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The purpose of this paper is to develop a numerical model for the simulation of the dynamics of nanoparticles (NPs) at liquid–liquid interfaces. Two cases have been studied, NPs smaller than the interfacial thickness, and NPs greater than the interfacial thickness.

The model is based on the molecular dynamics (MD) simulation in addition to phase field (PF) method, through which the discrete model of particles motion is superimposed on the continuum model of fluids which is a new ide a in numerical modeling. The liquid–liquid interface is modeled using the diffuse interface model.

For NPs smaller than the interfacial thickness, the results obtained show that the concentration gradient of one fluid in the other gives rise to a hydrodynamic drag force that drives the NPs to agglomerate at the interface. Whereas, for spherical NPs greater than the interfacial thickness, the results show that such NPs oscillate at the interface which agrees with some experimental studies.

The results are important in the field of numerical modeling, especially that the model is general and can be used to study different systems. This will be of great interest in the field of studying the behavior of NPs inside fluids and near interfaces, which enters in many industrial applications.

The idea of superimposing the molecular dynamic method on the PF method is a new idea in numerical modeling.

Demonetization and pandemic-related restrictions in India propelled the usage of mobile payments (M-payments). The culture of online smartphone transactions is expected to rise over the coming years, even after things return to normal. This study aims to unveil the factors that escalate the satisfaction levels of M-payment users and eventually stimulate them to continue using M-payments for their daily activities.

This study evaluated the intention to continue using M-payments for 710 users utilizing structural equation modeling and augmenting the technology acceptance model (TAM) as well as the expectation confirmation model (ECM). Mediation and moderation analysis examined the proposed model's direct and indirect relationships.

The findings unveil that perceived value co-creation participation, service quality and cognitive processing magnify user satisfaction, significantly escalating M-payment continuance usage intention. Perceived value co-creation participation and user satisfaction with M-payment partially mediate the linkage among the constructs. Furthermore, perceived usefulness strengthens the link, while perceived severity of security threats weakens the linkage between user satisfaction with M-payment and continuance usage intention.

The study's findings could benefit M-payment service providers, users, policymakers and the telecom industry to strengthen India's digital payment framework.

The perceived value co-creation participation and cognitive processing domain have not garnered much attention in the M-payment literature. The study strives to comprehend these constructs by widening the purview of TAM and ECM models. It also measures the moderating role of perceived severity of security threats and perceived usefulness to unfurl potential linkages between the identified constructs.

The chapter compares the survival of old regime elites in Tunisia and Egypt after the 2011 uprisings and analyses its enabling factors. Although democracy progressed in Tunisia and collapsed in Egypt, the countries show similarities in the old elite’s ability to survive the Arab Spring. In both cases, the popular uprisings resulted in the type of elite circulation that John Higley and György Lengyel refer to as ‘quasi-replacement circulation’, which is sudden and coerced, but narrow and shallow. To account for this converging outcome, the chapter foregrounds the instability, economic decline and information uncertainty in the countries post-uprising and the navigating resources, which the old elites possessed. The roots of the quasi-replacement circulation are traced to the old elites’ privileged access to money, network, the media and, for Egypt, external support. Only parts of the structures of authority in a political regime are formal. The findings show the importance of evaluating regime change in a broader view than the formal institutional set-up. In Tunisia and Egypt, the informal structures of the anciens régimes survived – so did the old regime elites.

The objective of this paper is to explore the possible impact of mobile banking service quality (MBSQ) on customer value co-creation intention (CVCI).

A questionnaire was administered to research participants from Jordan. A total of 562 valid questionnaires were analysed. Mediation and moderation evaluations were performed in order to examine the function performed by MBSQ, customer engagement (CE), and social presence as determinants of CVCI. Structural equation modeling of type covariance-SEM using AMOS software was employed for the analysis.

The research results verify the proposition that MBSQ, CE, and social presence can all influence. In addition, the mediating role of customer engagement in respect of the relationship between MBSQ and CVCI is also confirmed in this research.

This research is of use to bank managers who must allocate resources during the development of m-banking platforms, wherein value co-creation in banking can be promoted.

This study comprises an original contribution to current scholarship in the field of m-banking through its examination of the impact of customer engagement with m-banking. Moreover, this research augments current literature pertaining to the function of MBSQ in relation to CVCI as tempered by customer engagement and social presence.

The literature on the influence of audit committees (AC) and cosmetic accounting (CA) is scarce. AC plays a unique and vital role in boosting earnings reliability in countries with weaker application of accounting standards or weaker legal protection for investors. AC, therefore, are considered to be one of the essential tools available to directors in supervising management decisions regarding financial reporting. This paper aims to examine the influence of AC characteristics (ACC) on CA and how this relationship is moderated by the audit fee.

This study used probit regression to analyze 1,218 firm-year observations of listed companies in Tehran Stock Exchange from 2014 to 2020.

The results show that AC financial accounting expertise, AC independence, female AC membership and AC tenure were negatively related to CA. The negative relationship is highly pronounced when a firm incurs higher audit fees, and audit fees moderate the relationship between ACC and CA. Results for the robustness checks show that only AC independence was significant, and the results of other characteristics were not significant.

This research was conducted in an Iranian setting where the formation of ACs is on the verge of regulation; therefore, the data used for the study only contains the seven-year period of ACs’ statutory activity. In addition, a lack of consensus on the precise measures of an AC’s effectiveness could be considered as a restrictive factor.

The findings provide an initial insight into the effect AC on CA and moderating effect of audit fee on the relationship between ACC and CA.

Heuristics are a less complex and more understandable way to a more straightforward, astute and brisk basic decision-making strategy. The purpose of this study is the development of a rule of thumb called the “Crocodile rule” based on downside risk.

The crocodile rule is developed and tested in two steps by using data in the form of stock portfolios of the Pakistan Stock Exchange from January 2000 to November 2017. In the first phase of the study, researchers have forecasted the probabilities, while in the second phase, the researchers have used these probabilities to test the crocodile rule.

The findings show the acceptance of the null hypothesis, forecasting error for all categories of stocks for the first phase. The results also show that the minimum recovery chance is 58%, and the maximum recovery chance is 81% with an overall average of 69% chance of recovery. All recovery probabilities are above 50% for all portfolios; this is particularly impressive for a volatile market like Pakistan.

The study also proposes another performance measure such as “value-at-risk” and compare it with present results to yield better outcomes. Furthermore, other categories of stock like profitability and growth can be tested as well.

The practical application of this rule is a choice between a “Buy-and-hold” strategy and showing myopic behavior as another extreme.

This pioneering research focuses on the development of the “Crocodile rule” by using the lower partial moments as a proxy of downside risk. This research adds value to the existing literature on performance measures. Furthermore, it also highlights and indicates which strategy should be used by the investors in case of falling trends in the market.

The purpose of the article is to shed light on how COVID-19 affects employee involvement in environmental responsibility and innovative performance in the banking industry, and whether employee engagement mediates the relationship between the variables. Thus, this study tries to understand bank employees’ perspectives in relation to the variables.

The study was collected during Time lag (1) and Time lag (2) from 156 to 216 bank employees, respectively. The study applied two types of analysis, to comprehend the impact of COVID-19 on employees, descriptive analysis and the partial least squares (PLS) are used.

The study's findings focused mainly on the influence of COVID-19 in Jordanian banks on employee innovative performance (EIP) due to pandemic, in addition to its effect on environmental responsibility engagement (ERE). The findings indicated a positive significant relationship between the variables. Meanwhile, employee engagement (EE) mediated the effect between the exogenous and endogenous variables.

The current research provide light on the value of employees' innovative performance and banks' commitment to environmental responsibility for those working in the banking industry, particularly during a pandemic. The findings have significant ramifications for the banking industry and in raising employee engagement.

The purpose of this study is to look at the direct relationship between audit quality, earnings management (EM) practices and company performance, as well as the indirect influence (mediation) of EM practices in the relationship between audit quality and company performance. It offers empirical evidence from the Jordanian market, which is considered an emerging market.

The population of this study is represented in Jordanian service companies listed on the Amman Stock Exchange (ASE), with a total of 344 company-year observations. Furthermore, panel data analysis was used in this study, and data for the study were acquired from yearly reports as well as the ASE’s database.

Based on generalized method of moments model, the present findings demonstrate that the size of the audit firm and the tenure of the audit firm have a positive and negative influence on EM practices, respectively, but that industry-specialist audit firm has a negative and insignificant effect. EM practices have a negative impact on two company performance proxies (ROA and ROE), but have no effect on earnings per share (EPS). Furthermore, the size of the audit firm has a positive and significant influence on the performance proxies of the company [i.e. return on assets (ROA) and return on equity (ROE)]. The presence of an industry-specialist audit firm has a positive and significant influence on two proxies of company performance (ROE and EPS), but a negative and significant impact on ROA. An audit firm’s tenure has a negative and significant impact on two performance proxies (ROA and EPS), but a positive and significant impact on ROE. Then, EM practices either fully or partially mediate the relationship between audit quality proxies and company performance as assessed by ROA, ROE and EPS.

The current study’s limitation is that it only searched in Jordanian service companies listed on ASE from 2012 to 2019 to meet the study’s objectives; thus, the authors recommend that future work investigate the study model for other sectors, whether in Jordan or other emerging markets such as the Middle East and North Africa. Another limitation of this study is that the study models lack important variables, which may affect EM and company performance, such as corporate governance and ownership structure characteristics; as a result, the authors recommend that future work includes such variables in future research models to have more explanations in this context.

Analysts, investors and other strategic decision makers may use the findings of this study to improve the efficiency and efficacy of Jordan’s financial market. These findings will enhance policymakers’ willingness to establish appropriate regulations, which might improve Jordan’s financial market performance and efficacy. These findings may help investors make better judgments by using audit quality proxies and EM indicators, which can forecast business success.

First, this study distinguishes itself from prior studies through establishing a new research model, by investigating the mediating effect of EM in the relationship between audit quality and company performance. It provides empirical evidence from the Jordanian market; hence, it increases the body of the knowledge in this context. Second, to the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first study to look into the link between audit quality, EM and company performance together; hence, the model of this study is developed using agency theory and information asymmetry theory. Third, the current study adds new evidence to the role of audit quality and EM in companies, as well as how audit quality and EM practices affect company performance in emerging markets such as Jordan.

This study examines the underlying relationships between the critical factors of building information modeling (BIM) implementation and the factors' groupings among architecture, engineering and construction (AEC) organizations in Saudi Arabia. The objectives of the study are to (1) identify the critical factors for BIM implementation, (2) analyze the interrelationships between the critical factors and (3) compare the critical factors between the different organizational characteristics.

First, potential factors were identified through a systematic literature review and interviews with AEC professionals. Then, a questionnaire survey was sent to AEC professionals and the collected data were analyzed using the following techniques and tests: mean score ranking, standard deviation, normalized value, factor analysis (FA), analysis of variance (ANOVA) and post-hoc Tukey test.

The analyses show that 14 factors are critical for BIM implementation in Saudi Arabia. The top critical factors include the existence of standard contracts on data security and user confidentiality, consistent views on BIM among stakeholders and the availability of guidelines for implementing BIM. Of the 14 critical factors, 9 can be grouped into 4 underlying factors: environmental, governmental, legal and organizational. The analysis shows that the criticality of the most critical factors grouped by the FA varies between different levels of BIM competency. Finally, the presence of public–private partnerships (PPPs) in realizing BIM projects is a new and emerging critical factor for BIM implementation in Saudi Arabia.

This study differs from prior works on BIM implementation in Saudi Arabia by using FA to explore the underlying relationships among factors of BIM implementation and the factors' groupings. Based on the FA results, a roadmap for implementing the BIM was developed. These findings will help to purposefully and efficiently customize BIM implementation strategies and initiatives to ensure successful BIM implementation in Saudi Arabia.

Israel ratified the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities and has subsequently worked towards putting disability-empowering policies and facilities in place. This study explores the experiences of Palestinian Arab citizens of Israel with disabilities in everyday life including education, employment and accessing disability facilities and services.

This study explores the challenges and experiences of Palestinian Arab citizens of Israel through in-depth, semi-structured interviews with a disparate group of Arab men and women with various forms of disabilities.

This research indicates that Arabs with disabilities are either unable to access them or do so with great difficulty relative to their Jewish counterparts. The findings suggest that this is due to one of two reasons: first is institutional discrimination by Jewish and Arab staff, and second is structural discrimination as facilities and services are specifically designed for the Jewish majority and their areas of residence as opposed to Arab residential areas.

Guided by intersectional theory, this article explores how the multiple identities of Arabs with disabilities living in Israel are co-constituted and ordered by different social and political structures which inform their daily lived experiences. This research illustrates that in Jewish politics and institutions, Arabs with disabilities in Israel are “otherised” by being flatly identified as Palestinians; yet, within their Arab communities, they are “otherised” by being reduced solely to their disability. This article examines how this variation in ordering and reduction can lead to specific experiences and forms of discrimination that requires multi-dimensional approaches and ways forward.