and a systematic literature review. Then a questionnaire survey was developed based on the PIs and sent to EAs and EOs. The data were analyzed via mean score ranking, normalization, agreement analysis, factor analysis and fuzzy synthetic evaluation (FSE).

The analyses revealed 21 critical PIs for assessing EMP implementation in highway construction projects. Also, the critical PIs can be grouped into four components: ecological, pollution, public safety and ecological. Finally, the overall importance of the critical PIs from the FSE is between important and very important.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this paper is the first-of-its-kind study on the critical PIs for assessing EMP implementation in highway construction projects.

This study aims to examine how governing bodies demonstrated stakeholder engagement during the time of the COVID-19 crisis in South Africa.

This study uses a qualitative approach based on semi-structured interviews with 18 participants, comprising of preparers of financial statements, board members and management consultants/advisors. The study also relied on the analysis of articles on corporate webpages and publications produced by professional bodies on the economic, social and environmental impact of COVID-19.

The results of this study indicated that governing bodies demonstrated stakeholder engagement during times of crisis through transparent reporting, corporate social responsibility initiatives and active stakeholder inclusivity.

This study contributes to the body of research on stakeholder engagement during a crisis and provides evidence of the role stakeholder inclusivity can play in responding to a crisis. The findings will be useful in understanding the importance of stakeholder engagement during times of crisis. The study is one of the first, to the best of the authors’ knowledge, to evaluate how stakeholder engagement principles can be followed by governing bodies during a crisis.

This study investigated the factors affecting online learning (OL) and stress and anxiety (SaA) during the COVID-19 pandemic in Saudi Arabia.

This study used a quantitative study and a survey questionnaire to collect the cross-sectional data. The authors sent 500 survey questionnaires to the respondents of which 262 samples were returned. This represented a 52% response rate. Finally, this study used 260 valid samples to derive this study’s findings.

Through structure equation modelling analysis, this study’s findings demonstrate that lack of time and support, technical problems and lack of technical skills negatively affect OL. In addition, this study’s findings show that cost and access to internet has a significant effect on OL. Finally, this study’s findings show that among Saudi Arabian university students OL is the significant predictor of SaA.

This study’s findings offer university authorities meaningful ways to identify replacements for the usage of harmful devices to lessen psychological problems during the COVID-19 pandemic. By pointing out students’ significant challenges and barriers during OL, this study’s findings support the smooth and parallel running of OL. Such challenges cause deprivation and frustration among the students. Therefore, to some extent, it may be a violation of their human rights. In this way, this study’s findings demonstrate how to overcome these violations.

By exploring the significant challenges faced by Saudi Arabian university students, this study’s findings offer an original and empirical contribution to the literature.

The recent pandemic caused by coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) has significantly impacted the operational performances of pharmaceutical supply chains (SCs), especially in emerging economies that are critically vulnerable due to their inadequate resources. Finding the possible barriers that continue to impede the sustainable performance of SCs in the post-COVID-19 era has become essential. This study aims to investigate and analyze the barriers to achieving sustainability in the pharmaceutical SC of an emerging economy in a bid to help decision-makers recognize the most influential barriers.

To achieve the goals, two decision-making tools are integrated to analyze the most critical barriers: interpretive structural modeling (ISM) and the matrix of cross-impact multiplications applied to classification (MICMAC). In contrast to other multi-criteria decision-making (MCDM) approaches, ISM develops a hierarchical decision tool for decision-makers and cluster analysis of the barriers using the MICMAC method based on their driving and dependency powers.

The findings reveal that the major barriers are in a four-level hierarchical relationship where “Insufficient SC strategic plans to ensure agility during crisis” acts as the most critical barrier, followed by “Poor information structure among SC contributors,” and “Inadequate risk management policy under pandemic.” Finally, the MICMAC analysis validates the findings from the ISM approach.

This study provides meaningful insights into barriers to achieving sustainability in pharmaceutical SCs in the post-COVID-19 era. The study can help pharmaceutical SC practitioners to better understand what can go wrong in post-COVID-19, and develop actionable strategies to ensure sustainability and resilience in practitioners' SCs.