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The efficiency of each of an organization’s individual workers determines its effectiveness. The study aims to explore the relationship between human resource management (HRM) practices and organizational effectiveness with employee performance as a mediating variable.

Data were collected from 800 police officers in the Greater Accra and Tema regions. The data were supported by the hypothesized relationship. Construct reliability and validity was established through confirmatory factor analysis. The proposed model and hypotheses were evaluated using structural equation modeling.

The results show that career planning and employee performance were significantly related. Self-managed teams and employee performance were shown to be nonsignificantly related. Similarly, performance management and employee performance were shown to be nonsignificantly related. Employee performance significantly influenced organizational effectiveness. The results further indicate that employee performance mediates the relationship between HRM practices and organizational effectiveness.

The generalizability of the findings will be constrained due to the research’s police service focus and cross-sectional data.

The study’s findings will serve as valuable pointers for the police administration in the adoption, design and implementation of well-articulated and proactive HRM practices to improve the abilities, skills, knowledge and motivation of officer’s to inordinately enhance the effectiveness of the service.

By evidencing empirically that employee performance mediates the relationship between HRM practice and organizational effectiveness, the study extends the literature.

Construction safety management (CSM) has been intensively researched in the last four decades but hitherto mostly aimed at understanding root causes of accidents, recommending preventive measures and evaluating their implications. However, a systematic effort to present a comprehensive picture of construction safety research is hardly witnessed. Therefore, the study aims to investigate construction safety research contributors, ontologies, themes, evolution, emerging trends and future directions using quantitative and qualitative content analysis.

A total of 877 journal articles were extracted using preferred reporting items for systematic reviews and meta-analyses (PRISMA) guidelines and Scopus literature database and were analyzed using VOSviewer and Nvivo tools to present a comprehensive picture of the CSM body of knowledge.

The study observed rapid growth in construction safety research with contributions from various countries, organizations and researchers. This study identified 3 research levels, 8 project phases, 10 project types, 6 research instruments and 19 research data sources along with their usage in the research domain. Further, the study identified 13 emerging research themes, 4 emerging research trends and an observed paradigm shift from reactive to proactive CSM approach.

The comprehensive study on the emerging themes and findings on proactive CSM has strategic implications to practice to incorporate safety. The identified future directions can assist researchers in bridging the existing gaps and strengthening emerging research trends.

The study presents a comprehensive picture of the CSM body of knowledge using the content analysis approach that was absent in past literature and opened future research avenues.

Typically, adoption of sustainability in organizations are often done in an unstructured way without the consideration of other partners in the supply chain. The purpose of this paper is to suggest a coherent plan to improve sustainability in the supply chains utilizing ISO standards for environment and social responsibility.

This paper draws on literature on ISO14000 and ISO26000 to derive a set of variables applicable to supply chains, which are then prioritized for real organizations utilizing analytic hierarchy process.

The findings highlight that not all the variables of environmental, social and economic responsibility are equally important. Besides, the work reported in this paper justifies the application of multi-criteria decision-making (AHP) to prioritize elements of sustainability in context supply chains. The suggested method is illustrated using inputs from large manufacturing companies in Qatar.

ISO14000 and ISO26000 are well known standards; however, there was no effort to integrate these standards to improve sustainability in supply chains. The suggested methodology provides invaluable help to the managers to implement sustainability in a coherent manner across the supply chain.

The research contributes to the extant literature by proposing a new methodology based on the integration of three-approaches: Analytic Hierarchy Process, ISO14000 and ISO26000 systems.

The purpose of this research is to compare the board quality's (BQ) impacts on the financial performance (FP) of conventional and Islamic banks (IBs) after the Subprime financial crisis. The main reason is to help financial stakeholders choose the best performing and most appropriate bank type with its engagement based on the BQ index.

Based on the existing gap in previous researches and by using the GLS method (Generalized Least Squares method), the author compared the BQ's impacts on the FP of conventional and IBs. Settings of the FP and BQ were collected from 30 countries located on 4 continents. Two equal samples were tested; each of them is composed of 112 banks. The author concentrated only on the banks that have published regularly the banks' annual reports over the period 2010–2018.

Cylindrical panel results revealed that in conventional banks (CBs), the BQ has negatively affected banks' FP, while in IBs the BQ's impacts on the banks’' FP is ambiguous. Nevertheless, the positive impacts are more significant on the IBs' FP than the negative impacts on the IBs' FP.

The main practical contribution is the identification and distinction between the impacts of board determinants' quality on the shareholders' profits in the case of conventional and IBs. Hence, conventional or IBs which have a bad BQ will generate less FP and will be classified as a lender of bankruptcy danger for the bank customer. Besides, whatever the bank type, in a financial stable period, good BQ positively influences FP and provides a good impression to stakeholders. Otherwise, FP indicates that the banks suffer from the weaknesses of the board quality determinants.

Returning to the finance and banking governance literature, the author's article provides the first conditional and demonstrative analysis that detailed a logical comparative process to analyze the correlation between the board determinants' quality and the financial performance of conventional and IBs. However, previous research has always discussed the main role of the board as an internal governance mechanism on the FP separately in each bank type.

The purpose of this paper is to both determine the effects of the nonlinearity on the wave dynamics and assess the temporal and spatial accuracy of five finite difference methods for the solution of the inviscid generalized regularized long-wave (GRLW) equation subject to initial Gaussian conditions.

Two implicit second- and fourth-order accurate finite difference methods and three Runge-Kutta procedures are introduced. The methods employ a new dependent variable which contains the wave amplitude and its second-order spatial derivative. Numerical experiments are reported for several temporal and spatial step sizes in order to assess their accuracy and the preservation of the first two invariants of the inviscid GRLW equation as functions of the spatial and temporal orders of accuracy, and thus determine the conditions under which grid-independent results are obtained.

It has been found that the steepening of the wave increase as the nonlinearity exponent is increased and that the accuracy of the fourth-order Runge-Kutta method is comparable to that of a second-order implicit procedure for time steps smaller than 100th, and that only the fourth-order compact method is almost grid-independent if the time step is on the order of 1,000th and more than 5,000 grid points are used, because of the initial steepening of the initial profile, wave breakup and solitary wave propagation.

This is the first study where an accuracy assessment of wave breakup of the inviscid GRLW equation subject to initial Gaussian conditions is reported.

This study aims to analyze the effect of the board of directors on financial performance, either directly or indirectly, through the existence of risk management after the issuance of the Palestinian Code on Corporate Governance in Palestine.

This study uses a panel data of 31 Palestinian listed companies from 2010 to 2016. It also uses structural equation modeling (SEM) model.

The results of the SEM model show a significant positive relationship of the existence of risk management and the tenure-chief executive officer (CEO) with financial performance. However, CEO duality has a significant negative relationship with financial performance. The results also show a significant positive relationship of CEO duality and board size with financial performance through the existence of risk management.

This study adds to the existing literature by analyzing the effect of the board of directors on financial performance, either directly or indirectly, through the existence of risk management in Palestine, one of the youngest stock exchanges in the region, which assists in testing the validity of agency theory in a young and small emerging Islamic market context.

The results of this paper are significant for shareholders and managers of companies to make proper choices to secure the interests of stakeholders and increase the flow of capital and foreign investment.

To the best of the author’s knowledge, it is one of the first papers to investigate the effect of the board of directors on financial performance, either directly or indirectly, through the existence of risk management in Palestine.

The purpose of this paper is to review some of the key studies that are published in the last three decades on banking service quality with particular attention to the Middle Eastern countries, and provide some future research directions.

Literature review.

The review generated 11 research questions related to Islamic and conventional banking services in the Middle Eastern countries.

This paper reviews leading, current studies on conventional and Islamic banking in the Middle East, and provides future research directions for scholars and practitioners alike. Future research should address each of the research questions as identified in this paper with empirical data/evidence.

This paper reviews leading, current studies on conventional and Islamic banking in the Middle East and provides future directions of research for scholars and practitioners alike. Future research should address each of the research questions the authors identify with empirical data and scientific evidence.

This paper would be useful for guiding the development and resolution of researchers’ and practitioners’ research questions and could help to strengthen the banking industry in Middle Eastern countries.

This paper aims to explore and model the factors of management quality dimension (FMQD) in evaluating banking performance.

The FMQD in evaluating banking performance are explored through the review of literature. The identified factors are modeled using integrated fuzzy cognitive map (FCM) and Matrices’ Impacts Croise’s Multiplication Appliquée a UN Classement (MICMAC) approach. Scenario analysis is carried out on the proposed model to study the behavior in a dynamic setting.

The main finding of this study is the prioritization of FMQD in evaluating banking performance. The cohesive model obtained by FCM-MICMAC integrated approach demonstrates that the interlinked factors can be grouped into independent, autonomous, dependent and relay clusters. The results suggest that internal control system is the most influential factor, whereas the business per employee is the most sensitive one in modeling management quality.

This study models the FMQD through expert opinions, and hence, individual bias may influence the results. This study can be further validated through statistical analysis.

The study suggests that practitioners may focus more on these select factors and their mutual interactions to enhance management quality for improving the performance of the banks. The study emphasizes that better clarity and efficient designing of internal processes are the key to management soundness.

This is the first study to explore and model FMQD in banking performance using FCM-MICMAC approach. Validation of the proposed model in a dynamic setting is also relatively new in the banking performance literature.

As the ongoing oil prices’ crisis is emerging as a major cause of concern for the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) region, the constituent governments are attempting at undertaking measures of economic diversification to attain long-term sustainability. The author posits that open government data (OGD) has a significant role to play in facilitating the economic turnaround of the GCC region, given that OGD promotes innovation and economic growth besides providing avenues for collaboration and participation among different stakeholders.

Following a structured literature review, the paper scans literature on OGD followed by providing a typology of countries on the basis of their OGD-adherence (“laggard”, “caged”, “forerunner” and “champ”). This is followed by a discussion on the ongoing oil prices’ crisis, and evidentiary support is lent by examples from the OGD portals of each of the six GCC countries (Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and United Arab Emirates) to provide indicators as to how a robust OGD implementation may support their economic diversification objectives.

Although the present OGD framework of the GCC is relatively weak, it is asserted that OGD has immense potential in facilitating the economic diversification initiatives of the GCC countries. Therefore, the GCC needs to strategize upon institutionalization of their OGD initiatives for realizing their “vision” and goals of economic diversification to result in an economic turnaround effectively.

Besides providing a typology of countries as OGD-adherents and categorizing GCC as “forerunner(s)” on the basis of the typology, the originality of the study lies in its attempt to answer the research question: “what is the role of the OGD in facilitating the economic diversification of the GCC?” Conceding that the research on OGD in the GCC context is few and far between, the present study is a significant contribution to the extant literature pertaining to the roll-out of OGD in developing countries.

The purpose of this study is to critically evaluate how conventional and Islamic banks trade off risk, efficiency and financial performance in their business models, to investigate how patterns of risk and efficiency vary between conventional and Islamic banks and to critically evaluate how the profitability of conventional and Islamic banks varies following the financial crisis.

This study uses univariate and multivariate statistical techniques by investigating 12 Islamic banks and 34 conventional banks operating in the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) region has been studied over the period 2011–2018.

The results suggest that Islamic and conventional banks differ not in the levels of efficiency, risk and profitability, but rather in how risk and efficiency influence banks’ financial performance. Islamic banks are found to be less influenced by the adverse effects of credit risk, which is consistent with the risk-sharing nature of Islamic financing. However, the results only hold for return on assets (ROA) and return on equity (ROE) while the net interest margin is observed to be negatively influenced by credit risk. Lower cost-income efficiency is also found to boost ROA and ROE of Islamic banks which could be attributed to a larger share of non-interest revenues due to Sharīʿah-compliance.

From a theoretical point of view, this study helps to understand the risk, efficiency and financial performance of Islamic banks in comparison with conventional banks.

The results of this study can serve bank managers, regulators and shareholders. Policymakers should encourage a more risk-sharing structure of Islamic financing as it brings less adverse effects of credit risk and increases income sustainability for Islamic banks. The present study may help bank managers to improve the financial performance of their firms by controlling risk and efficiency. The study results also have implications for shareholders and depositors of Islamic and conventional banks as they should have a predetermined position about the level of credit risk and efficiency in each banking system.

The foremost contribution is that this is one of the few studies to compare risk, efficiency and financial performance of Islamic and conventional banks in the GCC region. By using the latest data, this paper hopes that the findings will be more relevant than previous studies to the current situation of the banking industry in the region.