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This study aims to explore the key factors that hinder technopreneur’s success.

The finalization of the most appropriate method to conduct any study is based on the nature of the research questions (Shaw, 1999; Morse and Richards, 2002). As this study is exploratory, a qualitative approach was used to collect the data. Morse and Richards (2002) have emphasized that the qualitative technique to collect is useful for in-depth assessment of the participant’s experiences, their understanding regarding the matter and their interpretation of their experiences.

Technopreneurs face four significant problems that have an impact on their business agility and competitiveness. These four factors are as follows: the entrepreneur’s skills and preparedness; their organization’s insufficient capabilities and talent to deal with the challenges; a lack of support mechanisms from relevant institutions; and, finally, the rapidly changing business environment in terms of technology and competition.

This study explores the hindrance factors through qualitative techniques faced by young technopreneurs in the context of Malaysia. This study will provide deep insight regarding the key issues facing new startups and will be helpful for policymakers.

The purpose of this paper is to examine how digital literacy influences knowledge sharing and academic performance among graduate students in online learning environments.

Structural equation modeling via AMOS was utilized to test the research hypotheses in this cross-sectional study. Students’ digital literacy, their knowledge sharing, and their academic performance in online learning environments were surveyed by questionnaires. The sample of 330 graduate students was selected from a leading public university in Iran. Based on a stratified sampling approach, the recruited students answered questionnaires based on their degree level and field of study.

The results demonstrated that digital literacy was a positive and significant predictor of knowledge sharing and students' academic performance. Furthermore, the study revealed that knowledge sharing mediates the relationship between digital literacy and academic performance.

Our findings revealed that digital literacy positively and significantly predicts knowledge sharing and academic performance. This may be attributed to the fact that digital literacy is essential for developing digital learning in higher education. Conducting research on the antecedents and consequences of digital literacy in academic environments may prove attractive to future researchers.

Research on the influence of digital literacy on students’ knowledge sharing and academic performance in online learning environments is scarce. This study suggests that improving students’ digital literacy and knowledge sharing can enhance their performance in online learning environments, and it is a recommendation for university educators and educational technologists. Gaining insight into the influence of digital literacy on how students share knowledge and their academic achievements in virtual learning environments can have numerous managerial ramifications for administrators and instructors in higher education.

The purpose of this study is that researchers have widely explored and associated corporate social responsibility (CSR) with firm success. Measuring the relationship between CSR, service quality, corporate reputation and brand preference by drawing on the stakeholder theory in developing countries remains a substantial research gap.

The data were collected using a survey method. The study was performed on 387 respondents who have undergone treatments in hospitals. The authors analysed the data using the Smart PLS 3.0 structural equation modelling technique.

The survey revealed that service quality and CSR are positively linked with corporate reputation, leading to brand preference in the health-care sector.

The survey was performed in the context of the health-care industry; however, additional studies are necessary to extrapolate the findings to other fields, such as education and food. This research helps guide policymakers, administrators, health-care managers and researchers by highlighting the contribution and role of service quality, CSR and corporate reputation in achieving a hospital’s performance.

This study contributes to the CSR literature by introducing the concept of CSR. To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this study also extends research in the diverse literature by examining the relationship between CSR, service quality, corporate reputation and brand preference by illustrating the stakeholder theory in the context of the health-care sector.

The purpose of this study is to explore the relationships between shared leadership, psychological contract, felt obligation and employees’ creative deviance as well as to investigate the mediating role of psychological contract and the moderating role of felt obligation in these relationships.

This study used convenience sampling to obtain longitudinal data collected (interval of one week) from 348 frontline hotel employees. The SPSS Process Model 5 was used to test the moderated mediation model.

The results indicated that shared leadership has a significant positive impact on both employee creative deviance and psychological contract and psychological contract positively influences creative deviance. The results confirmed that the psychological contract mediated the relationship between shared leadership and employee creative deviance. The study also highlighted the moderating role of felt obligation on the relationship between shared leadership and employee creative deviance.

This study contributes to the literature on shared leadership, psychological contract, felt obligation and creative deviance by providing empirical evidence of the mediating and moderating effects of psychological contract and felt obligation on the relationship between shared leadership and employee creative deviance. The findings offer practical insights into how organizations can leverage shared leadership to enhance employee creative deviance through psychological contract and felt obligation.

This research aims to explore the role played by Ijara-Murabaha Sukuk in attracting foreign direct investment (FDI) that adheres to Shariah principles into Pakistan’s oil sector. It focuses on the difficulties faced by the country in terms of payment for oil procurement. It highlights the recent collaboration with ARAMCO, Saudi Arabia’s national oil company, to establish the Gwadar Refinery Project. This project aims to enhance oil production, reduce costs and increase storage capacity.

Data was collected from 379 investors who participate in Ijara-Murabaha Sukuk through a questionnaire designed to evaluate how trade finance solutions, sustainability practices, transparency measures and governance structures impact FDI that comply with Shariah principles. The study also considers the moderating role of market conditions on these factors. Smart PLS 4 software was used to analyze their influence on creating an environment conducive to Shariah-compliant FDI.

The findings reveal that if the company prioritizes shariah-compliant foreign direct investment over conventional due to underlying productive activities ensuring economic growth as well as strong compliance mechanisms ensuring transparency, the multifaceted challenges associated with oil procurement, circular deficit, foreign exchange reserves and transparency problems can be solved. The groundbreaking analysis from this study will guide the major stakeholders while developing policies to convert the most expensive and massive budget deficit sector into a contributing sector of the economy.

This is a pioneering study on the application of Ijara-Murabaha Sukuk to resolve the problem of circular deficit of oil sectors of Pakistan by issuing 51% Ijara Sukuk for enhancing the capacity for the storage of oil and producing the oil from imported crude oil. 49% murabaha sukuk for importing crude oil. Successful implementation of the Shariah-compliant ARAMCO project can open the door to foreign direct investment for Pakistan and the other third economies, meeting the “Reducing Poverty of SDGs.”

The healthcare sector faces leadership challenges, emphasizing the importance of a mechanism to support and empower team members. The present study aims to investigate the impact of team empowerment (TE) on team performance (TP), with the mediating role of shared leadership (SL) and the moderating role of relationship conflict between shared leadership and team performance.

This study's conceptual model was proposed using the social exchange theory and conservation of resource theory. Data was collected using a self-administrated questionnaire to 492 respondents, of which 42 were team leaders, and 450 were team members from 42 teams in the Pakistani healthcare sector. The Partial Least Square-Structural Equation Modeling (PLS-SEM) technique was used to examine the proposed hypotheses of the study.

The results revealed a significant positive relationship between team empowerment and shared leadership. SL is positively associated with team performance. The present study also found that SL positively mediated the relationship between shared leadership and team performance. Moreover, relationship conflict moderated the relationship between SL and TP.

The finding delineates that healthcare organizations can adopt shared leadership and empower team members by involving them in decision-making, enhancing collaboration, resource utilization, and patient care outcomes. Managers should implement structured strategies like cross-functional training and inclusive decision-making processes to cultivate empowered teams and mitigate relationship conflicts for optimal performance.

The study advocates developing shared leadership practices for better team outcomes. This study is an early attempt to examine the mediating role of shared leadership between team empowerment and team performance.

Although several papers have been published over the past decade on various aspects of digital entrepreneurship, nothing has hitherto been written on the theme of digital entrepreneurship in the metaverse. This paper, therefore, aims to explore the key challenges of digital entrepreneurship in the metaverse, with a view to developing a model to address these challenges.

The Decision Making Trial and Evaluation Laboratory approach was adopted in this study to rank the selected challenges in order of importance and establish a cause-and-effect relationship between them. The data were gathered from 10 experts from Saudi Arabia who deploy augmented reality, virtual reality and other immersive technologies in the course of their business.

Three challenges, namely, “Market fragmentation (C3)”, “Technical complexity (C1)” and “Monetisation and revenue models (C5)” were highlighted in the findings as the main factors of influence in the Cause group, whereas the remaining five challenges, “Infrastructure and connectivity (C2)”, “Social and ethical considerations (C8)”, “User adoption and engagement (C6)”, “Privacy and security (C7)” and “Intellectual property protection (C4)”, were categorised in the Effect group, being significantly influenced by the challenges in the Cause group.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first study to explore the challenges of metaverse-enabled digital entrepreneurship and classify the identified challenges into groups of Cause and Effect.

This study aims to explore the impact of instability on bank performance by examining how economic uncertainty interacts with the profitability of both Islamic and conventional banks (CBs) in Indonesia.

This study applies a quantitative methodology, applying dynamic linear analysis through autoregressive distributed lag estimation and leverages time-series data from Indonesia’s banks. Specifically, bank profitability is measured using income before taxes, whereas economic uncertainty is gauged by weighting macroeconomic factors through principal component analysis.

Economic uncertainty affects the profitability of both Islamic banks and CBs in Indonesia, with CBs being more negatively impacted than Islamic banks.

Economic uncertainty has a notably different impact on banks’ profitability in Indonesia, highlighting the critical need for stabilization measures to reinforce the foundations of the financial institution management system and integration policy frameworks.

Strengthening the management of integration policies should be prioritized to enhance financial stability in larger banks during economic uncertainty. Policymakers should focus on the profitability of CBs during periods of economic uncertainty as it has a bigger impact than the Islamic banking industry.

This study underscores the importance of sustainable development strategies in enhancing banking performance during periods of uncertainty. At the same time, studies examining the relationship between economic uncertainty and bank profitability remain limited, particularly when comparing Islamic banks and CBs in Indonesia.

This study examines the moderating effects of cultural distance and the nationality of foreign subsidiaries’ CEOs on the relationship between internal/external network tie strength and technological innovation. This study focuses on foreign subsidiaries of Korean firms operating in emerging markets, based on the knowledge-based view.

To test the hypotheses, a survey was administered to 3,840 foreign subsidiaries of Korean firms in emerging markets. Questionnaires were distributed via phone and email, and 282 (7.34%) completed questionnaires were returned. Accordingly, an empirical analysis was conducted, and the hypotheses were tested.

First, internal network tie strength had a significant negative effect on foreign subsidiaries’ technological innovation. Second, external network tie strength had a significant positive effect on foreign subsidiaries’ technological innovation. Third, as for the moderating effect, cultural distance negatively moderates the significant negative effect of internal network tie strength on the technological innovation of foreign subsidiaries. Fourth, cultural distance positively moderates the positive effect of external network tie strength on foreign subsidiaries’ technological innovation. Fifth, foreign subsidiaries’ CEO nationality (parent country nationals) positively moderates the negative effect of internal network tie strength on foreign subsidiaries’ technological innovations. Sixth, foreign subsidiaries’ CEO nationality (parent country nationals) negatively moderates the positive effect of external network tie strength on foreign subsidiaries’ technological innovation.

Previous studies found a positive relationship between dual network tie strength and technological innovation in foreign subsidiaries from a knowledge-based view. This study’s significance lies in its finding that the varying strengths of foreign subsidiaries’ internal and external network connections can have different impacts on their technological innovation in the context of subsidiaries operating in emerging markets. Additionally, the moderating effects of cultural distance and the nationality of the foreign subsidiary’s CEO were examined. Therefore, this study is significant because it expands the literature on technological innovation in foreign subsidiaries.

This study aims to analyze how the COVID-19 pandemic has altered the role of the Islamic finance (IF) sector in the economy and how technological developments in IF can enhance its functioning and contribution to sustainable development in the post-pandemic era. It examines the impact of IF on traditional financial inclusion pre- and post-COVID-19. Furthermore, in response to the acceleration of financial technologies following the pandemic, the study explores the impact of Islamic FinTech on Digital Financial Inclusion (DFI) and, consequently, on sustainable development (SD).

A cross-sectional multiple regression analysis is conducted to examine the impact of traditional IF on financial inclusion pre- and post-COVID-19 in the years 2017 and 2021 for 64 countries. Moreover, a structural equation model (SEM) is used by using cross-section data for 64 countries in the year 2021 to capture the impact of Islamic FinTech on SD through DFI as an intermediator.

IF has a positive and significant impact on traditional financial inclusion pre-COVID-19. On the contrary, it has insignificant impact post to the pandemic due to the slow-down of the sector development. Alternatively, Islamic FinTech has a positive and significant impact on DFI and, hence, on SD. These results indicate that the development of the IF sector is negatively affected post to the pandemic. However, it still has an opportunity to shift to a more resilient sector by introducing financial innovations that allow it to cope with the global current financial technological changes.

This research has some limitations that could be addressed in future studies. First, the empirical analysis is restricted to cross-sectional analyses in years 2017 and 2021 to compare the role of IF pre- and post the pandemic. These years are chosen based on data from the Global Financial Development Database, which is collected by the World Bank and released every three years, with the latest update in 2021. Second, this study uses one measure for each of traditional and DFI. This can be further investigated by using multiple indicators or constructing an index for each variable.

Islamic FinTech presents several practical implications, particularly in its ability to provide access to financial services while adhering to Shariah principles. First, it fosters a more inclusive financial ecosystem by offering cost-effective, ethical and transparent financial products tailored to diverse populations that can significantly contribute to financial inclusion, especially in Muslim-majority countries. Second, it promotes gender equality by improving access to financial resources and services, which enhances financial inclusion and subsequently drives the expansion and development of the IF sector and hence supports SDGs. Third, Islamic FinTech supports the growth of SMEs by providing Shariah-compliant financing alternatives.

This paper’s originality lies in its comparison of the role that the development of the IF sector plays in financial inclusion pre- and post-COVID-19, using empirical regression analysis, which contrasts with other studies that use theoretical analysis. Furthermore, the study bridges a gap in the IF literature by extending the analysis to integrate digital technologies into the IF sector, using the Global Islamic FinTech index (GIFT) to capture various aspects of Islamic FinTech development by conducting an SEM to examine the impact of Islamic FinTech on SD, with DFI serving as an intermediator.