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Drawing on the “ISO 26000: 2010 – Guidance on social responsibility” handbook, this paper aims to investigate the extent to which Bangladeshi small- and medium-sized manufacturing enterprises (SMEs) are incorporating social responsibility (SR)/sustainability into their regular business activities. It is also aimed at providing insights into how Bangladeshi SME owner-managers perceive the concept of SR, and exploring the key drivers of and barriers to socially responsible and sustainable business practices.

A mixed-method research was carried out in two sequential phases. During the first phase, 110 printed questionnaires (59 of which were eventually used) were distributed among the owner-managers of the selected SMEs. The second phase involved seven in-depth semi-structured interviews.

The findings reconfirm the existence of the so called “attitude-behaviour” gap. The barriers that hinder the sustainable engagement of SMEs include corruption, a weak regulatory environment, inefficient or ill-suited government and external support and a lack of awareness of the environmental aspects of SR. In addition, this research reveals that Bangladeshi manufacturing SMEs do, to a certain degree, implement SR; only those few issues that suit the owner-managers’ personal motives are addressed, while many others (e.g. environmental issues) are neglected. Finally, it has been found that the business type and size, and the owner-managers’ educational attainments have no significant influence on the degree of adoption of socially responsible business practices by Bangladeshi manufacturing SMEs.

This paper develops a tool suited to meaningfully assess the socially responsible and sustainable business activities of SMEs. By using the four key elements identified in ISO 26000, namely, labour practices, the environment, consumer issues and community involvement and development, and by using an innovative and effective technique, a sustainability score and implementation level were calculated quantitatively for the selected SMEs. The tool developed here can be used to study the sustainability related issues faced by SMEs based in other low-income developing countries.

The extant literature provides evidence that single CEOs are less risk-averse. Building on the theory of risk aversion, the authors argue that the risk aversion trait arising from CEO’s marital status partially explains capital allocation efficiency. The paper aims to examine the association between CEO marital status and capital allocation efficiency.

The primary sample includes 9,671 observations from 1,264 US firms. The authors apply multivariate regression and a series of endogeneity tests to examine the association between CEO marital status and capital allocation efficiency.

Single-CEO firms have higher capital allocation inefficiency than those with married CEOs. The findings continue to hold after a series of endogeneity tests such as propensity score matching, change analysis and instrumental variable regression analysis and are robust to alternative proxies for capital allocation inefficiency. The capital allocation inefficiency in single-CEO firms arises from overinvestment but not underinvestment, and corporate risk-taking channels the effect.

The study is limited to the effect of CEO marital status, not CEO marital quality.

The findings imply that besides information asymmetry and agency conflicts, CEO marital status should receive special attention for capital allocation efficiency. Also, marital status influences the CEOs’ commitment to the general good of society, affecting the potential conflict of interest with different stakeholders from inefficient capital allocation.

This study extends corporate finance literature on CEO marital status by providing novel evidence on the effect of single CEOs on capital allocation efficiency. The authors conclude that CEOs’ personality traits, such as marital status, matter in corporate policy choices.

The purpose of this paper is to discuss multipurpose community information and knowledge centres (MCTs) and then describes and assesses the telecommunication facilities (and hence information access and provision) of such telecentres in Bangladesh including radio, television, telephone and internet facilities. The paper then highlights problems and prospects, in rural areas of Bangladesh, of information access through the telecentres.

The paper is based on a review of literature collected through the internet, personal visits and other secondary sources such as research reports and articles.

The paper highlights the existing MCT initiatives in rural Bangladesh and discusses their problems and prospects.

The paper is one of the very few studies which focuses on the prospects of MCTs for rural Bangladesh, particularly as regards information and knowledge access and provision, and proposes future directions for the development of MCTs in Bangladesh.

In Bangladesh (a middle-income and densely populated country) where socio-economic factors act badly on human activities during COVID-19. This research mainly focused on observing the socio-economic aspects of the Pandemic on human life between city and municipal areas.

This research relied on Khulna City Corporation (KCC) and Paikgacha Municipality of Bangladesh. A random sampling technique was adopted for choosing 622 stakeholders (318 in the city and 304 in the municipal area). Here, the socio-economic factors have been fixed based on the literature review and expert opinion. This study explored two mainstream social and economic issues affected by the Pandemic. Several statistical tests were performed to find the relationship among Socio-economic factors.

The study shows that the Pandemic caused great harm to city areas rather than municipal areas. The city is faced with tremendous pressure on the economic aspect as well. Besides, the pandemic affects savings, education sectors, food habits and other factors in both areas. The trip distribution also differs between the study areas and the mobility pattern shows that people migrated to rural areas from city space during the Pandemic.

This research will assist in focusing on a micro-level perspective in the future to analyze socio-economic changes. Moreover, it can help to point out the administrative prospects in the future.

Khan Jahan Ali (KJA) Bridge was constructed to promote industrial and commercial activity and improve economic and employment activity for local people. This study assessed the post-socioeconomic and environmental impacts of KJA Bridge on the inhabitants living adjacent to 2 Km from the bridge. As there is a slum adjacent to the bridge, the bridge has impacted much on the improvement of the social economic condition and lifestyle of the slum people.

The study approached a questionnaire-based field survey data collection through interviewing the people in the surrounding areas. To assess the environmental impacts, land cover change (LCC), carbon emissions and land surface temperature (LST) data were derived from Landsat images and processed in geospatial environment.

The study suggests that after bridge construction, 84% people have new jobs and about 87% people's income level has been increased. As a tourist spot, the bridge served employment opportunities for the 12% of the inhabitants. About 83% house structures have been improved, where the percentages of pucca and semi-pucca houses increased by 11% and 23%, respectively. The frequency of school-going children and literacy rate also increased. Despite all the socioeconomic development, 7.48% agricultural, 9.75% vegetation, 1.74% waterbodies were declined. Net carbon emissions increased to 13,432.39 tons from 3,323.46 tons; average LST increased from 25.750 to 32.550°C after the bridge construction.

This study focused on descriptive statistical analysis and portrayed the impact of the bridge on social, economic and environment from a micro point of view.

The Maqāṣid (objective) hierarchy is a triple-tiered conceptualisation of individual and social needs that is grounded in the five objectives of Sharīʿah (Islamic Law). Managerialism is the ideological representation of human interaction based on managerial doctrines and practices. This paper aims to explore the tension between the Maqāṣid hierarchy and managerialism by evaluating the Sharīʿah requirements in the Islamic Financial Services Act (IFSA) 2013 of Malaysia from the Maqāṣid al-Sharīʿah perspective.

This qualitative study uses an inductive approach to review the sources of Sharīʿah and classical literature of Islamic jurists to present Sharīʿah rulings on managerialism and Maqāṣid al-Sharīʿah.

The Maqāṣid hierarchy promotes a vision of human life that is the opposite of managerialism. In the case of IFSA 2013, the Maqāṣid hierarchy, which is supposed to be the bedrock for Islamic finance, is replaced by a managerial hierarchy closer to Maslow’s hierarchy than it is to Imam Shatibi’s concept of human life. A process of fitting the Maqāṣid hierarchy into a narrow managerial mould occurs in IFSA 2013, meaning that many of the unique aspects of the Maqāṣid al-Sharīʿah are lost.

This study will assist Sharīʿah scholars, policymakers and Islamic financial institutions to develop the financial system and to implement the Maqāṣid al-Sharīʿah to improve macro policy and shaping Islamic institutions.

This is a pioneer study that develops a bridge between the Islamic Maqāṣid and conventional managerial hierarchies, which will encourage academics and practitioners to enrich the literature by conducting more in-depth studies on this topic.

This study aims to investigate and propose the potential practice of hibah al-ʿumra as a Shari‘ah-compliant policy that would encompass the disbursement of death benefits and facilitate their smooth distribution among the projected beneficiaries of the family Takāful.

This study uses a qualitative approach. It conducts semi-structured interviews with different Takāful practitioners in Malaysia. This study also consulted a few Shari‘ah scholars regarding their opinions on the application of hibah al-ʿumra in disbursing family Takāful benefits. The thematic analysis is carried out to analyse qualitative data.

From both Shari‘ah and the relevant industry perspectives, the notion of hibah al-ʿumra has a great potential to disburse the family Takāful benefits to the Takāful participants or nominated beneficiaries. Given the conditional nature of hibah in Takāful, it is argued that there is a scope for imposing some conditions to make hibah al-ʿumra a life grant gift. This is expected to play a significant role in resolving the issues relating to the disbursement of family Takāful benefits among the beneficiaries, where it becomes irrevocable.

In the current practice of family Takāful, in the event of the recipient’s death or divorce, the application of absolute hibah results in the disbursement of Takāful benefits among undesirable beneficiaries. In contrast, in hibah al-ʿumra, it is expected that subject to a condition of withdrawal, its practice would help manage any unwanted situation if other potential beneficiaries are nominated upon signing the agreement at the outset.

This study is expected to contribute to help channel the family Takāful benefits into the desired beneficiaries being the proposed hibah al-ʿumra as a form of conditional hibah. Besides, this type of hiba can be treated as a solution in any adverse situation.

This paper aims to assess the progress in the provision of basic services in urban slums in Bangladesh during the transition period of millennium development goals (MDGs) to sustainable development goals (SDGs).

The study used a mixed method of research. The empirical part of the research was conducted in three Blocks of Rupsha slum in Khulna city. Randomly selected 120 households were interviewed through a structured questionnaire; three focus group discussion sessions (FGDs) were also conducted. Progress in the slum residents’ access to basic services during the transition from MDGs to SDGs is tacked based on primary data. The User Satisfaction Index (USI) and Network Analysis tools in ArcGIS are used to identify the gaps in service provision.

Findings show that a very significant proportion of families (56.67%) encounter an acute level of difficulties to gain smooth access to water services. About 89% of respondents have only access to a common or shared toilet facility where one common toilet is used by 20–25 persons. About 31% of families are unable to send their children to primary school even after four years of the adoption of SDGs. Achievements in most indicators of basic services in the slum are in general lower than the national level. Moreover, there exists spatial variability within the same slum. After four years of the transition from MDGs to SDGs, most of the services are poorly satisfying the residents of the Rupsha slum, and water service provision is in worse condition. The findings of this study have unveiled that while achievement in target areas is appreciable at the macro level, at the micro-level; however, good achievement in the provision of few basic services in the low-income settlement is more rhetoric than reality. Therefore, a lot more work needs to be done during the SDG phase to give the slum residents a decent quality of life as they have missed the MDGs’ train.

Study single-out works need to be done during the SDGs phase to give the slum residents a decent quality of life as they have missed the MDGs’ train.

This study analyzed the relationship between mobile financial services (MFS) usage and customer satisfaction with MFS in Bangladesh, considering perception, purpose of use and technical challenges as the primary factors influencing customer satisfaction with MFS. The aim is to determine the factors most influencing the use of MFS.

Data were collected from 400 MFS users through a structured web survey using snowball sampling that is consistent with the nature of MFS users who are difficult to identify or locate. Structural equation modeling (SEM) was used to analyze the data and evaluate the reliability and validity of the measurement model.

The results show that customers’ perceptions and satisfaction significantly impact their intention to use MFS. Specifically, customers’ perceptions strongly influence their satisfaction with MFS, and the purpose of use significantly predicts both perception and satisfaction. Technical problems and challenges were found to have no significant impact on satisfaction levels, but other factors were more critical. Furthermore, the integration of innovative technological solutions is crucial for fostering sustainability in MFS, as it enhances reliability and efficiency while minimizing environmental footprints.

The study was conducted in a single country, relied on self-reported data, and used a cross-sectional design, which limits the ability to draw causal inferences. Future research could explore the factors that influence customer satisfaction with MFS in different countries and regions and incorporate additional variables to provide a more comprehensive understanding of the drivers of customer satisfaction with MFS.

This study significantly contributes by extending the technology acceptance model (TAM) framework with the innovation resistance theory, offering a nuanced understanding of MFS adoption. The findings challenge conventional wisdom, highlighting the limited impact of technical problems on satisfaction and emphasizing the central role of user perceptions in shaping satisfaction and intention to use.