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Natural gas makes up about 50 per cent of Pakistan's energy consumption, which is decreasing at an alarming pace, making Karachi – the largest city of Pakistan – one of the major victims of natural gas shortfall. The purpose of this paper is to model natural gas demand and supply using geographic information systems.

Sui Southern Gas Company datasets were used to derive annual per capita gas usages and to analyze the capacity of gas supplies. Union Council is taken as a smallest and basic analytical administrative spatial unit for appraisal of badly affected, with insufficient, low and better gas supply regions.

Results show that the per capita demand for natural gas is higher in high class residential areas while supply is lowest for upper middle and lower middle class residential area populations. Only 19 per cent of the total residential areas are expected to be free from gas shortfalls. About 53 per cent of residential areas are facing the problem of low gas availability; and 3 per cent and 11 per cent areas are under stress of badly affected and insufficient gas supply, respectively.

This research shows an example of constructing a Geographic Information System (GIS)‐based gas demand and supply model that can be used for building strategic guidelines for top‐level planners, engineers and decision makers at the micro‐level. This is not a “deep” paper, but it works in identifying a problem and presenting a quantitative way forward. This paper will have significant impact both on society and academia, as this innovative technology and its implementation on gas utility has happened for the first time in Pakistan. Furthermore, in the international literature this has also been in infancy and will open new avenues of research, especially in developing countries. The work would certainly be applicable for other consumer‐based utilities such as electricity, telecommunication, sewerage and municipal water and they would all benefit from it substantially.

This study aims to explore the global issues of impulse buying, compulsive purchasing and materialism. It examines how materialism relates to self-esteem and the tendencies for impulsive and compulsive buying. In addition, the study delves into the impact of religiosity on self-esteem and materialistic values in an Islamic country.

Enumerators visited universities, distributing 415 questionnaires and receiving 397 in return. Due to the unavailability of a sample frame for the target population, the study used nonprobability sampling for statistical analysis, which included assessments of normality, reliability, validity and bootstrapping for the structural model, the researchers used Smart PLS.

The study confirmed 13 hypotheses while rejecting four. The unsupported hypotheses are: (i) materialism negatively impacts impulsive purchasing behavior, (ii) impulsive purchasing does not mediate the relationship between materialism and compulsive purchasing, (iii) materialism does not mediate the relationship between religiosity and impulsive purchasing and (iv) in an Islamic country, neither materialism nor impulsive purchasing significantly mediates the relationship between religiosity and compulsive purchasing.

This study was conducted in a city within a developing Islamic nation, focusing on college students. It suggests that future research could include more cities, a diverse population segments and multicultural perspectives. The research primarily examined the direct relationships between religiosity and factors such as self-esteem, materialism and impulsive purchasing. Future studies could explore religiosity as a mediating factor. This study highlights that materialism (M), impulsive buying (IB) and compulsive buying (CB) are not only closely interconnected but also adversely affect individual, family and societal well-being, raising global concerns. While occasional impulsive behavior is common among individuals in Islamic nations, repeated indulgences in the same behavior could lead to an obsession with excessive purchasing.

This study holds significant implications for consumers and retailers. Excessive and unnecessary spending can increase financial burden and adversely affect family welfare. Often, families and acquaintances inadvertently teach children to engage in extreme purchasing behaviors. To combat this, families and religious leaders should educate individuals about the detrimental effects of impulsive and compulsive purchasing. In addition, colleges and other institutions should organize seminars and workshops to address these issues. Retailers, whose sales largely depend on impulsive and compulsive consumers, should employ interpersonal influencers and brand advocates to connect with this customer segment effectively.

This study examined the relationship between religiosity, materialism, self-esteem and impulsive and compulsive purchasing behaviors. This study thoroughly tested 17 hypotheses, encompassing direct, mediating and multimediating relationships. The findings reveal that materialism’s impact on impulsive behavior is negligible compared to previous research, corroborating the findings presented in the cited literature.

This paper aims to examine the impact of corruption on bank stability and bank profitability separately for Islamic banks as well as conventional banks. Moreover, it also investigates whether the existence of Islamicity and corruption in the environment can moderate the Islamic banks-stability and Islamic banks-profitability relationships.

Sample of the study consists 136 banks comprising 70 Islamic and 66 conventional banks over the period 2015–2021 from nine countries with dual banking systems. Panel data fixed effect estimator with year effects is used to estimate the results.

Results of the study show that Islamicity is positively and corruption is negatively related to bank stability as well as bank profitability. Further, it is found that the effect of corruption is significantly different between Islamic and conventional banks, wherein conventional banks are more adversely affected than Islamic banks. However, an insignificant difference between Islamic and conventional banks is observed in the case of Islamicity.

The study provides theoretical and practical implications. On theoretical side, the study presents Islamicity as more reliable measure of religiosity based on Islamic values that can help in control of corruption by moderating corruption-bank stability nexus especially in dual banking economies which have high share of Muslim population. On practical side, the study recommends policy and operational measures for mitigating corruption aiming bank stability.

The results of this study contribute to the corruption-finance, religion-finance and dual banking literature. This study suggests that regulators and bank management must consider corruption and Islamicity while formulating their policies for better bank performance/stability.

Learning capability improves knowledge resources fosters innovative capabilities and firm competitiveness. The study aims to examine the human resource management (HRM) practice and employee creativity relationship using organizational learning capability (OLC) as a mediating variable.

Data were collected from 67 small-sized and 96 medium-sized firms. Confirmatory factor analysis was applied to establish construct validity and reliability. Structural equation modeling was used to evaluate the proposed model and hypotheses.

The results show that performance appraisal and employee creativity were positively related. Employee participation and employee creativity were positively related. Compensation and employee creativity were nonsignificantly related. OLC mediates the performance appraisal and employee creativity relationship. Similarly, OLC mediates the employee participation and employee creativity relationship. However, OLC did not mediate the compensation and employee creativity relationship.

Due to the research’s SME focus and cross-sectional data, the finding’s generalizability will be constrained.

The findings of the study would be useful to policymakers, stakeholders and management of SMEs in developing a supportive learning climate that promotes experiential and continuous learning cultures to ensure strategic capabilities, sustainable competitive advantage and innovativeness.

The study contributes to the extant literature on OLC, HRM practices and employee creativity by empirically evidencing that OLC mediates the performance appraisal, employee participation and employee creativity relationship.

Work engagement has been shown to be one of the most significant positive employee outcomes in organisations and a critical factor in overall business success. The effect of leadership behaviour on employee work engagement has also been established as one of the most critical interactions in the literature. Accordingly, this study aims to investigate the impact of a leader’s knowledge-hiding behaviour on employee work engagement. Moreover, this study examines how organisational citizenship behaviour moderates the relationship.

This study adopted a quantitative method with 289 front-line employees from Jordan’s banking sector, each of whom was asked to complete an online self-report questionnaire.

The findings of this study indicate that leaders’ knowledge-hiding negatively affects the three dimensions of employee work engagement (namely, physical, emotional and cognitive). Additionally, the findings provide evidence for the negative moderating effect of organisational citizenship behaviour on the direct relationship between leaders’ knowledge-hiding behaviour and three employee work engagement dimensions.

This study adds to the body of literature by proposing and empirically demonstrating the impact of leaders’ knowledge-hiding behaviours on all three dimensions of employee work engagement. Furthermore, this study adds to the knowledge-hiding phenomenon and work engagement literature by proposing the mitigation role of organisational citizenship behaviour on the negative relation between leaders’ knowledge-hiding behaviour and employees’ employee work engagement.