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Therefore, this research study investigates the impact of business environment on the performance of the business organizations. (1) To understand the importance the environment in the success of the business entrepreneurship. (2) To explore the environmental factors that can affect the success of business entrepreneurship in Pakistan. (3) To establish relationship between the environmental factors and the sustained organizational performance of business entrepreneurships in Pakistan.

Drawing from the person–environment fit (PE fit) and the self-determination theory literature, this survey research study seeks to determine the impact of organizational environment upon sustained organizational economic performance. The main independent variable of the study encompasses its main three dimensions, i.e. leadership capacity, organizational culture and organizational politics. The dependent variable comprises the sustained economic performance of the organization. The research study hypothesized and tested a model in which the organizational environment (organizational culture, organizational politics and leadership) interplays with the organizational sustained performance.

Keeping in view the outcomes of this research work the following implications can be drawn. A leader can yield maximum productivity of employees, if he/she has leadership capacity to provide directions, skilled to minimize the stress level of the employees and able to motivate them in achieving organizational goals. Therefore, capacity of leader to handle difficult situations and develop PE fit is the key to organizational success in current scenario. The study also revealed a positive effect of organizational culture on organizational performance. The culture of the organizations provides an environment of openness to think, share and contribute toward goals of the organization. It enables employees to express themselves, develop person-organization common goals with self-determination. The PE fit provides a platform to feel free, express their feelings and opinions, and contribute in the decision-making process of organizations. The involvement in organizational activities provide a sense of responsibility, ownership and motivation to produce better results for the organizations.

PE fit perspective postulates that matching individual psychological needs and environmental supplies (provided by organization and society) generates positive attitudes and behaviors (Tepper et al., 2018). The effect between individuals and their environment is inherently reciprocal rather than a one-way effect (Goetz et al., 2021). The fundamental postulation support that the fit certainly improves performance, commitment and satisfaction of individuals in the context of organizations (De Cooman et al., 2019; Rau vola et al., 2020). Moreover, self-determination theory (SDT) is another perspective that emphasizes the attainment of autonomy, competence and relatedness in employees to outperform (Deci and Ryan, (2010). The self-determination theory revolves around the social-contextual conditions that support or obstruct the integral courses of self-motivation and psychological development, which will contribute toward organizational performance (Nazir et al., 2021).

Ecological degradation is causing various medical hazards worldwide. Modern globalization is enhancing several polluting factors that cause ecosystem deterioration. This situation leads to the increasing significance of implementing green environmental practices. Previous studies emphasize various green concepts, mainly in finance, encouraging investors to make ethical and responsible decisions to promote clean ecological practices. But still, emerging concepts like socially responsible investment (SRI) require more understanding and acknowledgment, particularly in developing economies.

This study has focused on exploring the impediments to SRI-adopting practices. It is conducted in two phases. Initially, a systematic literature review was conducted to identify the hurdles in promoting SRI. Later, open-ended interviews from the active investors of Pakistan Stock Exchange Limited were executed to explore the barriers to implementing the SRI system. The responses were transcribed and tested through NVivo software.

The information extracted from the recorded statements was further classified into three themes: initial, subordinate and cluster, which provides an understanding of the identified factors. The findings suggest that the significant complications hindering SRI are a lack of regulatory framework, inadequate conceptual knowledge and limited resources.

The findings state that the identified impediments can help in developing a framework for successfully implementing SRI practices in emerging economies. It can strengthen the stakeholders' knowledge and suggest a guideline for investment decisions, providing them with socially, ethically and financially positive returns. Therefore, this study will inspire active and potential investors to adopt SRI practices, making the economic uplift certain.

This study will add value to the existing body of knowledge related to SRI and highlight the importance of SRI by suggesting it as a source to ensure sustainable green efficiency, particularly in the postpandemic era. It emphasizes the urgent need for a policy framework for effective investment decisions in emerging economies.

This study aims to explain the Sukuk structures individually by highlighting the key differences and commonalities in their influential aspects. It also compares the core aspects of Sukuk literature with conventional bonds and suggests the point of differences between them.

This study uses a quali-quantitative approach with the help of segmented bibliometric analysis to describe core differences and commonalities in various Sukuk structures in terms of core authors, countries, sources, affiliation, documents and keywords. In addition, it deploys “biblioshiny” from R-package “bibliometrix 3.0” to identify key influential aspects of different Sukuk instruments.

Results reported that Malaysia is the core contributing country in Sukuk publications and the center of author correspondence. There is a structural difference among various Sukuk instruments. The significant literature commonalities in Ijarah, Mudarabah, Musharakah and Murabahah Sukuk affiliations and globally cited journal articles are also found. However, the influential aspects of Sukuk compared with conventional bonds are different from other Sukuk literature. It also conducted a keyword analysis to report significant themes in the literature.

This study contributes to the existing body of knowledge as it helps investors to understand the shariah permissibility and investment supremacy of various Sukuk alternatives. Investors, policymakers, scholars and researchers should understand the dynamics of multiple Sukuk structures and their Shari’ah permissibility. This study significantly elaborates on this objective.

Given the overlapping themes and periods in specific subjects within Islamic economics and finance bibliometric research, which may yield similar findings in bibliometric studies, it is essential to document the growth of Islamic economic and financial research using bibliometric methodologies. This study aims to understand better the critical bibliometric review trends and scientific advancements in Islamic economics and finance.

This study uses bibliometric analysis, collecting 46 Islamic economics bibliometric papers from the Web of Science Core Collection from 1975 to 2022. The authors generated top scientific scholars, keyword analysis, citation analysis, content analysis and conclusions for journal development using R Biblioshiny, VOSviewer, ATLAS.ti and Excel.

This study has established a comprehensive bibliometric framework for Islamic economics and finance bibliometric papers, encompassing all critical areas within the discipline and identifying any remaining research gaps. The major significant areas revealed were Islamic social finance and microfinance concerns, which are closely pertinent to the issues of ethics, corporate social responsibility and sustainability, respectively. The authors also identified opportunities for future bibliometric analyses in Islamic economics and finance, which include using more comprehensive databases, refining or broadening search strategies, using advanced techniques and units of analysis and suggesting themes for further exploration.

The study relies merely on the Web of Science Core Collection database, which provides the most in-depth citations by source for the world’s scientific and scholarly research. Future research may consider expanding its scope to include other databases for a broader range of sources. Furthermore, due to the rise of bibliometric studies in Islamic economics and finance, this study also comments on the saturation of bibliometric studies conducted in several similar areas. While researchers bring their unique analytical perspectives to bibliometrics, this study provides a comprehensive view of existing research in Islamic economics and finance, highlighting well-explored topics and those that remain less studied. Thus, this could assist researchers in determining their future research priorities.

Policymakers in Islamic financial and economic institutions, including banking institutions, social, financial institutions and halal institutions, should be impacted by this research when making policies or conducting research. The viability of the current Islamic economic and financial ecosystem will be indirectly maintained and managed by these implications.

This comprehensive meta-analysis in Islamic economics and finance is expected to impact the development and sustainability of the Islamic economic and financial ecosystem, promoting societal welfare through applying Islamic economics and finance.

This pioneering bibliometric analysis of Islamic economics and finance papers aims to offer insights and projections for future research in the field. This research contributes to the literature by examining various aspects, including evaluating literature on trending topics, analyzing papers related to research areas and conducting content analysis of existing bibliometric studies in Islamic economics and finance. It specifically groups these studies around fundamental topics, summarizes findings from contemporary research and identifies emerging research gaps.

Environmental protection and conservation of resources is a challenge for policymakers to attain sustainable growth and development. The current study uses the variable of inclusive growth instead of the traditional measure of growth.

The link between inclusive growth, renewable energy, industrial production, trade openness and the environment is explored by using panel data from 1995 to 2019 in Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa (BRICS) countries. Before applying formal techniques, unit root tests were applied to check the stationarity of each variable. The long-run relationship among factors was found by the Kao cointegration test. The panel dynamic ordinary least squares (DLOS) was employed for regression estimation.

The results verified a decrease in ecological footprint (EF) in response to a potential rise in renewable energy consumption. An upsurge in EFs was explored due to a rise in gross domestic product (GDP) per person employed and trade openness. The EF significantly decreased by 0.671% in response to a 1% rise in renewable energy consumption.

It is highly suggested to enhance renewable energy usage. To achieve this, policymakers should implement and emphasize efficient energy technologies to ensure improving the environment. Efficient use of renewable energy resources will decrease global warming effects and ensure the sustainable use of scarce resources.

It first took into account the variable of inclusive growth instead of traditional growth measures. It explored the impact of GDP per person employed as an indicator of inclusive growth.

Universities across the globe are spending an increasing amount of their budgets to offer web-based services to cater information need especially off-campus students. However, the success of web-based services depends on how well the target users are satisfied with the use of the web services. The purpose of this paper is to assess students’ satisfaction with the use of the Allama Iqbal Open University (AIOU) web-based services.

Pilot tested questionnaire-based survey was administered to collect data from a sample of 388; selected through systematic sampling technique from the study’s population consisted of master level students belonged to 11 different academic departments of the Faculty of Social Science and Humanities at the AIOU from all over Pakistan.

Based on 318 useful questionnaires, response rate 82 percent, the results show that majority of the students were satisfied with the use of at the AIOU web-based services except for online mailing books tracking system, library web OPAC and web radio service. However, t-test analysis shows that no difference was found in the opinion of male and female respondents in terms of their satisfaction with the use of the web services. ANOVA results indicate that there was no significant difference depicted in satisfaction with the use of the web services among the respondents enrolled in different disciplines of the faculty. Similarly, no significant difference was found among different age groups. Moreover, the respondents belonging to all five provinces; Punjab, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Sindh, Baluchistan, Gilgit Baltistan, and Federal Capital territory showed the same level of satisfaction with the use of the services. The results of regression analysis (R²=0.226) denote that both perceived usefulness and perceived ease of use significantly predicted, 22.6 percent, in students’ satisfaction with the use the web services.

The study provides valuable recommendations which may be helpful for web administration of the university to improve AIOU web-based services.

To the best knowledge, this is the first study conducted to investigate the satisfaction with the use of the university web-based services in distance education’s perspective of Pakistan.

The delivery of information services in higher education is increasingly relying on Web-based systems. The low adoption and underutilization of information systems have been major problems for developing countries such as Pakistan in terms of realizing their full benefits. This study aims to investigate factors affecting student use of Allama Iqbal Open University’s (AIOU) Web-based services by using the Unified Theory of Acceptance and Use of Technology (UTAUT) from the perspective of Pakistani distance education.

This study has adopted quantitative research design with the UTAUT model as a theoretical framework. A self-completion structured questionnaire-based survey has been administered to 388 master’s level students, selected through systematic sampling from the target population. The response rate was 82 per cent (318). All statistical tests have been performed using IBM SPSS (version 20.0) and Process macro for SPSS.

Findings of the model’s hypotheses reveal that performance expectancy, effort expectancy and social influence are significant predictors of student behavioural intention to use AIOU Web-based services, whereas actual student use is dependent on facilitating conditions and student behavioural intention to use. The impact of moderating variables with respect to age, gender and experience did not influence the actual use of the Web services. However, the research model significantly measured (62.1 per cent) the actual use of AIOU Web-based services by the students.

This study is delimited to the UTAUT model to investigate the phenomena. Besides this, the context of the study is the voluntary instead of mandatory usage of Web services. A study conducted in mandatory settings, in which students are bound to use Web services, may have different results.

This is the first attempt to apply the UTAUT model to investigate the factors affecting student use of Web-based services from the perspective of distance education and the findings prove strong support for the model.

The role of digital library resources (DLRs) in accelerating academic and research productivity has been acknowledged worldwide. The purpose of this study is to empirically explore the use of DLRs as a predictor of satisfaction and research productivity in the context of Pakistan to examine its impact on engineering research productivity.

Given the research objectives, the most suitable methodology for this study is survey. The tool used for gathering the research data on the frequency of usage, purpose, satisfaction level and impact of DLRs usage on research productivity was questionnaires.

The findings of this study showed that the frequency of use of DLRs and purposes of DLRs significantly contributed to the research students’ satisfaction and research productivity. In addition, a significant relationship was found between the predictors (DLRs purposes, DLRs frequency) and outcome variables (users’ satisfaction and research productivity). Thus, all five hypotheses are supported. The findings of this study further suggested the provision of information sources by university libraries to support research efforts and make a scientific knowledge-based society in the country. The findings are also significant for Higher Education Commission (HEC) authorities, university library administrators, Library and Information Science professionals/information providers to develop e-resources and formulate effective usage policies through which they could make effective use of DLRs.

The rationale of the present study is to fill the gap by empirically investigating the association of users’ satisfaction and research productivity with two dimensions of DLRs, namely, DLRs usage frequency and purposes of DLRs usage.

The purpose of this study is to investigate the academic scientists’ scholarly use of information sources, the disciplinary differences in their use and the barriers encountered, particularly while using journals.

A quantitative research design based on the survey method was used to achieve the objectives of this study. A self-administered questionnaire was distributed to all the academic staff of three disciplines – science, life sciences and pharmacy. Together, they constituted 24 departments of the University of the Punjab. This oldest and largest public sector university was selected as a sample.

The findings showed that e-journals, e-reports and online reference sources were frequently used. The disciplinary differences were found with regard to the use of e-journals and e-books. Users of e-journals lacked skills of advanced searching and were not able to determine the quality of e-journals. Respondents faced certain barriers in usage such as payment of e-journal articles not available through the Library, slow internet speed and lack of information literacy instructions program.

Previous researchers conducted studies that were focused mostly on the academic scientists’ perceptions and the extent of electronic information sources’ use. Researchers in Pakistan mostly examined students and research scholars’ use of electronic information sources and very few studies were conducted to investigate academic scientists’ scholarly information seeking behavior. This study is valuable, as it investigated the scholarly use of information sources by academic scientists and particularly disciplinary differences in their use, digital literacy skills and the barriers encountered while using e-journals.

Higher education institutions, particularly in developing countries, are striving for superior innovation performance to cope with the challenges of contemporary educational environment. Drawing on the knowledge management capability model and knowledge-based view of firms, this study aims to determine the impact of knowledge management enablers, namely, top management knowledge value, knowledge-oriented culture and knowledge-based rewards, on innovation speed and quality and assessing the mediating role of knowledge sharing process.

Data are collected from 234 academics of higher education institutions in Pakistan and analyzed through the partial least squares structural equation modeling technique.

The results indicate that top management knowledge value and knowledge-based rewards have a positive effect on innovation speed and quality. Although knowledge-oriented culture also contributes to innovation quality, it does not influence the innovation speed. Moreover, the knowledge sharing process mediates the effect of all these knowledge management enablers on innovation speed and quality.

This study underscores the importance of three key knowledge management enablers in higher education institutions. The findings of this study suggest that signaling knowledge value from the top management, fostering knowledge-oriented culture and enacting a knowledge-based reward system are critical in facilitating knowledge sharing process and enhancing innovation speed and quality in higher education institutions.

This is among one of the earlier studies that investigates the influence of top management knowledge value, knowledge-oriented culture and knowledge-based rewards on innovation speed and quality, particularly in higher education institutions, and determines the mediating role of the knowledge sharing process.