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This paper aims to examine the impact of various economic, social and environmental issues on the sustainable development of Pakistan, both directly and indirectly through the sustainability dimensions of China–Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC), a multi-billion-dollar megaproject.

Using a quantitative (deductive) methodological approach, data were collected using a strategy of an online questionnaire survey from diverse stakeholders of CPEC in Pakistan. Partial least squares-based structural equation modeling technique was used to test the relationship between observed and latent variables.

The results confirmed the positive impact of various economic, social and environmental issues on the sustainable development of Pakistan directly and indirectly through the partial mediation of sustainability dimensions of CPEC.

Sustainability perceptions of stakeholders about CPEC and its relationship with sustainable development are critical issues for governments and policymakers. This paper suggest how economic, social and environmental dimensions of CPEC can enhance the positive perception which is necessary for stakeholder involvement and support for megaprojects such as CPEC.

This study evaluated the megaprojects of CPEC from a sustainability perspective through stakeholders’ perceptions by proposing and testing a parsimonious research model that has never been examined in the existing literature.

The purpose of this paper is to identify and critically examine a framing of key characteristics for climate change adaptation learning and action in the context of urban Pakistani local government.

The research employed a combination of approaches; predominantly literature review and interview methodologies. Recognising the need to understand climate change adaptation as an iterative learning process, the literature review concentrated on organisational and policy learning, with special consideration given to those characteristics most pertinent to urban governance in the Pakistani context. This analysis was then furthered through primary data collated through a series of interviews, with the City District Government of Lahore as the chosen case study for this piece of research. Initial scoping interviews were followed up by a series of in‐depth, semi‐structured, interviews with local government officials, an assessment process used to examine conceptual evidence and findings in the Pakistani urban context. A total of 21 Pakistani professionals, working in a variety of roles for local government, were subject to the interview process.

From a critical analysis of conceptual and real world evidence, the authors identified six discrete characteristics that could be used to frame the context of climate change adaptation learning and action in the Pakistani urban local government context. These have been categorised as: leadership for adaptation, vision for adaptation, culture for adaptation, good governance for adaptation, innovation and creativity for adaptation and resources for adaptation.

The value of this paper is several‐fold: it applies a learning perspective to the climate change adaptation debate, identifies a framing of key characteristics for climate change adaptation learning and action, and uses an actor‐based approach to examine some of the key conceptual ideas in the Pakistani urban context.

The National Health Service Breast Screening Programme set up 20 years ago in the UK has to evolve continuously to meet changing needs as a result of fundamental transformations in the age and ethnic profile of the population. This article draws on evidence generated as part of the Healthcare Commission's national study aimed at identifying issues that may contribute to different groups not having equal access to, experience of, or outcomes from services relating to breast screening and breast cancer treatment. Findings indicate that ethnicity has an effect on the awareness of services and of breast cancer. Access to screening and the experience of screening and treatment are influenced by the interaction of ethnicity with age. Younger women from certain black and minority ethnic groups face particular barriers. There can be additional barriers experienced by those from linguistic minorities. Equality of access, experience and outcomes does not mean treating everyone the same way.

It is essential to understand how the countries with the highest number of tourist arrivals have managed to recover or not based on the competitiveness of the tourism industry during the pandemic stage. It is necessary to evaluate the policies implemented by each government to maintain the competitive performance of their industries. This chapter proposes a comprehensive review of the policies implemented in the 10 most visited countries according to UNWTO data. Most of these policies are geared toward economic and financial flexibility strategies for companies and individuals in the industry under study. The effectiveness of these policies is evaluated with statistical information extracted from a unified UNWTO database to reduce biases in the effectiveness analysis. Finally, concluding remarks are offered on the effectiveness of the policies and their contribution to the sector's recovery.

This study aims to investigate the role of women in business leadership, specifically the effect of women on boards (WoB) on corporate environmental responsibility engagement (CERE) and corporate financial performance (CFP) in the Indonesian manufacturing companies. Furthermore, it also examines whether CERE mediates the WoB – CFP relationship.

This is quantitative research using secondary data obtained from the Indonesian Stock Exchange and the website of each company. Using agency theory, upper echelon theory and sustainability theory, 645 firm-year data from the period of 2015–2019 are analysed. The partial least squares structural equation modelling is used to test the hypotheses studied.

The results indicate that WoB is positively associated with CFP and CERE, CERE is positively associated with CFP and CERE mediates the effect of WoB on CFP. The samples are derived from the manufacturing industry; thus, it limits its generalisation. The result implies that investors need to increase the proportion of WoB to enhance CFP. For management, it implies that WoB has an important role in increasing environmental responsibility. For regulators, such as the Indonesian Financial Service Authority, it provides useful information for policymaking in terms of increasing the proportion of WoB and the need for a sustainability report. With increased WoB and CERE, CFP will be better so that society will also gain increased social benefits.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, the topic is rarely investigated, especially in the two-tier governance system that uses WoB, CERE and CFP. By investigating the impact of women’s presence on the board of commissioners and the board of directors, this research provides crucial empirical evidence for the agency theory, upper echelon theory and sustainability theory. A new data set also has been created for this research.

The abrupt outbreak of coronavirus disease (COVID-19) hit every nation in 2020–2021, causing a worldwide pandemic. The worldwide COVID-19 epidemic, described as a “black swan”, has severely disrupted manufacturing firms' supply chain. The purpose of this study is to investigate how supply chain data analytics enable the effective deployment of agility, adaptability and alignment (3As) strategies, resulting in improving post-COVID disruption performance. It also analyses the indirect effect of supply chain data analytics on disruption performance through the 3As supply chain strategies.

The hypothesis and theoretical framework were tested using a questionnaire survey. The authors employed structural equation modelling through the SMART PLS version 3.2.7 to analyse data from 163 textile firms located in Pakistan.

The results revealed that the supply chain data analytics contributed positively and significantly to the agility and adaptability, while all 3As supply chain strategies impacted the PPERF substantially. Further, the connection between supply chain data analytics (SCDA) and disruption performance has substantially been influenced through 3As supply chain strategies.

The results imply that in the event of low likelihood, high effect disruptions, managers and decision-makers should focus their efforts on integrating data analytics capabilities with 3As supply chain policies to ensure long-term company success.

This research sheds fresh light on the importance of data analytics in effectively implementing 3As strategies for sustaining company performance amid COVID-19 disruptions.

The role of insurance is a backbone for consumers to secure their future. It is important to know where to invest and what are the benefits. Therefore, for the Muslim segment, Islamic insurance system provides Riba (interest)-free environment where consumers invest their money and recover their losses according to sharia. This paper aims to examine the determinants that influence purchase intention of consumers toward Islamic insurance (Takaful) adoption in Pakistan with the help of the modified theory of planned behavior (TPB).

The authors added four specific variables related to Islamic sharia compliance in the conventional form of the TPB. The relationship among the variables is assessed by using partial least squares structural equation modeling, while the data are collected from 305 respondents.

The results suggest that attitude, subjective norm and perceived behavioral control are strong predictors of an Islamic insurance adoption in Pakistan. Moreover, factors such as compatibility, relative advantage and awareness have positive and significant impacts on takaful participation. A negative but insignificant relation is found between perceived risk and intention.

This paper provides insight for understanding the factors that lead to consumers' purchase intention of Islamic insurance.

This paper makes a unique contribution to the literature with reference to Pakistan, being a pioneering attempt to investigate the factors of Islamic insurance adoption by modifying the TPB and applying more rigorous statistical techniques like confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) and partial least square structural equation modeling.

This paper aims to investigate the impact of total quality management (TQM) practices on the work-related attitudes of International Non-Governmental Organisations (INGOs) staff, including job involvement, job satisfaction, career satisfaction and organisational commitment.

The paper developed and tested 16 hypotheses on the relationship between TQM practices and work-related attitudes. Out of 295 targeted staff working for 59 INGOs operating in Jordan, 126 staff have responded to the research questionnaire. The collected dataset has been analysed using the structural equation modelling-partial least square (SEM-PLS) technique.

Analysis of the data revealed the significant positive effect of TQM practices. Beneficiary focus, empowerment-teamwork and continuous improvement impact 35% of job involvement. Meanwhile, beneficiary focus and empowerment-teamwork affect 34 and 47% of career satisfaction and organisational commitment, respectively. Significantly, empowerment-teamwork and continuous improvement determine 62% of job satisfaction. However, the low extent of training and education is challenging to enhance employees' positive emotions.

This research provides further evidence on the importance of TQM practices to the leaders of INGOs. Therefore, to orient their resources towards TQM implementation to enhance work-related attitudes, and in turn, the performance of interventions in this challenging sector.

This research extends the knowledge regarding certain TQM practices that naturally and variably empower job and career satisfaction, job involvement, and organisational commitment within the INGOs. Therefore, to confirm the validity of this research direction in a new uncovered sector, which has its own specificities.

Sharding of blockchains consists of partitioning a blockchain network into several sub-networks called “shards,” each shard processing and storing disjoint sets of transactions in parallel. Sharding has recently been applied to public blockchains to improve scalability through parallelism. The throughput of sharded blockchain is optimized when the workload among the shards is approximately the same. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the problem of balancing workload of account-based blockchains such as Ethereum.

Two known consensus-based distributed load-balancing algorithms have been adapted to sharded blockchains. These algorithms migrate accounts across shards to balance transaction processing times. Two methods to predict transaction processing times are proposed.

The authors identify some challenging aspects for solving the load-balancing problem in sharded blockchains. Experiments conducted with Ethereum transactions show that the two load-balancing algorithms are challenged by accounts often created to process a single transaction to optimize anonymity, while existing accounts sparsely generate transactions.

Tests in this work have been conducted on transactions originating from a blockchain platform rather than using artificially generated data distributions. They show the specificity of the load-balancing problem for sharded blockchains, which were hidden in artificial data sets.

The adoption of Islamic banking (AIB) among customers has remained in the limelight due to its significance in the strategic marketing of Islamic banking (IB) services. Although researchers have devoted a significant effort to investigating the drivers of AIB, little is known about the exclusive barriers hampering AIB. Accordingly, this paper aims to examine the underlying barriers to the adoption of Islamic banking (BAIB) and categorize them into different research clusters using bibliometric analysis.

The data was collected from 132 articles published in Scopus database between 2007 and 2022 and analyzed using VOSviewer to explore BAIB.

The findings clustered the barriers to AIB into three groups, namely, efficiency of IB products and services (service quality, Shariah compliance level, availability of services), behavioral (knowledge and awareness, religiosity, trust and intention) and personal attributes (innovativeness, understanding of mobile/internet banking and technology acceptance) factors of Islamic bank customers.

The sample size of this study is relatively small, as the data was imported from Scopus database only to perform Bibliometric analysis. Future studies may use larger sample size by retrieving data from other databases such as Web of Science and PubMed to develop better research clusters of BAIB.

The dynamic business environment and unprecedented changes in consumer behavior require managers creating suitable conditions to foster adoption of their services and capture a better market share.

Following the findings of this research, future research avenues are identified for strategic embeddedness and global development of IB by overcoming BAIB.