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The purpose of this research is twofold: first, to investigate the impact of the adoption of green supply chain practices (GSCPs) on various parameters of competitive operational capabilities; second, to investigate the parameters that influence the market performance.

Structural equation modeling analysis was done based on the collected data through a self-administrated questionnaire from managers of 120 manufacturing firms.

In this study, we suggest that the relationship of GSCPs is positively related to all competitive operational capabilities. Further, we recommend that operational capabilities are directly related to market performance.

This paper investigates the relationship between GSCPs, Operational Competitive Capabilities and market performance, a relatively unexplored area in the developing economy. Moreover, it also adds value to the nascent literature on GSCPs in developing countries.

Nowadays customers want to enjoy their shopping experience with convenience and maximum value for their money. The purpose of this paper is to examine the role of in-store logistics in crafting store image and perceived value to customers, thus creating satisfied and loyal customers.

A research framework was developed based on the review of relevant past research in the area of retail store service quality, perceived value, store image, customer loyalty and satisfaction. Valid data were gathered through a survey from 200 respondents who have shopping experience of small- and medium-sized retail store. Data are analysed through partial least square structural equation modelling (PLSSEM) using Smart PLS 3.2.4.

The findings of this study suggest that in-store logistics play a major role in developing customers’ satisfaction followed by store image and perceived value. Further, satisfied customers are expected to return to the same retail store, thus showing loyalty.

This research provides insight into retail decisions makers regarding the factors which enhance customer satisfaction and retention. This study also helps marketers and operations managers to develop strategies for retail stores based on the findings of this research.

From a retailer’s perspective the paper explains the factors empirically that impact shoppers in the retail store environment.

By extending the service robot acceptance model (sRAM), this study aims to explore and enhance the acceptance of chatbots. The study considered functional, relational, social, user and gratification elements in determining the acceptance of chatbots.

By using the purposive sampling technique, data of 321 service customers, gathered from millennials through a questionnaire and subsequent PLS-SEM modeling, was applied for hypotheses testing.

Findings revealed that the functional elements, perceived usefulness and perceived ease of use affect acceptance of chatbots. However, in social elements, only perceived social interactivity affects the acceptance of chatbots. Moreover, both user and gratification elements (hedonic motivation and symbolic motivation) significantly influence the acceptance of chatbots. Lastly, trust is the only contributing factor for the acceptance of chatbots in the relational elements.

The study extends the literature related to chatbots and offers several guidelines to the service industry to effectively employ chatbots.

This is one of the first studies that used newly developed sRAM in determining chatbot acceptance. Moreover, the study extended the sRAM by adding user and gratification elements and privacy concerns as originally sRAM model was limited to functional, relational and social elements.

This study examines the new venue of moving illegal wealth from Pakistan under the umbrella of China–Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC). The study first discussed the features of CPEC in short and how it may bring stability and a new phase of development in the region and also in Pakistan. The review of related literature has suggested that previous studies are more focused on the advantages of CPEC and are almost neglecting the cons of the said project. Later, the research puts light on the problem of money laundering from Pakistan through CPEC and related trade transactions; Walker’s Gravity model has been used to calculate the attractiveness of money laundering. It has highlighted that China’s attractiveness for moving illegal wealth from Pakistan is increased in recent years; the risk of an increase in the amount of money laundered is also analyzed through the Fan Chart technique. Attributes which are making China more attractive for Pakistani wrongdoers are also discussed. The study aims to conclude that if the problem of money laundering will be addressed properly, the CPEC will play a vital role in bringing stability in Pakistan.

This study uses a descriptive and quantitative approach. This study uses the Walker’s Gravity Model updated by Unger et al. (2006) to measure money laundering in Pakistan. A newly developed technique for forecasting that is Fan Chart has been used to predict the trend of China’s attractiveness for money laundering as a preferred destination from Pakistan.

The study finds out that China is already increasing its ranking as a favorite destination for money laundering from Pakistan. Fan Chart analysis suggests that the attractiveness score will be increased.

The study helps in highlighting the problem of increase in money laundering from Pakistan through China under the umbrella of CPEC.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, there is no study found on the topic of the problem of money laundering linked with CPEC, and this is the first effort to point out the problem.

The purpose of this study is to investigate the roles of potential absorptive capacity (PACAP) and realized absorptive capacity (RACAP) in driving different types of innovation practices, including process, product, marketing and organizational innovation with in the supply chain (SC). Furthermore, this study also seeks to examine the previously unexplored relationship between these SC innovation practices and supply chain risk management (SCRM).

Data were collected from 267 SC professionals working in the export manufacturing industry for hypotheses testing via structural equation modeling.

The results have found that both PACAP and RACAP positively and significantly impact on each practice of SC innovation. The results also show that each SC innovation practices such as product innovation, process innovation and marketing innovation have a positive and significant impact on SCRM except organizational innovation.

This study makes a notable contribution to the broader SC management literature, with a specific focus on absorptive capacity, innovation management and SCRM, areas where empirical research is still emerging. This study reveals that organizations trying to manage SC risk must implement sufficient SC innovation practices by enhancing their PACAP and RACAP for quick response and recovery from SC disruptions.

It is believed that the core aim of Islamic institution is idiosyncratic from conventional business entities. Considering this presumption, this study aims to reveal the understandings of various stakeholders about objectives of Islamic banks.

The research endeavor is based on the findings of two distinctive studies, where Study 1 was aimed at investigating the communication of objectives through mission statements of Islamic banks and conventional banks with window operations. Here, mission statements were analyzed using content analysis and readability and understandability tests. Study 2, on the other hand, was aimed at investigating the understandings of various stakeholders, both internal (employees) and external (Muslim and non-Muslim customers of both Islamic and conventional banks, employees and management of conventional banks and business students). In total, 370 responses were received and analyzed in this study.

The findings (Study 1) unveil, the fact, that the mission statements of Islamic banks working in Pakistan are not good at communicating the corporate goals clearly. Out of ten banks investigated for Study 1, it is evident that only one bank (HBL, with window operations) was at par with readability threshold standards. Thus, it was imperative to share that mission statements of Islamic banks are difficult to read and comprehend. Study 2 adds further by revealing that most of the stakeholders are not clear about the objectives of these banks, while customers of conventional banks do not value the distinctive objectives of Islamic banks.

This study leaves a valuable message for the policy makers and top management of Islamic banks by focusing on the unattended part on their end, i.e. quality of mission statements and stakeholders’ perception about the objectives of their organization, thus highlighting the needs of greater emphasis on the communication flow to stakeholders, as the clarity of business purpose may change the way customers react toward the business and opt for banking – customer relation in future.

This study covers a multi-dimensional investigation of the understanding and communication of objectives of Islamic banks. There is dearth of literature focusing on the aspects of content analysis, mission statement readability and understandability and investigation of stakeholders’ perception in tandem.

The objective of this study is to investigate how country risk, different political actions from the government and bureaucratic behavior influence the activities in industry supply chains (SCs) in emerging markets. The main objective of this study is to investigate the influence of these external stakeholders’ elements to the demand-side and supply-side drivers and barriers for improving competitiveness of Ready-Made Garment (RMG) industry in the way of analyzing supply chain. Considering the phenomenon of recent change in the RMG business environment and the competitiveness issues this study uses the principles of stakeholder and resource dependence theory and aims to find out some factors which influence to make an efficient supply chain for improving competitiveness. The RMG industry of Bangladesh is the case application of this study. Following a positivist paradigm, this study adopts a two phase sequential mixed-method research design consisting of qualitative and quantitative approaches. A tentative research model is developed first based on extensive literature review. Qualitative field study is then carried out to fine tune the initial research model. Findings from the qualitative method are also used to develop measures and instruments for the next phase of quantitative method. A survey is carried out with sample of top and middle level executives of different garment companies of Dhaka city in Bangladesh and the collected quantitative data are analyzed by partial least square-based structural equation modeling. The findings support eight hypotheses. From the analysis the external stakeholders’ elements like bureaucratic behavior and country risk have significant influence to the barriers. From the internal stakeholders’ point of view the manufacturers’ and buyers’ drivers have significant influence on the competitiveness. Therefore, stakeholders need to take proper action to reduce the barriers and increase the drivers, as the drivers have positive influence to improve competitiveness.

This study has both theoretical and practical contributions. This study represents an important contribution to the theory by integrating two theoretical perceptions to identify factors of the RMG industry’s SC that affect the competitiveness of the RMG industry. This research study contributes to the understanding of both external and internal stakeholders of national and international perspectives in the RMG (textile and clothing) business. It combines the insights of stakeholder and resource dependence theories along with the concept of the SC in improving effectiveness. In a practical sense, this study certainly contributes to the Bangladeshi RMG industry. In accordance with the desire of the RMG manufacturers, the research has shown that some influential constructs of the RMG industry’s SC affect the competitiveness of the RMG industry. The outcome of the study is useful for various stakeholders of the Bangladeshi RMG industry sector ranging from the government to various private organizations. The applications of this study are extendable through further adaptation in other industries and various geographic contexts.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the relationship between perceived organizational support (POS), employee development and organizational citizenship behavior (OCB) while considering the moderating effect of person–organization (P–O) on this association.

Using a stratified sampling technique, the data was collected from 331 employees working in different bank branches located in five metropolitan cities of Pakistan. To test the hypotheses, the structural equation modeling technique was applied using AMOS 21.0.

The results of the study strongly supported the relationship between POS, employee development and organizational commitment. However, an insignificant relationship was found between POS, employee development and OCB. The results also reported a significant relationship between organizational commitment and OCB. Moreover, the relationship between organizational commitment and OCB was found to be moderated by P–O fit.

The findings of the study can be useful for banking organizations and policymakers responsible for employee and organizational productivity. The findings of the study can also assist the organizational leaders in working on long-term employee support programs to maximize their commitment to the organization. The study also provides the scope and space for potential scholars and researchers for carrying out further research.

While there is extensive literature is available on POS, employee development and its impact on OCB. However, it appears that very little work has been done to examine the moderating role of the P–O fit in the relationship between organizational commitment and OCB. Therefore, this study can be considered as original and of great value in understanding its relationships between various constructs in the scenario of Pakistan.

The purpose of this study is to determine if intraday week (IDW) effect of the currencies reflect leverage and asymmetric impact in currencies market. The study data set comprises of intraday patterns of 15 currencies from developed and emerging economies.

The study applies the exponential generalized autoregressive conditional heteroscedasticity (E-GARCH) model technique to observe the IDW leverage and asymmetric effect after introducing hourly dummies variables, namely, IDWmon, IDWwed, IDWfrid and IDWfrid-mon.

The study results favor the propositions and confirm that IDW effect do exist in the international forex markets in relation to hourly trading pattern for respective currencies. Mostly, currencies do depreciate on Monday and Wednesday compared to the rest of the days. However, on the last trading day, i.e. Friday currencies observe an appreciation pattern which is for both economies. The results have an evidence of leverage and asymmetric effect confirmed by the E-GARCH model as a result of press releases and influence by micro-factors in the currency markets.

The study believes to have theoretical connection related to the better understanding of currencies trend for developed and emerging economies, as the IDW effect exists. Moreover, confirmation of both the leverage and asymmetric effect in observed currencies would be able to assist the investors in making rational choices during the trading hours and would confirm considerable profits through profit incentivized strategies.

The study not only add knowledge to the previous study work in relation to the hourly trading pattern of currencies with reference to the IDW effects but also highlights the leverage and asymmetric effect in currencies that will help in formulating future trading strategies particular to emerging economies.

The aim of this paper is to examine the effect of talent management (TM) practices on employee performance (EP) among academic staff of Malaysian private universities (MPU) through employee engagement (EE).

This paper used both descriptive and quantitative approaches, while the research unit of analysis consists of MPU academic staff. A simple random and stratified sampling approach was utilized in this study while, the research sample consists of 314 MPU academic staff. A questionnaire was used to collect data from the target population, while partial least squares–structural equation modeling was used to evaluate the study hypotheses through a bootstrapping approach.

This paper results demonstrated that TM practices (succession planning practice, promotion practice and performance appraisal practice) have a significant effect on EP, while EE mediates the relationship between TM practices and EP in MPU.

This paper encourages university management to adopt and invest in TM practices for effective EE to achieve and sustain EP.

This paper has made a significant contribution to knowledge and to the operationalization of EE, EP and TM practices literature, which could help to develop theory, model, practice and research in areas of work performance.