Search results

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the asymmetric adjustment of cash holdings in Pakistani firms for above and below target firms.

The study employs generalized method of moments (GMM) to investigate the adjustment of cash holdings.

The study found that the firms which hold cash above the optimal level of cash holdings have higher speed of adjustment than the firms which hold cash below the optimal level. Financially constrained (FC) firms also adjust their cash holdings faster than financially unconstrained (FUC) firms but high speed of downward adjustment does not remain persistent after financial constraints are controlled. Findings of this study reveal this asymmetric adjustment in above and below target firms and extend these results in FC and FUC Pakistani listed firms, respectively.

The conclusion of this study has been derived under certain limitations. There is a vast space to extend this study in different dimensions. Firms operating in capital-intensive industries may provide different results for financial constraints because their policy designing would be quite different from other firms.

This study contributes to cash holdings research in Pakistan by exploring the adjustment behavior of cash holdings across Pakistani non-financial firms using econometric modeling. Downward adjustment rate is supposed to be higher than upward adjustment rate and this rate is tested using dynamic panel data model. Similarly, it is inferred that this relationship holds for above target firms even after including the financial constraints in the presented model.

Agri-entrepreneurship is considered a promising strategy to address poverty, particularly in developing countries. However, embarking on an agri-entrepreneurial venture poses significant challenges. The existing literature on agri-entrepreneurship in developing countries, particularly focusing on smallholders’ constraints, is often scattered and fragmented, focusing mainly on individual barriers rather than providing a comprehensive understanding of the multifaceted constraints. Therefore, this study aims to fill the gap by conducting a systematic review to identify, categorize, and prioritize the smallholders’ constraints.

By systematically reviewing literature retrieved from Scopus and Web of Science, published between 2013 and 2023, and following the PRISMA guidelines, this study identifies agri-entrepreneurial constraints through content analysis and categorizes and prioritizes them using thematic analysis.

This study revealed a range of constraints which are categorized into thematic areas including market-related challenges, financial constraints, limitations in human capital, institutional barriers, socio-cultural factors, technological shortcomings, and infrastructural challenges. Moreover, the study examines the role of social networks and their impacts on the livelihoods of smallholders in developing countries.

The study’s scope is limited to constraints for agri-entrepreneurship, particularly for smallholders in developing countries. The review considers English articles published between 2013 and 2023, and ABS 3 and above ranked journal articles.

The study systematically identifies, categorizes, and prioritizes the significant constraints to agri-entrepreneurship in developing countries by conducting a systematic review and identifying research gaps and future directions.

God promised pious individuals who obey to His commandments, to increase their economic well-being. Although it is difficult to demonstrate with figures in hand this causality relationship, Muslims must believe in its existence and robustness at both the individual and collective levels, as it is argued in Qur'an and the Prophetic Narration. We aim in this paper to model this positive relationship between Islamic work ethics and economic growth and prove theoretically its existence.

We develop an endogenous growth model very close technically to Lucas–Uzawa model (1988) in which the human capital defined as the individual's skill level acquired through formal education and learning by doing is replaced by ethical capital (piety).

The model proves theoretically that Islamic ethics are a key engine of endogenous economic growth and that the underdevelopment of Muslim populations is due to their low ethical capital (lack of piety).

The study recommends some policies such as providing formal religious education at all educational levels (elementary, secondary and higher levels) and promoting ethical values such as piety, sincerity, transparency, etc., through media and cultural institutions. Also, managers could provide courses and training to their workers to teach them Islamic work ethics.

This paper is the first to mathematically model Islamic work ethics as endogenous phenomena in socioeconomic systems and study theoretically their contributions to economic growth.

The purpose of this paper is to evaluate the impact of short-term loan (STL) vs long-term loan (LTL) on wheat productivity of small farms in Sindh, Pakistan.

The econometric estimation is based on cross-sectional data collected in 2016 from 18 villages in three districts, i.e. Shikarpur, Sukkur and Shaheed Benazirabad, Sindh, Pakistan. The sample data set consist of 180 wheat farmers. The collected data were analyzed through different econometric techniques like Cobb–Douglas production function and Instrumental variables (two-stage least squares) approach.

This study reconfirmed that agricultural credit has a positive and highly significant effect on wheat productivity, while the short-term loan has a stronger effect on wheat productivity than the long-term loan. The reasons behind the phenomenon may be the significantly higher usage of agricultural inputs like seeds of improved variety and fertilizers which can be transformed into the wheat yield in the same year. However, the LTL users have significantly higher investments in land preparation, irrigation and plant protection, which may lead to higher wheat production in the coming years.

In the present study, only those wheat farmers were considered who obtained agricultural loans from formal financial institutions like Zarai Taraqiati Bank Limited and Khushhali Bank. However, in the rural areas of Sindh, Pakistan, a considerable proportion of small-scale farmers take credit from informal financial channels. Therefore future researchers should consider the informal credits as well.

This is the first paper to examine the effects of agricultural credit on wheat productivity of small farms in Sindh, Pakistan. This paper will be an important addition to the emerging literature regarding effects of credit studies.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the effect of support price on wheat production in Pakistan during the period 1971–2016.

To capture the effect of support price on wheat production, the authors estimated the long-run linkage by using the ARDL bounds testing approach to cointegration.

This study confirmed the presence of a positive and long-term effect of area under cultivation, support price and fertilizer consumption on wheat production through ARDL bounds test. The results showed that both in the long run and short run, support price plays an important role in the enhancement of wheat production. The authors also found that the coefficients of the area under cultivation and fertilizer consumption variables were statistically significant and positive both in the long run and short run.

The use of the ARDL approach that examines the long-run and short-run effects of support price on wheat production in Pakistan makes the current study unique. An emerging economic literature suggests that only limited research has been conducted in this area.

The main purpose of this exploratory study is to investigate the attitude of pharmacists, as small- and medium-sized enterprise (SME) owners, toward new technologies, and more precisely, toward the adoption of mobile apps for mobile health (mHealth). Such apps are generally used to improve customer satisfaction and loyalty. This study measures pharmacists’ subjective experiences of mobile apps for mHealth and aims to understand how these pharmacists make sense of these apps.

The study adopted the narrative inquiry technique combined with critical event analysis. Participants' experiences were categorized based on how they viewed new technology tools. Interpretative inductive analysis identified precise aspects of the sense making illustrative of non-adoption or confused adoption of new technologies by pharmacists.

This study investigates to what extent new technology tools such as mobile apps affect retailers and more precisely the reasons why mobile apps are and are not adopted by retailers, as potential users, in the pharmaceutical industry. We identified four aspects of sense making that illustrated non-adoption or confused adoption of new technologies by pharmacists. These aspects are deeply discussed in the paper and are referred to the dimensions of confusion to confidence; suspicion to trust; frustration to education; mistrust to cooperation.

The main limitation of the present study is the limited number of territories investigated. This limitation arose because of the exploratory nature of the available research, which is generally based on case studies, and the lack of clear operationalization of the research available at the time of data collection. Another limitation is that the sample included only SMEs operating in the Italian pharmacy industry.

Many studies have highlighted the opportunities related to new mobile apps in the business-to-business market. Several have investigated customer interest in such new technology. If some contributions have indirectly investigated the acceptance of information technology tools, to the best of our knowledge, no study has been conducted to investigate directly and precisely the level of pharmacists' acceptance, use, and willingness to adopt information technology (e.g., mobile apps) for customer service in mHealth and mainly the reasons of non-adoption.

Keeping happy and committed workers is an imperative goal for organisations in any field, including higher education. Institutions must, however, have a thorough understanding of the elements that influence various organisational commitment levels before they can develop human resource management guidelines and procedures that work. Hence, by using social exchange theory, this study aimed to investigate the connection between work–life balance (WLB), job satisfaction and organisational commitment among a sample of Zimbabwean higher education institutions. These factors have received relatively minimal attention in academic institutions, particularly in developing nations.

A cross-sectional survey was conducted, using convenience sampling, to examine 224 members of the teaching staff from two universities in western Zimbabwe. The collected data were analysed using partial least squares structural equation modelling.

The results revealed that WLB significantly predicted job satisfaction. Furthermore, the relationship between WLB and affective and normative commitment was found to be indirect and mediated by job satisfaction.

The results of this study suggest that WLB and job satisfaction are crucial factors for higher education institutions that aim to secure their talented faculty's affective and normative commitment. Therefore, universities should implement firm policies and practices that encourage academic staff to maintain a healthy WLB and enhance job satisfaction.

The study's main contribution is the development of a conceptual model that contributes to the ongoing scholarly discourse on how to enhance organisational commitment among academic staff in under-resourced higher education institutions, as well as the concomitant implications for human resource policies within these institutions.