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This study investigates the relationship between bank capital and liquidity creation and further examines the effect that institutional quality has on this relationship in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA).

The data comprise 41 universal banks in nine SSA countries from 2010 to 2022. The study employs the two-step system generalized methods of moments and further uses alternative estimators such as the fixed-effect and two-stage least squares methods.

The empirical results show that bank capital has a direct positive and significant effect on liquidity creation. In addition, the positive effect of bank capital on liquidity creation is enhanced, particularly in a strong institutional environment. The results imply that nonconstraining capital regulatory policies bolster bank solvency, improve risk-absorption capacity and increase liquidity creation.

This study has several policy implications. First, it provides empirical evidence on the position of banks in SSA on the financial fragility and risk-absorption hypothesis of bank capital and liquidity creation debates. This study shows that the effect of bank capital on liquidity creation in SSA countries is positive and supports the risk-absorption hypothesis. Second, this study highlights that a country's quality institutions can complement bank capital to increase liquidity creation. In addition, this study highlights that nonconstraining capital regulatory policies will bolster bank solvency, improve risk-absorption capacity and increase liquidity creation.

The novelty of this study is that it introduces the country's quality institutional environment into bank capital and liquidity creation links for the first time in SSA.

The study seeks to evaluate the effect of capital adequacy and competition on the liquidity creation of Kenyan commercial banks.

Unbalanced panel data from 36 Kenyan commercial banks with licenses from 2001 to 2020 is used in the study. The generalized method of moments (GMM), a two-step system, is employed in the investigation. To increase the robustness and prevent erroneous findings, serial correlation tests and instrumental validity analyses are used. The methodology developed by Berger and Bouwman (2009) is used to estimate the commercial banks' levels of liquidity creation.

The study supports the financial fragility-crowding out hypothesis by finding a significant negative effect of capital adequacy on the liquidity creation of commercial banks. The research also identifies a significant inverse relationship between competition and liquidity creation, depicting competition's value-destroying effect.

A trade-off exists between capital adequacy and liquidity creation, which must be carefully evaluated as changes in capital requirements are considered. The value-destroying effect of competition on liquidity creation presents a case for policy geared toward consolidating banks' operations through possible mergers and acquisitions.

To the best of the authors' knowledge, this is the first study to empirically offer evidence concurrently on the effect of competition and capital adequacy on the liquidity creation of commercial banks in a developing economy such as Kenya. Additionally, the authors employ a novel measure of competition at the firm level.

It is largely acknowledged that arbitrating the flow of knowledge can help firms strategically leverage tacit and explicit internal knowledge. However, despite the apparent scholarly and managerial acceptance of the criticality of the flow of knowledge between various stakeholders, the academic understanding of knowledge arbitrage remains coarse-grained. There are practically no empirical insights available to unravel the consequences of firms’ knowledge arbitrage choices regarding rewards and risks. This study aims to identify the risks that emerge as firms channel the flow of knowledge from surplus to deficit areas within organizational boundaries. To this end, the authors investigate several subsumed subprocesses in knowledge arbitrage to map the associated risks.

This study used an exploratory qualitative approach to examine the risks that emerge as firms attempt to support knowledge flows within their organizational boundaries. The data were collected through open-ended essays via an online research platform from 45 full-time employees of firms operating in different sectors. The collected data were analyzed inductively through open, axial and selective coding.

The research findings identified three key subprocesses of knowledge arbitrage: knowledge diffusion, knowledge brokering and knowledge absorption. These subprocesses are susceptible to various risks arising the form of channels, champions, sharers and receivers of knowledge flows. In general, the study showed that a firm’s decision regarding knowledge flows, such as structured or random flows, or the presence or absence of designated coordinators to broker the flow carries specific risks for both sharers and receivers. In particular, while the risks of knowledge hiding, misinformation and disinformation manifest in all three subprocesses, low employee engagement, loss of knowledge and information overload also emerged as key risks in any two of the three subprocesses.

This study offers valuable insights by uncovering the hitherto unexplored risks in intrafirm knowledge arbitrage. Given that knowledge is a crucial organizational tool for driving performance, innovation and competitive advantage, understanding the risks associated with intrafirm arbitrated knowledge flows can help firms anticipate and mitigate the associated adverse consequences. The findings make a novel contribution by offering (a) a comprehensive categorization of the risks associated with knowledge arbitrage rooted in processes, people and structures and (b) a macro overview of knowledge arbitrage risks associated with the processes of knowledge diffusion, knowledge brokering and knowledge absorption.

This paper aims to investigate empirically the impact of economic policy uncertainty (EPU) on small-to-medium enterprises’ (SMEs) investment efficiency and whether product market competition influences this association.

The study was conducted on French SMEs listed on the “CAC Mid & Small” Index over 2008–2021. This paper proposes a quantitative approach to test the relationship between the EPU and SME investment efficiency.

These findings show that EPU significantly alleviates SMEs’ investment inefficiency, reflected in the reduction of overinvestment and underinvestment. As EPU increases, firms with more exposure to such uncertainty invest more efficiently, and their overinvestment tendency becomes lower, while reducing the risk of underinvestment. These results are still significant after a series of robustness checks. Further analysis shows that EPU mitigates investment inefficiency to a greater extent for firms operating in highly competitive industries, and better information environments.

This study was limited to the French EPU index and could be extended to a European or even international scale. Moreover, using alternative uncertainty indexes across various European countries can be more advantageous in further studies. Although results suggest that EPU affects investment efficiency, future studies could further explore the mechanisms through which EPU affects SMEs’ investment efficiency and, in particular, across different industries. Understanding these variations due to the specific industry-EPU sensitivity can provide valuable insights. Finally, it would be interesting to examine the risk management strategies adopted by SMEs in the face of EPU, combined with other growing risks, such as climate risk.

In the face of high EPU, SME managers must improve risk management, adopt appropriate investment strategies, consider using predictive analytics or economic forecasting tools and embrace technology and innovation that enhance agility and responsiveness to policy uncertainty. Besides, political decision-makers should adapt their regulatory policies (tax, labor, housing, etc.) to preserve the efficiency of SME investment.

Although the debates on how policy uncertainty affects the investment and financing of large businesses have received a great concern of academia, to the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first study that focuses on the effect of EPU on investment distortions for SMEs.

This paper aims to investigate associations between firm resources and reliance on entrepreneurial marketing (EM) channels among agrofood ventures. It accounts for agropreneur gender and racial/ethnic status in the context of marketing channel portfolio composition. The authors examine the established assumption that resource limitations drive EM and whether socially disadvantaged status of agropreneurs is associated with marketing strategy beyond standard resourcing measures.

Using 2015 Local Foods Marketing Practices Survey data, the authors apply linear regression to investigate differences in the use of EM channels, accounting for resources, social status and other factors.

Limited-resource ventures rely more on consumer-oriented channels that require EM practices. Socially disadvantaged entrepreneurs favor these channels, even when accounting for resources. Notably, ventures headed by men of color rely more on the most customer-centric local foods marketing channel.

Future research should investigate how social and human capital influences the use of EM.

Entrepreneurial support policy and practice for agropreneurs should be cautious about the “double-burden” folk theorem of intersectional disadvantage and review how to best direct resources on EM to groups most likely to benefit.

This paper uses a unique, restricted, nation-wide, federal data set to examine relationships between resource endowments, social status and the composition of agrofood enterprises’ marketing channel portfolios. To the best of the authors’ knowledge, it is the first to include racial- and ethnic-minority status of agropreneurs and to account for intersectionality with gender.

The choice between different financing sources is governed by a number of finance theories, particularly, trade-off theory and pecking order theory. However, the special characteristics of Islamic finance, which forces the exclusion of conventional bonds, leave Islamic banks with limited number of alternatives. Tier 1 sukuk are distinguished type of sukuk that combines the features of conventional bonds and stocks. This paper aims to answer the following question: Does the issuance of Tier 1 sukuk positively affect Islamic banks’ profitability or is their impact concentrated on enhancing Islamic banks’ capital adequacy ratios?

The data set used in this study consists of all United Arab Emirates (UAE) Islamic banks that issued Tier 1 sukuk over the period 2010–2020. Pooled and fixed effects panel regressions of Tier 1 sukuk and other control variables on three proxies of Islamic banks’ profitability were run. The selection of fixed-effect model is based on Hausman test, redundant fixed effects and likelihood ratio test.

This study reveals novel findings. Tier 1 sukuk increases both earnings per share (EPS) and capital adequacy ratios. That is, this study finds that there is a positive significant impact of Tier 1 sukuk on EPS, which indicates that issuing more Tier 1 sukuk will generate more return to shareholders in terms of higher EPS because of the lower cost of Tier 1 sukuk compared to equity. However, this study finds that there is an insignificant impact of Tier on sukuk on both return on assets and return on equity. Hence, it is concluded that Tier 1 sukuk does not increase the risk appetite of UAE Islamic banks.

Tier 1 sukuk is a niche instrument that has been recently used by Islamic banks. Hence, there are a limited number of Islamic banks that have issued this type of sukuk and consequently limited number of observations. Therefore, with the increased use of this instrument, a larger set of data will be available for examination. In addition, future research could examine the relationship between issuing Tier 1 sukuk and profitability in other countries where such sukuk have loss absorption feature. The impact of other types of sukuk, such as liability sukuk, on Islamic banks’ profitability could also be an interesting field of study.

This study recommends Islamic banks to issue more Tier 1 sukuk to enhance their profitability indicators while meeting Basel III accord. This study also recommends investors to purchase the stocks of Islamic banks that issue Tier 1 sukuk because they are able to offer them higher EPS. The authors advise the UAE regulators to allow Islamic banks to issue Tier 1 sukuk with loss absorption feature to enable Islamic banks engage in more risky activities that usually provide larger profits. This study also suggests that the Islamic Financial Services Board (IFSB) reclassifies Tier 1 sukuk, with loss absorption feature, within the highest quality of capital, common equity Tier 1, to encourage Islamic banks to issue this type of sukuk, especially Basel III accord and IFSB 15 require higher ratios of common equity Tier 1 to risk-weighted assets.

This research contributes to the existing literature in two ways. First, it adds to the existing literature on the impact of sukuk on Islamic banks profitability. That is, contrary to prior studies that merely investigate the impact of issuing ordinary sukuk on profitability, this study explores a distinguished type of sukuk, that is Tier 1 sukuk, that has been surprisingly ignored so far. Second, this study shows that it is not only capital adequacy ratios that have improved as a result of issuing Tier 1 sukuk but also Tier 1 sukuk reduce the cost of capital of UAE Islamic banks which has been reflected in a higher profitability proxied by EPS. Hence, these sukuk serve a dual function for Islamic banks by improving both capital adequacy and profitability ratios.

Due to the recent increase in unexpected events that negatively affect projects, the concept of resilience has grasped the attention of researchers, as risk management alone fails to address unpredicted events. This study aims to identify resilience dimensions and their designated factors and then construct a comprehensive definition for resilience in construction projects.

This paper adopted a qualitative research design through content analysis of semi-structured interviews with project engineers on behalf of their construction project; 26 interviews were analyzed via ATLAS.ti.

The results demonstrate that resilience in construction projects consists of four main dimensions: preparation, absorption, recovery and adaptation; each dimension comprises separate factors. The evidence from this study demonstrates that the resilience of the organization, project team and project manager supports the construction project when facing unpredicted or abnormal conditions.

The results of this paper will help construction project managers to enhance the resilience of their projects by providing different resilience factors.

The resilience concept in projects is novel and has limited knowledge available, especially in construction projects therefore, it requires additional comprehensive discussion and validation. The findings of this paper will serve as a cornerstone for the development of the resilience field and enrich the indigent literature on resilience in the construction industry.

Drawing upon the extended resource-based view (ERBV), this research aims to examine the effects of supply chain diversification (SCD) on enterprise digital transformation (DT), focusing on the external perspective of the supply chain.

Leveraging panel data from Chinese A-share listed companies from 2015 to 2022, this research employs multiple regression analysis to empirically examine the relationship between SCD and enterprise DT.

The results of analysis indicate that: (1) SCD positively influences enterprise DT, a relationship that persists even after rigorous endogenous and serial robustness testing. (2) SCD fosters enterprise DT by bolstering its absorption, innovation, and adaptive capabilities. (3) Executive risk preferences and Pilot Policies positively mediate the effects of SCD on enterprise DT.

This research provides novel empirical insights into the underlying mechanism linking SCD and enterprise DT. The findings offer valuable guidance for enterprises seeking to optimize supply chain management and embrace DT, while also informing policymakers on strategies to facilitate SCD and DT enhancement among enterprises.

Due to white rice’s association with diabetes and other chronic diseases in many Asian countries, many industries are working to develop high-fiber rice substitutes with similar organoleptic characteristics. Konjac rice (KR) is a promising option, but maintaining its optimal fiber content for health benefits while preserving its ideal sensory profile remains a challenge. This study aims to investigate whether a KR formula, combining tapioca flour and glucomannan gel, possesses similar organoleptic attributes to white rice while preventing glycemic response elevation.

In a six-week randomized single-blind clinical trial, 13 normoweight nondiabetic subjects received varying konjac-based rice and white rice ratios. Blood glucose levels were measured at intervals, and glycemic response was assessed using incremental area under the curve (iAUC). Visual analog scale gauged satiety, and organoleptic properties were evaluated.

Substituting white rice with pure and partial konjac-based rice significantly lowered postprandial blood sugar levels and glycemic response (p = 0.002). iAUC for pure KR and KR 1:1 was notably lower than white rice (p = 0.002). Subjects reported a sense of fullness comparable to white rice, with no significant organoleptic score differences (p = 0.260).

The study’s generalizability is compromised due to the limited number of participants, impacting external validity. The examined parameters offer a rough understanding of konjac grain’s impact on postprandial glycemic responses but do not elucidate underlying mechanisms or the duration of its inhibitory effect on glucose absorption. Long-term effects on metabolic, hormonal parameters and the colon’s microbial flora composition and function remain unexplored, constraining comprehensive insights into konjac grain’s extended implications.

This study introduces a novel KR formula to address the escalating diabetes risks associated with white rice consumption. Substituting white rice with KR significantly reduces postprandial blood sugar levels, highlighting its potential in preventing type 2 diabetes (T2D). Tapioca flour enhances palatability, making KR a viable option. While promising, long-term effectiveness and safety require further research, emphasizing comprehensive lifestyle interventions. The study contributes valuable insights to innovative dietary strategies for prevalent health conditions, emphasizing the need for ongoing efforts in public health.

White rice, a staple in Asian societies, is linked to a heightened risk of T2D due to increased production and inadequate dietary fiber. This connection contributes to the economic burden on governments through health insurance and lost productivity. Encouraging alternatives rich in fiber can mitigate this burden, offering a socioeconomically beneficial solution to preventable chronic diseases.

This trial demonstrates konjac-based rice’s potential in curbing glycemic responses, hinting at its role in preventing T2D. Glucomannan’s viscosity, satiety induction and potential gut health impact are highlighted. Further research is warranted for long-term effectiveness and safety. These findings contribute to the growing evidence supporting glucomannan as a valuable tool in addressing prevalent health conditions.

Manufacturers face various challenges and risks during their digital servitization (DS), due to the complexity caused by introducing breakthrough technologies, increasingly complex product-service solutions and new stakeholders in the business network. The process necessitates the implementation of various changes that usually happen over a long period of time. Using complexity management as a theoretical lens, this paper delves into manufacturers’ DS journeys and explores how manufacturers manage the associated complexities.

This paper investigates the DS journey of two manufacturers in a longitudinal case study from 2014 to 2021.

Three main complexity management actions during the DS journey were identified: shaping the digital service system, shaping the organization and shaping the network. Tied to different types of complexities, these actions demonstrate how manufacturers navigate their journey. The findings also reveal different complexity management approaches used at the different stages of this journey.

This paper offers a comprehensive framework for understanding complexity management in the DS journey, including the types of complexities, complexity management actions and complexity management approaches and their rationale. This paper shows that different requirements are created during emerge, consolidate and evolve stages of the DS journey. Manufacturers need a dynamic approach that considers changes in complexities and actions over time.