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This paper aims to examine the effects of oil price uncertainty on corporate investment of Islamic stocks during the COVID-19 pandemic.

The study uses a panel data set that covers 398 listed Islamic stocks from seven major Asia Pacific countries over the period of five years from 2017 to 2021, yielding 1,990 observations. Specifically, this paper investigates the said association by combining the real options theory regarding investment and the panel data-based econometric method that captures the dynamic relationship, the generalized method of moments estimators.

The findings show that the relationship between the oil price volatility and corporate investment of Islamic stocks is significant and nonlinear in nature, suggesting the presence of both the growth options and the waiting options. Overall, the results reveal that corporate investment of Islamic stocks is hindered during the unprecedented corona crash, when oil price increases at exponential rates.

The findings suggest that considering the information caused by unprecedented events like the COVID-19 pandemic is crucial for investment decisions of Islamic stocks. Therefore, policymakers and regulators should incorporate the impact of oil price uncertainties caused by unprecedented events like the COVID-19 pandemic on firm’s investment expansion and diversification strategies.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this paper is the first to examine the relationship between the investment of Islamic stocks and the oil price uncertainty under compound options theory in top Asian oil-importing countries.

The rapid rise of Islamic crypto assets, underpinned by blockchain technology, has introduced a novel dimension to the Islamic financial landscape, raising questions about their potential as safe havens within emerging Islamic economies. However, the opportunities and challenges associated with this phenomenon remain insufficiently explored. In this context, this study aims to empirically investigate the extent to which blockchain technology can establish Islamic crypto assets as safe havens in equity markets within Islamic economies.

This study addresses the need for rigorous empirical analysis to understand the dynamics between Islamic crypto assets and stock markets in emerging Islamic economies, focusing on the transmission of volatility. While the evolving nature of the Islamic financial sector demands reliable data, the reliance on the most available data offers insights into the expected future trends in this emerging field. The research specifically focuses on three essential assets in the Islamic financial portfolio: OneGram Coin and X8XToken, both backed by gold and MRHB DeFi, an Islamic DeFi asset lacking gold backing. These crypto assets are compared with corresponding assets in seven stock markets of emerging Islamic economies. Using daily log returns of the Islamic crypto assets from various sources and seven Islamic stock indices. The data covers the period from December 27, 2021, to December 28, 2022, capturing the fluctuations in Islamic stocks and cryptocurrency markets during the post-COVID-19 era. This research uses advanced econometric techniques, including pairwise dynamic correlation and the DCC GARCH model.

The findings indicate that Islamic crypto assets exhibit distinct characteristics, with lower volatility and low correlations compared to their conventional counterparts in non-Islamic contexts. This outcome suggests that these Islamic crypto assets could potentially serve as safe havens within Islamic stock markets, offering valuable insights for various stakeholders, including investors, governments and policymakers.

The findings are based on a specific set of Islamic crypto assets and may vary with a different selection. Market dynamics can also influence the relationships observed. Nevertheless, the outcomes provide valuable insights for investors, policymakers and researchers interested in the intersection of Islamic finance, cryptocurrency and technology.

In essence, this research not only unveils the potential of Islamic crypto assets as stabilizing forces but also delineates a trajectory for subsequent research endeavours within the realm of emerging Islamic Fintech, elucidating the challenges, opportunities and benefits that lie therein. With a discerning eye on circumventing the pitfalls entrenched within conventional crypto finance, this study contributes to a heightened comprehension of the transformative role that Islamic crypto assets can assume, ultimately enriching the financial resilience of Islamic economies.

This study examines the intersection of emerging Islamic economies and the digital economy in the context of the United Nations sustainable development goals (UN SDGs). This study aims to investigate the opportunities, challenges and barriers faced by emerging Islamic economies in the context of the digital economy. It specifically focuses on how these economies can contribute to the achievement of UN SDGs established in 2015. In addition, the study explores the prospects of Islamic digital finance and its potential to facilitate the adoption of the UN SDGs.

The following components outline the design, methods and approach of this study, identify and select specific UN SDGs that are relevant to the research aims. These selected goals serve as the basis for evaluating the impact of conventional and Islamic digital financial inclusion, gathered data from credible sources such as Bloomberg and Refinitiv Thomson Reuters to support the analysis. These sources provide comprehensive data on global indicators, progress and targets related to the UN SDGs, compare and evaluate the impact of both conventional and Islamic digital financial inclusion strategies on the selected UN SDGs; the study uses qualitative interpretation of the gathered data, which involves identifying patterns, themes and connections within the data to draw meaningful conclusions.

Results revealed that Islamic digital finance has the potential to contribute significantly to achieving the UN SDGs by promoting financial inclusion, encouraging ethical investments, supporting small and medium enterprises, promoting sustainable investments and leveraging technology to expand access to Islamic financial services and support sustainable investments.

While there are many potential benefits of Islamic digital finance in helping to achieve the UN SDGs, there are also several limitations that should be considered in research, such as limited access to digital infrastructure, regulatory challenges, product offerings, scale, awareness and adoption. Addressing these limitations will be critical to maximizing the potential of Islamic digital finance to contribute to achieving the UN SDGs.

This study points to an important gap in the literature; for practitioners, this study has significant managerial consequences for achieving the UN SDGs in emerging economies by facilitating social impact investments and promoting ethical and sustainable investments.

This study’s uniqueness lies in its exploration of the limited exploration of connecting the implementation of digital financial systems to promote UN SDGs within emerging Islamic economies.

The purpose of this paper is to examine factors that influence women entrepreneurship development in Bangladesh.

The paper adopts quantitative and qualitative analyses of possible factors that may affect the development of women entrepreneurships such as: age, education, socio‐culture, motivation, market information, business idea, enterprise creation, advocacy and decision making, enabling environment, and financing. A questionnaire was used to provide empirical evidence on the variables and to estimate the model employed by the study.

The analyses revealed that women face problems in establishing their own businesses in every step that they take. The desire for financial independence and decision making, market and informational network, availability of a start‐up capital, knowledge and skills, and responsibility towards children are the main factors that impact women's decision to become self‐entrepreneurs. The regression analysis, however, revealed that participation in women associations, advocacy, and decision making (self‐fulfillment) and knowledge are the main factors that affect women's decision to develop their business. Yet, the results indicated that religion does not influence women's entrepreneurship development.

The questionnaire survey employed in this paper is confined only to a women population who passed grade five and above as semi‐educated or educated women respondents group. The paper excludes homeless women or those who live in the slum urban areas.

The outcome of this paper can be used by researchers, government, non‐governmental organizations, civil society, and local community to formulate effective policy that motivate women to become entrepreneurs. This will have a positive effect on women participation on the economic development of Bangladesh.

This paper will be the first to provide empirical evidence on factors that affect women's entrepreneurship development in the urban Bangladesh.

The aim of this study is to design a guidance method to generate a smoother and feasible gliding reentry trajectory, a highly constrained problem by formalizing the control variables profile.

A novel accelerated fractional-order particle swarm optimization (FAPSO) method is proposed for velocity updates to design the guidance method for gliding reentry flight vehicles with fixed final energy.

By using the common aero vehicle as a test case for the simulation purpose, it is found that during the initial phase of the longitudinal guidance, there are oscillations in the state parameters which cause to violate the path constraints. For the glide phase of the longitudinal guidance, the path constraints have higher values because of the increase in the atmosphere density.

The violation in the path constraints may compromise the flight vehicle safety, whereas the enforcement assures the flight safety by flying it within the reentry corridor.

An oscillation suppression scheme is proposed by using the FAPSO method during the initial phase of the reentry flight, which smooths the trajectory and enforces the path constraints partially. To enforce the path constraints strictly in the glide phase, ultimately, another scheme by using the FAPSO method is proposed. The simulation results show that the proposed algorithm is efficient to achieve better convergence and accuracy for nominal as well as dispersed conditions.

This paper explores the interaction and impact of political disruptions on textile supply chain performance in Pakistan. A qualitative approach is adopted to explore the linkages and relationships between political disruptions and supply chain disruptions and performance. Semi-structured interviews were conducted at 25 different textile manufacturing firms. This study confirmed the prevalence of severe and variegated impacts of political disruptions on the textile supply chain. Supply chain disruption is found to be a key mediating factor that directly and indirectly affect supply chain performance through an increased production and delivery lead-time, transportation delays, interruptions of raw material supplies to plants and distributors and the restricted access to workplaces for suppliers and workers. The linkages are represented through vicious circles that illustrate the interactions and inter-relationships between disrupted supply chain and performance. This study provides empirical evidence to help government to formulate pertinent labour laws and industrial policy to mitigate political disruptions and minimise deleterious effects of supply chain disruption on production and distribution networks whilst respecting and protecting the democratic rights of people.

In times of crisis and volatility, especially in the Covid-19 scenario, project organisations are facing multifaceted threats. Project organisations are inclining towards flatter organisational structures. Employees are demanding more decision-making authority due to the changing working scenario. Despite the advancement in project management, a hard skill side, project organisations are still struggling to achieve successful projects. The project manager's leadership, employee self-leadership and soft skills are presented as the solution to these aggravated problems. This article attempts to determine whether a transformational leadership style can influence project success, directly and indirectly through employee self-leadership.

The author raises the hypothesis, supported by social cognitive theory, that transformational leadership impacts project success directly and indirectly through self-leadership. Data were collected from 289 project team members in the IT sector, and the proposed relationships were assessed through Partial least squares structural equation modelling PLS-SEM.

Results show that a project manager's transformational leadership behaviour and employee self-leadership positively impact project success. Additionally, self-leadership mediates the relationship between transformational leadership and project success. Lastly, empowerment demonstrated significant moderation for self-leadership and project success, and for transformational leadership and project success.

In this study, one obvious methodological limitation is a cross-sectional design. Future research can be performed while adopting a longitudinal research design. Another conceptual limitation of the model is that the authors did not include all transformational leadership dimensions, which can be considered for future studies while replicating this research model. Another future front can be by examining other leadership styles. Another research limitation may be the single source data collection, a future study may be conducted by several sources for data collection to adequately test both of the leadership styles at different hierarchies and for project success.

The paper contributes to the literature by finding that, in crises, a project manager's transformational leadership style enhances project success. In practice, project managers are needed to adopt transformational behaviour and encourage employee self-leadership and empowerment.

This paper empirically examines the perceived relationship between banking sector performance and FDI inflows, thereby highlighting an underexplored area in the existing literature.

To provide evidence from the South Asian context, this study selected five economies of the same region based on the data availability. A panel dataset, collected from the internationally reliable sources for the period 1998–2017, is analyzed with the help of different econometric techniques, including pooled least squares, fixed effects, generalized least square and two stages least squares.

The results indicate a significant negative relationship between banking sector performance and FDI inflows while demonstrating a significant positive association of inflation and trade openness with FDI inflows Moreover, higher per capita income, which is one of the indicators of a growing economy, exerts a statistically significant positive impact on FDI inflows. Finally, institutional factors have not played a significant role in attracting FDI in the sampled countries.

The results demonstrate a unique outcome from the perspective of the relationship between banking sector performance and FDI inflows, and hence policymakers of the developing countries in general and South Asian countries in particular would benefit from the current study significantly.

The obtained results are original as we have provided comprehensive evidence on the relationship between FDI and banking sector performance in the SAARC context for the first time.

In the digital age, public libraries are facing numerous challenges, and the Balochistan public libraries are no exception. This study aimed to identify current digital trends adopted by the public libraries in Balochistan and to find out about challenges and potential solutions regarding digital trends from library users.

A quantitative study was carried out and data were collected through the survey method, employing a structured questionnaire. The target population consisted of 17,953 users of 17 public libraries in Balochistan. A sample of 510 users both male and female was selected by using random sampling technique from the target population.

The analysis revealed that patrons of public libraries are dissatisfied with the services offered, as they now require access to new digital trends such as fast Internet, download facilities, unlimited content on numerous resources, Wi-Fi, online reference services, universal accessibility and user-friendly interfaces. Unfortunately, public libraries in Balochistan are still lagging in terms of development. The study recommended that public libraries in Balochistan should develop and implement digital services, increase access to digital resources, hire professional librarians, professional development and collaborate with other libraries.

The study’s findings can assist in improving public library services and granting patrons access to current information and resources in Balochisthan and other developing countries. This study’s originality stems from its use of a quantitative survey approach to gather data from 17 public libraries in Balochisthan and provide a comprehensive view of the digital challenges they face. The study’s focus on digital tendencies is relevant in today’s world, where technology is rapidly changing the way, we access and consume information.