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It is believed that the core aim of Islamic institution is idiosyncratic from conventional business entities. Considering this presumption, this study aims to reveal the understandings of various stakeholders about objectives of Islamic banks.

The research endeavor is based on the findings of two distinctive studies, where Study 1 was aimed at investigating the communication of objectives through mission statements of Islamic banks and conventional banks with window operations. Here, mission statements were analyzed using content analysis and readability and understandability tests. Study 2, on the other hand, was aimed at investigating the understandings of various stakeholders, both internal (employees) and external (Muslim and non-Muslim customers of both Islamic and conventional banks, employees and management of conventional banks and business students). In total, 370 responses were received and analyzed in this study.

The findings (Study 1) unveil, the fact, that the mission statements of Islamic banks working in Pakistan are not good at communicating the corporate goals clearly. Out of ten banks investigated for Study 1, it is evident that only one bank (HBL, with window operations) was at par with readability threshold standards. Thus, it was imperative to share that mission statements of Islamic banks are difficult to read and comprehend. Study 2 adds further by revealing that most of the stakeholders are not clear about the objectives of these banks, while customers of conventional banks do not value the distinctive objectives of Islamic banks.

This study leaves a valuable message for the policy makers and top management of Islamic banks by focusing on the unattended part on their end, i.e. quality of mission statements and stakeholders’ perception about the objectives of their organization, thus highlighting the needs of greater emphasis on the communication flow to stakeholders, as the clarity of business purpose may change the way customers react toward the business and opt for banking – customer relation in future.

This study covers a multi-dimensional investigation of the understanding and communication of objectives of Islamic banks. There is dearth of literature focusing on the aspects of content analysis, mission statement readability and understandability and investigation of stakeholders’ perception in tandem.

A mission statement is an important tool for organizational communication, as it speaks to all stakeholders. It should be readable and comprehensible. The main objective of this article is to determine the readability of mission statements from selected Islamic banks.

This study was conducted using simple counting techniques (total words, total sentences and number of words per sentence) and readability analyses. The mission statements from 169 Islamic banks were taken from their respective web sites between March and April 2012.

The findings reveal that the mission statements of Islamic banks are difficult to read and comprehend and require 17 years of formal education before they can be fully understood.

Future studies should consider a comparative analysis that looks at how the origins of a bank can affect mission statements as well as examining different division of the financial sector such as insurance companies and other financial institutions.

The findings of this study revealed that banks have a great deal of work to do on their mission statements in order to make them readable and understandable to a wide range of stakeholders.

This article is first of its kind as it focuses on an area that has not been investigated by earlier researchers.

This study aims to present a unique hybrid metaheuristic approach to solving the nonlinear analysis of hall currents and electric double layer (EDL) effects in multiphase wavy flow by merging the firefly algorithm (FA) and the water cycle algorithm (WCA).

Nonlinear Hall currents and EDL effects in multiphase wavy flow are originally described by partial differential equations, which are then translated into an ordinary differential equation model. The hybrid FA-WCA technique is used to take on the optimization challenge and find the best possible design weights for artificial neural networks. The fitness function is efficiently optimized by this hybrid approach, allowing the optimal design weights to be determined.

The proposed strategy is shown to be effective by taking into account multiple variables to arrive at a single answer. The numerical results obtained from the proposed method exhibit good agreement with the reference solution within finite intervals, showcasing the accuracy of the approach used in this study. Furthermore, a comparison is made between the presented results and the reference numerical solutions of the Hall Currents and electroosmotic effects in multiphase wavy flow problem.

This comparative analysis includes various performance indices, providing a statistical assessment of the precision, efficiency and reliability of the proposed approach. Moreover, to the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is a new work which has not been explored in existing literature and will add new directions to the field of fluid flows to predict most accurate results.

The purpose of this study is to numerically examine the mixed convection of CuO-water nanofluid due to a rotating inner hot circular cylinder in a 3D cubic enclosure with phase change material (PCM) attached to its vertical surface. Heat transfer and fluid flow characteristics were examined for various values of pertinent parameters.

Finite element method was used in the numerical simulation. Influence of various pertinent parameters such as Rayleigh number (between 10$^5$ and 10$^6$), Hartmann number (between 0 and 100), angular rotational speed of the cylinder (between −50 and 50), solid nanoparticle volume fraction (between 0 and 0.04) and PCM parameters (height-between 0.2H and 0.8H, thermal conductivity ratio- between 0.1 and 10) on the convective heat transfer characteristics are numerically studied.

It was observed that local heat transfer variations along the hot surface differ significantly for the cases with and without magnetic field where three distinct hot spots of peak Nusselt number are established when magnetic field is imposed. The average Nusselt number enhancement with the nanofluid at the highest particle volume fraction is 52.85 per cent at Hartmann number of 100, whereas its value is 39.76 per cent for the case in the absence of magnetic field. When the inner cylinder rotates, flow and thermal fields are affected within the cavity. The local heat transfer variations spread over the hot surface with cylinder rotation and 16.43 per cent of reduction in the average heat transfer is obtained with counter-clockwise rotation at 100 rad/sec. An enhancement in the PCM height and a reduction in the thermal conductivity of the PCM result in average heat transfer deterioration for the 3D cavity. The amount of the reduction is 43 per cent when the PCM height is increased from 0.2H to 0.8H, whereas 19.10 per cent enhancement in the heat transfer is achieved when thermal conductivity ratio (PCM) to the base fluid is increased from 0.1 to 10.

Such configurations can be designed for convection control, and in our case, various methods are available. Some of the investigated methods can be used in applications where magnetic field already exists. Convection control study in 3D cavity gives more realistic results as compared to 2D configurations, and results of the current investigation may be used for the design, optimization and flow control of many thermal applications involving magnetic field effects.