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Over the last ten years (2010–2019), the amount of nonperforming loans (NPLs) has been more than tripled in the banking industry of Bangladesh. Thus, this paper explores the behavioral dimensions, which contribute to the NPLs.

By analyzing social, cultural, psychological, political, economic, internal control mechanism and law enforcement contexts of Bangladesh, this study identifies nepotism (NE), moral hazard (MH ), inadequate collateral (IC), poor credit assessment (CA), lack of proper monitoring (LPM), repayment flexibility (RF), business risk (BR) and lending interest rate (LIR) as the catalysts of raising NPLs. Next, a structured questionnaire survey has been performed in Bangladesh among bank officials who closely work in credit risk management, credit supervision, corporate finance and loan recovery department. Finally, partial least squares (PLS) path modeling, a variance-based technique of structural equation modeling, is used in this study as a statistical tool to analyze the data.

This study finds that moral hazard problem, lack of proper monitoring, inadequate collateral and nepotism have significant positive impact on the raising of NPLs. Unfortunately, this study does not find any statistical significance of poor credit assessment, business risk and repayment flexibility on the NPLs in Bangladesh. Finally, this study reveals that lending interest rate has significant positive impact on the NPLs. Hence, this study concludes that domestic lending interest rate is not lower enough, and so this double-digit interest rate affects negatively to loan repayment.

This study concludes that moral hazard problem of borrower, lack of board independence, lack of proper monitoring, form and extent of collateral, management lobbying, indecorous personal guarantee by management, dependent-independent directors and nepotism are extensively contributing for occurring NPLs in Bangladesh. These noninstitutionalized stimulators should adequately be scrutinized by regulatory bodies, policy makers and banks. Besides, LIR needs to be decreased in a convenient level for mitigating NPLs.

This study is the empirical evidence of behavioral dimensions related with the growth of NPLs in Bangladesh by taking direct response from knowledgeable bankers.

This study aims to examine the investor's level of financial literacy and their attitude toward making any investment decision in the Bangladeshi capital market.

To measure the level of financial literacy of an individual investor, three variables have been used – financial knowledge, financial behavior and financial attitude. It also considers investment opportunity as a moderator variable to assess the effect of market-specific characteristics on financial literacy. Data have been collected through a structured questionnaire from 152 retail investors of the Dhaka Stock Exchange and Chittagong Stock Exchange. Smart-PLS 3.3 was used for analyzing the set of hypotheses for examining the relationships in the study.

Results found that financial attitude and financial behavior have a positive and significant relationship with investment decisions. Further evidence shows that investment opportunity moderates the relationship between financial attitude and financial behavior. This indicates that equity investors are suffering from market inefficiency and cannot ensure wealth maximization.

Regulators should focus not only on financial literacy programs but also on market discipline, accountability and performance. This will encourage investors to invest their money wisely and independently.

The study adds value to the capital market literature in two ways. First, it investigates the success of financial literacy programs in Bangladesh to resolve the behavioral bias issue among investors, which used to affect their returns negatively. Second, the study introduces a very new and relevant variable as a moderator in the context of Bangladesh. Investment opportunity is a moderating variable developed from the efficient market hypothesis. Results reveal that investors are somehow financially literate over time, which can be a positive attribute for controlling behavioral bias. However, market inefficiency, corporate corruption, financial crime, insider trading and information asymmetry hamper the regular growth of the market. Hence, equity investors are unable to ensure wealth maximization in Bangladesh, where this kind of problem exists.

This study aims to determine the number of companies involved in earnings manipulation. Additionally, this study has empirically investigated the common manipulation items among the companies.

Bangladesh's listed commercial banks are selected as a sample for this study, and financial data from 2009 to 2018 were collected. The likely and nonlikely manipulator Beneish model (1999) divides the sample into two groups. Based on the M-score of the model, the banks are put into two groups. To identify the most influential variables, an independent sample t-test was done with the help of Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS).

The findings show that banks in Bangladesh have an unstable trend in making manipulated financial reports. Results of the t-test reveal that overstating revenues, increasing intangible assets, lessening cost and accruals are the most appealing items for preparing a fraudulent financial report. The findings of this research work will help the investors take the right decision having the idea of manipulation in the banking sector of Bangladesh.

In the presence of many irregularities in the banking sector Bangladesh, very few studies have been carried out in forensic accounting and fraudulent financial reporting practices. Much research has focused on earnings management techniques. This research specifically focuses on identifying earnings manipulation in financial statements for micro-level variables like accounting accruals, intangible assets, etc. This will help policy-makers and financial statement readers to be proactive while reading financial statements and taking any investment decision.

The closure of educational institutions in the COVID-19 pandemic has changed the global teaching and learning landscape. Face-to-face classroom activity has been shifted to online classroom activity. This study aims to investigate the effect of social media-based education on students’ academic performance during the pandemic.

This study analyzes the perceptions of 302 university-going students of Bangladesh using structural equation modeling.

Results show that Facebook features, perceived usefulness and personal tutorial have a positive and significant relationship with the use of social media (USM). Furthermore, the USM has a positive and significant relationship with the academic performance of the university-going students of Bangladesh during the pandemic.

This research has considered the social media usage of university students during the pandemic for academic purposes. This study has not considered income group, technical literacy and device availability of the students. Therefore, the findings may not be generalized to all classes of society.

This study validates that the USM can ensure good academic performance by engaging students through collaboration and attention.

Diffusion of knowledge and interactive face-to-face learning procedures have faced a massive loss because of this COVID-19 pandemic. Easiness in the mode of teaching technique can be a precondition for its acceptance among the students. As the impact of social media on academic performance in this pandemic context has remained unexplained, this study is designed to focus on this emerging issue.

To investigate the consequence of COVID-19 pandemic on the financial reporting and disclosure (FRD) practices, the study has been conducted. Moreover, this paper highlights the significance of FRD practices in any emergency period and its relevance with legitimacy theory in Bangladesh Perspective.

The COVID-19 pandemic has adverse impact on business. Hence, all the business activities have been categorized into five major aspects which are financial factors, business operations, business contracts, business value and stakeholders. These five major activities have been considered as independent variable. By analyzing various policy recommendations and guidelines of global and local accounting bodies, a structured questionnaire was developed in association with related IAS and IFRSs. Then, it was distributed among the accounting professionals of Bangladesh who are currently engaged in financial statement preparation and auditing services. Finally, data was analyzed through structural equation modeling (SEM) to test the hypothetical relationship between dependent variable and independent variable.

This study finds that financial factors, business contracts and stakeholders have significant relationship with the financial reporting and disclosure practices during the COVID-19 pandemic period. However, business operation and business value have no significant relationship with financial reporting and disclosure practices.

This study tries to analyze why and how firms should disclose essential information (both financial and non-financial) to the financial statement users during the COVID-19 pandemic. This study can be used as benchmark to issue a separate policy or standard for reporting any kind of adverse event in the financial reporting and disclosure practices.

To our best knowledge, we believe that this is first kind of study undertaken to investigate the consequence of COVID-19 pandemic on the FRD practices in the context of Bangladesh. This study is kind of exploratory in nature. Hence, future studies can explore industry-based financial reporting and disclosure practice in any pandemic period.

This study is designed and directed to analyze the effect of board characteristics and audit committee attributes on the firm performance of publicly listed commercial banks of Bangladesh.

Thirty publicly listed commercial banks of Dhaka Stock Exchange (DSE) have been taken as sample for this study. Data have been collected from annual reports between 2011 and 2017 of the assessed banks. Pooled OLS model has been used for running regression model of this study.

Board independence has a negative and significant relationship with ROA and Tobin's Q. However, Board Independence has a positive and significant relationship with Stock Return. On the other hand, Board Diversity has a negative and significant relationship with ROA and ROE, which implies inefficiency of diversified board members in the context of Bangladesh. Family duality has a positive and significant relationship with ROA and a negative and significant relationship with Stock return. Board Meeting has a positive and significant relationship with ROA. Audit Committee Size has a negative and significant relationship with Tobins' Q. Independence of audit committee chairman has a negative and significant relationship with Tobin's Q and Stock Returns. Presence of non-executive directors and number of audit meetings have no significant relationship with any of the predicted variables.

Among all variables of the board characteristics, role of independent directors and participation of female directors have conflicting results in this study. This has raised a question about the fair appointment independent directors and their objective view on the board. Female directors' role is not convincing in the context of Bangladesh as most of the commercial banks are family-owned. Policymakers can tighten and supervise the appointment of independent directors to ensure good governance in the banking sector. Moreover, role of audit committee and independence of audit committee chairman have generated conflicting results in terms of market-based performance measure.

Banking sector of Bangladesh experiences huge corruption in the form of excessive NPLs and poor management quality which results in low profit for the firm. This study has explored the problems of management quality and flaws of audit committee which is hampering overall growth of banking industry. Improvement of independent directors' appointment and audit committee formation and reporting will certainly help banking industry of Bangladesh to improve overall performance.

The aim of the study has been performed to investigate the relationship between sustainable supply chain management (SSCM) practices and the cost performance of manufacturing firms in Bangladesh. Moreover, this paper highlights the key environment-friendly approaches and their association with financial performance in Bangladesh.

The paper empirically assesses sustainable supply chain performance using four major supply chain practices, including sustainable procurement, sustainable production, sustainable distribution and investment recovery, and compares it with the cost performance. Twenty-four variables were identified through different literature and distributed as a structured questionnaire among the managers appointed in different manufacturing firms in Bangladesh. An empirical study was conducted using the Partial Least Square-Structural Equation Modeling (PLS-SEM) technique to examine the hypothesized relationships.

The results find a positive relationship in two variables of sustainable supply chain practices, including sustainable procurement and investment recovery, while sustainable distribution negatively impacted cost performance. In addition, sustainable production found no effect on cost performance.

The paper emphasizes the financial perspective of a sustainable supply chain without explicit consideration of sustainability's environmental and social dimensions.

This study has implications for the literature on the SSCM approaches of manufacturing firms in the least developed economies. In addition, this study could work as a guideline for some manufacturing industries that prefer a policy or standard to alter their traditional supply chain management system to a sustainable supply chain.

The paper provides a comprehensive framework for evaluating the coordinated effect of SSCM practices on cost performance where variables of four specific activities of SSCM and cost performance are adopted from different studies. Further studies could be initiated, including some other eco-friendly supply chain variables, and the effect could be evaluated from an environmental perspective.

The purpose of this study is to analyze and forecast the financial sustainability and resilience of commercial banks of Bangladesh in response to the negative effects of COVID-19 pandemic.

Eighteen publicly listed commercial banks of Dhaka Stock Exchange (DSE) have been taken as a sample for this study. To measure the riskiness of banks' credit portfolio, nine industries of DSE have been considered to determine probable loss of revenue arising from the COVID-19 pandemic shock. Moreover, two commonly used multiple-criteria-decision-making (MCDM) tools namely TOPSIS method and HELLWIG method have been used for analyzing the data.

Based on the performance scores under TOPSIS and HELLWIG method, banks are categorized into three groups (six banks each) namely top resilient, moderate resilient and low resilient. It is found that EBL and DBBL are the most resilient banks, and ONEBANK is the worst resilient bank in Bangladesh in managing the COVID-19 pandemic shock.

This study concludes that banks with low capital adequacy, low liquidity ratio, low performance and higher NPLs are more vulnerable to the shocks caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. The management of commercial banks should emphasize on maintaining higher capital base and reducing default loans.

Resilience of the Bangladeshi banking sector under any adverse economic event has been examined by only using stress testing approach. This study is empirical evidence where both TOPSIS and HELLWIG MCDM methods have been used to make the result conclusive.

The purpose of this study is to investigate whether financial resource allocation decisions for corporate social responsibility (CSR) depends on slack resources and free cash flow.

The study's sample consists of 202 company-year observations from 51 financial institutions over the period 2015–2019. The authors collected CSR data from CSR review reports published by the Central Bank (Bangladesh Bank). The financial and governance data are collected from corporate annual reports and year-end review reports published by the Dhaka Stock Exchange. This study uses both the random-effect and generalized estimating equation models to test the hypotheses.

The authors establish two key findings consistent with the predictions of slack resource theory and free cash flow theory. First, the authors find a significant and positive relationship between slack resources and CSR expenditure. This result also supports the traditional thinking about corporate giving – that doing well enables doing good. Second, the author show that increases in free cash flow are associated with increases in CSR expenditure. This indicates the presence of agency problems between managers and shareholders regarding CSR expenditure.

This study is the first to show the positive impacts of slack resources and free cash flow on CSR expenditure in an emerging economy characterized by both capital constraints and high salience of CSR expenditure. The study has important implications for regulators, advocacy groups, shareholders and analysts in emerging economies that share similar contextual characteristics.

The usage rate of mobile financial services (MFS) has shown an uptick since the emergence of the COVID-19 pandemic in Bangladesh. This study aims to reveal the underpinning reasons for such MFS surge and its continuance by integrating health belief model (HBM) and expectation confirmation model (ECM).

The study analyzes 529 MFS users' responses during the second wave of the COVID-19 outbreak in Bangladesh using the partial least square method.

Satisfaction is more predictive than perceived usefulness in explaining continuance usage intention. Expectation confirmation also indirectly affects continuance intention. Among the HBM constructs, the indirect effect of perceived severity on continuance intention via perceived usefulness and satisfaction is significant. Besides, the impact of self-efficacy on continuance intention is also significant. Moreover, perceived credibility significantly affects satisfaction and indirectly affected continuance usage intention via satisfaction.

The study projects boosting customers' satisfaction is critical for the successful retention of existing MFS customers. MFS service providers should emphasize the factors that amplify satisfaction. They must evaluate preadoption factors so that customers can have positive confirmation. Especially, the service providers, the policymakers and the regulators should take an active role in improving the users' self-efficacy and the system's credibility. Undertaking the MFS literacy program, installing hotline service to provide emergency help will boost users' confidence in using the system.

The study is a unique contribution in the context of Bangladesh. To the best of the authors’ knowledge, no previous MFS studies in Bangladesh explored MFS continuance usage intention during COVID-19 and beyond. Besides, the inclusion of “perceived credibility” in the framework will supplement the earlier studies conducted on this aspect.