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This paper aims to examine the impact of disclosure regulation on the levels of bias and accuracy in management earnings forecasts disclosed in the prospectuses of Malaysian initial public offering (IPO). Specifically, the authors investigated the two environments of regulation (mandatory versus voluntary) to draw some conclusions regarding the benefits of regulating disclosure of management earnings forecasts.

A sample of 111 Malaysian IPOs listing on the Main Market of Bursa Malaysia from January 1, 2004 to February 29, 2012 was used. The paper uses both univariate and multivariate statistical analyses on this sample of IPOs.

The empirical results of these multivariate regressions indicated that disclosure regulation has positive and significant impact on the bias and accuracy of management earnings forecasts disclosed in IPO prospectus. In general, the study results suggest that using disclosure regulation to improve the quality of IPO earnings forecasts can be, to some extent, an effective strategy.

The findings of this study have important implications for regulators and investors. The findings can provide them some relevant insights on the improvements to the earnings forecasts accuracy and trends of the forecast (optimistic or pessimistic) after the change from mandatory to voluntary disclosure. Thus, the authorities may learn whether this change is an effective policy or whether the regime of mandatory disclosure was better for IPO companies and should be reversed.

This study is regarded as the first attempt to investigate the impact of reforms in disclosure regulation on the quality of management earnings forecasts of IPO prospectuses in a developing nation such as Malaysia. In spite of this, the paper focuses on a single country, and it contributes significant insights to the debate about the credibility of IPO management earnings forecasts.

This paper empirically addresses the question of whether the meaning of ethical leadership is constant across cultures. Drawing on the implicit leadership theory (ILT), we examine whether people in Australia and Pakistan respond to perceived ethical leadership in a similar or different manner. By comparing employees' interpretation of the key attributes associated with ethical leadership, we advance construct-specific knowledge in cross-national contexts.

Since meaningful cross-country comparisons of a research construct require an equivalent measurement of it, we examine the issue of cross-cultural measurement invariance of ethical leadership. Specifically, this study explores the configural, metric and scalar invariance of ethical leadership by obtaining data from matched international samples.

The findings broadly support cross-cultural generalisability of the construct's meaning and cross-cultural transferability of the ethical leadership scale (ELS). They suggest that measures of ethical leadership constructs should be used in different cultures with caution because significant differences may exist at the item level.

This study provides cross-cultural endorsement to the construal of ethical leadership by presenting evidence that supports convergence in the construct's meaning across Eastern and Western cultures. The study has enhanced the construct validity of ethical leadership through the use of the refined multiple-sample analytical approach. Previous studies have assumed that measures of ethical leadership are invariant across various contexts. However, this is the first study to employ a robust methodological technique (metric and path invariance) that demonstrates the significant difference between each item and path and generalises the validity of ethical leadership construct and its measures by using international samples.

Drawing on job demands-resources (JD-R) theory, this study aims to develop a model of how work engagement mediates the relationship between supervisor support and affective commitment, with religiosity moderating the relationship between supervisor support and work engagement. This study further tests a moderated-mediation model exploring the relationships between supervisor support, religiosity, work engagement and affective commitment within a unique institutional context where religious values and beliefs significantly influence and shape people management practices.

Using a survey-based approach, data were collected from 367 employees from the telecommunication sector in the context of Jordan.

Supervisor support was positively related to work engagement, which positively impacts affective commitment. Work engagement mediated the relationship between supervisor support and affective commitment. In addition, religiosity amplified the relationship between supervisor support and work engagement, and the mediating effect of work engagement on the relationship between supervisor support and affective commitment.

This study contributes to JD-R theory and pertinent literature by examining the moderating role of religiosity, an important yet neglected personal resource. To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this study is the first to examine the interaction effect between religiosity and supervisor support in predicting work engagement. It is also the first to examine a moderated mediation model exploring the relationships between supervisor support, religiosity, work engagement and affective commitment.

This study aims to explore and clarify the mechanism by which cognitive heuristics influence strategic decision-making during the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic in an emerging economy.

Data collection was conducted through a survey completed by 213 top-level managers from firms located in the twin cities of Pakistan. A convenient, purposively sampling technique and snowball method were used for data collection. To examine the relationship between cognitive heuristics and strategic decision-making, hypotheses were tested by using correlation and regression analysis.

The article provides further insights into the relationship between cognitive heuristics and strategic decision-making during the COVID-19 pandemic. The results suggest that cognitive heuristics (under-confidence, self-attribution and disposition effect) have a markedly negative influence on the strategic decision-making during the COVID-19 pandemic in an emerging economy.

The article encourages strategic decision-makers to avoid relying on cognitive heuristics or their feelings when making strategic decisions. It provides awareness and understanding of cognitive heuristics in strategic decision-making, which could be very useful for business actors such as managers and entire organizations. The findings of this study will help academicians, researchers and policymakers of emerging countries. Academicians can formulate new behavioural models that can depict the solutions to dealing with an uncertain situation like COVID-19. Policymakers and strategic decision-making teams can develop crisis management strategies based on concepts from behavioral strategy to better deal with similar circumstances in the future, such as COVID-19.

The paper’s novelty is that the authors have explored the mechanism by which cognitive heuristics influence strategic decision-making during the COVID-19 pandemic in an emerging economy. It adds to the literature in strategic management, explicitly probing the impact of cognitive heuristics on strategic decision-making; this field is in its initial stage, even in developed countries, while little work has been done in emerging countries.

The peer review history for this article is available at https://publons.com/publon/10.1108/IJSE-10-2021-0636.

This study aims to unveil the determinants of employer branding (EB) that attracts and retains the employees working in the Indian higher education sector using the factor-analytic approach.

The study is cross-sectional, and the data were collected from 141 employees working in the higher education sector. Exploratory factor analysis and independent t-test were deployed to analyze the data.

The results of independent samples t-test explicate that perception of male and female university employees pertaining to EB factors of employee attraction (EA) and employee retention (ER) is congruent. Further, the perception of employees in public and private universities on EB factor is similar for ER and non-similar for EA.

The present research is an effort to unveil the employee attraction and retention factors that play a vital role in showcasing an employer as a great place to work in the Indian higher education sector.

This article aims to clarify the mechanism by which herding behavior influences perceived market efficiency, investment decisions and the performance of individual investors actively trading on the Pakistan Stock Exchange (PSX).

The deductive approach was used in this study, as the research is based on the theoretical framework of behavioral finance. A questionnaire and cross-sectional design were employed to collect data from the sample of 309 investors trading on the PSX. The collected data were analyzed using SPSS and AMOS graphics software. Hypotheses were tested using structural equation modeling (SEM).

The article provides further empirical insights into the relationship between herding behavior and investment management and perceived market efficiency. The results suggest that herding behavior has a markedly negative influence on perceived market efficiency and investment performance, while positively influencing the decision-making of individual investors.

The current study is the first to focus on links between herding behavior and investment management activities and perceived market efficiency. This article enhances the understanding of the role that herding behavior plays in investment management and, more importantly, it improves understanding of behavioral aspects and their influence on investment decision-making in an emerging market. It also adds to the literature in the area of behavioral finance, specifically the role of herding behavior in investment management; this field is in its initial stage, even in developed countries, while little work has been done in developing countries.

The purpose of this paper is to explore how localized (organization-level) actors of policy initiatives that are inspired by neoliberal ideologies use management accounting and control practices. Specifically, it addresses the operational stages of a case study Private Finance Initiative (PFI) contract within the United Kingdom's (UK's) transport sector of roads for embedding government objectives in the underlying project road.

This paper adopts Dean's (2010) analytics of government to unpack the accounting-based control practices within the case study contract in order to articulate how, at the micro level, the government's objective of improving road-users' safety is enacted, modified and maintained through such regimes.

Drawing on a content-based analysis of UK government PFI policy and extensive case study-specific documents, together with interviews and observations, this research provides theoretical insights about how control practices, at a distance without direct intervention, function as forms of power for government for shaping the performance of the PFI contractor. The authors find that the public sector's accounting control regimes in the case study project have a constraining effect on “real partnership working” between the government and private contractors and on the private sector's incentive to innovate.

By analyzing a single road case study PFI contract, the findings may not be generalizable.

This paper provides significant theoretically informed insights about how public service delivery that is outsourced to private contractors is controlled by government at a distance within complex organizational arrangements (e.g. PFI).

The purpose of this paper is to report the findings of a study undertaken to understand customer satisfaction and customer retention in business-to-consumer markets. The study investigates the effect of personnel capability and customer satisfaction on customer retention in the banking sector. The influence of the control variable (gender) on customer retention and mediating role of customer satisfaction has also been examined.

The study has used structural equation modeling (SEM) for data analysis across a sample of 409 bank customers of a private bank operating in Jammu and Kashmir state of India. Questionnaires were distributed and respondents were selected through a cluster sampling technique.

The empirical analysis through SEM has confirmed that personnel capability and customer satisfaction have a significant positive impact on customer retention. Customer satisfaction partially mediates the effect of personnel capability on customer retention. Moderation analysis was performed and established that gender moderates the effect of personnel capability on customer satisfaction. It was also found that gender has no effect on other relations. Furthermore, the study shows that personnel capability has a stronger impact on customer retention as compared to customer satisfaction. However, the relationship between personnel capability and customer satisfaction is significant.

The study has been conducted on the customers of a private bank in India. Therefore, generalizations may be limited. As personnel capability is the predictor of satisfaction and retention, individuals with proper social and technical skills – in addition to other skills – should be hired for managing relationships with customers.

The study has added to the understanding of the relationship which exists among the following variables: gender, personnel capability, customer satisfaction and customer retention. These variables have not been studied together previously.

The purpose of the study was to find out the impact of the castrated and intact attribute of the male goat on its price in Pakistan.

Five major goat markets of Punjab, Pakistan, representing various cropping systems, climatic conditions and socio-economic conditions, were selected for the study. Data about the market location, traits of traded male goat (weight, age, breed, castration, etc.), buyer attributes (education level, experience of buying goats), the purpose of buying and price of 383 traded male goats were collected by using a pretested questionnaire. The hedonic regression model was used to estimate the impact of male goat attributes on its price.

Results indicated a significant price difference between castrated and intact male goats and recommended castration of male goats for a better price. Additional findings showed a significant positive impact of live weight, age, breed and the selling marketplace on the male goat prices.

By targeting and marketing male goat characteristics like castration, weight, breed and selling markets, goat producers can receive a premium price for their animals.

In livestock markets of developing countries, buyers strongly prefer castrated or intact male goats for several reasons. However, as existing literature did not document the effect of male goat's castrated and intact attribute on its price; therefore, the study is important to fill this gap.

Adapting a positive business ethics framework, the purpose of this paper is to offer a new perspective to manage bullying at work. Specifically, this paper reports an empirical study which examines how the good work of servant leadership may lower employees’ exposure to workplace bullying, with compassion as a mediator and social cynicism beliefs (SCBs) as a moderator.

Survey data were gathered from 337 essential health professionals working in various public and private health-care organisations in Pakistan. Structural equation modelling was used to test the research model.

This study found that perceived servant leadership helps in lessening employee exposure to workplace bullying by strengthening their compassion. However, SCBs moderate the mediating role of compassion in employees’ perceptions of the servant leadership–bullying relationship.

This study has implications in developing models of leadership to build employees’ empathetic resources to combat workplace bullying. The authors found that servant leadership and workplace compassion, embodying positive, ethical and sustainable attributes, play a crucial role in managing bullying at work by promoting relational dignity.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first study that examines the relationships between employee perceptions of servant leadership, workplace bullying and employee compassion while considering SCBs as a boundary condition.

The purpose of this study is to assess the validity of the psychological safety (PS), psychological empowerment (PE), intrapreneurial behaviour (IB) and individual performance (IP) construct measurements originally developed in Western individualistic cultures.

Proportionate stratified systematic sampling was used among the production/operations middle managers in Nigerian medium enterprises (MEs), resulting in 355 valid responses. The measurements were analysed through internal consistency analysis, content, convergent and discriminant validity analysis.

The result shows that all four construct measurements are suitable and appropriate to gauge the respective constructs in collectivistic cultures such as Nigeria.

Cross-sectional self-reported data were used to analyse the result of this study, which may lead to common method variance.

Organizations, especially MEs, can use the validated measurements of this study to enhance work results in the Nigerian context.

Collectivistic cultures can benefit from the widely used measurements of PS, PE, IB and IP despite been originally developed in Western individualistic cultures.

This paper extends the body of knowledge by validating the measurements of PS, PE, IB and IP in collectivistic cultures such as Nigeria. Measurement validation for these constructs is scarce in this context. Thus, this study will provide a consistent and efficient reference for forthcoming studies and improve the credibility and replicability of future research results in collectivistic cultures.

The main purpose of this paper is to provide a comprehensive review of mushārakah mutanāqisah (MM; diminishing partnership) technique and its potentials for Islamic financial institutions.

Based on an extensive literature review, this paper aims to highlight, explain and discuss the basic principles underlying implementation of MM and its distinctive features when compared to other modes of finance.

Islamic banks, throughout the years, developed several modes of finance which are more or less similar to their conventional counterparts. In fact, al‐Bay^c bithaman al‐ājil (BBA) and murābahah are the two instruments most commonly used by Islamic banks and financial institutions. Investment and financing through the profit and loss sharing instruments is almost nonexistent within the Islamic financial system. MM technique is an alternative financial instrument available for Islamic banks. It is a relatively new and very little used product available for Islamic banks. The paper claims that MM is more in line with Shari'ah teachings and as such should be used more by Islamic financial institutions. The study indicates that MM possibly has a comparative advantage for both financier and the customer when compared with conventional loans and BBA.

As a relatively new and untested mode of finance, the paper offers a theoretical overview only. Further studies should discuss more practical issues that keep banks away from utilizing MM more efficiently.

The comprehensive overview of the MM and underlying issue discussed in this paper is a very good foundation for further studies on the topic. It gives a clear theoretical base for practical implementation of MM.

This systematic literature review (SLR) paper presents the overview and analysis of the existing ontologies application in the SE domain. It discusses the main challenges in terms of its ontologies development and highlights the key knowledge areas for subdomains in the SE domain that provides a direction to develop ontologies application for SE systematically. The SE is not as straightforward as the traditional economy. It transforms the existing economy ecosystem through peer-to-peer collaborations mediated by the technology. Hence, the complexity of the SE domain accentuates the need to make the SE domain knowledge more explicit.

For the review, the authors only focus on the journal articles published from 2010 to 2020 and mentioned ontology as a solution to overcome the issues specific for the SE domain. The initial identification process produced 3,326 papers from 10 different databases.

After applying the inclusion and exclusion criteria, a final set of 11 articles were then analyzed and classified. In SE, good ontology design and development is essential to manage digital platforms, deal with data heterogeneity and govern the interoperability of the SE systems. Yet the preference to build an application ontology, lack of perdurant design and minimal use of the existing standard for building SE common knowledge are deterring the ontology development in this domain. From this review, an anatomy of the SE key subdomain areas is visualized as a reference to further develop the domain ontology for the SE domain systematically.

With the arrival of the Fourth Industrial Revolution (4IR), the sharing economy (SE) has become one of the important domains whose impact has been explosive, and its domain knowledge is complex. Yet, a comprehensive overview and analysis of the ontology applications in the SE domain is not available or well presented to the research community.

The purpose of this paper is twofold. First, to examine the influence of two dimensions of entrepreneurial competencies, namely, strategic competency and ethical competency on the growth of small and medium enterprises (SMEs); and second, to explore the role of network competence as a mediator among these understudied variables.

The data for this study were collected from wholesale and retail-based SMEs in Malaysia through a standard structured questionnaire. PLS–SEM approach was utilised to analyse the data.

Although the findings did not reveal a direct effect of strategic and ethical competencies of entrepreneurs on SMEs’ growth, these competences, however, were found to be influential in driving their growth when network competence was used as a mediator.

The existence of a mediation effect between strategic and ethical competencies and SMEs’ growth via network competence has provided insights which add new knowledge to the extant entrepreneurship and SMEs’ performance literature.

The purpose of this study is to summarize the available pool of literature on service quality to identify different dimensions of service quality in the healthcare industry and understand how it is measured. The study attempts to explore the research gaps in the literature about different service quality dimensions and patient satisfaction.

A systematic literature review process was followed to achieve the objectives of the study. Various inclusion and exclusion criteria were used to select relevant research articles from 2000–2020 for the study, and a total of 100 research articles were selected.

The study identified 41 different dimensions of healthcare service quality measurement and classified these dimensions into four categories, namely servicescape, personnel, hospital administration and patients. It can be concluded that SERVQUAL is the most widely used service quality measurement tool.

The study identified that a majority of the researchers deduced a positive relationship between SERVQUAL dimensions and the quality of healthcare services. The findings of study will assist hospital executives in formulating effective strategies to ensure that patients receive superior quality healthcare services.

How did the Planning Programming Budgeting System (PPBS), and the Congressional Budget and Impoundment Control Act (CBA) of 1974 change the nature of budget hearing deliberations in Congress? This study focuses upon the inquiry search patterns from 1949 through 1984 for the three House Appropriations subcommittees that reviewed the Forest, Parks, Prison, Internal Revenue, and Immigration and Naturalization Services' budget requests. After PPBS was implemented, all three subcommittees emphasized programmatic questioning more and object-of-expenditure questioning less. The more prevalent pattern of change was an abrupt change after implementing the budget reform followed by a gradual cumulative effect in subsequent years. A less prevalent pattern was an abrupt change followed by a gradual decrement over time.

The Government of Pakistan has allocated a substantial proportion of agricultural credit to subsistence farmers. The purpose of this paper is to analyze farmers’ access to credit and its adequacy in the light of current agricultural credit policy of Pakistan.

The study has used both secondary and primary data for analysis. Secondary data were collected from the annual reports of Pakistan Economic Survey and State Bank of Pakistan. Primary data were collected from 168 subsistence farmers through households’ survey. Farmers’ credit access and credit adequacy were measured using credit access ratio and credit adequacy ratio, respectively. The Student’s t-test and analysis of variance were used to assess the differences in credit access and adequacy among farmers’ groups (i.e. upper, medium and lower subsistence farmers). Tobit regression model was employed to determine the factors influencing credit adequacy among farmers.

The empirical results revealed that the amount of credit provided to subsistence farmers was less than stated in the national agricultural credit policy. Upper subsistence farmers had more access to credit than lower and medium subsistence farmers. Lower subsistence farmers had above average access to informal sources of credit, and had below average access to formal sources. The findings also revealed that lower subsistence and medium subsistence farmers had the highest credit inadequacy of funds for investment in agriculture. The results of the Tobit regression revealed that age, education, experience, household size, total landholding of farmer and proportion of own land influenced the agricultural credit adequacy.

Most of the credit was distributed among the upper subsistence farmers. Lower subsistence farmers were still largely dependent on informal credit for farm production activities. The Government of Pakistan performed poor in the implementation of agricultural credit policy, and has failed to help subsistence farmers in their access to formal credit. It is needed to revamp the agricultural credit policy and facilitate credit acquisition by subsistence farmers, particularly for tenant farmers. It is important that the Government may classify the subsistence farmers into subgroups, and reallocate the funds accordingly. This study has lessons and implications for agricultural finance initiatives in developing countries.

Previous studies have focused primarily on access to agricultural credit. However, this study has adopted a holistic approach by using secondary and primary data to assess the farmers’ access to credit and adequacy. In addition, limited literature is available to explore the farmers’ accessibility and adequacy of agricultural credit. Furthermore, this study has focused exclusively on the farmers who are living in the flood-prone areas of Pakistan.

While research on the influence of ethical and unethical behaviour on employee well-being abound, we still know little of how well-being is shaped under the dual positive and negative behavioural influences in the workplace. To address this limitation, this paper aims to investigate the relative effects of ethical behaviour of leadership and unethical bullying behaviour on employee well-being through the application of the conservation of resources theory.

This study was conducted in the context of Pakistan by seeking views of 330 employees in academic work settings.

The data analysis revealed that occurrence of unethical behaviour plays a more potent role than ethical behaviour in shaping employee well-being. These findings lend support to the conservation of resources theoretical perspective by reiterating the salience of resource loss over resource gain in shaping employee well-being.

This study offers a new insight into the management literature by highlighting that combating workplace bullying not only conserves employee well-being, but also allows organisations to capitalise more fully on the positive process enabled by leadership.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate whether proxies considered under ex ante uncertainty hold true under a fixed price mechanism structure. In particular, the study examines whether pre-initial public offering (IPO) financial performance, measured by Altman Z-score, can serve as a proxy for ex ante uncertainty or signalling in an IPO market where a fixed price mechanism is used to determine the offer price.

This study uses solely ex ante information available to prospective investors prior to the IPO to proxy for ex ante variables. It also applies a more sophisticated and robust approach using quantile regression (QR) technique in addition to ordinary least squares (OLS) regression. Applying the QR technique allows the study to produce estimates for the conditional quantiles of the distribution of IPO initial returns and address the violations of basic assumptions of the standard OLS technique.

The results show that for ex ante variables, such as IPORISK, company size, the Altman Z-score measure of pre-IPO performance, audit quality and the technology industry, are significantly related to IPO initial returns. However, the relationship differs across the conditional quantiles of the distribution of IPO initial returns, which would not have been recognised using standard OLS. However, the sign of the coefficients shown by some of these variables contradicts the ex ante uncertainty hypothesis assumption, but they are found to have predictive power in explaining IPO initial returns. These findings reveal unique characteristics of the IPO process and investors in Malaysia. Most importantly, the Altman Z-score is found to be significant in the lower and upper quantiles, but insignificant around the median quantile, which implies that Altman Z-score is important for IPOs with low and high initial returns.

These findings suggest that theoretical explanations of the ex ante uncertainty hypothesis cannot be generalised across financial markets, particularly in the Malaysian IPO market where fixed price offerings are common, and investors are risk averse, whereby they avoid risky IPOs, and prefer to take a small amount of returns against high risks. In addition, the composition of the companies in the market is not as large as the developed markets. This implies that the share price of the IPO may be sensitive to other disclosures in the prospectus, market sentiments or financial news. This study recommends the need for more empirical evidence for this purpose by including other important proxies of ex ante uncertainty, such as the use of IPO proceeds and risk factors that are disclosed in the prospectus to test whether the ex ante uncertainty hypothesis holds true in Malaysia.

This study fulfils the need for finding an appropriate theory that better explains IPO initial returns in the Asian IPO market by focussing exclusively on the pre-IPO information available in the prospectus. It also sheds light on important selected pre-listing information.