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Microfinance emerged as an essential catalyst for socio-economic development and financial inclusion to reduce poverty. Microfinance institutions cannot meet their primary objective of poverty reduction if they are not sustainable financially. With the theoretical support of profit incentive theory, this paper aims to investigate the impact of organizational structure (OS), growth outreach (average loan per borrower [ALPB] and number of active borrowers), women empowerment (percentage of women borrowers [PWB]), liquidity, leverage and cost efficiency (cost per borrower) on the financial sustainability of microfinance providers (MFPs) in India and explore the possible moderating effect of the national governance indicators (NGIs).

A financial sustainability index has been developed by using principal components analysis, including both conventional measures (return of assets and return on equity) and efficiency measures (operational self-sufficiency and financial self-sufficiency). Due to the existence of endogeneity and heteroskedasticity, this study uses two-step system generalized method of moments estimates to examine the relationships for a period of 2006 to 2018.

The finding reveals that there is a strong significant relationship between financial sustainability and its influential factors. Organizatioanl Structure, loan size, women borrowers, Gross Domestic Products and inflation enhance the financial sustainability of India’s microfinance sector. However, a number of borrowers, liquidity, leverage and operating costs negatively affect the financial sustainability of MFPs of India. The estimates demonstrate that NGIs significantly moderate the association between financial sustainability and its influential factors. The NGIs negatively affect the positive impact of Organizatioanl Structure on financial sustainability. National governance increases the positive effect of loan size (ALPB) and reduces the negative effect of a number of borrowers and leverage on the financial sustainability of MFPs of India. However, NGIs negatively affect the positive relationship between Percentage of Women Borrowers and Financial sustainability of Microfinance Providers of India.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this study is the first of its kind that incorporates all of the six dimensions of the National Governance Indicators (NGIs) and uses as a moderator. Secondly, a financial sustainability index has been developed for measuring the financial sustainability of Microfinance Providers (MFPs).

The purpose of this paper is to identify the negative aspects of blockchain technology and to shed the light on most productive years, countries, authors, sources and frequent keywords.

A Web of Science bibliographic data set containing 209 journal articles was evaluated using descriptive and network analytics. A two-step process is adopted in this study; descriptive analysis is initially carried out using RStudio to determine the most productive years, nations, sources and authors, and using co-occurrence of keyword analysis in VOSviewer, the most influential keywords are determined.

The findings reveal that 2022 is the most prolific year in terms of number of publications. It is discovered that China tops the list for having published the most articles. Similarly, the most productive authors are Kumar A and Abhishek K.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this bibliometric analysis is unique in that it takes a thorough approach to examine the negative aspects of blockchain technology and identify research trends and offer insights that might guide future research and practical solutions.

The present research aims to investigate how lean project management (LPM) and agile project management (APM) affect project performance outcomes in the construction sector in Jordan. This study focuses on six key project performance outcomes, namely cost, time, quality, client satisfaction, innovation and responsiveness.

The present study employed a quantitative approach to achieve the research objectives. Accordingly, a multi-item survey questionnaire was prepared to gather data from 392 project managers from construction companies in Jordan. The study’s model showed acceptable levels regarding reliability, validity, fit indices and discriminant validity. In order to test the hypotheses of this study, path analysis was employed using Amos 24.0 software.

LPM demonstrated a remarkably high positive impact on cost performance. It also positively affected quality performance and client satisfaction. However, LPM insignificantly affected time, innovation and responsiveness performance measures. On the other hand, APM showed a notably high positive impact on innovation and responsiveness. The findings also revealed that APM positively impacted quality performance and client satisfaction. In addition, APM negatively impacted cost performance and insignificantly impacted time performance.

This study is one of the first comprehensive studies to empirically examine the impact of both LPM and APM on various project performance outcomes in the construction industry in the context of a developing country. It reveals some similarities and differences between LPM and APM with regard to their impacts on project management outcomes. The findings are expected to guide managers in selecting the appropriate project management approach based on the desired performance outcomes. Accordingly, it offers important implications for project managers in construction companies.

The strict regulations and reporting requirements in microfinance institutions require a high level of knowledge and expertise in finance, accounting and risk management. Therefore, microfinance institutions (MFIs) must possess a high absorptive capacity to understand their customers’ needs and develop appropriate products and services to meet them. This study explains how organizational culture influences absorptive capacity in MFIs, with a particular focus on the mediating role of knowledge sharing.

Data were collected from 450 randomly selected employees of microfinance banking institutions in Pakistan. The data were tested for reliability and validity, and hypotheses were tested through structural equation modeling in WarpPLS 8.0.

The findings show that knowledge! sharing mediates the relationship between organizational culture and absorptive capacity. Thus, MFIs should promote knowledge sharing as a cultural value to improve their ability to acquire and utilize new knowledge, enhance absorptive capacity to drive innovation and facilitate the development of new products and services.

MFIs with higher absorptive capacity are more likely to be able to respond to changes in the market, such as new technologies or shifting customer demands. Therefore, managers should promote a culture of sharing knowledge and expertise to ensure adaptability in dynamic market conditions.

This research provides a framework for organizations to better understand the role of knowledge sharing in their success and how to leverage it to enhance their absorptive capacity. It is valuable for academics and practitioners seeking to improve organizational performance and competitiveness.

Drawing on job demands-resources theory, this paper aims to investigate the impact of workplace spirituality on mindfulness and the subsequent effects of mindfulness on open innovation mindset and job embeddedness. Additionally, it examines the mediating role of mindfulness between workplace spirituality and key outcomes, including open innovation mindset and job embeddedness. Lastly, the study investigates the moderating role of self-efficacy in the relationship between workplace spirituality and mindfulness.

The research utilized multiple sampling techniques to collect data from employees across numerous sectors. A total of 197 viable responses were collected. Partial least squares structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM) was used to test the proposed hypotheses.

The results indicate that workplace spirituality has a positive impact on mindfulness, which in turn increases employees’ job embeddedness and an open innovation mindset. Additionally, it was found that mindfulness mediates the relationship between workplace spirituality and both job embeddedness and open innovation mindset. Surprisingly and unexpectedly, the results indicate a negative moderating impact of self-efficacy between workplace spirituality and mindfulness.

Cultivating a sense of purpose and meaningful work, alongside mindfulness programs and recruitment practices focused on cultural fit, can enhance both employee retention and innovation.

Little to no research exists that clarifies how workplace spirituality impacts employees’ job embeddedness and an open innovation mindset. Notably, the mediating role of mindfulness remains unexplored. This study is among the first to explore the mediating role of mindfulness between workplace spirituality and outcomes such as job embeddedness and an open innovation mindset. Additionally, the moderating role of self-efficacy between workplace spirituality and mindfulness is almost absent in the existing literature. Lastly, the unexpected findings on the role of self-efficacy in this study open fresh avenues for future research.

This narrative literature review examines intersectional employee voice inequalities in a non-Western, high power distance context to develop a multilevel conceptual framework.

The authors use Leininger's (1997, 2002) culture care model to explore multilevel influences on intersectional voice inequalities. The article applies insights from a review of 31 studies to the specific challenges of migrant palliative care (PC) nurses in Saudi Arabia.

The themes identified in the review indicate how better transcultural communications might mitigate voice inequalities that influence migrant employee wellbeing and intentions to quit which result from cultural incongruities.

The impact of national culture differences and intersectional inequalities on employee voice has largely been ignored in academic research. This paper offers unique insights drawing on culture care theory into intersectional voice challenges from a non-Western perspective in the underresearched setting of Saudi Arabia which is mid-way through a national transformation program. It starkly contrasts policy ambitions for advancing healthcare with discriminatory practices based on conservative attitudes which stifle migrant worker voices.

Many firms have adopted different methodologies such as lean management to increase customer satisfaction. This is because they need to respond to customer demands for improved products and responsive service. This study aims to evaluate the influence of soft lean practices (SLP) on business performance in the service sector.

Out of 702 questionnaires distributed to various service companies in Zimbabwe, 260 valid responses were received. Structural equation modeling was used to assess the relationship among the factors of the proposed model.

The implementation of SLP leads to improvement in the business performance of the service companies. However, the impact of SLP on business performance is mainly indirect, mediated by customer satisfaction.

The research focused on the implementation of SLP in the service industry of a developing country; hence, the results obtained may require further investigations before generalization to other countries with different sociocultural contexts is made.

Most previous studies focused mainly on the implementation of the technical lean practices in the manufacturing industry without properly acknowledging the importance of SLP. This research investigates the importance of SLP in the service sector and further explores the mediatory role of customer satisfaction on business performance. The findings also validate the service-profit-chain theory.

Security is the most important issue in Internet of Things (IoT)-based smart cities and blockchain (BC). So, the present paper aims to detect and organize the literature regarding security in the IoT-based smart cities and BC context. It also proposes an agenda for future research. Therefore, the authors did a statistical review of security in IoT and BC in smart cities. The present investigation aims to determine the principal challenges and disturbances in IoT because of the BC adoption, the central BC applications in IoT-based smart cities and the BC future in IoT-based smart cities.

IoT) has a notable influence on modernizing and transforming the society and industry for knowledge digitizing. Therefore, it may be perceived and operated in real time. The IoT is undergoing exponential development in industry and investigation. Still, it contains some security and privacy susceptibilities. Naturally, the research community pays attention to the security and privacy of the IoT. Also, the academic community has put a significant focus on BC as a new security project. In the present paper, the significant mechanisms and investigations in BC ground have been checked out systematically because of the significance of security in the IoT and BC in smart cities. Electronic databases were used to search for keywords. Totally, based on different filters, 131 papers have been gained, and 17 related articles have been obtained and analyzed. The security mechanisms of BC in IoT-based smart cities have been ranked into three main categories as follows, smart health care, smart home and smart agriculture.

The findings showed that BC’s distinctive technical aspects might impressively find a solution for privacy and security problems encountering the IoT-based smart cities development. They also supply distributed storage, transparency, trust and other IoT support to form a valid, impressive and secure distributed IoT network and provide a beneficial guarantee for IoT-based smart city users’ security and privacy.

The present investigation aims to be comprehensive, but some restrictions were also observed. Owing to the use of some filters for selecting the original papers, some complete works may be excluded. Besides, inspecting the total investigations on the security topic in BC and the IoT-based smart cities is infeasible. Albeit, the authors attempt to introduce a complete inspection of the security challenges in BC and the IoT-based smart cities. BC includes significant progress and innovation in the IoT-based smart cities’ security domain as new technology. Still, it contains some deficiencies as well. Investigators actively encounter the challenges and bring up persistent innovation and inspection of related technologies in the vision of the issues available in diverse application scenarios.

The use of BC technology in finding a solution for the security issues of the IoT-based smart cities is a research hotspot. There is numerable literature with data and theoretical support despite the suggestion of numerous relevant opinions. Therefore, this paper offers insights into how findings may guide practitioners and researchers in developing appropriate security systems dependent upon the features of IoT-based smart city systems and BC. This paper may also stimulate further investigation on the challenge of security in BC and IoT-based smart cities. The outcomes will be of great value for scholars and may supply sights into future investigation grounds in the present field.

As the authors state according to their knowledge, it is the first work using security challenges on BC and IoT-based smart cities. The literature review shows that few papers discuss how solving security issues in the IoT-based smart cities can benefit from the BC. The investigation suggests a literature review on the topic, recommending some thoughts on using security tools in the IoT-based smart cities. The present investigation helps organizations plan to integrate IoT and BC to detect the areas to focus. It also assists in better resource planning for the successful execution of smart technologies in their supply chains.

The study proposes to determine the impending challenges to lean integration with Industry 4.0 (I4.0) in manufacturing that aims at achieving desired operational performance. Integrating lean and Industry 4.0 as the two industrial approaches is synergetic in providing operational benefits such as increasing flexibility, improving productivity, reducing cost, reducing delivery time, improving quality and value stream mapping (VSM). There is an urgent need to understand the integrated potential of OPEX strategies like lean manufacturing and also to determine the challenges for manufacturing SMEs and further suggest a strategic roadmap for the future.

The current work has used a combined approach on interpretative structural modeling (ISM) and fuzzy Matrice d'impacts croisés multiplication appliquée á un classment (MICMAC) approach to structure the multiple level analysis for the implementation challenges to integrate OPEX strategies with Industry 4.0.

The research has found that the indulgence of various implementation issues like lack of standardization, lack of vision and lack of trained support, all are the major challenges that inhibit the integration of OPEX strategies with I4.0 technologies in manufacturing.

The research has investigated the internal factors acting as a roadblock to lean and Industry 4.0 adoption. Further studies may consider external factors to lean and Industry 4.0 implementation. Also, further research may consider other operational excellence approaches and extend further to relevant sectors.

This study provides the analysis of barriers that is useful for the managers to take strategic actions for implementing OPEX strategies with I4.0 in smart manufacturing.

The research determines the adoption challenges towards the integrated framework. This is the first study to explore challenges in integrating OPEX strategies with I4.0 technologies in manufacturing SMEs.