Search results

Expansion of the consumption of renewable energy is a significant issue for reducing global warming, to cope with climate change and achieve sustainable development. This study aims to examine how research and development expenditure (R&D) affects renewable energy development in developed G-7 countries over the period from 2000 to 2019. Variables of trade liberalization and CO₂ emissions are considered control variables.

This study has adopted a panel quantile regression. The impact of the variables on renewable development has been examined in quantiles of 0.1, 0.25, 0.5, 0.75 and 0.9. Also, a robust examination is accomplished by applying generalized quantile regression (GQR).

The empirical findings reveal a positive and significant relationship between R&D and the consumption of renewable energy in 0.1, 0.25, 0.5 and 0.75 quantiles. Also, the findings describe that the expansion of trade liberalization and CO₂ emissions can significantly increase the development of renewable energy in G-7 countries. Furthermore, GQR verifies the main outcomes.

These results have very momentous policy consequences for the governments of G-7 countries. Therefore, investment and support for the R&D section to promote the development of renewable energy are recommended.

This paper, in comparison to other research, used panel quantile regression to investigate the impact of factors affecting renewable energy consumption. Also, to the best of the authors’ knowledge, no study has perused the effect of R&D along with trade liberalization and carbon emissions on renewable energy consumption in G-7 countries. Also, in this paper, as a robustness check for panel quantile regression, the GQR has been used.

This study examined the impact of digital finance on SME financial inclusion in Africa.

The study obtained data from the International Monetary Fund's Financial Access Survey and World Development Indicators covering the period from 2011 to 2022. Heteroskedastic panels corrected standard errors (HPCSE) and feasible generalized least squares regressions were employed in the analysis.

The findings indicate that digital finance (volume and intensity) significantly improves SME financial inclusion in Africa.

Due to the paucity of data, the study covered only 17 African countries over 12 years (2011–2022).

The findings imply the need for African central banks and other relevant regulatory bodies to establish effective regulations mandating Deposit Money Banks and other financial institutions to operate agent banking. This would facilitate access to financial services for SME owners. Such measures could financially include more unbanked SME owners, especially those in rural areas. Moreover, these initiatives must be strongly supported by introducing user-friendly digital financial technologies and registering more financial technology (fintech) companies.

Implementing necessary measures to enhance access to digital financial services for SMEs in Africa is likely to reduce unemployment and poverty and contribute to the economic growth and development of the region.

This study provides empirical evidence showing how digital finance affects SME financial inclusion in Africa.

Modern renewable energy is crucial for environmental conservation, sustainable economic growth and energy security, especially in developing East African nations that heavily use traditional biomass. Thus, this study aims to examine urbanization and modern renewable energy consumption (MREC) in East African community (EAC) while controlling for gross domestic product (GDP), population growth, foreign direct investment (FDI), industrialization and trade openness (TOP).

This study considers a balanced panel of five EAC countries from 1996 to 2019. Long-run dynamic ordinary least squares (DOLS) and fully modified ordinary least squares estimations were used to ascertain the relationships while the vector error-correction model was used to ascertain the causal relationship.

Results show that urbanization, FDI, industrialization and TOP positively affect MREC. Whereas population growth and GDP reduce MREC, the effect for GDP is not that significant. The study also found a bidirectional causality between urbanization, FDI, TOP and MREC in the long run.

Investing in modern renewable energy facilities should be a top priority, particularly in cities with expanding populations. The governments of the EAC should endeavor to make MREC affordable among the urban population by creating income-generating activities in the urban centers and sensitizing the urban population to the benefits of using MREC. Also, the government may come up with policies that enhance the establishment of lower prices for modern renewable energy commodities so as to increase their affordability.

MREC is a new concept in the energy consumption literature. Much of the research focuses on renewable energy consumption including the use of traditional biomass which contributes to climate change negatively. Besides, the influence of factors such as urbanization has not been given significant attention. Yet urbanization is identified as a catalyst for MREC.

This study aimed to explore the relationship between supply chain resilience (SCR) and organizational performance (OP), with innovation (INN) serving as a mediator and information sharing (IS) acting as a moderator.

The study comprehensively examined the connections between SCR, OP, INN and IS. An exploratory approach and quantitative methods were employed. The data were collected from small and medium-sized manufacturing enterprises of three cities Xian, Hainan and Guangzhou of China via online questionnaire surveys conducted through Emails and WeChat. SmartPLS-4 was used for data analysis.

The findings indicated that SCR has a positive effect on sustainability efforts. Additionally, INN and effective IS both mediated and moderated this relationship, playing crucial roles in improving sustainability within the supply chain.

The study offered practical insights for businesses to enhance their sustainability efforts. Managers can use these findings to develop strategies that improve SCR, foster INN and encourage effective IS, ultimately resulting in a more sustainable supply chain.

This study enriched the existing knowledge base by investigating the intricate relationships among SCR, OP, INN and IS, all within the context of achieving sustainability. By exploring these elements holistically, the research introduced originality and highlighted effective strategies for sustainable supply chain management.

This study aims to analyze chief executive officer (CEO) duality in corporate governance by using Scopus data. It explores CEO duality research trends across diverse corporate governance contexts and disciplines, shaping the future research agenda, and proposing recommendations for further investigations in this area.

This analysis is conducted through VOSviewer software and Biblioshiny by extracting the bibliometric network from the output files of the Scopus bibliographic database.

Research on CEO duality centers on keywords such as corporate governance, agency theory, board of directors, board size and firm performance. Word tree maps uncover various research areas and gaps. Top authors are Elsyed K. & Rashid K, with the University of Utara Malaysia as the leading organization. Main disciplines are “Business Management and Accounting” followed by “Economics.” “Corporate Governance: An International Review” tops the journals with 1,120 citations. Quantitative methods using secondary data dominate (94%), mostly from nonfinancial industries (96%). Theoretical lenses include agency theory, stewardship theory, stakeholder theory, resource dependence theory and institutional theory. Firm performance is the most researched aspect (38% of studies) concerning CEO duality.

Bibliometric and systematic analysis offer researchers a general overview and in-depth insights into current CEO duality research trends, influential articles and keywords in corporate governance. This study’s findings benefit research institutions, professional bibliometric users and funding agencies alike.

By visualizing bibliometric networks and conducting systematic analysis of top-cited articles, this study not only advances the academic understanding of CEO duality in corporate governance but also provides actionable recommendations for researchers, practitioners and policymakers to enhance governance practices and contribute to the field’s evolving body of knowledge.

The objective of the research is to examine the impact of global governance and macroeconomic indicators on the lending capacity of banks in India.

Employing a comprehensive time series dataset spanning from 1996 to 2022, we utilize the Nonlinear Autoregressive Distributed Lag model approach to investigate the short-run and long-run impact of government policy (GP) effectiveness, lending interest rates and remittance inflows (RI) on the lending capacity of banks in India.

The findings of the study indicate that lending interest rates have a statistically insignificant impact on lending capacity in the short term. However, in the long run, an increase in the lending interest rate leads to a decrease in lending capacity, whereas a decrease in the lending interest rate has a non-significant impact. On the other hand, the effectiveness of GPs affects both short-term and long-term lending capacity. In the short run, positive or negative changes in GP effectiveness lead to a decline in lending capacity. Whereas in the long run, a positive shock in GP effectiveness increases lending capacity, while a negative shock decreases it. Lastly, RI indicated no significant short-term impact on the lending capacity of the banks. Conversely, in the long run, a positive change in RI enhances lending capacity, whereas a negative change in RI reduces it, with a more pronounced effect.

The novelty of the study lies in the fact that it is a pioneering study that utilizes global governance and macroeconomic indicators to examine the impact on the lending capacity of banks and financial institutions in India. Moreover, the study adopts a non-linear approach to examine the relationship between the chosen variables, which enables an understanding of the impact of both positive and negative shocks on the dependent variable both in the short and long run. Lastly, the examination sheds light on the achievement of Sustainable Development Goal 8.10, which is related to financial inclusion and it is a major concern for a large developing nation like India.

This study aims to utilize Relational Job Design (RJD) theory and Conservation of Resources (COR) theory to explore the impact of RJD, particularly its key components – job impact (JI) and job contact (JC) – on employees’ quiet quitting (QQ) behavior. It also investigates the role of work alienation (WA) as a mediator and examines whether inclusive leadership (IL) has a moderating effect on these proposed relationships.

This paper used paired dyadic surveys to gather data from 166 full-time employees and their immediate supervisors used in service organisations across the United Arab Emirates (UAE). The study’s moderated mediation model was tested using hierarchical regression and the PROCESS Macro in statistical package for the social sciences (SPSS) v.26.

The results empirically support our hypotheses: RJD (JI and JC) significantly reduces employees’ feelings of WA, thereby decreasing the likelihood of engaging in QQ behaviours. As expected, the study also revealed that IL acts as a moderator by amplifying the detrimental effects of RJD (JI and JC) on feelings of alienation from one’s work, which in turn decreases the likelihood of engaging in QQ behaviour.

This study fills a gap in understanding how relational work design and IL jointly influence unfavourable workplace attitudes and behaviours. It offers a foundation for future studies on QQ in diverse cultural and organisational contexts.

This study provides practical insights for organisations aiming to tackle employee quitting behaviours. Human resource (HR) professionals and leaders should focus on enhancing both JC and JI, while actively fostering IL. These actions are critical for significantly boosting employee engagement, fostering a more motivated and connected workforce and reduce QQ behaviours in the workplace.

Although the data in this study were collected from an organisation with multiple branches across the country, the findings may still have limited generalisability to other organisations or industries. While this paper acknowledges this as a limitation, it also presents an opportunity for future research to explore QQ across diverse cultural and organisational contexts. Larger and more varied samples in future studies could provide deeper insights into the prevalence and drivers of QQ in different workplace environments.

This study explores the under-researched phenomenon of QQ, revealing how RJD can mitigate these behaviours. It uncovers new psychological mechanisms, offering actionable insights for management strategies to enhance employee commitment and reduce negative behaviours.

The purpose of this study is to scrutinize the extent of forward-looking (FL) disclosures and explore the impact of corporate governance (CG) on FL disclosures in integrated reporting (IR) in the context of the banking industry in Bangladesh.

Twenty-two listed banks in the Dhaka Stock Exchange (DSE) are selected as a sample from 2018 to 2022. For content analysis purposes, the study has developed an unweighted self-constructed disclosure index with 58 items and extracted data manually from the integrated annual report. Furthermore, descriptive statistics is conducted to analyze the extent of FL disclosures, and a pooled ordinary least squares regression model is used to examine the impact of CG (directors’ ownership, institutional ownership, foreign ownership, board of directors, independent directors, female directors and audit quality) on the FL disclosures.

This study reveals that the banking industry’s average FL disclosure score is only approximately 43%, indicating a meager degree of disclosures in Bangladesh’s well-structured sector. This study also finds that directors’ ownership, foreign ownership, female directors and audit quality have a statistically significant and positive relationship with FL disclosures at a 5% significance level. By contrast, institutional directors and the board of directors have a substantial but negative impact on FL disclosures. However, the other exponential variable, independent directors, has no impact on FL disclosures.

This study has some limitations, such as: i) the sample size is restricted to 22 banks, whereas nearly 36 banks are listed in the DSE. The sample size should be increased for better results. ii) The study only considers the banking sector with a small sample, but other sectors have been omitted from the sample. iii) The data have been extracted from the annual report, but other relevant sources such as banks’ websites, prospectuses, press releases, and media releases are not considered. iv) Finally, the self-constructed unweighted disclosure index is affected by subjective judgment. For depth analysis, a weighted method for content analysis purposes will be applicable.

Since there is no specific guideline for FL disclosures, this study suggests that the practical implication is for the regulatory body and policymakers to take the initiative to design a framework for FL disclosures that will improve disclosure quality. Second, they can investigate the independent director’s role in the banking sector to discover the existence of old-boy network problems.

Investors will benefit from the proper judgment about the firm’s forward-looking disclosures, hence making effective decisions.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, no particular study has been conducted on CG mechanisms and FL disclosures in the IR perspective of the banking sector in Bangladesh. So, this study may contribute to the existing literature.

This study investigates the determinants of net interest margin (NIM) and tests the decoupling hypothesis in Turkey's Islamic and conventional banks.

This study has employed a panel quantile model (PQM) to assess the net interest margin (NIM) and test the decoupling hypothesis in the dual banking system of Turkey.

The empirical results show that the impact of equity is positive for both Islamic and conventional banks but relatively more robust for Islamic banks. Moreover, it is observed that return on assets has a positive association with NIM in both types of banking systems. Interestingly, the impact increases from lower to higher quantiles, but a higher acceleration rate is observed for Islamic banks. The study also finds that, as bank stability increases, NIM decreases for both groups of banks but more stably for Islamic banks, resulting in lower margins than conventional banks. Thus, the paper confirms the decoupling hypothesis and suggests that, to increase profit margins, Islamic banks need to increase assets and equity.

The paper confirms the decoupling hypothesis and suggests that to increase profit margin, Islamic banks need to increase assets and equity.

Since both equity and assets contribute positively to interest margins, policymakers in the industry need to increase the size of equity and assets to get maximum returns.

This is one of the first studies to investigate NIM's determinants and test the decoupling hypothesis in the Turkish dual banking system using a non-parametric MCMC panel quantile regression (QRM) model.

This study aims to examine the impact of logistics performance and technological innovation on environmental quality in Africa, focusing on carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions and renewable energy consumption as indicators of environmental quality.

The study employs a panel data analysis of 43 African countries over the period 1990–2021. Data on logistics performance, technological innovation, CO2 emissions, and renewable energy consumption are sourced from the World Development Indicators database of the World Bank. Grounded in the Triple Bottom Line (TBL) framework, which integrates economic, social and environmental dimensions of sustainability, the analysis utilises the generalised method of moments (GMM) technique to address the issue of endogeneity.

The regression results reveal significant relationships between logistics performance, technological innovation and environmental quality indicators. Logistics performance demonstrates a negative impact on CO2 emissions, while technological innovation positively influences renewable energy consumption. The interactive effect of logistics performance and technological innovation mitigates CO2 emissions, aligning with the TBL framework’s environmental dimension by promoting sustainability. Furthermore, trade openness exhibits a significant negative effect on both CO2 emissions and renewable energy consumption. The findings highlight the potential synergies between logistics performance and technological innovation in driving environmental sustainability while offering economic benefits and addressing social well-being.

The findings suggest the importance of prioritising investments in enhancing logistics performance and fostering technological innovation to achieve environmental sustainability goals in Africa.

To the best of the researchers’ knowledge, this study presents an initial attempt to examine the nexus between logistics performance and environmental quality in Africa using the logistics performance index. Furthermore, beyond assessing the individual effects of logistics performance and technological innovation on environmental quality, we delve into their interactive dynamics, adding novelty to the study.