Search results

The purpose of this paper is to study brand credibility, customer loyalty and the impact of religious orientation in the Pakistani setting.

In a study of 263 respondents, exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses were conducted in order to check the fit of the data and the presence of common method variance. Correlation and hierarchical regression analysis was performed to evaluate the hypothesized relationships between the variables.

Significant and positive relationships were observed between trustworthiness and brand credibility, perceived quality and brand credibility, brand credibility and customer loyalty, religious orientation and customer loyalty. Brand credibility was also found to mediate the relationship between trustworthiness, perceived quality and customer loyalty. Religious orientation was observed to moderate the relationship between trustworthiness and brand credibility.

The paper evaluates brand credibility and customer loyalty in relation to trustworthiness and perceived value in a Pakistani setting. Religious orientation is a term coined up for this research and its impact as a moderator is also evaluated.

The construction industry struggles in environmental and economic performance due to waste generation. Several studies have measured this waste in the construction industry of developing countries like India, Brazil, China, Nigeria and Iran, and proposed strategies to enhance the overall efficiency. But no such work exists in Pakistan's context. The construction industry of Pakistan contributes significantly to the country's gross domestic product (GDP). And with several mega projects in progress to overcome the energy crises and improve the infrastructure of the country, the absence of proper waste management policies and plans calls for empirical research. Therefore, this study quantifies and benchmarks material waste in the local context, its impact on project cost and the effect of multiple subcontracting arrangements on waste generation. It also proposes a conceptual waste management plan (WMP) for local conditions which can be generalized for developing countries.

This paper uses a mixed research approach by leveraging Saunders's research onion model. To benchmark the current wastage practices, quantitative data of material waste in the Pakistani construction industry are gathered through document review of accounting systems, inventory and payment records of 40 completed building projects. Using the data, the waste rate of different materials is measured along with their impact on cost. Additionally, the role of subcontracting arrangements in waste generation is also investigated. Also, semi-structured interviews are conducted with project managers of high- and low-performing construction organizations to propose a conceptual WMP for the local industry and developing countries.

The highest wasteful materials by quantity are wood, sand and concrete blocks, and those by cost are wood, bricks and steel. By quantity, 123% more material was used on average than the actual productive work. Also, the labor only (L-O) subcontracting arrangement causes maximum waste. Moreover, the difference between the highest (155%) and lowest wasting company (104%) is 51%, highlighting the proactive and resistive waste management culture and approach by the worst- and best-performing companies. Further, the impact of waste quantities is more than 2% of the project cost. Finally, a conceptual model consisting of measures at the project, industry and national levels is also proposed as a guide for developing countries.

The findings of this benchmarking study can help improve the project planning, execution and monitoring, and control practices by providing a better understanding of the material waste potential. This will help economize the construction industry and improve its sustainability.

This is the first benchmarking study that quantitatively measures material waste in the construction industry of Pakistan. It highlights that costly as well as sustainability-implicating materials are frequently wasted in the local construction projects. Also, this study correlates the wastage with subcontracting arrangements. Additionally, an original conceptual WMP is proposed that could help the industry improve its performance. The findings could help the construction professionals identify the loopholes in their material management practices and not only save money but also ensure better sustainability.

This study aims to explore the firm's specific, opacity and economy-specific variables to explain the variation in South Asian market returns and indicate that how the difference in adoption of accounting standards refers to the effect of the movement in stock returns.

Following the scope of the study, factor analysis, fixed effect, Driscoll and Kraay standard errors (DKSE) and Panel Corrected standard error (PCSE) models have been inducted to determine the influence of firm-specific, opacity and economy-specific variables on stock returns. The sample of study comprises 1,885 firms from five countries located in the South Asia region with the period 2005–2018. To ensure the reliability of data, firm-specific data have been collected from DataStream International, while an international country risk guide was used to compile the data for economy-specific variables.

This study concluded that firm-specific variables showed a consistent and significant association with stock return except for beta, accrual and momentum while earning aggressiveness was the only factor in opacity measure to capture the variation in stock return. The implementation of international accounting standards seemed to be significant and proves to be helpful to enhance the quality of accounting information.

The limitations of this study comprised the estimation error by avoiding the firm's observations with negative equity in case of earning opacity and majority (more than 50%) of the observation belongs to a single market as India out of final sample which leads to having biasedness in findings.

This study helps the investors to consider the firms with smaller market capitalization and lower book to market ratio and avoid the momentum strategy under firm specific factors. Moreover, earning aggressiveness under opacity domain capture the variation in stock return and must be considered while investing funds.

The influence of adoption of international accounting standards along with firm and economy specific variable in South Asian Equity Markets return was the major contribution. Moreover, the inclusion of DKSE and PCSE models to examine the relevance of the financial and economic informational environment was also considered as a part of major contribution of this study.

Wealth Management Products (WMPs) are the largest and most crucial component of China's Shadow banking, which are off the balance sheet and considered as a substitute for deposits. Commercial banks in China are involved in the issuance of WMPs mainly to; evade the regulatory restrictions, move non-performing loans away from the balance sheet, chase the profits and take advantage of yield spread (the difference between WMPs yield and deposit rate).

In this study, the authors investigate what bank related characteristics and needs; influenced and prompted the issuance of WMPs. By using a quarterly panel data from 2010 to 2019, this study performed the fixed effects approach favored by the Hausman specification test, and a feasible generalized least square (FGLS) estimation method is employed to deal with any issues of heteroscedasticity and auto-correlation.

This study found that there is a positive and significant association between the non-performing loan ratio and the issuance of WMPs. Moreover, profitability and spread were found to play an essential role in the issuance of WMPs. The findings of this study suggest that WMPs are issued for multi-purpose, and off the balance sheet status of these products makes them very lucrative for regulated Chinese commercial banks.

Non-guaranteed WMPs are considered as an item of shadow banking in China, as banks do not consolidate this type of WMPs into their balance sheet; due to that reason, there is no individual bank data available for the amount of WMPs. The authors use the number of WMPs issued by banks as a proxy for the bank's exposure to the WMPs business.

From a regulatory perspective, this study helps regulators to understand the risk associated with the issuance of WMPs; by providing empirical evidence that Chinese banks issue WMPs to hide the actual risk of non-performing loans, and this practice could mislead the regulators to evaluate the bank credit risk and loan quality. This study also identifies that Chinese banks issue WMPs for multi-purpose; this can help potential investors to understand the dynamics of WMPs issuance.

This research is innovative in its orientation because it is designed to investigate the less explored wealth management products (WMPs) issued by Chinese banks. This study's content includes not only innovation but also contributes to the existing literature on the shadow banking sector in terms of regulatory arbitrage. Moreover, the inclusion of FGLS estimation models, ten years of quarterly data, and the top 30 Chinese banks (covers 70% of the total Chinese commercial banking system's assets) make this research more comprehensive and significant.

This study aims to investigate the impact of risk committee characteristics on the risk disclosure of banking institutions in an emerging economy, Pakistan.

The data are collected through a manual content analysis of 21 banks regulated by the State Bank of Pakistan over the period 2011–2020. The study utilizes the generalized least square (GLS) regression model as the method of analysis.

The study finds that risk committee size is positively associated with risk disclosure, which is in line with agency theory. However, risk committee independence and risk committee gender diversity are negatively associated with risk disclosure. This contradicts the theoretical perspective and is explained by the weak regulatory framework of Pakistan.

This study was carried out in a single research setting, which limits the generalizability of its findings to other developed and emerging economies.

The results provide valuable insights for regulators by identifying the attributes that require regulatory focus to strengthen risk committees and enhance risk disclosure practices within the banking sector of Pakistan. The findings highlight the effectiveness of the risk committee size, call for fully independent risk committees and encourage greater representation of women in these committees.

This study contributes to the corporate governance literature by empirically examining the risk committee characteristics and their impact on the risk disclosure of banks in an emerging economy. Moreover, this study contributes to theory by utilizing upper echelon theory in addition to agency theory as the motivation for the study.

This study examines the influence of corporate governance indicators (CGIs) on the textual tone of nonfinancial firms in a developing economy.

The data from 1,250 annual reports of listed nonfinancial firms in Pakistan are collected for 10 years. The narrative disclosure tone (NDT) is derived using the sentiment analysis of annual reports, resulting in six distinct NDT scores. The CGIs data are also extracted from the annual reports. The fixed effects model is used as the primary analytical tool, supplemented by machine learning-based linear regression. System GMM and two-stage least squares regressions are employed for robustness checks.

The findings reveal that most CGIs significantly influence all six NDTs. These results align with the existing theoretical literature, except those related to audit committee independence and gender diversity.

The study is limited to the use of annual reports as a source of narrative disclosures. Future research might employ other sources, such as earning press releases and social media.

Within the unique regulatory environment of Pakistan, the study offers insights for regulators to enhance the efficacy of independent directors, discourage concentrated ownership and promote the inclusion of women in board subcommittees to establish the authenticity of textual disclosures.

The study adds to the limited literature on the determinants of NDT. It underscores the importance of understanding textual tone for informed investor decision-making and restoring investor confidence. Moreover, it contributes by focusing on six NDTs and exploring the interplay between CGIs and textual tone.

The purpose of this study is to test whether the prediction of firm performance can be enhanced by incorporating nonfinancial disclosures, such as narrative disclosure tone and corporate governance indicators, into financial predictive models.

Three predictive models are developed, each with a different set of predictors. This study utilises two machine learning techniques, random forest and stochastic gradient boosting, for prediction via the three models. The data are collected from a sample of 1,250 annual reports of 125 nonfinancial firms in Pakistan for the period 2011–2020.

Our results indicate that both narrative disclosure tone and corporate governance indicators significantly add to the accuracy of financial predictive models of firm performance.

Our results offer implications for the restoration of investor confidence in the highly uncertain Pakistani market by establishing nonfinancial disclosures as reliable predictors of future firm performance. Accordingly, they encourage investors to pay more attention to these disclosures while making investment decisions. In addition, they urge regulators to promote and strengthen the reporting of such nonfinancial information.

This study addresses the neglect of nonfinancial disclosures in the prediction of firm performance and the scarcity of corporate governance literature relevant to the use of machine learning techniques.

This paper aims to present a technique that has been developed to study the wear in the camshaft and tappet. The engine manufacturers use the most suitable materials, lubrication additives and surface coatings to minimize friction in all the components of the engine. Reduced friction results in less wear of critical engine components. The researchers are constantly trying to find an improved lubrication formula which reduces the wear and friction coefficient at a considerably low price. In this regard, the cam follower interface is of much importance because most of the wear occurs in this interface.

The tappets and the cam lobes are analyzed to determine wear. A two-dimensional optical surface profilometer is used to measure the tappet wear, and a high-resolution linear variable differential transformer is used for the measurement of cam lobes. Tests are conducted on Mercedes Benz engine OM 646 under constant camshaft speed, constant inlet lubricant temperature and constant lubricant pressure to study the oil rheology on cam tappet wear.

The results show that the wear occurs on the cam tappet interface, which is almost a linear phenomenon, and it increases with use.

Customized jigs were made to measure wear of camshaft and tappet.

This study explores the influence of parasocial interaction (PSI), brand credibility and product involvement on celebrity endorsement, and how PSI interacts with brand and product factors and affects celebrity endorsement synthetically.

This study employs a 2 (high/low product involvement) by 2 (high/low brand credibility) between-subjects factorial design experiment to test the hypotheses.

Brand credibility has a positive effect on followers' attitudes toward advertising and products, and product involvement influences its moderation. PSI has salient positive effects on followers' attitudes and behavioral intention, regardless of high/low product involvement. Brand credibility mediates PSI's influence on celebrity endorsement.

The results reinforce the significant effect of PSI on endorsement effectiveness and brand credibility, show the influence of brand credibility and product involvement and show how their influence conditionally interacts with others.

The corporate advertiser should prefer a high PSI celebrity as their endorser. The advertising message design on the microblog also deserves the attention of advertisers.

This study is the primary attempt to construct an integral model to demonstrate the synthetic effect and interaction process of consumers' perception of the endorser, brand and product category factors on celebrity endorsement within the social media context.

The purpose of this paper is to increase understanding of the influence mechanisms of specific HR practices variables – salary, job stability and job enrichment – upon employee commitment, through the mediating role of job satisfaction, in a developing country context. Crucially, these indicate employee commitment.

The study analyzed three specific HR practices with a sample of 263 employees in the banking industry of Pakistan. A structural equation modeling methodology is adopted.

The findings indicate that remuneration strategies were positively related to job satisfaction and employee commitment. Regarding the intervening impact of job satisfaction, this study found that it mediates only for non-monetary strategies between job satisfaction and employee commitment.

A key limitation is that this is a cross-sectional study, perhaps not generalizable over longitudinal approaches. Another limit is posed by the developing country context of this study, perhaps not applicable to some developed countries.

From an HR perspective, managing salary structure is an ongoing issue. The proposed model suggests the use of specific practices about satisfaction and commitment as intermediate steps to manage employee commitment.

The research offers a unique understanding from the developing country context of Pakistan. This provides a novel study conducted to examine employee commitment using the high-performance work practices model.