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Environmental degradation is a global concern and an increasing one. Increasing population pressures, escalating consumption patterns and rapid industrial development are key contributors to this degradation. There is a growing recognition that sustainable development policies, plans and actions have a better chance of being implemented when they are supported by an educated, informed public. The objective of this paper is to highlight the need for the inclusion of environmental education into the curricula of engineering studies in order to raise environmental awareness at an early stage in their careers. The main aim of such environmental education is to provide engineers with the background to environmental issues such that they develop solutions that take into account the needs of the natural environment and which seek to minimise any negative impact.

The purpose of this paper is to set guidelines for the development and review of environmental impact statements (EIS) for major development projects proposed in the third review of the Kuwait Master Plan (KMP3). Best practices for environmental quality management to alleviate the impact of these projects on the environment are discussed.

The paper selects six major projects proposed for the period (2005‐2030) in KMP3. These projects include construction of new towns, power plants, highways, hospitals, waterfront projects and sanitary engineering projects. The current environmental impact assessment (EIA) system in Kuwait is reviewed and a comprehensive proposal to develop or review EISs for each of the six projects is recommended.

The projects selected are known to have adverse environmental impacts. The proposed EIS system will help developers prepare and submit a comprehensive EIS to obtain an environmental permit from the Environment Public Authority in Kuwait.

The proposed guidelines could be modified and applied to EISs for similar projects in other Gulf countries and other regions in the world that have similar climate conditions and geographies.

It is hoped that the proposed EIS guidelines will qualify as best practices for environmental quality management of comparable projects. The guidelines should reduce the time involved for preparing EISs and promote greater content accuracy in addition to promoting a “cleaner production” approach for these projects.

Gold investment is one of the essential long-term investments for many to diversify their investment portfolios. Muslims are continuously looking for halal products and services in any aspect of life and one of them is Shari’ah gold investments (SGI). However, evidence pertinent to Muslims’ behaviour towards Shari’ah gold is somewhat inconclusive and for that, a new empirical investigation is needed to reduce the gap, at best. Hence, the purpose of this study is to study factors determining SGI behaviour in Penang, Malaysia.

By using the Islamic theory of consumer behaviour (ITCB), this study examines the determinants of the SGI behaviour. The questionnaire survey was distributed and the data gathered was analysed using partial least square structural equation modeling.

All hypothesised hypotheses were instrumental in explaining the factors determining SGI behaviour in the context of Penang, Malaysia.

This study has at least two limitations, namely, confined generalisations of the variables used and the limited context of the research conducted.

This study sheds light on the determinants influencing SGI behaviour, at best.

This study is original in terms of its final output that enlightens the significant effects of iman, Islamic altruism, maqasid consumer index on the behaviour of investors on Shari’ah gold within the ITCB’s context along with integrated religious satisfaction.

The purpose of this article is twofold: to identify the characteristics of research on organisation and management in Arab countries and to find out whether research results support the culture‐free hypothesis or not. A thorough search of sixteen journals, research monographs, books and theses produced only 35 empirical studies. Most of these studies were exploratory, descriptive, and used small convenient samples. Although some findings supported the culture‐bound hypothesis, major conceptual and methodological weaknesses in these studies throw doubt upon the validity of their results.

This study aims to investigate the customer’s willingness to participate in family takaful using the theory of interpersonal behaviour (TIB) in Pakistan.

For this study, purposive sampling was used, and 310 useable questionnaires were received from the respondents who were postgraduate students, non-users of family takaful. The respondents are residing in the largest city of Pakistan, which is Karachi. The software Analysis of Moments Structures (AMOS v.25) was used to analyse the data.

The findings of this study reveal that awareness, affect, facilitating conditions and religious obligation are pivotal in determining the customers’ intention to purchase family takaful products. In addition, perceived risk and social factors are found not to be significant predictors. Resultantly, it may also be necessary to look into the factors examined in this study and other factors that may have played a great role in the acceptance of family takaful in the case of Pakistan.

This study is limited in terms of geographic coverage as it only covers part of Karachi city as a place of investigation, and therefore, the results cannot be generalised fully. On the same note, the sampling method can also be broadened to have the actual number of respondents for generalisability purposes. Future studies may focus on the random sampling method using cluster sampling to cover other regions and provinces for a clear picture and understanding.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this work is one of the first studies to be carried out on empirical grounds using the TIB in the context of family takaful products in Pakistan.

Iraq's invasion of Kuwait on August 2, 1990 precipitated an ecological tragedy in the Arabian Gulf region. During the course of the invasion Kuwait suffered severe losses to both its oil industry and its ecological system. The scale of damage was enormous, ranging from destruction as a result of oil fires and spills to the economic deterioration of Kuwait's oil industry. The purpose of this paper is to focus on the lessons learned from Kuwait's oil well catastrophe in the hope of preventing or at least minimizing future such man‐made disasters.

The paper reviews and analyzes Kuwait's oil well tragedy in terms of its scope, logistical services provided to cope with the disaster, the techniques used in firefighting operations and related political issues. The paper also discusses the need to review existing environmental laws and the concept of environmental crime in light of this catastrophe.

There are many important lessons that can be drawn from Kuwait's catastrophic disaster, the most important of which is to ensure that dictators in the future never believe they can destroy the environment without severe repercussions from the international community.

The conflagrations in Kuwait demonstrate the dangerous consequences of large‐scale modern combat in an environmentally fragile area. Not just Kuwait but all oil‐producing nations, especially the Gulf countries, are vulnerable to this type of environmental and economic disaster.

Kuwait's tragedy highlights the need for immediate consideration of possible similar disasters in the future and how the global community will deal with them. The high cost of environmental degradation only gets more expensive when left unattended. The price is paid not only in hard currency for firefighting but in damage to the public's health and in other environmental problems. This paper shows that sustainable development is impossible in the presence of wars and terrorist activities.

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.

Past studies show that companies’ connection with the government (or politically connected companies (PCCs)) contributed negatively to their financial performance. The grabbing hand theory suggests that political connection demand companies to serve political and social obligation that exhaust companies’ financial resources. The purpose of this paper is to extend the previous studies by examining the role of monitoring mechanisms, specifically corporate governance mechanism and institutional ownership (IO), whether they weaken or strengthen the financial performance of PCCs in Malaysia.

The sample consists of all companies listed on the Main Board of Bursa Malaysia (previously known as Kuala Lumpur Stock Exchange) for the year of 2004-2007. The time periods were chosen because there were no significant economic and political events that could possibly distorted the financial and non-financial data.

The findings show that companies’ political connection (the presence of political figure or government representative as members of board of director) has consistently showing negative relationship with performance. The result is consistent with the grabbing hand theory that argues that companies’ connection with government would actually destroy companies’ value. The monitoring role of corporate governance as measured by the percentage of independent board members does not have any significant effect on firm’s performance. The monitoring role of corporate governance as measured by the composition of independent board members have shown a positive significant effect on the company’s performance. However the second monitoring mechanism, the percentage of institutional investors, have a tendency to weaken the company’s performance.

The findings of this study provide an additional understanding of the consequence of government intervention on companies’ performance. This study also highlights the role of monitoring mechanism (independence board members and IO) in strengthening or weakening the performance. The findings suggest that the proper appointment criteria for board members should be seriously considered to ensure better corporate governance structure. Therefore, the formation of the nomination committee as suggested by the current Malaysian Code of Corporate Governance play an important contribution to ensure candidates nominated as board members have proper credentials and qualifications to carry out responsibilities as board members.

The purpose of this study was identifying factors that encourage property tax payment among property owners, specifically from the residential property segment within the Malaysian context. This aim is derived from existing evidence which clearly indicates a steady annual increase in property tax arrears from non-complying property owners as reported by the local governments (LGs).

This research was conducted using a survey method where a questionnaire was used as the research instrument in garnering the necessary study data. The collected data was analyzed through quantitative means towards gleaning study findings to fulfil the set objectives. The analyses used within this study were reliability analysis, descriptive analysis and factor analysis.

Research findings indicate that there are five factors that encourage property tax payment, namely, the proactive action capability of LGs; stimulation of payment; quality of staff and service; reliable tax foundation and governance; and smart expenditure. The identification of these factors has the potential to act as a mitigation mechanism for LGs to alleviate the issue of property tax arrears.

The findings of this study may be used by LGs in developing a comprehensive action plan to encourage property owners to pay taxes. The study findings are exploratory in nature, based on the locality of the LG selected in this study, the Penang Island City Council (MBPP). As such, the findings may not be considered as a generalization of the property tax situation throughout Malaysia as study data was only collected from the administrative region of MBPP. However, these findings can still be used as a basis in establishing similar studies within other LGs which demonstrate similar characteristics with MBPP.

In the Malaysian scenario, the focus of the previous studies on property tax arrears revolves around actions that have been taken by LGs to encourage the payment of property tax. However, in this study, the determination of encouraging factors is no longer referred to LG perspectives but was investigated from the taxpayer dimension. This approach allows new mitigating ideas to be developed and adds value in the context of a different perspective towards establishing a more practicable action plan in reducing property tax arrears.