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The main purpose of this paper is to explore the borrowers’ intention to participate in small entrepreneurship based on Islamic principles. In doing so, this study has conducted an investigation in the case of a new Waqf-based model for Islamic microfinance in Bangladesh, which targets extending loans to the rural poor to alleviate rural poverty in society.

The researchers used the survey technique to investigate the microentrepreneurs’ intention to participate in this new Islamic microfinance scheme. A total of 290 responses were collected from the rural poor located in three different districts of Bangladesh and the participation of respondents was on a voluntary basis. The structural equation modeling technique was used to analyze the data using the SmartPLS-3 software.

Findings of the study indicate that Islamic moral obligations are observed to be substantially significant to influence empathy, favorable and unfavorable reasons to participate in the scheme. In turn, empathy is also found to be robust to influence intention or niyyah toward borrowing microfinance to initiate microentrepreneurship. However, among the four mediating effects, only two are found to be statistically significant.

Theoretical implications suggest that Islamic moral obligations remain at the core of the present research model. The significant impact of this variable implies that Islamic moral values and obligations are substantially important for the people in Bangladesh who strictly follow Islam in their daily lives. The research recommends the necessity for an awareness program on Islamic microfinance and the role of a Waqf-based scheme in the economic empowerment of the rural poor in society.

This institution practically implies harnessing the role of the Waqf-based philanthropic scheme to empower microentrepreneurs in society to alleviate poverty. Practical implications also highlight that Humanitarian Economic Lending Program (HELP) is a new type of Islamic microfinance institute based on Karz-e-Hassanah scheme and started in a small business initiative. In this study, one of the most important findings is that most people are strongly concerned about reasons, which may help the founder of HELP to propagate its branches across Bangladesh.

The model of this scheme may empower poor microentrepreneurs and consolidate the potential of a Waqf-based scheme for attaining socio-economic development. This fund may be used for social Islamic business as well.

Only a few studies have been directed on microfinance from an Islamic perspective in Bangladesh. This is the first initiative for a new scheme to be verified using an empirical method. Thus, testing the viability of this scheme in the Bangladesh context will certainly add value to the clients, institutions and policymakers in the Islamic microfinance paradigm.

Both QS World university rankings and US higher education accreditation agencies provide external quality evaluation for institutions to deliver quality control and assurance, which causes ample criticism about the academic freedom of teaching staff. Moreover, Austria-based Green Pedagogy advocates outcome-based sustainable quality learning, which promotes teachers’ psychological empowerment and autonomy and the UNESCO model of education advances a transformative paradigm to sustain social, economic and environmental well-being. In this backdrop, this study aims to attain two objectives: the first is to conceptualize a research framework investigating psychological empowerment for predicting faculty academic autonomy, which, in turn, influences sustainable quality education in private higher education institutes (HEIs); and the second is to explore the expert opinion on the suitability of an approach to sustainable quality education between the movements of Green Pedagogy and the UNESCO model globally.

To attain the objectives, this study uses a model of psychological empowerment (MPE) as its theoretical basis. The data (n = 390) was electronically collected from the teachers of 21 private universities through a self-administered questionnaire and analyzed following the procedure of Smart-PLS-SEM. Respondents were selected based on a random sampling procedure.

Findings of this study indicate that psychological empowerment significantly influences teacher autonomy, which significantly influences sustainable quality education. The findings also highlight that the scholars vie for the Green Pedagogy in comparison to Education for Sustainable Development to ensure sustainable quality education in private HEIs. Furthermore, content analyses show that the US higher education accreditation process dilutes faculty academic freedom as well as quality education.

From a research perspective, this study results demonstrate that the MPE appears to be a robust theoretical approach. It also implies that a psychologically empowered teacher is characterized by greater autonomy, responsibility, belief in their competences and application of them in work practice and ability to teach their students effectively. Future research needs further investigation to reconfirm the results.

From a practical standpoint, the results of this study have significant and pervasive lessons for the administrators and academic leaders in HEIs. First, the management of HEIs can capitalize to psychologically empower the faculty members and also allow adequate academic autonomy to ensure sustainable quality education. Second, this study highlights that the Green Pedagogy approach is practically more suitable to attain sustainability in HEIs. And third, with the advancement of new technology, faculty members have to prepare themselves with improved knowledge and pedagogy techniques for which they need to be empowered more by allowing significant level of faculty autonomy.

Social implications of this study are that Green Pedagogy is observed to be superior to UNESCO model in terms of ensuring sustainable quality education by which the students and teachers can contribute more in social and community development.

This study has a significant empirical contribution in understanding the importance of faculty empowerment and freedom or autonomy to ensure sustainable quality learning embodying the Green Pedagogy approach in HEIs, when international HEIs are competing for accreditation and QS rankings.

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.

This study broadly intends to explore the impact of perceived consumer experience in branchless Islamic banking on consumer satisfaction, which may enhance financial inclusion of rural people in Islamic banking activities. Specifically, this study sets three objectives: first, to explore the effects of Islamic bank consumers’ experience on disconfirmation and satisfaction; second, to investigate the impact of expectations on service performance, disconfirmation and consumer-perceived experience; and third, to examine consumer satisfaction in Islamic branchless banking to broadly examine the status of overall financial inclusion.

Data were collected from selected consumers of Islami Bank Bangladesh Limited (IBBL) using a random sampling procedure. The selected consumers of eight remote branchless locations of the Islamic bank were interviewed face-to-face. Data were processed using PLS-SEM.

The results of the study show that all hypotheses were supported, indicating consumers’ experience, expectations and performance significantly influence their branchless Islamic banking satisfaction. This indicates that branchless Islamic banking can enhance consumer satisfaction and ensure the wider financial inclusion of remotely located rural people in banking activities.

From a theoretical perspective, the study findings show the robustness of the expectancy disconfirmation theory (EDT) for aiding to predict customer satisfaction in branchless Islamic banking activities. Other studies have also fruitfully used EDT as a theoretical framework from which to explain citizenship satisfaction in local governments of the public domain (Van Ryzen, 2004, 2006, 2013) or to explain customer satisfaction in variety of programs (Oliver, 1980, 1997, 2014). From the same perspective, the model implies that the important role of perceived consumer expectation significantly determines consumer satisfaction in the branchless Islamic banking initiative.

From a practical perspective, it is implied that digitally operated branchless Islamic banking is the most convenient banking process. On the one hand, it entails extensive financial inclusion of rural and remote areas of the country and minimizes operating costs of banking operations; on the other hand, it is opening the door to profit maximization for the banking industry. The findings from this research will practically imply the way for new horizons in the application of branchless banking within the Islamic banking and finance sector. In this regard, policy planners ought to be more careful in formulating banking and financial outlays by which digital or branchless banking facilities may be extensively spread to reach the unbanked populace across the nation within a short-possible time frame.

The findings from this research will pave the way for new horizons in the application FinTech within the Islamic banking and finance sector. Such studies should also take into account the emerging phenomenon of combining Shari’ah and FinTech, referred to as Shari’ah FinTech, to fully explore its potential and implications for the industry. Thus, the banking industry as a whole ought to be attentive to extending this type of digital transformation in the banking industry to provide win-win situations for both the client and agent in the financial and banking operations in the country.

This research is based on primary data and provides significant results in terms of digital customer satisfaction.

This study aims to investigate the effects of standardization, accreditation process on academic freedom and quality learning in higher education institutes (HEIs). In addition, this study explores the mediating effects of academic freedom between standardization, accreditation and learning.

To attain the objective, the study uses the theory of self-determination as its theoretical underpinning. The smart PLS-SEM technique is applied for analyzing data.

The results indicate that the accreditation process has a significant negative influence on faculty academic freedom and quality of learning in the sampled HEIs. There is also a significant mediating effect of academic freedom.

There are a few limitations in this study. First, the study considers the faculty members only as respondents. Second, this study only considers the faculty members of private universities as respondents. In the future, public HEIs could also be included in similar studies. Finally, this research has been done in the context of a developing country.

The findings of the study have pervasive implications for the authorities in HEIs. The authorities of HEIs might capitalize on this evidence in formulating the appropriate policy for their HEIs.

As the accreditation process weakens academic freedom and quality learning, accreditation should not be viewed as an institutional development and quality assurance tool. Rather, accreditation ought to allow for amplifying faculty voices, empowering faculty and protecting their rights.

Quantitative analysis on the subject addressed in the current study is scarce. Therefore, this research can be considered valuable for stakeholders of HEIs.

This study aims to assess both internal and external factors that impact consumer attitudes and intentions with regard to the purchase of non-deceptive counterfeits. More specifically, this study examines the impact of integrity, brand consciousness, performance risk and social risk on the attitude and in turn on the purchase intention of consumers towards non-deceptive counterfeits.

A total of 679 valid responses from the university students in two different Gulf countries, namely, Oman (264) and Qatar (415) were gathered through a self-administered structured questionnaire and analysed through partial least square‐structural equation modeling.

All the predictors of consumer attitude appeared significant in both country samples except integrity. However, brand consciousness appeared insignificant in the sample of Oman. In addition, Purchase intention towards the non-deceptive counterfeits was significantly predicted by attitude and subjective norm in both samples.

In the domain of non-deceptive counterfeit literature, the findings of the study will substantially add value. Particularly, in the Gulf country context, the impact of internal psychological and external risk factors on the attitude and purchase intention of non-deceptive counterfeits will enhance the insights of existing literature and extend and proof the robustness of the theory of reasoned action.

This study aims to determine how Basel III capital requirements affect the stability of Islamic banks globally during the global financial crisis and the COVID-19 pandemic.

The secondary data for all Islamic banks worldwide from 2004 to 2021 is obtained from the FitchConnect database. The main technique was a two-step generalized method of moment (GMM) system, and the data were tested using pooled ordinary least squares, fixed effects and difference GMM models for robustness checks.

Regression results support the moral hazard hypothesis based on evidence that both the total capital ratio and the Tier 1 capital ratio have a statistically significant positive impact on the stability of Islamic banks globally. Furthermore, neither the global financial crisis of 2008–2009 nor COVID-19 (2020–2021) significantly impacted the stability of Islamic banks worldwide. The results are robust across alternative measures of stability, capital buffers, dummy variables and estimation techniques. According to the descriptive statistics, the number of Islamic banks that disclose their regulatory capital ratios to the public has increased over the study period, and the mean of total capital and Tier 1 ratios are considerably greater than what is required by Basel II and Basel III.

Bankers, regulators and policymakers should benefit from the evidence on capital and risk management in Islamic banking according to Basel Committee on Banking Supervision (BCBS) and Islamic financial services board (IFSB) international standards in various jurisdictions.

This research builds on earlier studies that were both beneficial and instructive by exploring the relationship between BCBS and IFSB capital guidelines and the trustworthiness of Islamic banks in greater depth. This study uses numerous capital ratios, buffers and stability measures to provide an international context for research on Islamic banking. In addition, the database is up-to-date to include information about the COVID-19 pandemic aftereffects in the year 2021. This study also introduces the Basel membership of Islamic banks to provide context for countries still at the Basel II stage or are yet to begin implementing the Basel III international standard.

The proliferation of the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) has threatened the service industry, especially the restaurant sector, requiring innovative ways to help restaurants overcome this challenge. Thus, based on the stimulus–organism–response (SOR) model, the purpose of this study is to examine the role of customers' perception of a restaurant's innovativeness (CPRI) in brand evangelism by mediating customer engagement (CE). Additionally, this study examines the moderating role of customer openness to experience.

A Web-based survey collected the primary data from 483 Egyptian customers. The data were analysed using the partial least squares structural equation modelling method based on WarpPLS.7 software.

According to the findings, CPRI, which acts as a stimulus in the SOR model, positively affects CE (organism) and brand evangelism (response). CE positively affects restaurant evangelism. Additionally, CE mediates the relationship between CPRI and evangelism. Openness to experience moderates the relationship between CPRI, engagement and brand evangelism.

This study addresses the gaps in understanding CE and brand evangelism within the context of restaurant innovation. This study assesses restaurant innovativeness scales of developing economies in multiple dimensions. Egyptian restaurant marketing managers should innovate products, services, experiences, and promotions to increase consumer engagement and feedback through technology.

This study investigates how Egyptian restaurants engage with and evangelise customers through innovation. This is one of the few studies that examine brand evangelism in a restaurant setting from the perspective of the SOR theory. Additionally, this study analyses CE as a mediator and openness to experience as a moderator.

This study aims to examine the effect of several factors on Muslims' intentions to invest in the Hajj fund Sukuk, Jordan. The study's hypothesis and model were derived from previous studies.

The present study was undertaken based on a self-administered questionnaire of 356 Jordanians who are Muslims and non-investors in Hajj Fund Sukuk. The sample was selected using a purposive sampling method. The data were analyzed using Smart-PLS version 4.

The results indicated that social influence, knowledge, religion and return on investment significantly affect the purchase intention of Jordanian Muslims to invest in Hajj Fund Sukuk.

There are some limitations to this study. First, the study was done in Jordan; thus, additional research might be conducted in other parts of the Islamic world to learn more about the perception of investing in Islamic Sukuk, particularly Hajj Sukuk. Second, while the present study used a quantitative research technique to achieve its purpose, it would be advantageous if the researchers used more qualitative techniques, such as interviews or focus groups, in the future to explore additional factors that may impact Muslims' intent to invest in Hajj Fund Sukuk.

The findings of the current study could help practitioners in the Islamic sukuk industry by identifying the key factors that encourage Muslims to invest in Hajj sukuk. They may use the results of this study in the formulation of marketing policies and the development of marketing strategies to persuade more investors to invest their money in these sukuk.

To the best of the author’s knowledge, this is the first study carried out to better understand the main factors that may influence Muslims to invest in Hajj Sukuk in the Jordanian context. Hence, this study contributes to increasing the body of knowledge in the area of Islamic marketing in general and in the field of Islamic sukuk investment specifically.

Before the British colonial regime, Muslims in South Asia recognized a transnational notion of education that stretched on all sides, including the Middle East, Africa, Europe, and Central and South-East Asia, with a great social awakening and consciousness about the importance of inclusive education. Academia included theological and secular subjects and focused on producing thoughtful, sophisticated, and confident individuals ready to defend their beliefs with sound knowledge and reasoning. However, the British Raj in the 19th and 20th centuries had a lasting and indelible impression on the Muslims and the Islamic education system. British colonial regime challenged the theological discourse and education and compelled a Western style of education. These transformations in the education system raised several dilemmas and impasses for the Muslims of South Asia. Pakistan has remained a silent recipient of this tension underpinned in its educational systems even before its inception. This chapter traces the roots of education systems operating in Pakistan starting from the ninth century with the victory of Mohammad Bin Qasim through the 19th-century colonial rule of Great Britain until today, when the country offers a blend of diverse education systems. The study explores values embedded in different education systems operating in Pakistan. It is essential to understand the values inherent in these systems to see the harmony or conflict prevailing as a consequence which might have repercussions for the different societal segments and communities. Renewed focus toward value realization will facilitate refining educational frameworks and a promise for the acceptance of global and international advancements.