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This study aims at investigating the extent to which Egyptian universities disclose information on social responsibility to different stakeholders, which leads to the enhancement of sustainable development.

An index of social responsibility that fits the Egyptian universities is established, comprising four dimensions: organizational governance, energy and environment resource sustainability, human resource development and community participation and community development. This index has been used to score the disclosure level of social responsibility of Egyptian universities. This study uses information available on websites of Egyptian universities as of the end of December 2018. Frequencies provide the basis for discussion.

The results reveal that the level of disclosure of universities on social responsibility is low, but, in favor of private universities vs public universities. At the university level, only a few numbers of public universities disclosed high volume of information on social responsibility, such as Cairo University, Ain Shams University, Alexandria University and Assiut University. Furthermore, the results manifest that public universities disclose higher level of information related to organizational governance, energy and environment resource sustainability and community participation and community development, whereas, private universities disclose higher level of information related to human resource development.

The results are constrained with the social responsibility dimensions and attributes used to establish a disclosure index that fits Egyptian universities, as well as the information disclosed on universities websites.

This study provides insights to Egyptian higher education regulators and the rectors of Egyptian universities that may help in planning and monitoring social responsibility activities in a way that could lead to sustainable development.

This paper aims to examine the impact of environmental, social and governance (ESG) disclosure and firm value (FV), as well as, pinpoints the role of the audit quality (AQ) as a moderating variable on such impact; where the authors hypothesize that AQ modulates the relationship between ESG disclosure and the FV.

Data of a sample of firms listed on the Egyptian Stock Exchange Market (EGX) were collected over the period of 2017–2021 and analyzed using the regression and 2SLS models.

The results suggested that: (1) the ESG has a significant positive impact on the FV in the EGX, and (2) AQ has a significant impact, as a moderating variable, on the relationship between ESG disclosure and FV.

The findings would help the Egyptian market authorities in realizing the importance of integrating ESG information within the financial reports of the listed firms. The findings could also help in developing effective disclosure procedures to provide shareholders with useful information.

This paper contributes to the literature regarding the ESG disclosure components and the FV value by considering AQ in testing such relationship.

Fingerprints and blood samples are important for the identification of individuals and criminals. The present study aims to identify the predominant fingerprint patterns and the association between the fingerprint patterns and ABO–Rh blood groups in Omani population.

A cross-sectional study was conducted on 200 Omani individuals aged 18 years (104 males and 96 females). The imprints of all right and left-hand fingers were taken, and the types of the fingerprints were determined using a standard protocol. The blood group of all the subjects was recorded. Chi-square test was performed to identify the association between the fingerprint patterns and the ABO and Rh blood groups.

The loop fingerprint pattern was the most common in Omani subjects (49.4%), followed by whorl (44.9%) and arch (5.7%) pattern. A significant association (p < 0.001) was found between gender and fingerprint pattern. The loop was the highest occurring pattern in the females (54.6%), while the whorl was more in males (50.0%). The whorl pattern was the most common in the AB+ and O− groups. The loop was a predominant pattern in the A+, A−, B+, B− and O+ groups. The Chi-square test also revealed a significant correlation between different fingerprint patterns and blood groups of the subjects (p < 0.001).

The present study is an outcome of undergraduate student's research project thesis for the Doctor of Medicine (MD) program. The results of the present study may help in creating a data bank for biometrics, which can be useful for diagnosing associated diseases and also help in identification of individuals.

This research aims to examine the impact of RPTs and board of directors' characteristics on the market value of Indian listed banks. Further, this study evaluates the moderation effect of board composition on the association between RPTs banks’ market value.

The sample size consists of 38 banks listed on Bombay stock exchange. The current study is based on secondary data for ten years from 2010 to 2019. Generalized Method of Moment (GMM) was used for estimating the results.

Subsidiary transactions, board of directors' size, composition, diligence, promoters, remuneration and banks' size and leverage have a significant impact on the market value of Indian listed banks. Further, board of directors' composition positively moderates the association between RPTs and banks value measured by Tobin's. Furthermore, corporate governance characteristics have a significant impact on RPTs measured by total RPTs and all subsidiary transactions.

This research is limited only to listed banks whose data are available in the ProwessIQ database, which makes it difficult to generalize the findings on other unlisted banks. This research helps policymakers, investors and creditors to categorize RPTs into different groups to identify the harmful and beneficial once to the bank. The findings suggest that policymakers, investors and creditors should not consider all key personal transactions as harmful transactions; instead, the policymakers, investors and creditors should consider all subsidiary transactions as harmful in the absence of independent directors.

The present study contributes to the existing literature on RPTs by evaluating the interaction effect of board composition on the association between related party transactions and banks' value. Further, this research focuses on the financing industry; Indian banks, which has not been sufficiently researched in comparison to the non-financing industries.

The purpose of this paper is to draw a map of the general features of epistemological and critical concerns in contemporary Islamic philosophy. This study will not be confined to the domain of academic philosophy or to those who are professionals in the field of philosophy.

The paper adopted the critical rational approach in dealing with contemporary Islamic philosophy in the Arab world. The scope will include scholars from different fields of epistemology who tried to present a “vision” of the attitude that should be adopted in facing the challenges of the age and the problems of the nation on the epistemological level or the political, economic and social levels.

There is a need for a philosophy of action and progress rather than a philosophy that is based on abstract ideas and theories and of words/rhetoric. The ethics required to accomplish this ought to identify the attributes of the citizen who can reach self-actualization through legitimate means based on a progress agenda with theoretical and philosophical foundations.

Because a critical rational approach can be dealt with from different perspectives, this paper will adopt the classification of the principal intellectual trends: the reformist, secular and liberal.

This paper covers a long time span to determine whether the philosophical projects have been effective.

This paper, which criticizes the philosophic projects that are theoretically unsound and that do not address real social problems (like poverty), argues the need for a philosophy of progress and action. This will lead to devising an agenda that addresses the challenges the society is facing and to finding alternative and creative solutions resulting in development.

In recent years, the fast growth of Islamic banks (IBs) has generated debates among policymakers and economists about the sustainability and performance of these institutions. This paper aims to undertake a comparative analysis of the financial performance of IBs and conventional banks (CBs) in Pakistan over the period 2008–2019 to evaluate how IBs are faring compared to their conventional peers.

This paper considers Financial Ratio Analysis (FRA) to analyse and compare the performance of the top-10 IBs and CBs operating in Pakistan. The sample includes five full-fledged IBs and five CBs which offer Islamic windows in Pakistan. The top-five performing CBs offering Islamic windows have been selected in this study.

The results show that IBs are better capitalized, less risky and have higher liquidity as compared to CBs. In contrast, the profits of IBs are found to be lower than those of CBs.

The study has provided an analysis of financial performance only for Pakistan. A cross-country analysis could be more representative of the performance of IBs.

The study infers that the size of the Islamic banking industry in Pakistan should be enhanced by opening new branches and promoting Islamic financial literacy.

The study assists investors, creditors, debtors and managers in making better decisions. It also provides the latest valuable information to regulators and policymakers that can be used to make rules and policies for the finance industry in Pakistan.

The unprecedented SARS-CoV-2 (COVID-19) pandemic has further constrained the budgets of governments worldwide for delivering their much-needed infrastructure. Consequently, public-private partnerships (PPPs), with the private sector's investment and ingenuity, would appear to be an increasingly popular alternative. Value for money (VfM) has become the major criterion for evaluating PPPs against the traditional public sector procurement and, however, is plagued with controversy. Hence, it is important that governments compare and contrast their practice with similar and disparate bodies to engender best practice. This paper, therefore, aims to understand governments' assessment context and provide a cross-continental comparison of their VfM assessment.

Faced with different domestic contexts (e.g. aging infrastructure, population growth, and competing demands on finance), governments tend to place different emphases when undertaking the VfM assessment. In line with the theory of boundary spanning, a cross-continental comparison is conducted between three of the most noticeable PPP markets (i.e. the United Kingdom, Australia and China) about their VfM assessment. The institutional level is interpreted by a social, economic and political framework, and the methodological level is elucidated through a qualitative and quantitative VfM assessment.

There are individual institutional characteristics that have shaped the way each country assesses VfM. For the methodological level, we identify that: (1) these global markets use a public sector comparator as the benchmark in VfM assessment; (2) ambiguous qualitative assessment is conducted only against PPPs to strengthen their policy development; (3) Australia's priority is in service provision whereas that of the UK and China is project finance and production; and (4) all markets are seeking an amelioration of existing controversial VfM assessments so that purported VfM relates to project lifecycles. As such, an option framework is proposed to make headway towards a sensible selection of infrastructure procurement approaches in the post COVID-19 era.

This study addresses a current void of enhancing the decision-making process for using PPPs within today's changing environment and then opens up an avenue for future empirical research to examine the option framework and ensuing VfM decisions. Practically, it presents a holistic VfM landscape for public sector procurers that aim to engage with PPPs for their infrastructure interventions.

This study aims to explore the loyalty intent of prepaid (contract-free) customers in a market where disloyalty is prevalent and the market has low switching costs.

A quota, non-probability sampling technique was applied, resulting in the completion of 220 self-administered questionnaires that were used for data analysis. Confirmatory factor analysis and a structural equation model were applied to determine model fit and test the formulated hypotheses for this study.

The strength of the satisfaction–loyalty relationship is found to be influenced by three specific satisfaction antecedents, strengthened by the mediating role of customer delight and impacted by switching costs.

The findings of this study may guide mobile service providers in their initiatives to secure satisfaction and loyalty in a market context where switching costs are low and the market is described as disloyal.

This study investigates the well-researched relationship between satisfaction and loyalty and the antecedents of customer satisfaction to determine which of these variables should be the focus in a challenging market where consumers are disloyal and switching costs are low.

Creating employment for all seems to be impossible in emerging nations as the unemployment rate is rising faster than the number of job openings available. Studies on the other hand show that creating jobs is simple if the right resources and opportunities are made available. The present study aims to examine the effects of various demographic social and environmental factors on the entrepreneurial intention of engineering undergraduates in Chhattisgarh state.

Correlational research design was incorporated in the present study. The author applied stratified random sampling to collect samples of 1,000 engineering undergraduates enrolled in their third and fourth years in different technical colleges/universities in Chhattisgarh state. Structural equation modelling and confirmatory factor analysis were applied to analyse the data.

The results revealed that demographic, social and environmental factors greatly influenced engineering undergraduates’ entrepreneurial intention. However, age and occupation do not predict their self-employment intention.

The present research itself is a novel study, especially in Chhattisgarh state, where the area of examining the effects of demographic, social and environmental factors on entrepreneurial intention among technical undergraduates has been limitedly explored.

Intellectual capital (IC) and financial performance is now a very contemporary issue in the banking sector. The purpose of this study is to investigate empirically the impact of IC on financial performance of all the listed commercial banks of Bangladesh.

Bangladesh Bank database and financial statement of the listed commercial banks of Bangladesh for the period of 2014–2018 have been used to collect data. Value added intellectual coefficient (VAIC^TM) methods have been used for measuring the performance of banks. VAIC^TM determined IC and its three major components like structural, human and capital employed.

The results suggest that human capital efficiency (HCE) and capital employed efficiency (CEE) have statistically significant relationships with bank performance, but when VAIC^TM is divided then structural capital efficiency (SCE) does not have a significant relationship with bank performance.

The study uses only listed banks, but it does not include all the commercial banks specially nationalized commercial banks.

The findings allowed banks to focus more on human capital (HC) and structural capital, because in the present world, HC is considered one of the key factors for the success in business. This study also provides an awareness on how good IC of the banking companies will bring more assistance to a better life of a society.

This is one of the very few studies which examine the impact of IC on bank financial performance in Bangladesh.