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In literature, it is recognized that there is no universal set of critical success factors (CSFs) applicable to all projects. The goal of this research is to validate a theoretical model which considers that CSFs’ influence on project success (PS) is configurational, that CSFs combine to influence PS.

The authors proposed a theoretical framework which operationalizes CSFs considering contingency and institutional theories' terms, as external contingencies, organizational resources and project strategies, which influence PS. The framework is validated through a qualitative approach on 18 social projects implemented by nongovernmental organizations (NGOs). Based on the conducted semistructured interviews with NGO managers or project managers, 91 instances when CSFs combine to influence PS were identified.

The dominant path reveals the combination of CSFs in terms of strategies adopted to face contingencies (70 instances), another as resources which moderate managers' strategies (14 instances), and in seven instances positive contingencies and resources combine and influence the PS. The results reveal that CSFs combine in reactive and dynamic ways to influence PS.

The research contributes to the vast literature on projects' success by adopting a different perspective. Configurational theory explains project management and projects' complexity better than the traditional approaches, which have a rather correlational perspective.

The purpose of this study is to develop the dictionary with grammar and multiword structure has to be used in conjunction with sentiment analysis to investigate the relationship between financial news and stock market volatility.

An algorithm has been developed for calculating the sentiment orientation and score of data with added information, and the results of calculation have been integrated to construct an empirical model for calculating stock market volatility.

The experimental results reveal a statistically significant relationship between financial news and stock market volatility. Moreover, positive (negative) news is found to be positively (negatively) correlated with positive stock returns, and the score of added information of the news is positively correlated with stock returns. Model verification and stock market volatility predictions are verified over four time periods (monthly, quarterly, semiannually and annually). The results show that the prediction accuracy of the models approaches 66% and stock market volatility with a particular trend-predicting effect in specific periods by using moving window evaluation.

Only one news source is used and the research period is only two years; thus, future studies should incorporate several data sources and use a longer period to conduct a more in-depth analysis.

Understanding trends in stock market volatility can decrease risk and increase profit from investment. Therefore, individuals or businesses can feasibly engage in investment activities for profit by understanding volatility trends in capital markets.

The ability to exploit textual information could potentially increase the quality of the data. Few scholars have applied sentiment analysis in investigating interdisciplinary topics that cover information management technology, accounting and finance. Furthermore, few studies have provided support for structured and unstructured data. In this paper, the efficiency of providing the algorithm, the model and the trend in stock market volatility has been demonstrated.

Malaysia is considered to be a relatively young country as compared to other older countries such as Japan, China and Australia in terms of the ageing population. However, until 2035, Malaysia will be in the ageing group countries as 15% of the entire population will be above 60 years of age. This situation is quite alarming as more and more ageing care centres will be required to fulfill the ongoing demands of the ageing population. The elderly care centres in Malaysia are categorised as public (sponsored by the government), private, and charity based that comes under religious centres. Currently, there are about 365 registered elderly care centres working in the main states of Malaysia, including Sabah and Sarawak, two states of the East Malaysia. Due to the importance of ageing population issues, the present study is conducted to explore the demographics facet of Malaysian’s elderly care centres. The main reason behind that lies on the fact that many of these centres are still labelled as being not well equipped and lacking behind in trained staff, equipment and also suffering from severe financial constraints but some still capable of working on a sustainability basis.

Qualitative Research Strategy has been adopted, and 28 centres throughout Malaysia are included in this study. About 18 Operators from different centres and 15 caregivers were interviewed to get the holistic view of ageing care and facilities in their respective centres.

The results highlight that the majority of centres are not receiving any financial help from the government, and few centres are doing small business such as supplying consumable medical and non-medical items and providing renting and rehabilitation centres facilities to sustain. The caregivers are facing issues such as excess workload, less salary, peer conflicts and non-cooperative centre leadership.

The present study may help to provide useful information to the policymakers, which enables them to formulate the strategies for ageing care centres in Malaysia. As this study provides insight of components that have an impact on the overall wellbeing of elderly care centres, hence, it could help the care services providers to act as a rising star for Malaysian’s social life comfort.

Women's empowerment is a crucial gender issue and more so in developing countries. Women's empowerment has far-reaching consequences at individual, household, societal and global levels. In this study, the authors focus on the effect of their childhood and pre-marriage conditions on the present level of empowerment in the rural setting in the southern part of India controlling for relevant variables.

This study is based on the primary data collected from 700 women in southern India's villages. The authors used chi-square to understand the bivariate association between the level of women's empowerment and their socio-economic characteristics including their pre-marriage conditions. Further, multiple regression was used to find out the association between her pre-marriage characteristics and empowerment.

The study finds a positive association between mothers' education on their daughters' empowerment. Freedom of movement during childhood also had a positive relationship with the current level of empowerment. The study finds a positive effect of self-esteem and self-efficacy on women's empowerment. The authors also found that property in their names and knowledge about their legal rights were associated with higher empowerment. Other important indicators related to higher women's empowerment are household assets and their employment.

To the best of the authors' knowledge, this study is a unique attempt to study the effect of conditions before marriage on women's empowerment, especially in the Indian context. The study looks into the relationship between childhood conditions of women in a rural set up including their parents' education and jobs, discrimination faced and upbringing conditions and their current level of empowerment.

The peer review history for this article is available at: https://publons.com/publon/10.1108/IJSE-05-2022-0329

In most developing countries like Pakistan, the gap between rich and poor has widened over time. This polarization in the society hinders economic growth and acts as a barrier for development and well-being. The proportion of income distribution varies across the population sub-groups in Pakistan. Therefore, it is important to study the income distribution effects across the four provinces of Pakistan.

This study attempts to explore the root causes of income inequality and its changes in a dynamic context across the four provinces of Pakistan over a decade (2005–2006 to 2015–2016) by using a regression-based inequality decomposition method.

Age, gender and higher education are the most prominent factors explaining the level of inequality across the four provinces of Pakistan. Higher education enhances the level of inequality in all provinces but contributes negatively to its changes except for Balochistan. Skilled agricultural and fishery workers in Balochistan have contributed significantly to reducing the level of inequality over the decade but not to its changes. Healthy contribution of the unpaid family workers in economic activities has reduced the level of inequality in Punjab and Balochistan and contributed positively to the change in income inequality. Employer or self-employed workers enhance the level of income inequality but contribute negatively to its changes for Punjab and Balochistan.

To date, inequality literature on Pakistan focuses on economic growth and poverty. A handful studies focus on the determinants of income inequality in a static context. This study goes beyond the static decomposition tools and attempts to explore the determinants of inequality in a dynamic context.

The peer review history for this article is available at https://publons.com/publon/10.1108/IJSE-09-2021-0573.

This paper aims to empirically investigate the impact of bank market concentration of financial constraints on firm investment.

This analysis is based on cross-industries panel of 368 listed Pakistani non-financial firms over the period of 2001-2009. Further, the Generalized Method of Moments estimation technique has been used to estimate the dynamic panel data model.

By applying a dynamic panel analysis, it was found that small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) are financially constrained in the credit market. The main finding indicates that reduction in bank concentration eases financing constraints, and this effect is more pronounced for SMEs. In addition, while testing the firm opacity in this context, results reveal that opaque firms are more financially constrained, and bank market competition is less favourable to the firms with greater opacity.

The results, first, assess the efficacy of ongoing financial reforms in Pakistan and, second, offer implications for other economies that exhibit financial development similar to that of Pakistan.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the empirical relationship between microsavings and the financial performance of microfinance institutions (MFIs) in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA).

The approach in this paper is decidedly empirical, and employs data obtained from Microfinance Information eXchange (MIX). The data set consists of 350 microfinance MFIs domiciled in 36 Sub-Saharan African countries for the period covering 1998–2012.

The panel estimation results consistently show that there exists a negative and statistically significant relationship between microsavings and the financial performance of MFIs in SSA. This is perhaps surprising, albeit rational considering the exceedingly elevated operating expenses that ascend from mobilizing and managing microsavings, ceteris paribus, that could erode firm profitability. The paper draws policy implications from these important findings.

Even though generalized method of moment estimation technique was employed and robustness checks, the issue of endogeneity cannot be eliminated entirely.

Microfinance industry is one of the fastest growing segments of the financial sector in SSA. The industry is increasingly becoming the core of financial inclusion in the region where two-thirds of the adult population lack access to formal financial services. Therefore, gaining an in-depth understanding of the role microsavings play in the financial performance of MFIs can contribute to the growth of the industry.

This study is timely considering the significant growth in the number of microsavings – there are currently twice as many microsavings accounts in SSA as there are microcredits. More importantly, based on 400 MFIs, that reported data to MIX in 2016, the total microsavings stood at about US$11bn against an aggregate loan portfolio of about US$10.5bn. The remarkable growth of microsavings in SSA, from less than US$100m in 2000 to US$11bn in 2016, is the main motivation of undertaking this study.

The purpose of this paper is to analyze differential consumption patterns of Pakistani migrant households resulting from foreign and domestic remittances.

Using the Working-Leser model and a number of matching techniques, the authors analyze a representative household survey carried out in 2010–2011 to compare various expenditure categories of recipient and non-recipient households across different income brackets.

Results show that foreign remittances lead to significant consumption changes. Contrary to the widely held view, remittances do not raise the budget share on consumer goods and recreation, while allocation on education increases substantially. Households receiving domestic remittances also reflect strong focus on human capital with significantly higher shares of health and education. Recipients of international transfers living below one dollar a day spend proportionally more on food compared with their non-recipient counterparts whereas their education and health budget shares are not dissimilar.

The positive effect of remittances on expenditures on human capital coupled with a lack of evidence suggesting an increase in the share of conspicuous spending resulting from remittances highlights the beneficial role that remittances play in a developing country.

Extant literature lacks consensus on whether migrant remittances should be treated as a temporary or permanent source of household income. In this study, the authors argue and empirically show that the two need not be mutually exclusive, and may co-exist depending on the nature of remittances and household characteristics.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the relationship between credit access and technical efficiency of smallholder crop farmers in northern Ghana.

The study uses a random sample of 445 farming households in the three northern regions of Ghana. The two-stage double bootstrap DEA approach was used to consistently estimate technical efficiency scores as well as the determinants.

The results revealed that, given the current technology, there is substantial yield or productivity gap among the sample of producers in northern Ghana used for the study. This is because producers can reduce input use by over 50.0 percent while still achieving the same output levels. It is further revealed that proportion of household income from off-farm activities, distance of farm from homestead, location and credit access are significant determinants of technical efficiency.

The current study differs from previous studies in two basic ways. First, it takes into account the fact that smallholder farmers practise mixed or inter-cropping by using value of output so that various crops on a given plot of the farmer can be aggregated; and second, a nonparametric approach is adopted so that the inherent inconsistencies in using the two-step model within a parametric framework can be avoided.

The purpose of this paper is to estimate the impact of one productive development program (PROPYME) in a developing nation like Costa Rica. This program seeks to increase the capacity of small and medium-sized firms (SMEs) to innovate.

Impacts have been estimated assuming that beneficiary firms are trying to maximize their profits and that PROPYME aims to increase these firms productivity. The impacts were measured in terms of three result variables real average wages employment demand and the probability of exporting. A combination of fixed effects and propensity score matching techniques was used in estimations to correct for any selection bias. The authors worked with panel data companies treated and untreated for the period 2001-2011.

PROPYME’s beneficiaries performed better than other firms in terms of labor demand and their probability of exporting. In addition, the dose and the duration of the effects of the treatment (timing effects) are important.

The authors study the impact in ways that go beyond the average treatment effects on the treated (ATT) usually estimated in the existing literature. Specifically, the research focusses on the identification of the timing or dynamic effects (i.e. how long should we wait to see results?) and treatment intensity (dosage effects).

Se estima el impacto de un programa de desarrollo productivo (Propyme) en un país en vías de desarrollo como Costa Rica. El Propyme busca incrementar la capacidad innovadora de las pequeñas y medidas empresas (pymes) costarricenses.

el impacto se ha estimado y evaluado asumiendo que las pymes beneficiaras buscan maximizar sus beneficios y que Propyme se enfoca en incrementar la productividad de esas empresas. El impacto se valoró en función de tres variables: salarios reales medios, empleo demandado y la probabilidad de exportar. Se utilizó una combinación de técnicas de efectos fijos y emparejamiento en las estimaciones con el fin de prevenir sesgos de selección. Se trabajó con un panel de datos, incluyendo empresas tratadas (beneficiarias de Propyme) así como no tratadas para el periodo 2001-2011.

los beneficiarios de Propyme tuvieron mejor desempeño que las restantes empresas en términos de empleo demandado y su posibilidad de exportar. Adicionalmente los efectos dinámicos (dosis y duración) de los tratamientos son importantes.

este artículo evalúa el impacto de una forma que va más allá de lo usual en la literatura por medio de los efectos promedios de los tratamientos sobre los beneficiarios. Esto por cuanto se enfoca en efectos dinámicos como la duración así como la intensidad.