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The research examines how behavioral intentions, as a higher-order construct, indirectly affect financial inclusion through service trust, usage behavior and financial literacy in mobile money adoption.

Following the positivist research philosophy, a cross-sectional study design was used to collect data through questionnaires comprised of scales adapted from prior studies. With a usable sample size of 340 respondents, this study employs partial least squares structural equation modeling to assess the model.

The study revealed the significant indirect role of behavioral intention on financial inclusion through use behavior, behavioral intentions on use behavior through service trust, and use behavior on financial inclusion through financial literacy. The role of behavioral intentions on financial inclusion through serial mediation of service trust, use behavior and financial literacy was also found to be significant.

This study's novelty resides in examining the indirect relationship between behavioral intentions and financial inclusion, specifically via the serial mediation of service trust, use behavior and financial literacy.

This research aimed to find out both direct and mediating relationships between the fear of COVID-19 (FC) and the usage of digital financial services (UDFS) via mediator financial anxiety (FA). It also attempted to ascertain the moderated effect of education of small and medium-sized enterprise (SME) owners (ESO), i.e. business degree holders (BDH) vs nonbusiness degree holders (NBDH), in the relationship between FC and the UDFS.

This research employed a simple random sampling technique. In total, 387 complete responses were collected from Pakistani SMEs. The complete analysis was performed using Statistical Package for the Social Sciences (SPSS) 23, AMOS 24, Process Marco 4.1, and Interaction 1.7.

According to the findings, FC leads to UDFS and FA mediates this relationship. Additionally, the findings show that the ESO between FC and UDFS was moderated. However, conditional analysis shows that BDH-SME owners strengthened the moderated relationship between FC and UDFS compared to NBDH-SME owners, who did not show any relationship.

Policymakers might use the study's findings to promote business education, which has been recognized as essential for making sound financial decisions. Finally, because the study is cross-sectional, the authors are unable to draw definitive generalizations.

The key novelty of this research work lies in the inclusion of FA as a mediator and the education of SME owners as a moderator in understanding the relationship between FC and the UDFS. This study illuminated the positive aspects of the COVID-19 epidemic based on the theory of emotional finance, risk avoidance theory and theories of emotion.

This paper empirically investigates the impact of board diversity in terms of demographic and cognitive dimensions on financial distress likelihood in an emerging Chinese market to explore whether the Chief Executive Officers' (CEOs) power moderates the relationship between board diversity and the probability of financial distress.

To test the hypothesized relationships, demographic diversity through gender, age and nationality, and cognitive diversity through education, expertise and tenure, are taken as independent variables to investigate their impact on the probability of financial distress measured by the Altman China Z score. Data is collected for 13,740 firm-year observations from 2009 to 2018. This study employs panel data regression under fixed effect assumptions. Further, to control the possible endogeneity issue, this study uses a two-step System Generalized Methods of Moments (GMM) model as a robust check.

The results reveal that board diversity is positively associated with financial distress Z score, suggesting that diverse boards are helpful in reducing the likelihood of financial distress. Moreover, CEO power positively moderates this relationship. It means that board diversity, in the presence of powerful CEOs, is more effective in reducing financial distress likelihood by controlling the wrong financial decisions taken by top executives to reap personal benefits. Further, the robustness model confirms the relationship between board diversity and the probability of financial distress.

To the best of researchers' knowledge, this is one of the earliest studies to investigate board diversity by constructing demographic and cognitive board diversity indexes as a determinant of financial distress likelihood in China. Further, researchers found no study in the literature using CEO power as a contextual variable on the relationship between board diversity and financial distress.

This study aims to fabricate multiwalled carbon nanotubes (MWCNTs)-mediated polyvinyl alcohol (PVA) composite films using the solution casting approach.

The prepared films were evaluated for diverse structural, surface, optical and electrical attributes using advanced analytical techniques, i.e. electron microscopy for surface morphology, Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy for tracing chemical functionalities, x-ray diffraction (XRD) for crystal patterns, water contact angle (WCA) analysis for surface wettability and UV visible spectroscopy for optical absorption parameters. The specimens were also investigated for certain rheological, mechanical and electrical properties, where applicable.

The surface morphology results expressed a better dispersion of MWCNTs in the resultant PVA-based nanocomposite film. The XRD analysis exhibited that the nanocomposite film was crystalline. The surface wettability analysis indicated that with the inclusion of MWCNTs, the WCA of the resultant nanocomposite film improved to 89.4° from 44° with the pristine PVA film. The MWCNTs (1.00%, w/w) incorporated PVA-based film exhibited a tensile strength of 54.0 MPa as compared to that of native PVA as 25.3 MPa film. There observed a decreased bandgap (from 5.25 to 5.14 eV) on incorporating the MWCNTs in the PVA-based nanocomposite film.

The MWCNTs’ inclusion in the PVA matrix could enhance the AC conductivity of the resultant nanocomposite film. The prepared nanocomposite film might be useful in designing certain optoelectronic devices.

The results demonstrated the successful MWCNTs mediation in the PVA-based composite films expressed good intercalation of the precursors; this resulted in decreased bandgap, usually, desirable for optoelectronic applications.

Block chain technology (BCT) has apparent capability of handling information in digital format, which has dragged attention of the practitioners for its utility in industrial and manufacturing practices. Conversely, the managerial adoption of BCT is relatively limited, which motivated the authors to identify crucial dimensions that can persuade the acceptance of BCT from an executive perspective. Thus, the present study is aimed to conduct to understand crucial barriers under BCT for managerial implementation in supply chain management (SCM) of small and medium enterprises (SMEs).

The present study investigated evident barriers to understand implementation of BCT. A questionnaire based survey is performed to collect primary data from service and manufacturing based companies in India. Survey responses are received online and the data is analyzed in a scorecard. The scorecard embedded the scribed entries of Likert scale to determine the relative score.

In present study, sixteen barriers from three categories named as technological, organizational and environmental are evaluated, where, five sub-barriers from technological domain, seven sub-barriers from organizational domain and four sub-barriers from environmental domain are evaluated. The findings of the study determined that the three factors, i.e. “complexity in setup/use”, “Security and privacy concern” and “Technological awareness” mostly affect the adaptation of BCT in SCM. Conversely, “Market dynamics”, “Scalability” and “Cost” do not influence the intention to adopt the technology.

Only few studies have endeavored to ascertain the BCT adoption in SCM of SMEs in developing country like India. Thus, the study is filling a momentous gap of mapping BCT dimensions in the scholastic literature. The findings are expected to enable SMEs to understand important factors to be considered for adopting BCT in their curriculum. Furthermore, the study may benefit the BCT developers and suppliers to endure customized solutions based on the findings.

Conventionally, the marginalised population was considered to engage in child labour due to poverty, education or lack of other options, but indeed, a few children work voluntarily. However, a growing number of scholars, in recent years, have drawn their attention to the valuable question, “why children are engaged in child labour in the informal economy”. Even though a few studies have explored the motives of informal workers, to our knowledge not a single paper has explored the motives of child labourers working in the informal economy. The purpose of this study is to fill this gap by evaluating the motives of child labourers, through three competing theorisations of the informal economy.

In this study, face-to-face structured interviews of 45 child labourers were conducted, who worked in different automobile workshops in the city of Lahore, Pakistan. Respondents were selected using the snowball sampling technique as this strategy is suitable for researching sensitive issues and is feasible for small sample sizes.

The main finding is that no single explanation is universally applicable to all child labourers. Some (27 per cent) justify their participation in the informal sector as driven by necessity (structuralist perspective), majority (40 per cent) explain their participation in the informal economy as a rational economic choice (neo-liberal perspective) and finally, more than a quarter of respondents (31 per cent) engaged in child labour due to their own free will or voluntarily to work for their family (post-structuralist perspective). This study also revealed that entrepreneurial spawning is a key determinant of child labour as the majority of children, in our study, working in automobile workshops intended to start their own workshop business in the future.

This article shows that children early engaged in work with entrepreneurial intention/spawning. Entrepreneurial education is very important in a child’s life. Entrepreneurial education will be a ticket to fulfill their dreams and learn new things with entrepreneurial attitude.

Government should develop the vocational training institutes for children who left the schools.

This study contributes to the body of literature by providing a better understanding of why children work in informal employment, an occupation generally perceived as constituting exploitative working conditions. This study also contributes to the wider literature of entrepreneurship by exploring “entrepreneurial spawning” as one of the major reasons underlying the participation of children in informal work.

The purpose of this paper is to evaluate the relationship between bankers’ perspectives and their pro-green banking behaviors (i.e. intentions). Specifically, how do bankers’ perspectives on environmental concerns, environmental normative structure and green technology affect their intentions toward G-banking activities?

A theoretical framework of the theory of bounded rational planned behavior (TBRPB) as its foundation was established. Using measurement scales to measure different aspects of environmental concern, environmental normative structure, green technology, attitudes, perceived behavioral control and subjective norms, a survey instrument was developed to examine the various associations implied by the model of TBRPB. Data were collected from the bankers of selected commercial banks in Bangladesh following the random sampling procedure. The data were analyzed using the partial least square structural equation modeling technique.

Findings indicate that all of the predictors appear to be robust in predicting the G-banking intention of the sampled bankers in Bangladesh. The results also show that attitudes, subjective norms and perceived behavioral control have significant mediating effects toward bankers’ bounded rational G-banking intention.

There are a few limitations in the study. First, the study considers environmental concerns as an antecedent of the attitude of bankers toward G-banking activities. Future studies can explore other variables related to environmental problems to study G-banking adoption and practices. Second, this study only considers the private conventional bankers as respondents to the survey to assess G-baking intention. In the future, other types of bankers, such as Islamic bankers and public banks’ bankers could be included in the survey to explore G-banking practices. Finally, this research has been done in a developing country-context.

In this study, environmental concerns of bankers appeared to be highly significant predictors to influence their attitudes toward bounded rational G-banking intention. Similarly, the social normative structure also appears to be a robust antecedent of subjective norms to influence bounded rational G-banking intention of respondent bankers. Finally, green technology or bakers’ personal and skill-related ability to control bounded rational G-banking intention also appeared to be a strongly significant predictor of green banking activities. All this evidence implies that respondent bankers in the sample responded positively to provide their positive intention toward G-banking activities based on their environmental concern.

Important social implication of the current study is G-banking practices can help reduce carbon emissions and other pollutants which would enrich overall environmental sustainability and ecological conditions.

Few studies are directed on G-banking perspective in Bangladesh. This research is one of the empirical studies which will certainly add values for the clients, institutions and policymakers in banking paradigm.

The perception of Islamic finance by its various stakeholders is not always reconcilable. Its foundations and attributes are subject to a plurality of perceptions making it almost impossible to reach a consensus about them. This paper aims to understand the perception of Islamic finance by bank employees in Cameroon.

This research follows the interpretativist paradigm and is qualitative and exploratory in nature. The data are collected through semi-structured face-to-face interviews with bank employees, mainly branch managers. These interview data are analysed using the thematic analysis method.

Bank employees in Cameroon perceive Islamic finance as a finance that: targets everyone, regardless of religion, but Muslims first (Islamic finance is both inclusive and exclusive); offers original products and services; has a religious anchor that may hinder non-Muslim economic agents; has many advantages, mainly for financial institutions, and some limitations for financial institutions and their customers; is full of opportunities for its stakeholders; and is not yet fully practiced in Cameroon.

This study mobilises a qualitative approach, provides new insights into the research on the perception of Islamic finance and reaches a consensus on the perception of certain aspects and attributes of Islamic finance, namely, for the perception of the target and the Shariah compliance of Islamic finance. Furthermore, this study is a pioneering effort to understand bank employees’ perception of Islamic finance in non-Islamic and developing countries where Islamic finance is underdeveloped.

Adoption of latest technological advancements (e.g. lecture capture system) is a hallmark of market-driven private universities. Among many other distinguishing features, lecture capture system (LCS) is the one which is being offered to enhance the flexibility of learning environment for attracting executive business students. Majority of foreign universities are offering the facility of LCS to their students in offshore campuses established in Malaysia. Yet, very little is known about perception and behaviour of executive business students towards acceptance and use of this facility. Therefore, to bridge the identified gap in academic literature, this study is an effort to explore the causal relationship between existing constructs of extended unified theory of acceptance and use of technology (UTAUT2), personal innovativeness (PI), intention and use behaviour (UB) towards LCS. Moreover, this study is aimed to extend the UTAUT2 by introducing a new variable, namely, PI in the domain of information technology (IT) (PIIT).

SmartPLS-3.2.6 was used for data analysis and all PLS-related calculations. For this purpose, a self-administered questionnaire was designed to collect data regarding acceptance and UB towards LCS. A sample size of 481 responses from executive business students, who were enrolled in offshore campuses of five selected foreign universities in Malaysia, was used for testing the proposed theoretical model.

The results of structural equation modelling (SEM) revealed that, performance expectancy, effort expectancy, social influence, facilitating conditions, price value, hedonic motivation, habit and PIIT have a significant and positive influence on acceptance and use of LCS among executive business students. Unique to this study is that, findings of this study have highlighted PIIT as an important factor that affects intention and UB towards LCS among executive business students.

By validating and extending the UTAUT2, the findings of this study provide a number of practical implications along with a comprehensive, robust and useful framework for universities to successfully implement technological advancements, such as LCS, to enhance overall learning outcomes.

By investigating the factors determining acceptance and use of LCS among executive business students, using a partial least square (PLS)-based SEM approach, this study makes a sizeable theoretical, methodological and contextual contribution to the overall body of knowledge.

Developing on the base of theory of planned behaviour (TPB), the purpose of this paper is to investigate the relationship between perceived social support (SS) from one’s social network and entrepreneurial intention (EI). Moreover, mediating effect of other constructs of TPB, i.e., attitude towards entrepreneurship (ATE), subjective norms (SN) and perceived behavioural control (PBC) is also examined in this study.

This study involves a variance-based partial least square-structural equation modelling approach for analysing responses from 381 fresh business graduates.

Findings of this study revealed that SS positively influences EI and also that this relationship is fully mediated by ATE, SN and PBC.

Due to limited resources, cross cultural comparison and multi-group analysis were not performed, which are considered as a limitation of this study.

It is expected that the findings of this study can help policy makers, researchers and academicians in better understanding of critical role of SS for understanding the intentions of nascent entrepreneurs.

Further, findings of this study suggest that academicians and policy makers need to take heed towards relatively less explored phenomenon of SS to enhance the attractiveness of entrepreneurial career in fresh business graduates.

This study has proposed a model for assessing impact of SS on EI. By doing so, this study extends TPB in the context of EI. Moreover, findings of this study are a unique step forward, and offer a new insight towards better understanding of the determinants of EI in fresh business graduates.