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This study aims to analyze Islamic financial institutions’ (IFIs) current financial engineering and product development procedures.

The paper is quantitative in nature and the survey questionnaire were collected from managers and IF experts working for Islamic Banks, Takaful and other IFIs in Turkey, Malaysia and UAE. Two-stage structural equation modeling was used to test the hypothesis.

The findings highlighted that the Shari’ah Supervisory Board, Strategy and Planning of IFIs, Legal and Regulatory framework, pricing of a new product and financial performance positively impact the new product development (NPD) process. At the same time, Islamic values have no significant positive impact.

When generalizing the research results, data collection from the right departments was the main limitation of the current study. Future research may opt to collect data only from Product Development Departments.

The findings of this study will allow IFIs to reflect on their present methods, procedures and Shari’ah compliance framework for the NPD process.

Factors affecting the product development and financial engineering process are discussed in the literature. The findings of this study can be regarded as building blocks for future academic research on product development and financial engineering in Islamic finance.

Like all other human behaviors, creativity must be examined by considering both personal and situational influences. “Person-organization fit” (POF) provides a suitable theoretical perspective to investigate the congruence between persons and organizations in the domain of creativity. However, few studies have examined the effects of POF on creative behavior. Although the majority of these studies have identified a positive relationship between POF and creativity, it is suggested that congruent individuals are less likely to be inventive. The current study will examine the positive relationship between POF and employees' self-rated creativity in the Turkish context. The paper aims to discuss these issues.

Subjective POF measures and a creativity measure were adapted for this research, and multiple regression was used to calculate whether and how POF relates to creativity.

Two important conclusions were found from the analyses. One of these significant interaction effects was found on employee creativity. And the second is congruence between personal values and current organizational values would effect employee creativity positively. Detailed findings and contributions have been discussed.

Although providing an important contribution to POF and creativity literature, this study had some limitations. In this study, self-rating method has been used to measure employee creativity. However, supervisor rating is the most common way in field studies and gives more objective results than self-rating method.

The findings provide valuable information for human resource practitioner about the importance of situational factors as far as personal characteristics for enhancing creative behavior in organizations.

As far as it is known, there are few studies to examine the relationship between POF and creativity empirically. The majority of these researches examined the complementary fit (demand-abilities, need-supply, value-supply fit). On the other hand, this study specially has focused on supplementary fit (POF), rather than complementary fit and examined its relationship with employee creativity by considering a wide set of values in the Turkish context.

Empirical research on the relationship between financial inclusion and economic growth has neglected the influence of religion or secularism. This study aims to investigate the effect of financial inclusion on economic growth in religious and secular countries.

The financial inclusion indicators are the number of automated teller machines (ATMs)per 100,000 adults and the number of bank branches per 100,000 adults. These two indicators are the accessibility dimension of financial inclusion based on physical points of service. The two-stage least square (2SLS) regression method was used to analyze the effect of financial inclusion on real gross domestic product (GDP) per capita growth and real GDP growth in religious and secular countries.

Bank branch contraction significantly increases economic growth in secular countries. Bank branch expansion combined with greater internet usage increases economic growth in secular countries while high ATM supply combined with greater internet usage decreases economic growth in secular countries. This study also finds that bank branch expansion, in the midst of a widening poverty gap, significantly increases economic growth in religious countries, implying that financial inclusion through bank branch expansion is effective in promoting economic growth in poor religious countries. It was also found that internet usage is a strong determinant of economic growth in secular countries.

Few studies in the literature examined the effect of financial inclusion on economic growth. But the literature has not examined how financial inclusion affects economic growth in religious and secular countries.

This study aims to present the perspectives of heterodox economics and Islamic economics on environmental economics, as an alternative to mainstream economics, which takes economic growth as its main objective and argues that environmental problems will largely disappear when economic growth is achieved.

In this study, there was no intention to conduct a detailed analysis of heterodox economic models and Islamic economics. Instead, the approaches to the “environment,” which can be considered as an urgent need of the planet, were evaluated, and the inadequate proposals of the mainstream economics’ environmental approach were theoretically criticized and heterodox economics and Islamic economics were proposed as an alternative model.

Heterodox and Islamic economics offer alternative models of development prioritizing social and ecological justice to address environmental problems, which is in contrast to mainstream economics’ narrow focus on market mechanisms and individual rationality. Thus, engaging in more dialogue in the context of the environment is inevitable for both schools, considering the vast geography inhabited by Muslims and the proposed heterodox economic policies, and moreover, these approaches are modeled for the first time.

This article presents a synthesis of Islamic economics and heterodox thinking in contrast to mainstream economic policy, highlighting their similarities and differences and providing a more comprehensive understanding of the complexities and potential solutions of environmental problems. To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this approach has not been previously explored, making it an original contribution to the literature.

Fuel cells technologies are the most promising green energy technologies for diverse applications. One of the fastest growing areas is the portable electronic applications where the power range is the order of 1–100 W. For most of the portable electronic devices, rechargeable battery is the major energy source. Due to limitations like limited capacity, requirement of external power for recharge have led many researchers to look for alternative power sources to power portable electronic devices. The high energy density of fuel cells makes them very attractive alternative to batteries for portable power applications. There are a variety of fuel cell technologies being considered to replace batteries in portable electronic equipment. Direct Liquid Fuel Cells (DLFCs) have attracted much attention due to their potential applications as a power source for portable electronic devices. The advantages of DLFCs over hydrogen fed PEM fuel cells include a higher theoretical energy density and efficiency, a more convenient handling of the streams, and enhanced safety. Unlike batteries, fuel cells need not be recharged, merely refueled. This paper provides an overview on challenges of DLFCs (Direct Liquid Fuel Cells), like fuel crossover, cost, durability, water management, weight and size along with approaches being investigated to solve these challenges. Portable Fuel Cell Commercialization Targets for future and producers of portable fuel cells across the globe are also discussed in this paper.