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The novel coronavirus (SARS-CoV-2) variant of 2019 has taken more than 3.8 million lives according to the World Health Organization. To stop the spread of such a deadly and contagious disease, lockdown of varying nature was imposed worldwide. Lockdown, preventive techniques and observation of standard operating procedures (SOPs) have effectively decreased the spread of contagious diseases but have affected various businesses and industries economically. The food industry has been hit hard by different restriction parameters, due to which a disruption in food supply and demand was observed. Therefore, this study aims to study this disruption in the supply chain of processed food.

A comprehensive review was conducted on PubMed, Google Scholar, and Scopus to locate articles on processed foods, food delivery and supply chain. The selected articles were evaluated using the context analysis method.

The pandemic situation has increased the consumption and demand for processed food products from retail stores, and decreased the demand for food service products. These circumstances called for technological advancement in the field of food supply from farm to fork. This study reviews research articles, policies and secondary literature. Several advances have been made to deliver safe, nutritious and wholesome food to consumers. Block chain-based food supply chains, value stream mapping, sustainable supply chain domain and online ordering systems via mobile apps have been discussed in correspondence with information and communication technology (ICT) during COVID-19.

This study concludes that the use of advanced software and its adequate knowledge by suppliers, logistics companies and consumers have assisted in handling shocks to the global food system and provided in-time food delivery, traceability, database information and securely processed food to consumers.

This study shows the effects of COVID-19 pandemic on global food systems; disruption in food demand and supply chain is overlooked and changed; use of technological advances in food supply chain to tackle pandemic; online food ordering system gained popularity and improved technically.

1. The review highlights the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on global food systems.

2. The disruption in food demand and supply chain is overlooked and changed.

3. The use of technological advances in the food supply chain to tackle the pandemic.

4. The online food ordering system gained popularity and improved technically.

The review highlights the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on global food systems.

The disruption in food demand and supply chain is overlooked and changed.

The use of technological advances in the food supply chain to tackle the pandemic.

The online food ordering system gained popularity and improved technically.

This paper aims to propose a liquidity management solution for Islamic financial institutions (IFIs) that concurs with sustainable development and financial stability.

The study is a qualitative research. It uses the exploratory research methodology, specifically the content analysis approach, to gather primary data and identify and interpret relevant secondary data and Sharīʿah concepts. The purpose is to develop a liquidity management solution for IFIs. The proposal is based on the Unleveraged Green Investment Trust (UGIT) model, which is consistent with Basel III regulatory requirements. In developing the UGIT model, the exploratory research was complemented by a case study to examine the UGIT solution for the particular case of renewable energy.

The model demonstrates how financial innovation can meet both financial stability and sustainable development objectives, thereby achieving the spirit of Islamic finance. The structure further highlights the importance of regulatory and fiscal frameworks to enhance liquidity management and investor appeal for green financial instruments.

This study suggests a structure of UGIT to enable IFIs to meet their liquidity management needs while promoting sustainable development.

This study aims to examine the impacts of climate change (CC), measured average annual rainfall, average annual temperature and carbon dioxide (CO₂e) on cereal production (CPD) in Bangladesh by using the annual dataset from 1988–2014, with the incorporation of cereal cropped area (CCA), financial development (FD), energy consumption (EC) and rural labor force as important determinants of CPD.

This study used an auto-regressive distributive lag (ARDL) model and several econometric approaches to validate the long- and short-term cointegration and the causality directions, respectively, of the scrutinized variables.

Results of the bounds testing approach confirmed the stable long-term connections among the underlying variables. The estimates of the ARDL model indicated that rainfall improves CPD in the short-and long-term. However, CO₂e has a significantly negative impact on CPD both in the short-and long-term. Results further showed that temperature has an adverse effect on CPD in the short-term. Among other determinants, CCA, FD and EC have significantly positive impacts on CPD in both cases. The outcomes of Granger causality indicated that a significant two-way causal association is running from all variables to CPD except temperature and rainfall. The connection between CPD and temperature is unidirectional, showing that CPD is influenced by temperature. All other variables also have a valid and significant causal link among each other. Additionally, the findings of variance decomposition suggest that results are robust, and all these factors have a significant influence on CPD in Bangladesh.

These findings have important policy implications for Bangladesh and other developing countries. For instance, introduce improved cereal crop varieties, increase CCA and familiarizes agricultural credits through formal institutions on relaxed conditions and on low-interest rates could reduce the CPD’s vulnerability to climate shocks.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this study is the first attempt to examine the short- and long-term impacts of CC on CPD in Bangladesh over 1988–2014. The authors used various econometrics techniques, including the ARDL approach, the Granger causality test based on the vector error correction model framework and the variance decomposition method.

The purpose of this paper is to assess the impacts on production of five fruit crops from 1961 to 2018 of energy use, CO₂ emissions, farming areas and the labor force in China.

This analysis applied the autoregressive distributed lag-bound testing (ARDL) approach, Granger causality method and Johansen co-integration test to predict long-term co-integration and relation between variables. Four machine learning methods are used for prediction of the accuracy of climate effect on fruit production.

The Johansen test findings have shown that the fruit crop growth, energy use, CO₂ emissions, harvested land and labor force have a long-term co-integration relation. The outcome of the long-term use of CO₂ emission and rural population has a negative influence on fruit crops. The energy consumption, harvested area, total fruit yield and agriculture labor force have a positive influence on six fruit crops. The long-run relationships reveal that a 1% increase in rural population and CO₂ will decrease fruit crop production by −0.59 and −1.97. The energy consumption, fruit harvested area, total fruit yield and agriculture labor force will increase fruit crop production by 0.17%, 1.52%, 1.80% and 4.33%, respectively. Furthermore, uni-directional causality is correlated with the growth of fruit crops and energy consumption. Also, the results indicate that the bi-directional causality impact varies from CO₂ emissions to agricultural areas to fruit crops.

This study also fills the literature gap in implementing ARDL for agricultural fruits of China, used machine learning methods to examine the impact of climate change and to explore this important issue.

Given the importance of employee psychological well-being to job performance, this study aims to investigate the mediating role of affective commitment between psychological well-being and job performance while considering the moderating role of job insecurity on psychological well-being and affective commitment relationship.

The data were gathered from employees working in cellular companies of Pakistan using paper-and-pencil surveys. A total of 280 responses were received. Hypotheses were tested using structural equation modeling technique and Hayes’s Model 1.

Findings suggest that affective commitment mediates the association between psychological well-being (hedonic and eudaimonic) and employee job performance. In addition, perceived job insecurity buffers the association of psychological well-being (hedonic and eudaimonic) and affective commitment.

The study results suggest that fostering employee psychological well-being may be advantageous for the organization. However, if interventions aimed at ensuring job security are not made, it may result in adverse employee work-related attitudes and behaviors.

The study extends the current literature on employee well-being in two ways. First, by examining psychological well-being in terms of hedonic and eudaimonic well-being with employee work-related attitude and behavior. Second, by highlighting the prominent role played by perceived job insecurity in explaining some of these relationships.

Although 76% of the population of the United Arab Emirates (UAE) is Muslim, takāful (Islamic insurance) has a much smaller share of business in the UAE than conventional insurance does. The purpose of this study is to highlight the importance of brand equity (BE), which is known as the incremental value that provides reason to buy a brand. This study provides useful insights that can help the health takāful industry to gain a feasible market share in the UAE.

This is a quantitative study in which stratified random sampling was adopted for data collection from 300 respondents through a self-administered questionnaire from August to November 2018. Underpinning the study is the theory of planned behavior (TPB) and the structural equation modeling (SEM) technique has been used to examine the impact of BE on purchase intentions (PI) through the moderating role of demographic factors such as age, income, education and religion. Three dimensions of BE, i.e. brand awareness (BAW), brand association (BAS) and perceived quality (PQ), are evaluated in terms of their significance as dimensions of BE.

The major findings of this study confirm that BE has a strong positive influence on the PIs of health takāful customers in the UAE and that all three dimensions of BE make significant contributions to the overall BE. The results show that education does moderate the relationship between BE and PI while age, income and religion do not. A new finding of this study is the nonsignificant moderating role of religion, whereby it was found that takāful products in the UAE are not limited to Muslim customers but can include potential customers who are followers of other religions.

To the best of our knowledge, the present study is the first of its kind to examine the impact of BE on the PI of health takāful customers in the UAE. The findings of the study give academia, researchers and marketers a better understanding of the importance of BE and of its vital role in promoting takāful products in the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries such as the UAE.

This study explores the impact of ethical and authentic leadership on employees' workplace perceptions, focusing on organisational citizenship behaviour (OCB), trust in leader, commitment, employee voice and empowerment in independent hotels across two contrasting Global Leadership and Organizational Behaviour Effectiveness (GLOBE) clusters: Germanic and Middle-Eastern clusters. It examines how national culture influences these relationships in the hospitality industry.

Data were collected from 1,678 employees in independent hotels in the Germanic European cluster (Germany and the Netherlands) and the Middle-Eastern cluster (Qatar and Turkey) using selective and snowball sampling techniques. Hypotheses were tested using two-stage structural equation modelling.

Ethical leadership significantly affects employee voice in Germany and the Netherlands but not in Qatar and Turkey. Authentic leadership positively influences employee voice in Qatar, Turkey and Germany but does not significantly impact trust in leader in any of the four countries. The study underscores the role of cultural dimensions, particularly power distance, in shaping these relationships.

This research contributes to the literature by investigating the effects of ethical and authentic leadership on key organisational variables in culturally diverse contexts within the hospitality industry. The findings highlight the necessity of considering national culture in leadership practices and suggest practical implications for independent hotels to adapt their leadership approaches to enhance employee outcomes. Future research should explore cultural dimensions as moderators in organisational relationships.

This study aims to explore the relationship between the objectives of Islamic banking, customer satisfaction and customer loyalty in the South African context. Diving deep, this study also explores the relationship between customer satisfaction and customer loyalty.

Purposive and snowball sampling techniques were used, resulting in 163 respondents participating in this study. The data was collected using an online survey and analysed using a structural equation model based on the partial least squares method.

The results indicate that the construct related to the objectives of Islamic banking influences both customer satisfaction and customer loyalty. In addition, customer satisfaction is also found to influence a customer’s loyalty to the Islamic bank.

In South Africa, to the best of the authors’ knowledge, this study is the first of its kind; thus, the results provide context-specific insights into the extant literature on Islamic banking for Muslims residing in a non-Muslim majority country.

The pandemic's health and social issues have significantly altered the character and manner of teaching and learning in higher education across the country. The use of technology to replace or integrate face-to-face learning with online learning has become a necessary requirement for promoting and continuing learning processes. Furthermore, integrating technology is a goal of Sustainable Development Goal 4 (SDG 4) to make teaching and learning more innovative and sophisticated. This paper is based on a systematic review grounded in a synthesis of research papers and documents analyzing the current status of teachers' pedagogy through online learning modes in the context of Pakistan.

Through content analyses of academic studies in higher education and reflection on the online teaching experiences, this study discusses how students' learning is associated with teachers' teaching approaches in the modern era of digitalization and innovation.

The review and analysis suggest that online teaching is not viewed as an innovative phenomenon; rather, teachers simply teach their traditionally designed face-to-face courses through the use of technology. The paper suggests that transforming teachers' pedagogical insight to make online learning sustainable is an urgent need for higher education.

The analysis provides a basis for consideration of teacher learning and quality education (SDG #4) to fulfill the nation’s agenda for sustainable development. The analysis helps educators and administrators in higher education institutions reflect on their policies and practices that have short- and long-term effects on students' learning outcomes.

Waqf (Islamic endowment) in the form of cash is important to address the problem of developing idle waqf lands. Although there are various existing models of cash waqf, there is still a need for innovative cash waqf models. This paper aims to offer an alternative mode of financing for developing idle waqf lands using the concepts of cooperatives and waqf.

The present study first evaluates relevant literature on financing issues faced by waqf institutions in developing idle waqf lands as well as existing models of cash waqf. Based on the prevailing gap in cash waqf models, the study proposes a hybrid model of cooperative-waqf to finance idle waqf lands in Malaysia.

The proposed model is unique owing to the new dimension of membership being embedded into the waqf project. It considers donors as members of the waqf project, which is funded through the cash waqf collected, and thus, donors are given the privilege to receive benefits from the commercialised projects that are developed on the waqf lands. The existing models of cash waqf use traditional methods in which donors merely contribute cash waqf without any awareness of how the contributions are utilised. Usually, this problem occurs due to the lack of reciprocal communication between cash waqf donors and waqf institutions.

The present study examines the case of waqf land development in the context of Malaysia only. Secondly, the paper does not contain any empirical analysis, and the development of the paper is based on existing literature that discusses various models of cash waqf practised in Muslim-majority and -minority countries. Future research can conduct surveys of donors and other stakeholders on the practicality of the model.

It is expected that the proposed cooperative-waqf model will be able to create a synchronised relationship between cash waqf donors and waqf institutions and hence boost participation in developing waqf lands.

The present study adds to the existing literature in the area of waqf and cash waqf models, especially the application of this instrument in the context of Malaysia. It also offers a new hybrid model to the State Islamic Religious Councils (SIRCs) – Malaysia’s sole trustee of waqf assets management – such that the implementation of the proposed model could boost the collection of cash waqf in developing commercial projects on idle waqf lands.