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The purpose of this study is to examine the impact of the marketing mix, customer perceptions, and religion on the buying decision of Islamic banking products in an emerging market namely the United Arab Emirates (UAE).

This study adopts a quantitative approach to analyze the data of 435 respondents collected through an online survey during January–February 2022. Data analysis of direct and moderating relationships are done through Smart PLS (partial least squares) using structural equation modelling (SEM) technique.

The results indicate that marketing mix (product, price, place and promotion) and customer perceptions have a positive direct relation with the buying decision of Islamic banking products in the UAE. However, moderation analysis shows that religion is a non-significant moderator for the above relationships.

This study combines potential variables from the perspectives of marketing, human mindset, and individual beliefs. The findings of this study provide a wider understanding of consumer behavior toward Islamic banking products. Marketers of the Islamic banking industry can utilize these findings for effective market segmentation and well-crafted marketing strategies. This will ultimately contribute to the sustainable growth and development of the Islamic banking industry in the UAE and other regions.

The purpose of this study is to examine the various factors that influence the productivity (PR) of employees who worked remotely in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) during the COVID-19 pandemic.

This study adopts a quantitative approach to analyze data collected online from 110 respondents using the snowball sampling technique during the pandemic. The analysis of the data is conducted using the structural equation modeling (SEM) technique of Smart PLS (Partial least squares) to evaluate the direct and moderating variables.

The results indicate that direct variables such as workload, job satisfaction, work–life balance and social support have a significant positive impact on employee PR in the UAE. However, the analysis of the moderating variable indicates that job level is not a significant moderator of the above relationships. The findings, generally, provide support for social exchange theory.

The findings of this study will help businesses of various domains in a variety of industries in understanding the core factors that should be considered to enhance the overall PR of their employees while working from home. Businesses can achieve their organizational goals by ensuring steady growth even during uncertain times.

This paper answers the question of whether remote working affects employee PR during the pandemic in an emerging market, namely the UAE. The current study contributes to the existing literature by combining the variables investigated in previous studies into a single study and by considering job level as a moderator variable.

Although 76% of the population of the United Arab Emirates (UAE) is Muslim, takāful (Islamic insurance) has a much smaller share of business in the UAE than conventional insurance does. The purpose of this study is to highlight the importance of brand equity (BE), which is known as the incremental value that provides reason to buy a brand. This study provides useful insights that can help the health takāful industry to gain a feasible market share in the UAE.

This is a quantitative study in which stratified random sampling was adopted for data collection from 300 respondents through a self-administered questionnaire from August to November 2018. Underpinning the study is the theory of planned behavior (TPB) and the structural equation modeling (SEM) technique has been used to examine the impact of BE on purchase intentions (PI) through the moderating role of demographic factors such as age, income, education and religion. Three dimensions of BE, i.e. brand awareness (BAW), brand association (BAS) and perceived quality (PQ), are evaluated in terms of their significance as dimensions of BE.

The major findings of this study confirm that BE has a strong positive influence on the PIs of health takāful customers in the UAE and that all three dimensions of BE make significant contributions to the overall BE. The results show that education does moderate the relationship between BE and PI while age, income and religion do not. A new finding of this study is the nonsignificant moderating role of religion, whereby it was found that takāful products in the UAE are not limited to Muslim customers but can include potential customers who are followers of other religions.

To the best of our knowledge, the present study is the first of its kind to examine the impact of BE on the PI of health takāful customers in the UAE. The findings of the study give academia, researchers and marketers a better understanding of the importance of BE and of its vital role in promoting takāful products in the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries such as the UAE.

The purpose of this paper is to analyze zero valent iron nanoparticles (NZVIs) by a novel green method, taken from Thymus vulgaris (TV) plant extract, were synthesized and applied to degrade reactive black 5 (RB5) azo dye.

The optimum conditions for the highest removal of RB5 dye were determined. Characterization of NZVIs was done by scanning electron microscopy (SEM), transmission electron microscopy (TEM), Fourier-transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR), transmission electron microscopy (TEM) and X-ray diffraction (XRD). The NZVIs were used for the removal of dye RB5, and the parameters affecting were discussed like pH, initial concentration, contact time and NZVIs dosage.

The characterization results of NZVIs by SEM, TEM, FTIR and XRD show that polyphenols, organic acids and proteins reduce not only the green synthesis of NZVIs but also the aggregation of nanoparticles. The maximum dye removal efficiency of 99.6 per cent occurred at pH 4, NZVIs dose of 600 mg/L, and contact time of 5 min. The adsorption of RB5 dye onto the NZVIs surface and scavenging of the azo bond (−N = N) by the strong reduction of NZVIs were the proposed mechanisms for dye removal. The application of NZVIs to treat wastewater containing reactive dye shows high degradation efficiency.

The findings may greatly benefit the application of the NZVIs taken from Thymus vulgaris (TV) in the fields of dye adsorption.

The present study is novel because it incorporated the morphological and structural properties of the synthesized NZVIs using a native plant of Iran and studied the capability of green-synthesized NZVIs to remove RB5 as a water contaminant.

The native plant presented here can be developed for reduced environmental pollution before discharge to accepted water.

The NZVIs is prepared via green-synthesized method, which is prepared with leaves of TV. There are two main innovations. One is that the novel NZVIs is prepared successfully by native plant via green-synthesized method. The other is that the optimized conditions were obtained for the removal of RB5 dye as a water contaminant. Furthermore, to the best of our knowledge, no study has ever investigated the removal of RB5 by NZVIs produced using a native plant in Iran.

Using the lenses of social exchange and reactance theories, this study examines the relationships between abusive supervision and both turnover intentions and job satisfaction. The moderating role of employee depression in the relationship between abusive supervision and these specific work outcomes is also investigated, by incorporating the conservation of resources theory.

Quantitative data were collected from a sample of 221 frontline retail employees, across shopping malls in the Caribbean nation of Trinidad. A 3-step multiple hierarchical regression analysis was performed to test the relationships.

The findings provided support for the propositions that abusive supervision predicts job satisfaction and turnover intentions, respectively. Employee depression moderated the relationship between abusive supervision and job satisfaction but did not moderate the relationship between abusive supervision and turnover intentions.

While existing research has explored the relationships between abusive supervision, job satisfaction and turnover intentions, limited studies have investigated the moderating role of employee depression. This study contributes to understanding this pervasive workplace issue by investigating a relatively unexplored moderating effect.

This study aims to investigate the impact of corporate governance compliance, governance reforms and board attributes on operating liquidity of Pakistani listed non-financial firms. The study further tests how these relationships vary in the pre- and post-corporate governance reforms.

Fixed-effect regression model is used on 10 years panel data from 2007 to 2016 for a sample of 170 firms listed on the Pakistan Stock Exchange. Two-stage least squares model is used for addressing the endogeneity problem.

The findings reveal that governance compliance and governance reforms negatively affect operating liquidity. Among the board attributes, board meetings, directors’ remuneration, board foreign diversity and board gender diversity are significantly related to operating liquidity. Further exploration indicates that internal governance mechanisms are less effective to safeguard shareholders from expropriation during weak external governance. This suggests that strong external governance is inevitable to the effectiveness of internal governance mechanisms. Overall, the study findings support the agency theory.

The findings provide valid recommendations to policymakers interested in safeguarding the investors to focus on macro-level governance for making the micro-level governance effective. Further, the results provide the executives with an insight to improve the compliance level with the code of corporate governance.

Unlike prior studies, this study examines the impact of corporate governance compliance and novel board attributes – directors’ attendance at board meetings, number of board committees, directors’ remuneration and board foreign diversity on operating liquidity. Further, the study subdivides its sample period into pre- and post-corporate governance reforms to examine how external governance influences internal governance effectiveness.

From the agency theory’s point of view, this paper aims to analyze corporate governance mechanisms about the characteristics of the companies quoted in the segments Bovespa Mais and Bovespa Mais 2 and their influence on the creation of value in preparation for the opening of the initial public offering (IPO).

A quantitative approach was adopted to achieve the proposed objective using the panel data with fixed effects and secondary data collected on the Comissão de Valores Mobiliários website, using statistical software Stata® 13.0 for statistical tests. The population comprises non-financial companies belonging to the Bovespa Mais and Bovespa Mais Level 2 groups, as the survey sample took into account the period of adhesion of the companies, totaled in 15 companies, which cover the period from 2008 to 2019. The selected variables correspond to the ownership structure’s characteristics, then the board’s composition and the fiscal council as the body responsible for supervising the administrators’ acts.

The main results indicate that the number of independent members on the board of directors and the supervisory board’s participation positively influence market performance. However, it also reveals that the concentration of ownership brings fundraising for other companies’ acquisitions, risk reduction concerning information asymmetry between investing powers.

The main results indicate that the number of independent members on the board of directors and the supervisory board’s participation positively influence market performance. Despite this, it also reveals that the concentration of ownership brings fundraising for other companies’ acquisitions, risk reduction concerning information asymmetry between investing powers.

This paper advances a comparative institutional perspective to explain capital market choice by firms making an IPO in a foreign market. This paper finds that internal governance characteristics (founder-chief executive officer, executive incentives and board independence) and external network characteristics (prestigious underwriters, degree of venture capitalist syndication and board interlocks) are significant predictors of foreign capital market choice by foreign IPO firms.

While product market choices have been central to strategy formulation for firms in the past, financial markets’ integration makes capital markets an equally crucial strategic decision. This paper advances a comparative institutional perspective to explain capital market choice by firms making an IPO in a foreign market.

This situation generates value to shareholders and is perceived by the market and, ultimately, generates a direct relationship with the market performance of companies. While product market choices have been central to strategy formulation for firms in the past, financial markets’ integration makes capital markets an equally major strategic decision.

The purpose of this study is to evaluate the synergy of corporate governance (CG) with intellectual capital (IC) and to assess the moderating effect of profitability indicator on the aforementioned synergy using agency theory, resource-based view theory and theory of financial ratios as conceptual frameworks.

The sample includes 72 companies with a six-year data set drawn from the KSE 100 Index companies of Pakistan. In addition, the study adopts Pulic’s model to compute the efficiency of IC. The research uses fixed-effect panel regression for analysis and two-stage least squares regression (2SLS) to address endogeneity issues in the estimation process.

The results showcased that chief executive officer duality possesses negligible impact on IC efficiency (ICE), while independent directors, audit committees and board size tend to attain a strong association with IC. Moreover, it postulates that the moderation of return on equity strengthens the path between all governance components and ICE significantly.

The research uses a 2SLS regression analysis to explore how CG practices take hold on the effectiveness of IC in Pakistan while taking into account the moderating impact of profitability. The findings add to the body of knowledge on the value that strong governance practices have on businesses and society.