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A limited number of empirical studies have indicated that individuals who experience workplace ostracism tend to engage in subtle and retaliatory behaviors as a means of seeking inner peace. However, research on organizational behavior and employee psychology in relation to ostracism is still in its nascent stages. Specifically, further investigation is warranted to explore how supervisor ostracism influences task procrastination (TP) through psychological processes such as self-efficacy, self-esteem and motivation. Notably, a significant gap exists in the ostracism literature, as it has yet to thoroughly examine employee behaviors related to knowledge hiding (KH) and TP in the context of individual or team-based work (Zhao et al., 2016; Brouwer and Jansen, 2019). Therefore, the present study aims to address this gap and expand the research stream within the education sector by introducing “threat to self-esteem” (TSE) as a mediating factor in the outcomes of ostracism.

The study employed a quantitative approach, using questionnaires to collect data and mainly focused on statistics and standards. The authors used SPSS and Smart-PLS to employ numerical values developed from questionnaire surveys. Likewise, we employed primary data collection tools, including mixed survey analysis (self-reported and peer-reported). The data were collected from middle-level managers working in three public sector universities. By using a three-wave research design with a two-week interval in each phase, we were able to separate the measurement of the predictor and moderator factor [supervisor ostracism (SO) and individual resilience (IR)], mediator (TSE) and outcome variables (KH and TP).

The study has discovered a substantial relationship between variables, and all hypotheses are accepted according to the data results and findings. The study measures the effects of supervisor ostracism on knowledge hiding and task procrastination through mediating effect of threat to self-esteem, which individual resilience moderates. This study adds a few contributions to the current literature, following the goals stated above. First, this attempts to highlight employee KH behavior and TP behavior by identifying SO as the primary predictor.

The organization should closely monitor the level of workplace ostracism. One strategy to accomplish this goal is to routinely gauge the extent of ostracism at work using targeted techniques like surveys and observation. The organization can also create an employee assistance program for the workers to assist them in coping with the mistreatment and better adjusting to the workplace culture. Furthermore, employee empowerment and collaborative decision-making can boost workers' self-esteem, eventually leading to diminishing knowledge-hiding and procrastination habits inside the organization.

There is a research gap regarding the barriers to KH from the perspective of team dynamics and interpersonal mistreatment at work because prior research has focused on knowledge sharing, organizational culture and organizational obstruction. Research on organizational behavior and employee psychology in relation to ostracism is still in its nascent stages. Specifically, further investigation is warranted to explore how SO influences TP through psychological processes such as self-efficacy, self-esteem and motivation. Notably, a significant gap exists in the ostracism literature, as it has yet to thoroughly examine employee behaviors related to KH and TP in individual or team-based work.

The study aims to identify and discuss influential aspects of corporate environmental disclosure (CED) literature, including key streams, themes, authors, keywords, journals, affiliations and countries. This review also constructs agendas for future CED research.

Using a bibliometric review approach, the authors reviewed 560 articles on CED from 215 journals published between 1982 and 2020.

The authors' insights are three-fold. First, the authors identified three core streams of CED research: “legitimization of environmental hazards via environmental disclosures,” “the role of environmental accounting in achieving corporate environmental sustainability” and “integrating environmental social and governance (ESG) reporting into the global reporting initiatives (GRI) guidelines”. Second, the authors also deployed a thematic map that classifies CED research into four themes: niche themes (e.g. institutional theory and environmental management system), motor themes (e.g. stakeholder engagement), emerging/declining themes (e.g. legitimacy theory) and basic/transversal themes (e.g. voluntary CED, environmental reporting and corporate social responsibility). Third, the authors highlighted important CED authors, keywords, journals, articles, affiliations and countries.

This study assists researchers, journal editors and consultants in the corporate sector to comprehensively understand various dimensions of CED research and practices and suggests potential emerging research areas. Although this paper appears to have been thoroughly conducted, using authors' keywords to identify themes was a key limitation. Thus, the authors call upon using a more comprehensive data mining technique that uses keywords in abstracts, titles and the whole body of papers and then identifies inclusive trends in CED literature.

The authors contribute to the extant accounting literature by investigating the organizational-level CED, both mandatory and voluntary, using a systematic and bibliometric literature review model to summarize the key research streams, themes, authors, journals, affiliations and countries. By doing so, the authors construct a future research agenda for CED literature.

The aim of this study was to investigate the use of software for the automation of academic libraries in Sialkot. This study consisted of three objectives, including recognizing the reasons to adopt the software for library automation, investigating the problems faced by librarians while using library software and identifying the satisfaction level with the attributes of library software.

A quantitative research approach was used to achieve the objectives of this study. A survey was conducted to collect data from the library information science professionals working in the academic libraries of Sialkot. The data was collected from 46 library professionals through a structured questionnaire.

The findings showed that the economic cost of implementation, maintenance and the software providing multilingual support were the major reasons for adoption of software for the purpose of automation. In this study, compliance with the internet, noncooperation in library automation by university/institution, availability of training facilities, insufficient library budget, a lack of financial/economic resources, staff transfer and a lack of consultancy and technical service were identified as major issues when using library automation software. However, the respondents were quite satisfied with the performance of software attributes including circulation modules, easy to use cataloguing modules, reports’ modules, software attributes of administration modules and multilingual facility.

This study persuades library and information science professionals to automate their libraries through the adoption of library software.

The purpose of this study is to uncover how peer ostracism (POS) elicits knowledge hiding directed towards ostracizing peers through the intervening role of peer contact quality (PCQ). Moreover, the authors aim to highlight the role of the need to belong (NTB) as a first-order boundary condition in direct and indirect hypothesized paths.

The research opted for a three-wave time-lagged survey design. The data were obtained from the 234 teaching and non-teaching employees working in Higher Educational Sector in Pakistan through random sampling. Mediation and moderated mediation analysis was done by using PROCESS Models 4 and 7.

The results embraced the mediation, moderation and moderated mediation hypotheses. It was noted that POS creates negative exchange relationships. As a result, the ostracized employees withhold knowledge from the predating peer. NTB served as a buffering agent between POS and PCQ, as well as, in the indirect POS, PCQ and peer-directed knowledge hiding relationship.

This research serves as a guideline for management and faculty of Higher Educational Institutions for minimization of POS to promote effective collegial contact quality and curb knowledge hiding.

Although the research in workplace ostracism and knowledge hiding is not new, yet how this association emerges from the viewpoint of peers is not known. This study has added to the literature by answering who is more likely to reciprocate ostracism from peers by having poor quality contact and directing knowledge hiding towards the predator. By this, the authors have added to the limited stream of moderated mediation mechanisms underlying ostracism and knowledge hiding behaviour. In addition, the authors have drawn attention to the importance of peer relationships in higher educational settings.

This study aimed at exploring the differential effects of different corporate governance (CG) indicators on risk management practices in Islamic financial institutions (IFIs) and conventional financial institutions (CFIs) of Pakistan. It also investigated the moderating role of institutional quality (IQ) in shaping the effects of CG practices on financial institutions of Pakistan.

A sample of 57 financial institutions including commercial banks, insurance companies and Modarba companies over the period 2006–2017 is used to carry out the empirical analysis. The authors applied the robust two-step system-generalized method of moments estimator, which is also called the dynamic panel data estimator. They also built the PCA-based composite index of CG and IQ by using different indicators to investigate the moderating role of IQ. They used three proxies for risk taking, five for CG and one for Shari’ah governance. To test the validity of the instruments, they applied the Arellano and Bond’s (1991) AR (1) and AR (2) tests and the J-statistic of Hansen (1982).

The results provided strong evidence that several individual characteristics of CG and the composite index are significantly related to the operational risk, the liquidity risk and the Z-score (a proxy for solvency risk). The results also revealed that IQ significantly and substantially contributes in reducing the level of risks. Finally, the estimation results indicated that the effects of CG on risk management are significantly different at IFIs and CFIs. This differential impact is mainly attributed to the fundamental differences in business models, operational strategies and contractual obligations of both types of institutions.

The findings of this study are important for enhancing our understanding of how CG relates to risk taking in Islamic and conventional financial services industries and how good quality institutions are important for formulating the governance effects on the risk-taking behavior of financial institutions. The findings suggest that a suitable size of board should be chosen to manage the risk effectively. As the findings show that the risk-taking behavior of IFIs differs from that of CFIs, the regulators and international standard setting bodies should tailor the regulatory frameworks accordingly.

This paper is different from the existing studies in four aspects. First, to the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first empirical investigation in Pakistan, which does the comparison of IFIs and CFIs while examining the impacts of CG on risk management. Second, the paper constructs the composite index of CG by considering several different indicators of governance and examines the combined effect of governance indicators on risk management process. Third, this paper adds to the growing literature on the role of IQ by investigating whether it acts as a moderator between CG structures and risk management and if yes, then whether this moderating role is different for IFIs and CFIs. Finally, the paper builds upon the existing research work on the CG effects for different types of financial institutions by proposing a single regression based analytical framework for comparing the effects across two different types of institutions, harvesting the benefits of higher degrees of freedom and avoiding/minimizing the measurement error.

This study aims to empirically examine the influence of financial constraints on firm carbon emissions. In addition to the role of financial constraints in firm-level carbon emissions, this study also examines this influence in the presence of governance, environmental orientation and firm-level attributes.

Using pooled ordinary least square, this study examines the impact of financial constraints on firm-level carbon emissions using a panel of 1,536 US firm-year observations from 2008 to 2019. This study also used two-step generalized method of moment–based dynamic panel data and two-stage least square approaches to address potential endogeneity. The results are robust to endogeneity and collinearity issues.

The results suggest that financial constraints enhance the carbon emissions of the firms. The economic significance of financial constraints on carbon emissions is more pronounced for the firms that do not report environment-related expenditure investment and those that are highly leveraged. The authors further document that firms with a nondiverse gender board signify a statistically significant impact of financial constraints on carbon emissions. These results are also economically significant, as one standard deviation increase in financial constraints is associated with a 3.340% increase in carbon emissions at the firm level.

Some implicit and explicit factors like corporate emissions policy and culture may condition the relationship of financial constraints with carbon emissions. Therefore, it would be worthwhile to consider these factors for future research. In addition, it is beneficial to identify the thresholds and/or quantiles at which financial constraints may significantly make a difference in enhancing carbon emissions.

The findings offer policy implications for investment in stakeholder engagement for capital acquisitions, thereby effectively enforcing environmental innovation and leading to a reduction in carbon emissions.

This study integrated governance and environment-oriented variables in the model to empirically examine the role of financial constraints on the carbon emissions of the firms in the USA over and above what has already been documented in the earlier literature.

This study aims to investigate the fabrication of solid ankle foot orthoses (SAFOs) using fused deposition modeling (FDM) printing technology. It emphasizes cost-effective 3D scanning with the Kinect sensor and conducts a comparative analysis of SAFO durability with varying thicknesses and materials, including polylactic acid (PLA) and carbon fiber-reinforced (PLA-C), to address research gaps from prior studies.

In this study, the methodology comprises key components: data capture using a cost-effective Microsoft Kinect® Xbox 360 scanner to obtain precise leg dimensions for SAFOs. SAFOs are designed using CAD tools with varying thicknesses (3, 4, and 5 mm) while maintaining consistent geometry, allowing controlled thickness impact investigation. Fabrication uses PLA and PLA-C materials via FDM 3D printing, providing insights into material suitability. Mechanical analysis uses dual finite element analysis to assess force–displacement curves and fracture behavior, which were validated through experimental testing.

The results indicate that the precision of the scanned leg dimensions, compared to actual anthropometric data, exhibits a deviation of less than 5%, confirming the accuracy of the cost-effective scanning approach. Additionally, the research identifies optimal thicknesses for SAFOs, recommending a 4 and 5 mm thickness for PLA-C-based SAFOs and an only 5 mm thickness for PLA-based SAFOs. This optimization enhances the overall performance and effectiveness of these orthotic solutions.

This study’s innovation lies in its holistic approach, combining low-cost 3D scanning, 3D printing and computational simulations to optimize SAFO materials and thickness. These findings advance the creation of cost-effective and efficient orthotic solutions.

The purpose of this study is to conduct a systematic content review and bibliometric analysis of the current research trends, core concepts and knowledge mapping on the topic Islamic Banking and Finance (IBF) during Covid-19. Apart from highlighting the contributions of prolific authors, prominent institutions and countries, a comprehensive review of a significant number of documents using co-citation and co-word analysis is carried out for the science mapping.

A data set of 125 papers was collected published in Scopus database during the period December, 2019 and January 5th, 2023. Yearly publications, most-cited papers and authors, active sources, affiliations and countries are highlighted with descriptive analysis. Knowledge structure of the topic was mapped with investigating the social, intellectual and conceptual structures of IBF research. Content analysis is carried out to uncover the underlying research clusters that shape the scientific knowledge structure of studies.

A diverse group of authors and institutions contribute to the growing body of knowledge on the topic. IBF is adopting new paradigms and frameworks to integrate FinTech, crowd funding and Islamic social finance to provide sustainable solutions in both crisis and normal periods. The research on IBF is classified in to three themes: “financial markets in Covid-19,” “modeling risk and market regimes” and “FinTech and Islamic social finance.”

This study collects data only from Scopus database. Future studies must include research articles from other databases such as, Web of Sciences.

This study highlights research gaps in the existing literature and provides directions for future research.

The study aims to investigate the presence of herding behavior in the stock market of UK with a special emphasis on news sentiment regarding the economy. The authors focus on the news sentiment because in the current digital era, investors take their decision making on the basis of current trends projected by news and media platforms.

For empirical modeling, the authors use machine learning models to investigate the presence of herding behavior in UK stock market for the period starting from 2006 to 2021. The authors use support vector regression, single layer neural network and multilayer neural network models to predict the herding behavior in the stock market of the UK. The authors estimate the herding coefficients using all the models and compare the findings with the linear regression model.

The results show a strong evidence of herding behavior in the stock market of the UK during different time regimes. Furthermore, when the authors incorporate the economic uncertainty news sentiment in the model, the results show a significant improvement. The results of support vector regression, single layer perceptron and multilayer perceptron model show the evidence of herding behavior in UK stock market during global financial crises of 2007–08 and COVID’19 period. In addition, the authors compare the findings with the linear regression which provides no evidence of herding behavior in all the regimes except COVID’19. The results also provide deep insights for both individual investors and policy makers to construct efficient portfolios and avoid market crashes, respectively.

In the existing literature of herding behavior, news sentiment regarding economic uncertainty has not been used before. However, in the present era this parameter is quite critical in context of market anomalies hence and needs to be investigated. In addition, the literature exhibits varying results about the existence of herding behavior when different methodologies are used. In this context, the use of machine learning models is quite rare in the herding literature. The machine learning models are quite robust and provide accurate results. Therefore, this research study uses three different models, i.e. single layer perceptron model, multilayer perceptron model and support vector regression model to investigate the herding behavior in the stock market of the UK. A comparative analysis is also presented among the results of all the models. The study sheds light on the importance of economic uncertainty news sentiment to predict the herding behavior.