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Globally, the COVID-19 pandemic impacts the financial condition and the mental health of millions of workers from various informal sectors. This study aims to look into the hawkers’ community’s mental health and living conditions in Bangladesh during COVID-19.

The researchers have applied the purposive sampling technique to choose ten hawkers from Khulna city, a district in the southern region of Bangladesh. An in-depth interview was taken in the Bengali language in an unstructured manner and lasted 30–40 min per respondent.

The findings showed that the Hawkers’ income reduced, and specifically, during the pandemic, they had earned half of what they usually made before. Besides, they could not open their stores because law enforcement agencies imposed restrictions on opening business centres during the lockdown except for some emergency necessities shops. This restriction led the hawkers to stop selling their products because there was a high chance of spreading the virus through the products they sold. Due to income reduction, they had to eat cheap food, which caused their health problems. Consequently, this community mentally got depressed.

Policymakers in Bangladesh might think about enacting more effective measures to provide some extrinsic and intrinsic support in improving the mental health of the hawkers’ community.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first study on the mental of the hawkers’ community during COVID-19.

Although wearable health-monitoring technology (WHMT) has become a stimulus for public health, women’s acceptance rate of this technology appears to be low. Thus, this study intends to investigate the factors affecting women’s adoption of WHMT.

The unified theory of acceptance and use of technology–2 model has been used in this study as a research framework that has been extended to include lifestyle and attitude. The proposed extended framework is validated using primary data (n = 314) collected from female respondents using a structured questionnaire; the partial least square-based structural equation modeling technique is subsequently used to test the proposed hypothesis.

The results show that effort expectancy, social influence, price value, habit, attitude and lifestyle have significant positive effects on women’s behavioral intention to use WHMT and accelerate actual usage behavior. Notably, effort expectancy and habit exhibit the largest impact on behavioral intention. However, performance expectancy, facilitating conditions and hedonic motivation are not significantly associated with behavioral intentions.

The findings of this study are important for healthcare practitioners and service providers to comprehensively understand the factors that affect women’s behavioral intentions in line with their actual usage behavior. This insight will help policymakers design viable strategies regarding WHMT to promote its sustainable usage in least developed countries.

This study contributes novelty by using an extended model that links women’s attitudes and lifestyles to their adoption of WHMT. This study also fills the gaps in the existing literature on women’s behavioral intentions in the context of WHMT by showing novel associations in the domain of WHMT uptake.

Family entrepreneurship benefits women because of their economic, family, and social needs. But, as rural women, it is not much easy for them to maintain their family entrepreneurship successfully. Thus, this paper aims to explore the main challenges faced by rural women entrepreneurs in Bangladesh to survive their family entrepreneurship.

This study is qualitative in nature, based on narrative inquiry. The purposive sampling technique was used as a part of a non-probability sampling method to collect the data from rural women entrepreneurs from three districts (Khulna, Shatkhira, and Sylhet) in Bangladesh engaged in family entrepreneurship. No new information was found after collecting the data from seven (07) respondents; thus, they were chosen as the final sample size.

The findings show that rural women entrepreneurs faced primarily social and cultural, financial, and skill-related challenges, though they face other challenges to survive their family entrepreneurship. The attitude and perception of society toward women and their roles are at the root of social and cultural barriers. Researchers also found that financial challenges have a colossal impact on rural women and the other problem.

Although entrepreneurial activities are essential for socio-economic development in these developing countries, this research adds to the existing information by highlighting the main challenges that rural women face when they want to be business owners and entrepreneurs.

Research on rural women entrepreneurship in Bangladesh is limited and new. This study can provide an overview of the challenges faced by the rural women entrepreneurs and provide them with a blueprint for the development of women entrepreneurs in developing countries.

To improve the loan repayment performance (LRP) of microfinance banks (MFBs) in Pakistan, this study aims to look at the direct impact of multiple borrowing (MB) on LRP and client-business performance (CBP), as well as the direct impact of CBP on LRP. The moderating function of pandemic factors in the relationship between MB and CBP, as well as the mediating effect of CBP in the association between MB and LRP, was also investigated in this study.

A questionnaire was used to obtain data from 531 lower-level workers of microfinance institutions (MFIs) for the study. The respondents were chosen using stratified sampling, which divided the target population into four influential groups: lending officers in agriculture, lending officers in businesses, lending officers in gold loans and lending officers in salary loans. In this study, a two-stage structural equation modeling approach was used, including a measurement model (outer model) and a structural model (inner model). The validity and reliability of the questionnaire were investigated using the measurement model (outer model), whereas PLS-SEM bootstrapping was performed to test the hypothesis and find the relationship among different underpinning constructs by using the structural model (inner model).

The outcomes of this study demonstrate that MB has a direct impact on CBP, and that CBP has a direct impact on LRP. MB, on the contrary, had no direct and significant impact on LRP in this study. The idea that CBP mediates the relationship between MB and LRP, as well as the moderating effect of pandemic factors on the relationship between MB and CBP, is supported by this research.

Until now, the influence of MB on LRP via the mediating role of CBP and the moderating role of a pandemic factor in the setting of Pakistani MFBs has received little attention. During the COVID-19 pandemic, this research also aids MFBs in better understanding MB and its impact on LRP. Furthermore, based on the findings of this study, Pakistani MFIs can enhance their LRP by implementing new lending regulations, particularly with reference to MB and the COVID-19 pandemic.

This paper aims to contribute to the field of social entrepreneurship by exploring the interrelationships among the antecedents of social entrepreneurial intention (SEI) through the lens of Mair Noboa model (MNM). In recent years, many researchers have applied the antecedents of MNM to determine SEI. However, interrelationship among these antecedents has not been a focus of enquiry despite the repeated scholarly calls.

Applying quantitative methodology, the data was collected from a Web-based survey distributed across Bangladesh (N = 412). Data analysis was carried out based on the covariance-based structural equation modelling technique to confirm the hypotheses. The final measurement and structural models met all the requirements for reliability, model fit, convergent validity and discriminant validity. The proposed hypotheses were tested based on direct relationships and mediating effects.

The findings suggested that interrelationships among these antecedents do increase individuals’ intentions to become social entrepreneurs.

This paper fills an important knowledge gap by exploring the interrelationships among moral obligation, empathy, perceived social support and social entrepreneurial self-efficacy. This paper stressed identifying whether the SEI enhances through the interrelationships among these antecedents or not. The study findings bring new theoretical and practical implications on the role of empathy, moral obligation, perceived social support and social entrepreneurial self-efficacy.

This chapter explores the concept of corporate social responsibility (CSR) from an Islamic Shari'ah-compliant perspective. It provides a comprehensive literature review on CSR with an explicit focus on the Islamic perspective of CSR, Islamic models of CSR, CSR practices in conventional and Islamic banks, and the consequences of CSR to Islamic banks. This chapter's main contribution lies in considering the current CSR literature from a Shari'ah perspective. Likewise, it identifies gaps in the current literature and suggests potential areas for future research. This chapter attempts to improve the understanding of how Islamic banks integrate social responsibility into their operations. The insights from this chapter are helpful to practitioners and academic scholars in Islamic finance, accounting, and CSR. This chapter emphasizes the importance of incorporating Islamic values and principles into CSR practices and encourages further research and investigation in this area.

The unique characteristic of Islamic bank leads in governance and disclosure. Using stakeholder, signaling, and market discipline theory, governance and adequate disclosure may increase bank soundness. This study aims to investigate the relationship of sharia disclosure and Sharia Supervisory Board in influencing Islamic bank soundness in the different regulatory framework of the country. Using purposive sampling, the research covered 84 Islamic banks in 16 countries during the period 2013–2015 with lag data of Islamic bank soundness. The result shows sharia disclosure influences on Islamic bank soundness for management efficiency, capital adequacy ratio, asset quality, and liquidity. The results also show that sharia disclosure mediates the indirect effect of SSB on Islamic bank soundness. The regulatory framework (sharia accounting standard and SSB regulation) shows moderating effect of regulation framework proved on the association of sharia disclosure with management efficiency, capital, and liquidity. The effect is indirectly depending on the regulatory framework for proxy management efficiency, capital, and liquidity. The implication of the research suggests that sharia disclosure could increase the market discipline mechanism of Islamic bank stream. The Islamic bank can increase the transparency using sharia disclosure as a branding for increasing public trust, even though in the deficient Islamic bank regulation countries.

The aim of this study is to examine arguments about the economic and ethical worth of microfinance.

This study draws on the available literature to provide a balanced discussion of different views about the economic and ethical desirability of microfinancing. The discussion is reinforced by the use of secondary data (statistics) on the attributes of microfinancing and by reference to a case study in rural Pakistan.

Microfinancing is less virtuous than commonly portrayed. Its economic inefficiency consequences are identified, and it is found only likely to make a small contribution to economic growth. The economic efficiency criterion for moral worth (promoted by Becker and Posner) is found to be wanting. From an ethical point of view, microfinance needs to be supplemented by charity to assist the poor. The supply of Islamic microfinance has grown rapidly, but it remains absolutely quite small. It still has some way to go to overcome the ethical and economic shortcomings associated with the supply of microfinance. Supplying microfinance to vulnerable female borrowers can put them under considerable psychological stress. Possible beneficial effects of microfinance are also identified.

This study is unique because it systematically draws on recent literature and data to provide a novel and balanced review of the economic and ethical worth of microfinance.

The purpose of this study is to examine various data sources to identify trends and themes in humanitarian supply chain management (HSCM) in the digital age.

In this study, various data sources such as published literature and social media content from Twitter, LinkedIn, blogs and forums are used to identify trending topics and themes on HSCM using topic modelling.

The study examined 33 published literature and more than 94,000 documents, including tweets and expert opinions, and identified eight themes related to HSCM in the digital age namely “Digital technology enabled global partnerships”, “Digital tech enabled sustainability”, “Digital tech enabled risk reduction for climate changes and uncertainties”, “Digital tech enabled preparedness, response and resilience”, “Digital tech enabled health system enhancement”, “Digital tech enabled food system enhancement”, “Digital tech enabled ethical process and systems” and “Digital tech enabled humanitarian logistics”. The study also proposed a framework of drivers, processes and impacts for each theme and directions for future research.

Previous research has predominantly relied on published literature to identify emerging themes and trends on a particular topic. This study is unique because it examines the ability of social media sources such as blogs, websites, forums and published literature to reveal evolving patterns and trends in HSCM in the digital age.