Search results

This paper aims to identify the pre-design critical success factors CSFs pertaining to different types of construction projects in the rapidly growing city of Dubai, by adopting one of the multi-criteria decision-making (MCDM) tools, analytic hierarchy process (AHP).

A mapping process was utilized to filter and categorize CSFs gathered from a literature review. A total of 5 main and 27 sub-main criteria were derived following RIBA's Plan of Work 2020 (Royal Institute of British Architects). A questionnaire was distributed among experts in the construction industry to assess the development in vicinity of the Sheikh Zayed Road (SZR). An analysis was conducted to prioritize the CSFs as per experts' judgment.

According to the experts' combined judgment, CSFs linked to client requirements (CR) are the most significant at 22.9% priority weight. Overall project review (OPR), project team (PT), project preparation (PP), previous projects feedback and experience (PPF) success factors achieved 21.4, 19.5, 18.9 and 17.2%, respectively. Within CR, sub-CSFs of client consultation and acceptance (CCA), responsibly matrix for stakeholders (RM), client track record (CTR) and client level of service (CLS) were prioritized by the experts.

This work was carried out by respondents based in UAE only, and focused on one urban stretch of Dubai, this could be replicated by employing experts from other countries and other case study areas within Dubai.

This study would significantly have an impact on the education of current and future project managers, planners, engineers, architects and, most importantly, decision-makers on helpful pre-design strategies for enhancing their project success. This research could assist, direct and educate management, as the management provides/manages the necessary resources for projects. Furthermore, management also has the authority to choose project leaders/consultants that will make the project successful.

Consolidating Dubai's phenomenal growth requires prioritizing socio-economic strategies in future development projects at the pre-design and pre-construction stage, which will improve the city's business environment and the quality of life for Dubai's residents. This opens up fresh possibilities over the next few years for integrating robust procedures for successful execution, monitoring and evaluation of future construction developments from the outset.

Although many studies have identified various factors as important for successful building projects, few appear to have done a complete analysis using pre-design criteria to systematically categorize professional views on the relative relevance of CSFs. There is a lack in research examining the factors that led to Dubai's successful construction projects. This study attempts to bridge this gap and provide a prioritized framework reference model to assist project/asset managers and decision-makers.

The purpose of this study is to understand the inhibitor behavior of specific drug against mild steel corrosion and their adsorption mechanism on the surface.

Corrosion rates are influenced by the formation of inhibitor aggregates at the mild steel surface. Detail surface characterizations of mild steel have been studied before and after adsorption of drugs in 1N HCl solution. Scanning electron microscopy, atomic force microscopy and Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy were used to examine the effect of drug adsorption on steel surface.

Scanning electron microscopy analysis suggested that the metal had been protected from aggressive corrosion because of the addition of the inhibitors. Atomic force microscopy visualization confirmed the formation of protective layer on steel surface, resulting in the decrease in surface roughness with corrosion rates. The nature of metal surface has been analyzed by Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy.

The findings of this study will help us to understand the interaction of specific drugs with mild steel surface and their potential inhibition mechanism.

The purpose of this paper is to improve the socio-economic condition of low-income households in Malaysia, many products and services are available, including access to working capital and enterprise development training programs. This study examined the impact of access to working capital and micro-enterprise development training programs on household income and economic vulnerability among participants of development initiatives in the eKasih (national poverty data bank) in Peninsular Malaysia.

Adopting a cross-sectional design, the authors collected data randomly from the selected 300 micro-entrepreneurs from the list of development organizations available in the eKasih (national poverty data bank) located in four states of Peninsular Malaysia. Quantitative data were collected through structured interviews with the respondents from October to November 2017.

Both the length of participation and total amount of economic loan were found to increase the household income. However, there was no positive and significant impact of total number of training hours on household income. Interestingly, length of participation was found to reduce the level of economic vulnerability, except total amount of economic loan, and total number of training hours.

Despite the overwhelming empirical evidence, the findings indicated that the impact of enterprise development training programs was inconclusive. The effect of total amount of loan on economic vulnerability was also inconclusive. Hence, both policy makers and development organizations should understand how their programs benefit the poor households that can be improved through new implementation strategies.

The purpose of this paper is to study how board attributes impact corporate social responsibility (CSR). In particular, this paper aims to empirically examine the impact of financial performance on the relationship between board attributes and CSR. Board attributes such as board size, board independence, female board representation and CEO-chair duality are included.

This study uses panel data set of 200 French companies listed during 2007–2018 period. The direct and moderating effects were tested by using multiple regression technique.

The results indicate that significant direct relationships exist among board attributes and CSR. Board independence and female board representation are positively linked with CSR. However, board size and CEO duality are negatively associated with CSR. Findings show, also, that corporate financial performance accentuates significantly the effect of board size, board independence and CEO-duality on CSR, but does not moderate the relationship between female board representation and CSR.

The findings may be of interest to different stakeholders and policy-makers and regulatory bodies interested in enhancing CG initiatives to strengthen corporate social responsibility because it suggests thinking about implementing a broadly accepted framework of good CG practices to meet the demand for greater transparency and accountability. As an extension to this research, further study can examine the impact of ownership structure and audit quality on CSR issues.

This study extends the dynamic relationship between CG mechanisms and CSR by offering new evidence on how corporate financial moderates this relationship.

Owing to religious and economic preferences in Muslim-dominated countries, middle-income customers are at the heart of banks’ strategic targeting. This study aims to investigate selected middle-income Islamic bank customers from Sylhet, one of Bangladesh’s top religious and cultural cities, to examine their perceptions of the Islamic banking services.

This study forwards three determinants of overall satisfaction. These are perceived relative advantage (PRA), perceived risk management (PRM) and perceived customer engagement (PCE). The study has used structured questionnaire and collected complete data on 300 middle-income Islamic bank users. The data was analysed using exploratory factor analysis (EFA), confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) and structural equation modelling (SEM).

While all the three selection factors significantly influence overall satisfaction, PCE has greater positive impact on overall customer satisfaction, followed by PRA and PRM. “Convenient location”, “competitive charges” and “return on deposit despite low earnings” are the top three instruments measuring “PCE”. Religion did not qualify as a standalone selection factor. The results are robust across tests conducted by using EFA, CFA and SEM.

Gross purchasing power of middle-income class in Bangladesh grew from 7% to over 30% during the past decade, and the purchasing power of this class stood at US$100bn. Having a greater portion of this population as Muslims, banks can design products and marketing campaigns by using the three selection criteria that offer a combination of faith and non-faith-based variables.

Similar studies on the middle-income customer group have been rare, especially from the Islamic banking perspective. These findings offer a concise list of three factors for the bank managers to build their strategies. With respect to the Vision 2021, these findings carry greater socio-economic significance given the transition of Bangladesh to a middle-income country.

Globally influential Islamic banks from the Middle East and Southeast Asia carry voluminous correspondence banking with banks from China and India, leading to potential spillover effect of contagion among the banks from these regions. This study aims to investigate the Islamic banks systemic risk contagion with major banks from China and India.

Having the option pricing theory in the backdrop, the authors calculated three different distance to risk measurements (default, insolvency and capital). The authors have included top six listed globally influential Islamic banks, top seven Indian banks and top eight Chinese banks based on their net asset value. They then measured the banks’ extreme shocks based on the extreme value theory by using the logistic regression model. These extreme shocks helped the authors to map the spillover among the selected banks from multiple regions.

The authors have found strong evidences of directional risk spillover among the banks in this sample. Islamic banks are receiving a significant risk spillover from the other sample banks but transmitting less toward the other banks from India and China. Hence, there is strong one-directional risk contagion toward the Islamic banks in the study sample.

This research would be particularly useful to the regulators and bankers from emerging and Islamic markets to understand the conniving nature of the crisis by effectively mapping the source, destination and implementation of the shock transmission mechanism of the potential financial contagion.

Even though the corresponding banking among the top Islamic banks from the Middle East and Southeast Asian countries, and banks from India and China, is on the rise, the assessment of risk among these banks has been limited. In particular, the authors extended on the extreme value theory to focus on the wider impact of spillover, including significant direction of contagion from non-Islamic banks to Islamic banks.

Visits to locations connected to historical atrocities, tragedy, suffering, or presumably dreadful events are referred to as “dark tourism”. While Bangladesh may not be widely known for dark tourism, several unexplored avenues may be of interest to those who engage in this type of unique and unconventional tourism experience. In addition to creating job opportunities and income generation in Bangladesh, it can achieve educational objectives, communicate with a broad audience, raise awareness of events of the past, and quench people's thirst for information, which can help them to comprehend a society. Though Bangladesh has several somber locations connected to tragic events including World War II, liberation war sites, mass killing sites, shipbreaking yards, Rohingya refugee camps, riots, and the mother language movement, traditional tourism predominates there. If managed responsibly, these varied resources, somber locations, and histories, some of which date back to 1800, could make Bangladesh a dark tourism destination. Although dark tourism in Bangladesh has the potential to contribute to historical awareness, preservation, educational opportunities, and socioeconomic development, it is yet unexplored due to a lack of knowledge, experience, policy, effective marketing, and some controversies. By approaching responsibly, Bangladesh can leverage its history to attract visitors' interests in exploring the darker aspects of the country's past. Hence, this chapter is designed to explore the status and potential significance, prospects, and challenges of dark tourism in Bangladesh. The findings will help policymakers, tourists, and other stakeholders to explore and enjoy enormous benefits from Bangladesh's untapped dark tourism opportunities.

This chapter examines the nexus between the between tourism growth and income inequality in the top 10 tourist destinations in the world by using the advanced econometric technique namely quantile-on-quantile (QnQ). This approach combines the two approaches, that is, the nonparametric estimation and quantile regression and regresses the quantile of the tourism growth onto income inequality quantiles, thus enabling the effect of the income inequality on across different conditional tourism growth distribution. It also allows to explain a comprehensive picture of the overall interdependence and nonlinear relationship between the examined variables. The result from QnQ approach shows a negative association between income inequality and tourism growth, however, the country-specific analysis shows wide variations within and across different quantiles of variables. Notably, on the one hand, a strong negative association between the variables is found in China, France, Spain, Italy, Russia and the USA implying that tourism expansion minimizes the income inequality. On the other hand, a strong positive association is noted in Germany, Turkey, Mexico and the UK, which means that growth in tourism widens the income inequality. These outcomes provide important policy direction for tourism management in the respective countries.

The aim of this paper is to analyze the role of the judiciary in ensuring legal accountability of government officials and its impact on governance in the context of Bangladesh. Although, the judicial system of Bangladesh comprises Supreme Court, subordinate courts and tribunals. However, this study focuses Supreme Court only to keep the study in a manageable extent.

The study is qualitative in nature and based on content analysis. Dhaka Law Report (DLR), which is a monthly published report on case laws[1] decided by the Supreme Court has been selected as content for this study. Some case laws selected from DLR (2004‐2008) were analyzed using purposive sampling method, with a view to evaluating the effectiveness of judiciary (as an external but formal mechanism of accountability) in accountability of government administration and management and its impact on overall governance.

The most important finding of this paper is that the judiciary is very effective for ensuring legal accountability of government officials, which ultimately contributes to human rights and good governance. However, a major problem found was that until and unless an affected person files a case against a government authority, maintaining the required procedures of judiciary, it (the judiciary) has no scope to settle any disputes. Though there is a provision of Suo Muto (by own initiative) rule of the Supreme Court, this practice is very rare in Bangladesh. Furthermore, the executive is responsible for implementing the verdict of the judiciary. Therefore, if the government has not enough respect for, or does not care to implement judiciary's verdict, justice and rule of law will not be ensured. This study also found some cases like this.

This work does not address detailed issues of governance and is not based on empirical data.

This is a mixed study of judiciary and public administration, which is very rare in Bangladesh. Therefore, it will be brought into line with current practice by the concerned researchers and policy makers in public administration and judiciary.

This paper will be of interest to legal practitioners, policy makers, academicians and those in the field of governance.

It is important to implement artificial intelligence (AI) because it can simplify and solve complex problems faster than humans. Because AI learns about people and their behavior from the first purchase, AI marketing can boost marketing efforts by leveraging data to target extremely precise consumer groups. There is a debate about the efficacy of AI marketing due to the constraints and limits imposed by the system's nature. This chapter presents insights from published studies regarding the relationship of AI with marketing and how AI can affect marketing. A real-world example of Netflix's usage of AI in marketing has been demonstrated. Then, consumer attitudes regarding AI were revealed. Then, several ethical considerations concerning AI were highlighted. Finally, the anticipated future of AI marketing was addressed. This chapter demonstrated the significance of firms implementing AI marketing to get a competitive advantage. Although some of the difficulties mentioned in this study need to be resolved, AI marketing has a bright future. There are ethical concerns about bias and privacy that should be addressed further. This chapter will encourage firms to use AI systems in marketing, and it will open the door to concerns that will need to be investigated academically in the future.