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Aim – This empirical study explores the association between competition, business strategy, and the uses of a multiple performance measurement system in Bangladesh manufacturing firms.

Design/methodology – The study uses a questionnaire survey of 50 manufacturing companies. Data were analyzed using multiple regression analysis and other descriptive statistics.

Findings – The results suggest that greater emphasis on multiple measures for performance evaluation is associated with businesses that are facing high competition. The practices of multiple performance measures are also significantly related to the types of business strategy being followed. Specifically, firms pursuing a prospector strategy have relied more on multiple performance measures to rate business performance than the firms pursuing a defender strategy.

Practical implications – The article notes that the designers of performance measurement systems need to consider contingent factors that affect an organizations’ control system.

Originality/value – Substantiating the connection between contingent variables and the use of multiple performance measures in manufacturing firms facilitate a better acceptance of firms’ tendency toward new measurement tools. The study contributes to the performance measurement and contingency literature since it presents empirical evidence of the state of multiple performance measures with organizational contingent variables using a developing country's manufacturing sector data.

This paper aims to understand and identify the various barriers in adopting new telecom services in rural areas for improving the penetration and revenue of the telecom companies. These barriers are modeled to study their inter-relationships and prioritize them for strategizing appropriate management action plans.

Delphi technique has been used to form a consensus with the telecom managers working in rural areas to finalize the barriers. An integrated Interpretive Structural Modeling–Analytic Network Process (ISM–ANP) approach has been adopted to establish the complex relationships, cluster the relationships, to understand and prioritize the telecom service adoption barriers.

The major contribution of this research is imposing directions and dominance of various barriers to promote better adoption of new telecom-based mobile services in rural areas. The proposed integrated method can aid in decision making by providing more informative, accurate and a better choice than using either ISM or ANP in isolation.

The generalizabilty of these research findings is limited, as it was generated specific to rural telecom service adoption barriers in Indian context. Because decision-making problems are usually complex and ill-structured, every decision is based on the decision-maker’s expertise, preferences and biasness of the experts who showed their interest to participate in the research.

This paper forms the basis of identifying the reasons for poor adoption of telecom-based mobile services in rural India. This study would help the telecom companies and the managers to understand and develop strategies to target the rural audience by introducing action plans and innovative mobile services to overcome the identified barriers. By applying the proposed methodology, telecom companies can classify and prioritize their action plans as short-, medium- and long-term plans to systematically overcome the identified barriers.

This paper provides a base for understanding various factors that affect the adoption of telecom-based mobile services. It demonstrates the use of an innovative approach to develop an integrated model to understand the barriers.

Bangladesh has a long history of dealing with seasonal changes resulting in droughts and floods. Three major rivers, the Ganges, Brahmaputra and Meghna (GBM) come to a confluence, forming the GBM floodplain. There is a specific time window (June to September) when most of the runoff occurs and over 90% of their combined flow is discharged into the Bay of Bengal. As a result, the seasonal monsoons result in wet and dry seasons, making Bangladesh vulnerable to both floods and droughts. Climate change will likely alter characteristics such as timing and intensity, therefore increasing the challenge of adaptation. Socioeconomic conditions and high-population density limit the country's ability to adapt to these hydro-meteorological extremes. Although climatic variability causes severe damage and loss of life in Bangladesh, examples of local adaptation to the annual rhythm of seasonal variation can be found in flood-prone areas. Scientific modeling has resulted in more robust and efficient early warning systems that have greatly decreased the loss of life from climate hazards in recent years. However, positive impacts from models are limited by complex social concerns that are pervasive across the country.

This paper aims to analyze the Halal industry before, during and after the COVID-19 outbreak.

Qualitative content analysis derived from a narrative-type literature review – supported by expert opinions elicited from semi-structured interviews and transcripts from the keynotes of five prominent speakers at a Halal industry conference during the pandemic. The conference theme covered the Halal industry’s development and strategies before, during and after the COVID-19 outbreak.

There are opinions, concerns and actionable suggestions from the five prominent guests on how the Halal industry is faced with challenges but also new opportunities, with the potential to lead an agenda toward community and transparency.

The halal industry could survive the ravaging COVID-19 and still has the potential to be explored. Expectedly, it makes this occasion an assessment or benchmark to improve the Halal industry and lifestyle in the future and contributes to the betterment of the ummah and Muslim countries.

Corporate social responsibility (CSR) and fintech have emerged as critical megatrends in the banking industry. This study aims to examine the impact of financial technology on the relationship between CSR and banks' financial stability. Specifically, it investigates the moderating effect of fintech on the association between CSR and the financial stability of conventional banks operating in Qatar, UAE, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Bahrain, Jordan, Pakistan and Turkey from 2010 to 2021.

To achieve the authors’ objective, the authors apply Baron and Kenny's three-link model, tested with fixed and random effects regression models.

The results reveal that the development of fintech decreases banks' financial stability, whereas it promotes banks' involvement in CSR strategies. Furthermore, the findings indicate that fintech plays a moderating role in the relationship between CSR and financial stability. It positively moderates the impact of CSR on financial stability. The robustness analysis highlights the mutual reinforcement of fintech and CSR dimensions in improving the financial stability of banks. Thus, by fostering community and product responsibility, fintech could enhance the financial stability of banks.

Finally, the authors recommend that banks focus more on developing technological and environmentally friendly financial products.

This study contributes significantly by providing valuable insights for managers and policymakers seeking to improve banks' financial stability through the simultaneous adoption of new financial technology products and the strong commitment to CSR practices.

This study aims to explore whether and how leaders’ attributes, understanding of and attitude towards quality assurance (QA) shape their practices towards effective implementation of QA in universities.

Using qualitative case study, the data were collected from nine institutional leaders purposively selected from two universities. The data, collected through semi-structured interviews, were analysed using thematic analysis technique.

The findings revealed that personal attributes of leaders such as understanding of QA, attitude towards QA and practices shape leadership style either as transformational or compliance leader. The transformational leader implements QA procedures with the intention of bringing improvement in teaching learning and research quality. In contrast, the compliance leaders are primarily concerned with implementation of QA procedures merely to fulfil the requirements of an external regulatory body.

This study acknowledges that certain other factors (e.g. demographics, institutional policies or practices) might have an influence on leadership practices. Using the framework of this study, further quantitative and/or mixed methods research can expand by bringing more factors that can shape leadership practices.

The role of leadership is significant to the success of any university. A plethora of studies have reported various aspects of successful leadership in higher education (HE). However, in the changing nature of HE due to the emergence of formal QA, there is paucity of research that focusses on the role of leader’s attributes in the effective implementation of QA procedures.