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The purpose of this paper is to investigate the efficacy of bacterial exopolysaccharides (Eps) in reactive black 5 (RB5) textile dye wastewater bioremediation.

The Eps were produced by bacteria isolated from cotton gin trash soils collected from different cotton-growing regions in Kenya for comparison purposes. A broth medium reconstituted using molasses was assessed for its capacity to produce the Eps. RB5 textile dye wastewater was optimized for dye removal under different temperatures, times and molasses concentrations. Dye removal was studied by Lovibond-Day Light Comparator, UV–Vis spectrophotometer and FTIR.

It was found that cotton gin trash soils contained Eps-producing bacteria. Three of the Eps studied were found to have the capacity to remove at least 80% of the dye from the wastewater.

This research did not assess the efficacy of the RB5 dye removal from the wastewater by mixtures of the Eps.

Bioremediation of textile dye wastewater with Eps produced by bacteria cultured from cotton gin trash soil is significant because it will offer an effective and cleaner alternative to the chemical coagulants.

Alternative treatment of textile wastewater with the Eps would result in safer water being released into the water bodies as opposed to the chemically treated wastewater that contains remnant chemicals.

Research on the use of Eps produced by bacteria isolated from cotton gin trash soils for removal of RB5 dye from textile wastewater has not been done before.

Mega construction projects (MCPs), which play an important role in the economy, society and environment of a country, have developed rapidly in recent years. However, due to frequent social conflicts caused by the negative social impact of MCPs, social risk control has become a major challenge. Exploring the relationship between social risk factors and social risk from the perspective of risk evolution and identifying key factors contribute to social risk control; but few studies have paid enough attention to this. Therefore, this study aims to systematically analyze the impact of social risk factors on social risk based on a social risk evolution path.

This study proposed a social risk evolution path for MCPs explaining how social risk occurs and develops with the impact of social risk factors. To further analyze the impact quantitatively, a social risk analysis model combining structural equation model (SEM) with Bayesian network (BN) was developed. SEM was used to verify the relationship in the social risk evolution path. BN was applied to identify key social risk factors and predict the probabilities of social risk, quantitatively. The feasibility of the proposed model was verified by the case of water conservancy projects.

The results show that negative impact on residents’ living standards, public opinion advantage and emergency management ability were key social risk factors through sensitivity analysis. Then, scenario analysis simulated the risk probability results with the impact of different states of these key factors to obtain management strategies.

This study creatively proposes a social risk evolution path describing the dynamic interaction of the social risk and first applies the hybrid SEM–BN method in the social risk analysis for MCPs to explore effective risk control strategies. This study can facilitate the understanding of social risk from the perspective of risk evolution and provide decision-making support for the government coping with social risk in the implementation of MCPs.

The present study investigates a nexus between digital public services (DPS) and international tourism empirically.

This article analyzes the nexus of DPS and international tourism by using the international sample of 23 European countries in the span of nearly 10 years from 2011 to 2019. Various econometric techniques, including the panel-corrected standard error (PCSE) model and the feasible generalized least squares (FGLS) model, are employed to confirm the author’s findings. Furthermore, the autoregressive distributed lag (ARDL) method is applied to measure the short- and long-run effects of DPS on international tourism developments.

Tourism is positively influenced by digitalization, implying that the enhancement of digital public service usage results in the development of the tourism industry. However, when looking at the effect of DPS in the short term, a negative impact can be found on tourism, as the density reported in the previous analysis stated a negative response to the tourism density. This effect spans the course of several facets, such as international tourism arrivals, international tourism receipt, international tourism, receipts (% of total exports) and global tourism expenditure (% of total imports). Although the result is unfavorable in the short term, digitalization promises great prospects for tourism in the long term. Notably, an improvement in economic growth, financial development as well a reduction in the pervasiveness of corruption and an improvement of environmental quality are transmission channels through which DPS have favorable influences on tourism activities.

The author’s findings are vital for managers and policymakers to establish a comprehensive grasp of digitalization's role in deciding tourist adoption. This is because digitalization has been proven to play a role in determining tourism adoption.

The present study is the first to examine the relationship between DPS and international tourism empirically. The author is also the first to distinguish the effects of digitalization in the short and long run.

Seasonal influenza epidemics accounted for significant morbidity and mortality loads worldwide despite the availability of a safe vaccine as an efficient tool against severity of the disease. However, the uptake of the latter was sub-optimal. This study aims to identify predictors and barriers related to seasonal influenza vaccine uptake in the Kingdom of Bahrain.

A cross-sectional study enrolled 502 individuals attending primary healthcare centers in Bahrain for ambulatory care between July and August 2022. The data were collected using an interviews-based questionnaire which included questions on demographic data, knowledge and attitudes and practices toward influenza vaccine. The authors identified the barriers as well as the determinants of the vaccine uptake and its recommendation to others.

The mean age of participants was 35.07 years (SD = 13.9). Most of the respondents were Bahraini (86.5%) and 53.4 % were females. The results revealed that 34.1% have previous information about the influenza vaccine and 36.9% versus 69.9% are willing to receive the vaccine or advice it to others, respectively. Determinants of vaccine uptake were identified.

This study confirmed a sub-optimal influenza vaccine acceptance in the general community of Bahrain despite a global access in primary care. Health professionals need to be more proactive in mobilizing the community and particularly females toward influenza vaccination.

The purpose of this study is to examine whether the gender of an audit engagement partner (EP) is associated with the quality of the EP’s audit output.

This paper defines a low-quality EP as an EP who leads the audit of at least one client firm that subsequently restates its financial statements, while a high-quality EP is an EP that is not associated with any restatement. Using a sample of 6,082 observations from 2016 to 2020, the study estimates a logistic regression of EP quality on EP gender and control variables.

The results show that female EPs are more likely to be high-quality EPs. With an odds ratio of 1.25, the results imply that female EPs are 1.25 times more likely to be associated with higher-quality audits compared to male EPs.

The results of this study imply that female EPs are more likely to perform high-quality audits, and it supports the assertion that EP gender plays a significant role in determining EP quality. Further studies may apply gender theory to investigate the behavior of female EPs.

The results show that female EPs are more likely to be high-quality EPs. With an odds ratio of 1.25, the results imply that female EPs are 1.25 times more likely to be associated with higher-quality audits compared to male EPs.

The results of this study should be of interest to stakeholders such as audit committees, regulators, investors and creditors, as they provide an indicator for assessing the quality of audits. Moreover, considering the EP’s important role in an audit, the current study extends the existing literature by providing evidence of a relationship between EP gender and EP quality.

The study aims to investigate the Shari’ah governance quality effectiveness, at the bank and national levels, on the value relevance of Islamic banks’ (IBs’) earning per share and book value per share.

Quantitative analyses are conducted using a panel of 40 listed IBs from 12 countries during 2012–2019. Data were retrieved from the Refinitiv Eikon database and banks’ annual reports.

The findings suggest that Shari’ah supervisory boards’ attributes negatively influence the value relevance of accounting information while the internal procedures positively impact it. The results also provide evidence of a complementary effect between Shari’ah governance mechanisms at the bank and national levels on the value relevance of accounting information.

IBs’ boards and managers need to be more aware of the role of Shari’ah governance and its impact on value relevance. The observed complementarity between Shari’ah governance systems at the bank and national levels may incite regulators to include comprehensive Shari’ah governance regulations in their best practices. Strengthening collaboration between regulators and the Accounting and Auditing Organization for Islamic Financial Institutions (AAOIFI) is also required to create an enabling environment for investors to rely on the AAOIFI accounting standards in their investment decision-making process.

Existing studies tend to ignore the effectiveness of Shari’ah governance quality at the bank level on value relevance. There is a similar lack of empirical research on the effectiveness of the centralized Shari’ah governance scheme on accounting issues.

Corporate donation behavior sends two financial-related signals, i.e. sufficient cash flow and self-confidence in future earnings. This paper aims to investigate whether these financial-related signals released by corporate donation drive investors to make more optimistic forecasts about the firm’s future earnings per share (EPS) and whether this effect varies across different historical earnings trends.

This study is based on a controlled online experiment with 553 MBA students.

The results demonstrate that a financial signaling mechanism works, but it is moderated by historical earnings trends. When the earnings trend is always increasing, the more the number of financial signals received, the higher the investors’ EPS forecast; when the earnings trend is fluctuating (down then up or up then down), investors’ EPS forecast is higher when they receive financial signal(s) than when they do not, but no additive effect occurs from receiving one signal to two signals; when the earnings trend is always decreasing, investors’ EPS forecast is irrelevant to the number of financial signals received.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this study is the first to experimentally investigate a possible mechanism to explain investors’ positive response to corporate social responsibility (CSR) (specifically, corporate donation) disclosures – the financial signaling mechanism. This study also extends the research on the impact of financial information on investors’ use of nonfinancial information by investigating the moderating role of historical earnings trends on the financial signaling mechanism of the CSR effect.

This study aims to explore the constructs of spirituality (SP) and entrepreneurial performance (EP) and their measurements to identify their connections. Attending to the needs of entrepreneurs to face the current global crisis, this research establishes a framework that integrates SP to enhance EP.

This study focuses on a comprehensive literature review and a comparison between constructs to come across with the proposal of a conceptual framework.

For SP, spiritual well-being was found as a good measure which, to the best of the authors’ knowledge, has never been used in entrepreneurship. EP has been typically measured by economic indicators, but recently, noneconomic benefits and effects on stakeholders have also been considered, so an integrated approach is proposed. The main contribution is a framework called holistic entrepreneurial inventory (HEI), which integrates the main elements of the constructs in a matrix showing their interconnection. It is accompanied by a scorecard for entrepreneurs to identify strengths and weaknesses in SP and EP.

This is a theoretical research and proposal; further empirical research could help confirm the present conceptual findings.

To help entrepreneurs identify the areas where they would like to improve, understanding the connection between SP and EP, which are dynamic states in constant change.

EP has been mainly focused on exogenous causes. The HEI scorecard may give entrepreneurs a different perspective from the innermost part of their being.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the direct and mediation effects of small- and medium-sized enterprises' (SMEs) ecopreneurship posture (EP), green inbound practices (GIP), green production practices (GPP), green outbound practices (GOP), community-based performance (CBP) and green competitiveness (GC).

Empirical data for the study were garnered by utilizing questionnaire from Ghanaian manufacturing SMEs. Structural equation modeling, specifically partial least squares is applied to test the hypothesized relationships.

The findings suggest that SMEs' EP, GIP and GPP have significant positive effects on CBP and GC. However, while GOP has a significant effect on GC, it has no significant effect on CBP. Moreover, the mediation result demonstrates that while GIP and GPP significantly mediates the relationship between SMEs' EP and CBP, GOP does not provide any mediation mechanism through which SMEs' EP influence CBP. The result further confirms the mediation roles of GIP, GPP and GOP between SMEs' EP and GC.

This research offers novel empirical evidence by exploring the mediation roles of GIP, GPP and GOP between EP, CBP and GC through the lenses of the natural resource-based view and stakeholder theoretical perspectives.

This study aims to present a bibliometric overview of the academic research on export performance (EP) in the business and management areas.

A bibliometric overview of 1,463 papers from 1968 to 2021, including performance analysis, science mapping analysis and graphical mapping, was conducted using the Scopus database. SciMAT software was used for thematic analysis and conceptual evolution mapping of the EP domain, and VOSviewer software was used for graphical visualization.

This study shows that EP research experienced spectacular growth, especially between 1998 and 2003, and the interest in this field continues to increase. Also, the USA and the UK appear to be the absolute leaders in EP research, with the best indicators of productivity and influence in all dimensions analyzed. The findings from the analysis through SciMAT indicate that “capabilities” and “R&D” are the main Motor themes that have contributed the most to the EP literature, whereas “global value chain” and “start-up” are emerging themes as new areas of interest.

This study develops a baseline for representing certain and exhaustive insights in the EP field and specifies trends over a period. Using a single database and excluding book chapters/conference papers are limitations of this study.

EP is a research field that has gained wide acceptance in the academic community and international marketing literature. To the best of the authors’ knowledge, no bibliometric overview has analyzed the EP literature. This study presents the first systematic quantitative analysis of academic research on EP in the business and management areas.