This paper mainly has two objectives: the first one is to identify the similarity of capital structure between Islamic and Conventional banks; Second objective is to detect the relationship between capital structure variables and performance of Islamic and Conventional Banks in Gulf Countries (GC). This investigation has been performed on a sample of 16 GC Banks (8 Islamic Banks and 8 Conventional Banks) for the period 2005-2014. ROE (return on equity) and ROA (return of asset) have been used as performance measures. Total debt to total assets, Equity to total assets, Debt to equity ratios have been used as capital structure measures. Size of the bank has been considered as dependent variable to identify its relationship with bank performance. Data collected were analyzed by using SPSS software. The results of the research indicate a similarity of capital structure of Islamic banks and Conventional banks in Gulf Countries. ROA as performance measurement has a significant negative relationship with financial leverage and a positive relationship with equity to assets ratio. This relationship is identified at Islamic banks, Conventional banks and all the banks of the sample. Bank size has a positive relationship with ROA and ROE as performance measures in Islamic and Conventional banks.

Despite the substantial attention given to pro-environmental behavior (PEB) by academicians, practitioners, and policymakers, few studies have investigated how employee-perceived corporate social responsibility (CSR) affects employees’ PEB. Moreover, though the concept of PEB has been found to elicit a wide range of positive benefits for employee behaviors and attitudes, it has rarely been applied to the context of the manufacturing sector. Underpinned by the social identity theory (SIT) and the attitude-behavior-context (ABC) theory, the present study investigates the impact of employee-perceived CSR on employees’ PEB through the moderating roles of employee–CSR skepticism and employee–CSR authenticity. The convenience sampling technique was used to select employees from Pakistani manufacturing firms to participate in the study’s survey. Analysis results of data from 235 respondents across 115 manufacturing firms suggest that employee-perceived CSR positively drives employees’ PEB. In addition, the findings offer valuable insights on employee–CSR skepticism and employee–CSR authenticity. Specifically, CSR skepticism weakens the link between perceived CSR and PEB, while CSR authenticity strengthens this link. By providing implications and limitations, the present study discusses that organizations can convey the message of their credible, genuine, and authentic CSR efforts to their employees for social, economic, and environmental wellbeing. The study’s discussions and conclusions are presented.

Service quality in health care institutions is an emerging phenomenon, and many hospitals are concerned about providing quality service to their patients based on information obtained by the patient's perceptions of service quality. First, we aimed to determine patients' perception of service quality offered at Council for Health Service Accreditation of Southern Africa (COHSASA)-accredited private hospitals in Nigeria. And that included reexamining the dimensionality of SERVQUAL (the test tool) based on our sample data. Second, we aimed to find out whether there are any existing gaps between patients' expectation and perception of the service quality. Third, this research is an attempt to test the perceived quality effects on patients' satisfaction and repurchase intentions toward health services. Quantitative research was conducted via selfadministered questionnaires to patients who attended a randomly selected COHSASA-accredited private hospital in Nigeria and analyze their data using a variety of quantitative procedures including structural equation modeling, factor analyses, and paired-samples t tests. A systematic sampling method was used, and a total of 228 questionnaires were used for the final analyses. SERVQUAL was found to be a three-factor variate comprising the following: tangibility, reliability, and sensitivity. Our results concluded that perceived quality was significantly lower than expected quality despite being accompanied with positive levels of satisfaction and repurchase intentions. Finally, patient's satisfaction was found to fully transmit the indirect effects of two of the three factors, quality sensitivity and reliability, onto repurchase intentions, whereas tangibility does not exert indirect significant influences over repurchase intentions via patient satisfaction.

The study aims to provide empirical evidence on the impact of corporate social responsibility (CSR) and accounting comparability (AC) on earnings persistence (EP) in listed firms on the Vietnamese stock market. Data were collected from 76 companies that have disclosure financial statements, annual reports, and CSR of companies and listed firms on the Vietnamese stock market in the period from 2014 to 2017. The study used the Generalized Method of Moments (GMM) regression method to evaluate the correlation. We believe that CSR and AC have a positive impact on EP. The study helps to contribute to a review of previous studies on the relationship between CSR disclosure, AC and EP in developing countries. The study points out some policy implications for regulators and firms on transparency in an information disclosure to increase AC and CSR on the basis of maintaining EP.

The stock market plays a vital role in the economic development of any country. Stock market performance can be measured by the market capitalization ratio as well as many other factors. The primary purpose of this study is to predict the movement of the stock market based on the total market capitalization of the Dhaka Stock Exchange (DSE) using autoregressive integrated moving average (ARIMA) models as well as artificial neural networks (ANN). The data set covers monthly time series data of total market capitalization from November 2001 to December 2018. This study also shows the best model for forecasting the movement of DSE market capitalization. The ARIMA (2,1,2) model is chosen from among the several ARIMA model combinations. From several artificial neural networks (ANN) models as a modern tool, a three-layer feed-forward topology using a backpropagation algorithm with five nodes in the hidden layer, one lag, and a learning rate equal to 0.01 is selected as the best model. Finally, these selected two models are compared based on the Root-Mean-Square Error (RMSE), Mean Absolute Error (MAE), Mean Absolute Percentage Error (MAPE), and Theil’s U statistic. The results showed that the estimated error of ANN is less than the estimated error of the traditional method. Doi: 10.28991/ESJ-2022-06-05-09 Full Text: PDF

Demand forecasting is a scientific and methodical assessment of future demand for a critical product.The effective Demand Forecast Model (DFM) enables pharmaceutical companies to be successful in the global market. The purpose of this research paper is to validate various shallow and deep neural network methods for demand forecasting, with the aim of recommending sales and marketing strategies based on the trend/seasonal effects of eight different groups of pharmaceutical products with different characteristics. The root mean squared error (RMSE) is used as the predictive accuracy of DFMs. This study also found that the mean RMSE value of the shallow neural network-based DFMs was 6.27 for all drug categories, which was lower than deep neural network models. According to the findings, DFMs based on shallow neural networks can effectively estimate future demand for pharmaceutical products.

Utilizing qualitative techniques, this research is aimed at investigating total quality management (TQM) implementation practices within a humanitarian setting. The extensive survey instrument of professionals working for the United Nations (UN) organizations operating in the Middle East is used to reveal TQM use within international nongovernmental organizations (INGOs) that provide humanitarian relief. With the goal of helping organizations to address anticipated difficulties in implementing TQM practices that improve performance of humanitarian interventions, this study identifies and examines the boosters and blockers of successful implementation of the TQM practices. The most prominent themes that were identified relate to availability of funding, management commitment to quality, partnerships and communication channels, and knowledge sharing.

This study analyzes the impact of corporate social responsibility (CSR) fulfillment on corporate risk-taking to assist stakeholders in identifying the “double-edged sword” role of CSR activities and provide empirical evidence for enterprises to properly carry out CSR activities. The results show that the self-interest instrumentalization of CSR activities intensifies agency conflict, and CSR fulfillment weakens risk-taking to a certain extent. When CSR fulfillment reaches a certain value, CSR activities can improve risk-taking. Then, CSR fulfillment and risk-taking show a U-shaped relationship. Further analysis shows that the impacts of CSR on debt financing and R&D input reflect the U-shaped effect pathways of CSR fulfillment on risk-taking. Finally, it is suggested that CSR activities should be avoided to become the “self-interest tool” of the management. The regulators guide enterprises to break through the inflection point of the U-shaped effect and consider more for the stakeholders’ overall interests. Additionally, the regulators establish an effective compensation system to ensure that the enterprises with adequate CSR fulfillment obtain high-quality capital resources and promote the sustainable development of the capital market.