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After the fall of Burma on 10 March 1942 the British government extensively implemented scorched-earth policies in Bengal like denial of rice and boats. The British government had inadequate defense equipment to resist Japanese attack in Bengal. After the Japanese invasion supply of Burmese rice suddenly stopped. Faridpur district used to import rice from Burma. The Burmese conquest created an immediate and serious crisis for several rice imported districts and coastal districts of Bengal. Hence, none of the districts of East Bengal could escape its brutal clutches and severity recorded in Chittagong, Dhaka, Faridpur, Tripura, Noakhali, Bakargonj and so on.

Among the affected districts of Bengal, Faridpur has been chosen as study area due to severity of famine. This study addresses the famine scenario of Faridpur. Data has been collected from primary and secondary sources. Content Analysis Research method is used to test reliability and validity of the data. Historical Analysis Research method has been followed in this study.

Finding of the study shows that the government relief issues, ignorance of warnings, political nepotism and denial policy of British government intensified the famine of Faridpur district. The wartime tactics adopted by the colonial government aggravated the famine situation. This article has shed light on the government war time policy, activity and some impacts of British decline in Burma that fueled the famine in Faridpur district.

This study is my original research work and has not been published else where.

This study aims to investigate whether firms involved in a major corruption scandal, with broad ramifications across several emerging and advanced markets, design the content of their corporate codes of conduct to either improve corporate ethical standards and practices or merely manipulate the impression of stakeholders.

This study adopts an impression management perspective. It uses content analysis techniques to examine the codes of conduct adopted by seven Brazilian engineering and construction multinationals accused of corruption. The analysis covered five major themes: (1) forms of corruption, (2) values or principles, (3) interested parties, (4) procedures and routines and (5) punitive action.

The study provides detailed evidence that the codes of conduct adopted by these firms are mere artifices that aimed at meeting legal requirements but do not target the relevant corporate audience involved in grand corruption. At best, such a code may impede petty and bureaucratic corruption.

This research contributes to improving the understanding of how Latin American multinationals adopted codes of conduct after a major scandal and how they failed—at least to some extent—to design codes complying with established corporate governance principles. It shows that management manipulated the impression of stakeholders by selectively adopting or omitting certain terms, examining or concealing various issues and addressing mainly petty crimes rather than grand corruption. It also identifies areas where Western ethical values conflict with established practices and cultural norms in Latin America.

Given the relevance of female directors in the governance of any firm, this paper aims to examine their effect on firms’ financial performance by investigating their general impact and segregating the same into different subgroups based on Kanter’s theory.

To achieve the purpose, this study selects a sample of the top 100 listed Indian firms for the period of 2014–2018 and gathers the data pertaining to the variables under consideration from the respective firms’ annual report and corporate database Capitaline Plus. For undertaking the investigation, the authors have segregated the sample into three groups, i.e. firms with boards having less than 10% of female directors are called skewed boards; firms with boards having female directors that range from 10% to 20% are called as tilted board; and firms with boards having sizable representation of female directors of above 20%. To examine the performance impact of overall female directors and their different subgroups, the authors have used a generalized estimating equation model. For the robustness test, the authors have used the fixed-effect model.

The authors find a significant positive impact of the overall percentage of female directors on the financial performance of firms. Additionally, the results indicate that boards with a titled group of female directors and boards with a sizable representation of female directors significantly positively impact firms’ performance. However, the authors fail to extricate any significant performance impact of boards with a skewed group of female directors.

First, the study reveals that despite prevailing nepotism in India, female directors, owing to their core characteristics, can create a favorable perception of firms in the market. Second, it also works as an eye-opener for regulators by revealing the minimum threshold for female directors that a board should have to exploit the benefits of a gender quota rather than mere compliance with the requirements of the Companies Act, 2013. Third, it implies that more gender-diverse boards can improve a firm’s financial performance only if female directors range between the thresholds of 10% to 20%. Finally, the finding is significant for changing the business culture in India, where institutions are traditionally less supportive of women than in other emerging countries.

Departing from existing studies, which provide evidence on the performance impact of the overall percentage of female directors, the study unveils the differential impact of female directors on firms’ financial performance depending on their level of representation on the board. To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first study in the context of an emerging market to test Kanter’s theory.

This paper aims to explore how female academics use cronyism to cope with the lack of emancipative support resulting from their intense teaching and research duties, poor representation at senior administrative levels and their exhausting familial commitments.

Qualitative semi-structured interviews were conducted with 32 female academics working full-time at four public universities in Egypt.

The findings showed that the low action resources (considering their unreasonable teaching loads, research requirements and supervision engagements), emancipative values (the unfair representation of female academics at senior administrative levels) and civic entitlement (universities not serious about promoting gender equality) are perceived by female academics as a lack of empowerment that necessitates their adoption of cronyism as their main coping strategy. Moreover, in male-dominated societies, female academics who do not have the power to shape their work-related status tend to use undesirable behaviours such as cronyism to mitigate the negative consequences of the shocks they encounter.

This paper contributes by filling a gap in human resources management in which empirical studies on the relationship between cronyism, emancipation and career shocks have been limited so far.

This study was designed to contribute to the extant literature by discovering the perceptions of restaurant employees and managers toward equal opportunities in restaurant labor and working in a diversity-rich restaurant work environment.

A qualitative research approach was utilized. Through in-depth interviews, data were collected purposefully from restaurant workers in different positions (e.g. managers, servers, chefs and cooks) in the USA.

As a result of content analysis, different perspectives emerged on equal employment opportunity and diversity in restaurant labor. While some employees and managers believe that restaurant labor has equal employment opportunities, others think there is a lack of equal employment opportunity and partial equal employment opportunity in the industry. Most participants perceive working in a diversity-rich restaurant work environment as beneficial (an opportunity to learn about different cultures and an opportunity to learn different experiences and approaches).

To the best of our knowledge, this is the first paper to explore employees' and managers' perceptions of equal employment opportunity and diversity in the hospitality labor context, specifically restaurant labor. Therefore, the research findings will create value for scholars to understand the view on equal employment opportunity and diversity in restaurant labor. Further, it will assist practitioners in designing their labor structure regarding equal employment opportunity and diversity management for the future.

The purpose of this study is to present an analysis of the Islamic good governance concept and means known as Al-Siyasah Al-Syar’iyyah as a principle and approach for combating corruption. This literature review aims to synthesize extant literature that discusses the determinants of integrity and how to prevent and combat corruption based on the Al-Siyasah Al-Syar’iyyah perspective.

A systematic search was conducted on a literature review based on Scopus and referred journals from Google Scholar databases. A manual search on Google Scholar was performed to identify additional relevant studies. Studies were selected based on the predetermined criteria. They were thematically examined using content analysis.

The study found that most of the 45 works of the literature, (41 studies and four chapters) suggested that corruption should be considered a sin and that education of Al-Siyasah Al-Syar’iyyah’s perspective against corruption, emphasizing the principle of piety, the institutionalization of justice and accountability, good governance performance with an emphasis on its belief in self-accountability and justice, is the means to combat corruption.

This study is unique in that it focuses on locating material on battling corruption from the standpoint of Al-Siyasah Al-Syar’iyyah. Based on the al-Quran, the Sunnah and the best practices of Muslim rulership, this notion provides an epistemological, ethical and ontological stance in Islam.

The aim of this study is to explore employees’ perceptions of the role of human resources (HR) departments in Jordanian organisations and the reasons behind these perceptions.

Semi-structured interviews were conducted with 23 employees who work at different organisations in various industrial sectors in Jordan.

Employees perceive HR roles as: providing transactional services (traditional); working as business partners to facilitate other departments’ roles (limited). Perceptions of HR professionals and the role of HR departments were generally negative, due to: societal-cultural norms and stereotypes of HR departments and HR professionals; the role of Wasta (a localised form of favouritism) in affecting HR practices; employees’ personal experiences with HR departments and HR professionals at their workplace; and the non-availability of human resources management (HRM) degrees in Jordan.

Limited research has explored varying perceptions about HR departments and their impacts on business contexts in emerging markets, including Jordan. This research is unique as it identifies the reasons behind common misconceptions of HR roles in Jordanian organisations. It extends beyond existing literature by integrating employees’ perceptions of the role of the HR departments to understand the consequences for HR practices’ operational effectiveness. It also pioneers consideration of societal culture in shaping these perceptions, which helps us build theories for future testing and generalisation purposes in other contexts with cultural commonalities. This study also highlights the current state of HRM development in Jordan, which helps in setting the agenda for future research in the country and the Middle East and North Africa region.

This study aims to investigate the relationship between all three dimensions of perceived strategic value of m-commerce (operational support, managerial productivity and strategic decision aids), antecedents of m-commerce (organizational readiness, external context and m-commerce competence) and m-commerce adoption. The present study will further examine a mediation model in which all three dimensions of perceived strategic value of m-commerce affect m-commerce adoption through IT investment.

An online survey questionnaire was adopted to test the validity of this research and hypotheses. Data were collected from 178 Chinese family businesses via snowball sampling.

The results show that all three dimensions of perceived strategic value of m-commerce (operational support, managerial productivity and strategic decision aids) are positively connected to m-commerce adoption. Also, it was found that IT investment partially or fully mediates the relationship between all these dimensions of perceived strategic value of m-commerce and m-commerce adoption.

This study would enhance owners' and managers' understanding of the relationship between perceived strategic value of m-commerce, IT investment, antecedents of m-commerce and m-commerce adoption, thus contributing to their future adoption.

This study aims to investigate the intricate relationship between corruption and the credit costs faced by small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in OECD countries, a critical yet underexplored area in financial crime research. The primary aim is to dissect and understand how corruption impacts SMEs’ access to credit, highlighting a significant yet overlooked aspect of financial crime. This research seeks to fill a gap in the literature by providing empirical insights into the economic consequences of corruption, specifically on SMEs financing.

This study used secondary panel data from the World Bank and OECD databases. The data covered the period 2007–2020 for 25 OECD countries. This study used interest rate for SMEs loans as a dependent variable and GDP per capita, inflation and corruption index as independent variables. This study used the panel autoregressive distributed lag (ARDL) model to examine the relationship between variables.

The empirical findings derived from Panel ARDL postulate an intriguing dichotomy in the effects of GDP per capita, inflation rate and corruption on interest rates in both the short and long run. It was discerned that an increase in GDP per capita and inflation rate correlates with a decrement in interest rates in the long run, suggesting a potential compromise by central banks between controlling inflation and fostering economic growth.

This paper makes a novel contribution to the field of financial crime by illuminating the often-overlooked economic dimensions of corruption in the context of SMEs financing. It provides a unique perspective on the ripple effects of corrupt practices in credit markets, enriching the academic discourse and informing practical approaches to combating financial crime.

Absorptive capacity (AC), the ability to leverage external knowledge for innovation, helps explain the mixed findings on family firms' (FFs) innovation performance. Our research focuses on the chief executive officer (CEO)’s role – whether family or non-family and founding or later generation – in influencing AC. We also explore how firm size and environmental dynamism affect these relationships, offering insights into varying AC levels among FFs.

Ordinary least squares (OLS) regression models were estimated to test the hypotheses using a sample of 364 FFs in Spain.

FFs’ AC is greater when the CEO is a family member, and even more so when the family CEO belongs to the founding family generation. While AC diminishes in larger FFs, this effect is mitigated when the CEO is a family member. The predicted moderating effect of environmental dynamics is not supported by the analyses.

This paper adds insights about the drivers of heterogeneity in innovation among FFs, addressing recent calls for more nuanced views of how family members drive the strategic behavior of the business and incorporating considerations of different types of FFs based on the identity of the firm CEO. The results overall support the theoretical claims and also open up important questions for future studies.