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The paper seeks to document attitudes and patterns of behavior in Pakistan's criminal justice system over the past 30 years.

A conceptual discussion and approach are taken following extensive interviews, conducted in 1992‐1993, with members of the police, judges, civil service bureaucrats, torture victims, psychiatrists, political detainees, criminal lawyers and others.

The patterns of behavior are longstanding and deeply rooted despite periodical changes in political leadership. Cynicism about law enforcement is widespread throughout the country and much crime goes unreported as a result. There is a lack of faith and support for police officials and legal safeguards for criminal suspects are often ignored.

The conditions in Pakistan's criminal justice system are explained theoretically with reference to the concept of hegemony in Pakistan's prevailing political culture.

Presents an overview of the justice and law enforcement systems which prevailed in Afghanistan under the Taliban, incorporating personal views of some Afghan intellectuals and Pakistani intelligence officials who had close contact with Taliban personnel. Summarizes the historical background and notes the historic strong, informal social controls with retributive elements of tribal societies; the failed attempt to introduce a Soviet‐style criminal justice system after the Communist coup of 1978; the ensuing period of general chaos and anarchy, brought to an end by the emergence of the Taliban on Afghanistan’s political and military scene by the mid‐1990s, which established some sort of civil order, ruthlessly enforced according to the Taliban’s own interpretation of Islamic justice. Describes the hierarchies within the country’s administrative system and methods of solving civil and criminal disputes. Concludes that it is too early to predict whether a new viable legal order will emerge in the future, particularly when warlords control significant regions beyond the Karzai‐administered city of Kabul.

Banking services encounter major challenges in determining customer's psychometric behavioral intentions. Scholars suggest that a theoretical approach to better understand the key constructs of service marketing, such as service quality, perceived value, customer satisfaction, corporate image and behavioral intentions, is critical to bank performance. The present study aims to design and test a comprehensive multidimensional and hierarchical model of service quality with higher-order psychometric constructions and their mediation effects in the model.

Data from a self-administered structured questionnaire are analyzed by confirmatory factor analysis and structural equation modeling.

Empirical results confirm that multidimensional and hierarchical service quality are best suited to assess overall banking service quality, in which outcome, interaction and environment quality are the important primary dimensions, with each of them having several subdimensions. Service quality is the significant antecedent of behavioral intentions, customer satisfaction, corporate image and perceived value. Customer satisfaction and service quality are the best determinants of behavioral intentions. In addition, customer satisfaction, perceived value and corporate image are complementary variables, having significant mediation effects on the relationship between service quality and behavioral intentions.

As a maiden study in the context of emerging economies, this research integrates a comprehensive service quality theory and valuable customer loyalty constructs, which are crucial to banks' financial performance, bolstering evidence for the theoretical pitch. This study also provides managers with a clear idea of how they can develop sustainable service marketing strategies and policies on the psychometric perceptions of customers, thereby leading banks to achieve long-term goals.

Workplace relationship has widely been recognized as an important factor to shaping employees’ workplace experience. Workplace incivility, a low-intensity form of deviant behavior, is deemed to have an adverse effect on both businesses and their employees. However, the role of individuals’ positive psychology in buffering the adverse effects of workplace incivility remains unclear even though social stressors like incivility are prevalent among Jordanian heath care workers. Applying the conservation of resources (COR) theory and social exchange theory (SET), the purpose of this paper is to investigate the relationship between coworker incivility and psychological distress as moderated by psychological capital (PsyCap).

Survey data were collected from a sample of Jordanian health workers and a structural equation modeling technique was utilized.

The findings show that coworker incivility predicts higher levels of psychological distress, and employee PsyCap moderates the link between incivility and psychological distress.

Although research concerning the link between incivility and unwanted work or personal outcomes has been established, studies examining the variables that can buffer these effects are largely lacking. This study fills this void in the literature. The implications for practice and theory are discussed.

Image annotation plays an important role in image retrieval process, especially when it comes to content-based image retrieval. In order to compensate the intrinsic weakness of machines in performing cognitive task of (human-like) image annotation, leveraging humans’ knowledge and abilities in the form of crowdsourcing-based annotation have gained momentum. Among various approaches for this purpose, an innovative one is integrating the annotation process into the CAPTCHA workflow. In this paper, the current state of the research works in the field and experimental efficiency analysis of this approach are investigated.

At first, and with the aim of presenting a current state report of research studies in the field, a comprehensive literature review is provided. Then, several experiments and statistical analyses are conducted to investigate how CAPTCHA-based image annotation is reliable, accurate and efficient.

In addition to study of current trends and best practices for CAPTCHA-based image annotation, the experimental results demonstrated that despite some intrinsic limitations on leveraging the CAPTCHA as a crowdsourcing platform, when the challenge, i.e. annotation task, is selected and designed appropriately, the efficiency of CAPTCHA-based image annotation can outperform traditional approaches. Nonetheless, there are several design considerations that should be taken into account when the CAPTCHA is used as an image annotation platform.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first study to analyze different aspects of the titular topic through exploration of the literature and experimental investigation. Therefore, it is anticipated that the outcomes of this study can draw a roadmap for not only CAPTCHA-based image annotation but also CAPTCHA-mediated crowdsourcing and even image annotation.

Smart banking services (SBS) are critical for developing countries to achieve developmental goals. The success of SBS is dependent on the considerable perceived customer experience of provided services. Based on technology adoption studies, this study aims to model smart customer experience (SCE) outcomes by investigating the relationships between SCE, customer gratitude, continuance intentions and positive word-of-mouth (P-WOM).

The current research included 384 bank clients as participants. The data were analyzed using partial least squares structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM).

According to the findings, SCE directly increases customer gratitude, continuance intention to adopt smart services and P-WOM. Customer gratitude enhances continuance intentions and P-WOM. Additionally, customer gratitude mediates the relationship between SCE, continuance intention and P-WOM. Finally, the findings revealed that customer innovativeness and optimism play a substantial moderating impact among the variables studied.

This is the first research to include all of these variables. Furthermore, to the best of the authors' knowledge, this is the first empirical study of these linkages in the banking sector of emerging nations.

Employee expediency is a ubiquitous, unethical phenomenon in the workplace that is largely underresearched. Based on the tenets of conservation of resources (COR) theory, this study investigates the influence of excessive performance pressure on employees' expedient behaviour via moral disengagement. It further examines the moderating role of employees' moral identity in the relationship between performance pressure and employee expediency.

The data were collected using a multi-wave paper-and-pencil survey amongst 388 sales associates working in pharmaceutical manufacturing companies in Bangladesh. A series of hierarchical regression analyses and bootstrapping techniques of the PROCESS macro were conducted to test the hypotheses.

The findings reveal that performance pressure significantly and positively affects employees' expediency. Additionally, moral disengagement partially mediates the positive relationship between performance pressure and employee expediency. Furthermore, moral identity moderates the direct effect of performance pressure on moral disengagement and the indirect effect of performance pressure on employee expediency through moral disengagement.

Managers are advised to consider the compatibility of economic and moral principles when defining performance targets or evaluating staff performance, as immoral behaviours harm organisations in the long run. Additionally, managers should emphasise candidates with high levels of sensitive moral qualities, such as integrity and moral behaviour, and their abilities should be given preference when hiring new employees, e.g. moral reasoning.

This pioneering study investigates the underlying psychological mechanisms and moral characteristics to unravel the association between performance pressure and employee expediency using the lens of COR theory. The study identified the moral consequences of performance pressure and mitigating strategies to reduce employee expedient behaviour.

This study aims to investigate the impact of trust in the metaverse on the Islamic banking sector, particularly in facilitating market success. Additionally, it seeks to explore the relationship between metaverse-driven brand image, product features, service quality and overall performance in the market.

Data were collected from 187 participants in Jordan, with the SmartPLS software used to test the hypotheses.

The findings reveal a significant impact of metaverse-enhanced brand image, product features and service quality on Islamic banking market performance. Furthermore, customer trust in the metaverse plays a significant role in shaping the relationship between product features, service quality and Islamic banking market performance.

The study’s practical implications still suggest the need for a more holistic metaverse-driven approach. Investing in service quality initiatives alone may not adequately build and sustain customer trust in the metaverse. Instead, transparent communication on ethical practices in the metaverse is required to reinforce trust and magnify the positive influence of superior service quality in the metaverse.

This study aims to explore the key factors influencing customer loyalty in Islamic banking within the Iraqi market, as well as the consequences of loyalty. Despite the increasing global significance of Islamic finance, there is a notable lack of empirical research addressing how both causal and contextual factors shape customer loyalty in Iraq. This research seeks to fill this gap by examining the dynamics of customer loyalty and its perceived value to customers, thereby contributing to a deeper understanding of customer relationships in Islamic banking.

The research is conducted using a grounded theory approach, allowing for an exploration of the objective through in-depth qualitative analysis. In-depth interviews are conducted with various stakeholders, including customers, managers and bank employees. The inclusion of heterogeneous groups offers a richer and deeper understanding, increasing the validity and transferability of the findings.

A model of customer loyalty in Islamic banking in Iraq is developed, highlighting social, individual and banking characteristics as indicators of causal factors. Macroeconomic trends, government policy and media and advertising are identified as contextual factors, while competitor actions, life events and demographic profiles are recognized as intervening factors. The findings also suggest that loyalty brings positive values not only to the customers, such as positive experiences, lifetime value and better financial stability, but also to the banking institutions, including word-of-mouth referrals, competitive advantage and increased customer advocacy.

This study contributes to the advanced development of a theoretical framework on customer loyalty. In addition, the findings offer valuable insights into the relationship between Sharia compliance and customer loyalty, calling for banking institutions to prioritize adherence to Sharia principles.

This study explores areas of research within the context of Iraqi Islamic banking, allowing for the discovery of new and original insights into causal, contextual and intervening conditions of customer loyalty, which signify the Iraqi social phenomena. While the scope focuses on customers, the grounded theory approach opens up to emergent patterns and relationships.

The present work has proposed and employed an innovative hybrid method based on the combination of factor analysis and an artificial neural network (ANN) model to forecast customer satisfaction from the identified dimensions of service quality in India, a developing country.

The qualitative study is conducted with Internet banking users to understand e-banking clients' perceptions. The data is collected with the help of a questionnaire from randomly selected 208 customers in India. Firstly, factor analysis was performed to determine the influential factors of customer satisfaction, and four factors i.e. efficiency, reliability, security and privacy, and issue and problem handling were extracted accordingly. The neural network model is then applied to the factor scores to validate the key elements. Lastly, the comparative analysis of the actual ANN and the regression predicted result is done.

The success ability of the linear regression model is challenged when approximated to nonlinear problems such as customer satisfaction. It is concluded that the ANN model is a better fit than the linear regression model, and it can recognise the complex connections between the exogenous and endogenous variables. The results also show that reliability, security and privacy are the most influencing factors; however, problem handling and efficiency have the slightest effect on bank client satisfaction.

This research is conducted in India, and the sample is chosen from the urban area. The limitation of the purposeful sampling technique and the cross-sectional nature of the data may hamper the generalisation of the results.

The conclusions from the study will be helpful for policymakers, bankers and academicians. To our knowledge, few studies used ANN modelling to predict customer satisfaction in the service sector