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Doug Scovanner, CFO of Target Corporation, was about to present his proposal at the November 2008 Board meeting. He was prepared to discuss immediate strategic actions which would provide support for working capital for the discount retailer. The retail community was about to suffer their worst fourth quarter in recent memory. Consumer spending had contracted, unemployment was rising and the deflated housing market had driven the economy into a recession. Although discount retailers had fared better than other industries during the second and third quarters, they were not immune to the overall economic downturn which had become a global crisis. To further complicate matters, Target's largest competitor, Wal-Mart, just posted third quarter growth even though Target was bracing for a busy holiday season. Scovanner anticipated further strain on working capital before year-end as cash flow tightened and the capital markets remained at a virtual stand-still.

The paper aims to examine the impact of Shari'ah governance quality on environmental, social and governance (ESG) performance in Islamic banks.

The study's sample consists of 66 Islamic banks from 14 countries over 2015–2019. The research uses the Heckman model, which is a two-stage estimation method to obtain unbiased estimates, as ESG scores are only observable for 17 Islamic banks in Eikon Refinitiv database at the time of the analysis.

The analysis shows that Shari'ah governance has a beneficial role to achieve ESG performance. The analysis also shows that enhanced profiles of Shari'ah supervisory boards' (SSB) attributes are more efficient than the operational procedures to promote ESG performance. In addition, the analysis shows that enhanced SSBs' attributes strengthen the bank's corporate governance framework, while sound-designed procedures increase the bank's social activities by emphasizing their roles to ensure Shari'ah compliance. Finally, the analysis sheds light on the failure of Shari'ah governance to promote environmental performance.

The existing databases providing companies' ESG-related information still do not offer sufficient data to conduct an international study with a larger sample of Islamic banks (IBs) having ESG scores for a more extended period.

The research provides policy insights to Islamic banks' stakeholders to promote social and governance performance in the Islamic finance industry through improving Shari'ah governance practices. However, raising environmental awareness is imminent among all actors implicated in the Shari'ah governance processes to help overcome the anthropogenic risks.

The research complements the governance-banks' ESG performance literature by examining the role of Shari'ah governance. The research also extends the literature on Islamic banks' sustainability by pointing to the Shari'ah governance failure to enhance environmental performance and thus achieve Maqasid al-Shariah regarding the environment.

This paper aims to fill a gap in the existing literature by shedding the light on four main issues. First, the relationship between child-at-risk protection and sustainable development and the key factors contributing to the failure or success of child-at-risk protection systems. Second, the main characteristics and limitations of the current institutional arrangements of the child-at-risk protection system in Egypt. Third, the budget allocations to child protection-relevant entities in Egypt. Fourth, the way forward to enhance the effectiveness of the child-at-risk protection system in Egypt.

The methodology used in this paper is of a qualitative nature. The authors relied on desk review of the international and national reports (including the un-published ones) and the relevant literature on the topic. Additionally, the authors reviewed the relevant laws and regulations and analyzed the fiscal data extracted from Egypt’s State budget. Also, semi-structured interviews were conducted with some officials from the different governmental entities covered by the study.

From the institutional perspective, the authors find that the current child-at-risk protection system in Egypt needs effective institutional arrangements, as it is attributed with the limited activation of the child protection committees, lack of coordination mechanisms and overlapping mandates with regards to case management. Hence, the authors propose two institutional approaches that could help in enhancing the performance of the current system. While the first approach has decentralized nature, the other is centralized. From the fiscal perspective, the authors analyze the trend and composition of the budget allocations to the child protection-relevant entities in Egypt. They show that such allocations are relatively small especially when items not related to child protection are excluded.

The paper analyzes the main characteristics and limitations of the current institutional arrangements of the child-at-risk protection system in Egypt. Moreover, it proposes two alternative institutional approaches to deal with such limitations and enhance the effectiveness of the current system. The paper also provides an analysis of the budget allocations to the child protection-relevant entities in Egypt. These issues have not been addressed sufficiently in the Egyptian context.

This case shows an example of the opportunities opened by the internet that drove young entrepreneurs to start their business, in May 2011, as a premium beanbag supplier in Egypt.

Undergraduate students studying management.

The case examines the use of information and communication technology (ICT) by young Egyptian entrepreneurs, and how technology could open for them a broad horizon for continuous development, creativity and innovation. It presents the experience of a group of four undergraduate students who established a virtual company producing and selling beanbags through their website. The main objective of the case is to highlight the business challenges faced by entrepreneurs and possible opportunities in emerging economies and the effective role of ICT in reacting to these business environment changes. The case also provides a strategic analysis of the various factors that may impact the organization and explains how technology can contribute to improving the company’s standing. Finally, recommendations are provided to serve as basis for any future strategic plans.

This study highlights the value of ICT in general and the internet in particular in driving young entrepreneurs to start their own business. It also presents the best practices in conducting a successful online business, and approaches undertaken by internet entrepreneurs to address rising challenges. It understands the variety of tools that could be used to market business online. It indicates the role of information technology in supporting business strategies at any organizational stage to improve different processes, to assist in decision-making, and to create new customer-centric services and products.

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CSS 3: Entrepreneurship.

In this article the authors will focus on the state of the art on information filtering and recommender systems based on trust. Then the authors will represent a variety of filtering and recommendation techniques studied in different literature, like basic content filtering, collaborative filtering and hybrid filtering. The authors will also examine different trust-based recommendation algorithms. It will ends with a summary of the different existing approaches and it develops the link between trust, sustainability and recommender systems.

Methodology of this study will begin with a general introduction to the different approaches of recommendation systems; then define trust and its relationship with recommender systems. At the end the authors will present their approach to “trust-based recommendation systems”.

The purpose of this study is to understand how groups of users could improve trust in a recommendation system. The authors will examine how to evaluate the performance of recommender systems to ensure their ability to meet the needs that led to its creation and to make the system sustainable with respect to the information. The authors know very well that selecting a measure must depend on the type of data to be processed and user interests. Since the recommendation domain is derived from information search paradigms, it is obvious to use the evaluation measures of information systems.

The authors presented a list of recommendations systems. They examined and compared several recommendation approaches. The authors then analyzed the dominance of collaborative filtering in the field and the emergence of Recommender Systems in social web. Then the authors presented and analyzed different trust algorithms. Finally, their proposal was to measure the impact of trust in recommendation systems.

The purpose of this paper is to identify the effect of Islamic work ethics on the organizational citizenship behavior in Jordanian press organizations, and single out the most significant element of Islamic work ethics.

The present study adopted the descriptive analytical approach based on field survey. The population of the study consists of seven daily newspapers in Jordan in 2010. A stratified random sample of the top management and executive management was taken, proportionate to the size of each organization. In total, 66 questionnaires were distributed to 30 per cent of the 218 targeted managers, and 175 questionnaires were distributed to 15 per cent of the employees, who totaled 1,163. In total, 204 questionnaires were collected. Frequencies and percentages were used to identify the characteristics of the community, while means and standard deviations were used to answer the questions, along with the multiple regression and the single-factor analysis of variance.

The study found that the level of commitment on the part of workers in Jordanian press foundations to Islamic work ethics was high. In addition, there was a statistically significant effect of abidance by Islamic work ethics (kindness and forgiveness in dealing with employees and clients, obedience to the people in power and respecting job ethics in organizational citizenship behavior among employees in these organizations. Meanwhile, there was no statistically significant effect of abidance by the Islamic work ethics (proficiency, giving advice to Muslims, sense of responsibility, justice and fairness, integrity and teamwork) in organizational citizenship behavior.

The paper involves a set of components of organizational citizenship behavior derived from Islamic work ethics. These ethics can be integrated into the human resources systems in media organizations, and other types of entities. These ethics can be incorporated into any code of conduct, stating the behaviors expected from every employee.

The researcher conducted a comparative study based on related literature. Obviously, previous studies addressed work ethics generally, but they did not address the specific components of ethics which this study did). It is also worth indicating that all previous studies were conducted in foreign contexts, whereas this study has been conducted in an Arab context. Additionally, there are studies on organizational citizenship behavior, but this one linked between Islamic work ethics and organizational citizenship behavior.