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The purpose of this paper is to discuss, with numerical simulations, magnetohydrodynamic (MHD) natural convection laminar flow from an isothermal horizontal circular cylinder immersed in a fluid with viscosity proportional to a linear function of temperature.

The governing boundary layer equations are transformed into a non‐dimensional form and the resulting nonlinear system of partial differential equations are reduced to convenient form, which are solved numerically by two very efficient methods: implicit finite difference method together with Keller box scheme; and direct numerical scheme.

Numerical results are presented by velocity and temperature distributions of the fluid as well as heat transfer characteristics, namely the shearing stress and the local heat transfer rate in terms of the local skin‐friction coefficient and the local Nusselt number for a wide range of MHD parameter, viscosity‐variation parameter and viscous dissipation parameter.

MHD flow in this geometry with temperature dependent viscosity is absent in the literature. IN this paper, the results obtained from the numerical simulations have been verified by two methodologies.

To investigate the effects of chemical reaction on natural convection heat and mass transfer from a sphere with temperature dependent viscosity.

The governing boundary layer equations are transformed into a non‐dimensional form and the resulting nonlinear system of partial differential equations are reduced to local non‐similarity boundary layer equations, which are solved numerically by very efficient implicit finite difference method together with Keller box scheme.

The effects of chemical reaction, the skin‐friction coefficients, surface heat transfer rates, velocity and concentration distribution decrease as well as the mass transfer rates and temperature distribution increase within the boundary layer.

The investigation is valid for steady two‐dimensional laminar flow. The concentration of the reactant is maintained at a constant value and the sphere is isothermal. An extension to unsteady flow with temperature dependent thermal conductivity is left for future work.

This result provides guidance to engineers about heat and mass transfer with the effects of chemical reaction from isothermal spherical surface.

Information and communication technologies (ICTs) have received much attention as a tool for development for several decades. One way in which ICTs were introduced in developing countries, particularly prior to the advent of smartphones, was through shared access and information centres. Many of these were established as pilots, but were unable to operate without external funding and were often declared failures. And some of them probably were, particularly those that focussed exclusively on ICT as a technology, rather than on how the centres could contribute to improving livelihoods. The purpose of this paper is to explore how some centres, namely “Bangladesh Rural Advancement Committee (BRAC) Gonokendra” in three villages of Bangladesh, influenced socio-economic development.

This study was informed by the Heeks and Molla’s extended information chain model and Sen’s “development as freedom”. The field study was undertaken in three BRAC Gonokendras located in different villages in rural Bangladesh.

While the authors found that the centres contributed to socio-economic development, this contribution was limited by social constraints, hindering the well-being of individuals and families. Addressing social constraints thus remains a challenge in order for ICTs to contribute to development.

The extended framework to investigate ICT-led socio-economic development implies that ICT as a catalyst can promote development at micro/community level only by simultaneously addressing social constraints.

This study looked into the scope of integrating the aspirations of zakah and corporate social responsibility (CSR) to counter poverty, inequity, illiteracy, malnutrition and environmental pollution to ensure peace, happiness, prosperity and sustainability as envisaged in sustainable development goals (SDGs).

This is a qualitative research study conducted using both primary and secondary data. Primary data were collected from 29 business enterprises in Bangladesh employing a semi-structured interview protocol. The secondary data were collected through content analysis of annual reports, websites and CSR publications of sample organizations. Finally, collected qualitative data have been analyzed thematically following the due procedures to address the research questions.

The findings reveal that integration of the aspirations of zakah and CSR is a convenient and wholehearted approach for entrepreneurs resulting in pursuing SDGs. In addition, business entrepreneurs in Bangladesh consider such practices as killing two birds with one stone because this approach warrants performing both religious and social obligations simultaneously. Interestingly, the study explores that shariah compliance acts as a guiding force for selecting well-being-oriented projects in zakah-funded CSR resulting in pursuing the priority goals – No Poverty (1), Zero Hunger (2) – of SDGs, thereby addressing some of the most critical issues of emerging economies such as Bangladesh.

The findings of this research can be used as a guide to incorporate the spirit and principle of zakah into the CSR programs aimed at pursuing SDGs mainly in Muslim countries representing one-fourth of the world population.

Integration of the aspirations of zakah and CSR is an innovative move and net addition to the literature on sustainability, CSR and zakah because Muslim business entrepreneurs will now conveniently be able to use the entrepreneurs' zakah money – readily available in each financial year – to fund the entrepreneurs' various CSR projects (within shariah framework) relating to poverty alleviation, humanitarian and disaster relief, health and sanitation and environmental conservation which will eventually contribute to pursuing various SDGs.

This study aims to investigate the characteristics, as well as the purpose and posts of the COVID-19 Facebook groups.

A systematic search for COVID-19 Facebook groups was conducted on June 1, 2020. Characteristics of the groups were examined using descriptive statistics. Mann-Whitney test was used to study the differences between groups. The study of the most popular groups’ posts was also carried out using the content analysis method.

The groups had a combined membership of 2,729,061 users. A total of 147,885 posts were received. There were about approximately 60% public groups. A high percentage of the groups (86.5%) had descriptions. The results showed a significant relationship between the groups’ description status and the number of members (p-value = 0.016). The majority of COVID-19 Facebook groups (56%) were created to meet their members’ information needs. The highest number of studied posts were related to vaccination (35.2%), followed by curfew rules (19.6%) and symptoms (10.6%).

Translating these insights into policies and practices will put policymakers and health-care providers in a stronger position to make better use of Facebook groups to support and enhance public knowledge about COVID-19.

The purpose of this study is to explore growth models based on “industry-based capabilities”, “resources-based capabilities” and “institution-based capabilities” in the context of the determinants of micro, small and medium enterprises’ (MSMEs) actors’ intention to grow.

This study involved 188 owners/managers of MSMEs. The analysis was conducted using partial least squares structural equation modelling. Moreover, the importance-performance map analysis package is used to complement the study findings.

This study uses the framework of the resource-based view (entrepreneurial knowledge), industrial-based view (industrial linkage) and institutional-based view (government support and access to finance) as proxies of the tripod-based view framework. The findings show that entrepreneurial knowledge (skills, competencies and functional), government support, access to finance and industrial linkage (vertical and horizontal) significantly encourage MSMEs’ owner/manager growth intention.

Firstly, this study suggests that MSMEs actors focus on developing entrepreneurial knowledge to boost the skills, competencies and functionalities needed to improve their business capabilities, directly affecting their growth intention. Secondly, this study indicates that the growth intention of MSME players, besides increasing internal capacity, must also be supported by the external environment, such as financial institutions, government and industrial linkage.

This study offers a tripod-based view as a framework for MSMEs’ actors’ intention to grow, where the constructs in the model used so far have not been explored comprehensively in the context of MSMEs. So, the built model brings more relevant factors to explain this topic from various perspectives.

This study examines the theoretical and empirical relationships between LM&SS, human resource management (HRM), climate for LM&SS and outcomes (employee well-being and performance) in hospitals. As part of this research, the authors examine the interplay between “hard” and “soft” practices for LM&SS and “soft” HR practices.

A cross-sectional, multisite survey study covering all internal service units at all eight Dutch university hospitals was conducted (42 units, N = 218 supervisors, N = 1,668 employees), and multivariate multilevel regression analyses were performed.

A systems approach involving “soft” LM&SS practices that are specifically HR-related has a positive effect (β is 0.46) on a climate for LM&SS. A climate for LM&SS is not related to perceived performance or employee health. It is, however, positively related to employee happiness and trusting relationships (both βs are 0.33). We did not find that a climate for LM&SS had a mediating effect.

This study shows that a balanced approach involving both “hard” and “soft” factors is crucial to achieving the desired breadth and depth of LM&SS adoption at the macro, meso, and micro levels. The authors found that a climate for LM&SS positively affects employee well-being in hospitals.

In their attempt to create mutual gains for both their organization and their employees, hospitals that adopt LM&SS should foster a climate for LM&SS by embracing a balanced approach consisting of both “hard” and “soft” practices, thereby internalizing LM&SS at the macro, meso, and micro levels.

This is one of the first studies to examine in-depth the impact of “hard” and “soft” LM&SS on both employee well-being (subdivided into different components) and performance in healthcare, as well as the role of “soft” HRM in this relationship. Linking LM&SS, HRM and outcomes to a climate for LM&SS is relatively a new approach and has led to a deeper understanding of the mechanisms underpinning the internalization of LM&SS in healthcare.

Steady-state visual evoked potential (SSVEP) has been widely used in the application of electroencephalogram (EEG) based non-invasive brain computer interface (BCI) due to its characteristics of high accuracy and information transfer rate (ITR). To recognize the SSVEP components in collected EEG trials, a lot of recognition algorithms based on template matching of training trials have been proposed and applied in recent years. In this paper, a comparative survey of SSVEP recognition algorithms based on template matching of training trails has been done.

To survey and compare the recently proposed recognition algorithms for SSVEP, this paper regarded the conventional canonical correlated analysis (CCA) as the baseline, and selected individual template CCA (ITCCA), multi-set CCA (MsetCCA), task related component analysis (TRCA), latent common source extraction (LCSE) and a sum of squared correlation (SSCOR) for comparison.

For the horizontal comparative of the six surveyed recognition algorithms, this paper adopted the “Tsinghua JFPM-SSVEP” data set and compared the average recognition performance on such data set. The comparative contents including: recognition accuracy, ITR, correlated coefficient and R-square values under different time duration of the SSVEP stimulus presentation. Based on the optimal time duration of stimulus presentation, the author has also compared the efficiency of the six compared algorithms. To measure the influence of different parameters, the number of training trials, the number of electrodes and the usage of filter bank preprocessing were compared in the ablation study.

Based on the comparative results, this paper analyzed the advantages and disadvantages of the six compared SSVEP recognition algorithms by considering application scenes, real-time and computational complexity. Finally, the author gives the algorithms selection range for the recognition of real-world online SSVEP-BCI.

The current market conditions are driving firms to plan, design and implement corporate social responsibility (CSR) policies that are true to the firms' real sense, i.e. authentic. Authenticity is an important aspect of micro-foundations of CSR in shaping the way social responsibility initiatives would impact the stakeholders including the customers, partners, current members of the organization and shareholders. This calls for a need to synthesize past research on CSR authenticity in order to propose directions for future research.

The current study synthesizes relevant literature on CSR authenticity using systematic literature review (SLR) approach. In total, 34 research works were identified and examined to seek insights on CSR authenticity.

Findings of the study identified various miro-, meso- and macro-level determinants of CSR authenticity and different set of outcomes having implications on business and society. The study also proposes a comprehensive definition of CSR authenticity which was somewhat missing in existing literature.

The study provides strong theoretical and managerial implications. Particularly, the study provides directions for future research on the topic.

In this paper, a review of literature on CSR authenticity is currently missing.

From an agency theory realm, this study aims to respond to the more recent calls to deeply analyze the indirect influence of professional shareholders, namely, institutional, blockholder and foreign owners, on the extent of compliance with International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) mandatory reporting requirements.

Multivariate regression analysis was applied. Moreover, quantitative static and dynamic panel data have been used. More plainly, ordinary least squares was run as a baseline estimator. Afterwards, one-step system generalized method of moment and two-stage least squares were conducted to control for the potential endogeneity dilemma. The analysis is based on a sample of nonfinancial listed firms on the Palestine Stock Exchange for the time span of 10 years, from 2010 to 2019.

After controlling for the detrimental effect of the endogeneity issue, the findings clearly reveal that the effect of the three types of professional shareholders (institutional, blockholder and foreign) on the extent of compliance with IFRS is more significant under a high proportion of independent nonexecutive directors.

To the best of the author’s knowledge, prior literature on the nexus between shareholding structure and compliance level with IFRS has restricted solely to analyzing the direct influence without casting the light on the moderation effect of independent nonexecutive directors. Hence, analyzing this sensitive configuration merits attention. In this vein, to ameliorate the compliance level with IFRS, regulators have to devote remarkable effort to updating both enforcement mechanisms and best practices of shareholding structure simultaneously.