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The purpose of this paper is to extend the understanding of Six Sigma (SS) and the underlying dimensions of its critical success factors (CSF) via an analysis of the effects of top management support (TMS), implementation strategy (IS), and collaborative team (CT) on project performance (PP) in Mexican manufacturing companies.

Based on a SS literature review, a survey was conducted to capture practitioners’ viewpoints about CSFs for SS implementation and their impact on performance in manufacturing companies. A factor analysis and structural equation modeling were conducted in order to identify and analyze causal relationships.

The results suggest that CSFs grouped in the constructs TMS, IS, and CT have a positive impact on PP as measured by cost reduction, variation reduction, and quality improvement.

Although the empirical data collected supported the proposed model, results might differ among organizations in different countries. In addition, the study did not analyze a unique performance metric; instead, general PP dimensions were used.

Boosting the TMS, IS, and CT enhances positive PP of SS in manufacturing companies.

IS as a construct has not been studied exhaustively; this work contributes to a better understanding of it and its impact on PP. Additionally, studies of SS in Latin America are limited, so this study gives a complementary vision to practitioners and researchers about it.

Debt, dividend and investment policy constitutes a company's important financial decisions to determine firm performance. The research emphasizes on the problem of overinvestment, a phenomenon that worsens firm operation. Furthermore, it clarifies the moderation role of debt and dividend policy in mitigating the negative effect of overinvestment on firm performance in the case of Vietnamese listed companies.

The research uses all financial statement of non-financial Vietnamese listed companies on Ho Chi Minh and Hanoi Stock Exchange in the period of 2008–2018. The data are collected from Thomson Reuters Eikon. The final data set is comprised of 669 listed companies. The study measures overinvestment though investment demand function and HP filter. Moreover, the research employs the dynamic model, so it has to apply the SGMM method to deal with the problem of endogeneity caused by the lagged dependent variable.

The research finds that overinvestment is negatively associated with firm performance. Debt or dividend policy separately can moderate the negative effect of overinvestment on firm performance. However, when these two policies are combined, they lessen the positive interaction impact of each policy due to the substitution between debt and dividend policy.

The research may have two limitations. Firstly, the research measures overinvestment indirectly through investment demand function and HP filter. These two measures only help identify the sign that companies may have the problem of overinvestment because we cannot determine whether they overinvest or not in reality. Secondly, when using interaction variables, the problem of multicollinearity may be higher, and this may adjust the signs and significance level of variables in the models.

Practically, the research proposes three policy recommendations. Firstly, a company can exploit debt or dividend policy to limit excessive free cash flow in order to constrain the problem of overinvestment. Secondly, a company should enhance its corporate governance to resolve agency problems. Thirdly, the government should make the financial sector more transparent and effective to improve monitoring functions of various parties in the capital market.

Overinvestment sometimes can cause social issues. Overinvestment means that companies make ineffective investment. If they continue this situation over a long time, companies may have financial distress or even go bankruptcy. As a result, it will slow down economic growth and increase unemployment in the economy.

The research is supposed to make two great contributions to the existing empirical studies in two aspects. Firstly, it is the first attempt to take into consideration the interaction between overinvestment and financial policies. Secondly, it helps enhance the fundamental stance of the agency theory, which supports the interdependence of debt, dividend and investment policy.

This study aims to investigate the relative impact of firm-created (FC) and user-generated (UG) social media marketing communication on fashionwear customers' purchase intention (CPI) in Sri Lanka. The primary objective is to identify the influence of social media marketing on the purchasing intention (PI) of customers in the fashionwear industry in Sri Lanka.

A standardized online survey was conducted, generating 312 datasets for analysis.

The empirical findings reveal that both firm-produced and UG social media fashionwear marketing communication has a significant influence on CPI. However, firm-produced social media fashionwear brands demonstrate a higher impact on CPI.

This study highlights the importance of social media marketing communication in shaping customers’ PI in the fashionwear industry in Sri Lanka. Both FC and UG content on social media platforms play a crucial role in influencing customers' intention to purchase fashionwear products. However, firm-produced social media fashionwear brands exert a stronger impact on CPI. These findings emphasize the need for marketers to incorporate effective social media strategies, including both FC and UG content, to enhance customer engagement and drive purchase decisions in the fashion-wear industry.

Climate change has become an increasingly important issue globally, and organisations are being urged to be more carbon friendly by taking initiatives to reduce carbon emissions in their business operations. The purpose of this paper is to examine the extent to which climate change has been addressed and the influence of financial strength and corporate governance structure on the disclosure of carbon information.

The research process consists of an investigation via content analysis of the annual and sustainability reports of the top 100 public-listed companies in Malaysia for the year 2017.

The results of the study revealed that carbon information on carbon emissions accounting had the highest disclosure and that climate change risks and opportunities had the lowest disclosure. The results of the multiple regression analysis revealed that profitability is positively significant with carbon disclosure while leverage is negatively significant. However, the governance structure does not seem to have any influence on the disclosure of carbon information.

The conclusions drawn from the study must be interpreted with caution as the sample companies only comprise of the top 100 public-listed companies in Malaysia to provide an initial insight into the situation in Malaysia. Furthermore, the interpretations and conclusions drawn from this study are based solely on a cross-sectional analysis of the data for only one year.

This finding is a significant contribution to regulatory bodies and policymakers regarding the drivers of climate change initiatives in an emerging economy such as Malaysia. This finding suggests that in the Malaysian setting, financial structure influence decisions on climate change initiatives.

The commitment by business leaders of the impact on climate from the production processes would contribute towards a low carbon economy and subsequently improve the quality of life of the community.

The findings of the study provide insight of the business attitude towards climate change in an emerging economy such as Malaysia.

The study aims to investigate how the presence and absence of institutional equivalents (interaction of industry peers and local peers) affect the earnings management practices of firms.

The study uses discretionary accruals to operationalize earnings management. A sample of 18,744 Bombay Stock Exchange (BSE) listed firm years spanning over 12 financial years (March 2010–March 2021) has been considered and analyzed through panel data regression models.

The author’s results show that the earnings management practices of a firm's institutional equivalents and the firm's own earnings management are positively associated, implying that firms closely follow their institutional equivalents. This association is found to be more pronounced among focal firms when the difference between the earnings management levels of industry peers and local peers is greater. Further, the author find that large firms aggressively imitate their industry peers and local peers, whereas profitability does not influence their imitation behavior.

The author’s findings have implications for understanding peer imitation processes, particularly when firms face increasingly multifaceted institutional environments. It suggests auditors and analysts take into account the earnings management practices of local and industry peers while analyzing the client's financial statements and making forecasts, respectively.

The study is among the pioneering attempts to explore the domain of earnings management from the lens of institutional equivalence and provides compelling evidence that the interaction of industry peers and local peers impacts the earnings management practices of firms.

This paper aims to attempt to first examine the competitiveness of micro, small and medium-sized enterprises (MSMEs) in the logistics industry; second, to identify the MSMEs’ perception towards takāful (Islamic insurance); third, to recognise the challenges in the adoption of takāful; and fourth, to suggest strategies to enhance the micro-takāful penetration rate.

The SWOT (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats) analysis was used to measure the MSMEs’ competitiveness. Interview sessions were conducted with 13 owners of MSMEs in the logistics industry from the period November 2018 until January 2019 in Selangor, Malaysia.

The SWOT analysis identified several strengths (e.g. advanced infrastructure, rising number of new entrants and contribution to the local economy), weaknesses (e.g. lack of digital culture and training and a dearth of expertise), opportunities (e.g. supportive government initiatives and evolution of the mobile internet) and threats (e.g. changing customer expectations and limited financing facilities). The MSMEs’ perception towards micro-takāful and challenges in the adoption of takāful were also identified.

This paper provides an understanding of the MSMEs’ perception towards micro- takāful products, sheds light on the challenges faced by MSME owners in protecting their businesses from risk exposures and offers strategies to enhance the micro- takāful penetration rate. This study, however, is limited to Malaysia’s experience.

The identification of MSMEs’ SWOT will be useful for these businesses as it provides solid information that can be used to improve business performance while also seeking takāful protection. This paper, other than serving as a guideline for stakeholders in the logistics industry to have a better understanding of their business environment, may also provide useful insights to practitioners and policymakers.

This paper integrates the SWOT analysis into a study on business risk exposure and takāful protection from the MSMEs’ perspective. Hence, the findings could broaden available knowledge on MSMEs, especially for businesses in the logistics industry. The knowledge may also facilitate matters for takāful operators interested in tapping into the market.

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.