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This study aims to empirically investigate the effect of financial reporting quality (FRQ) and audit quality (AQ) on the investment efficiency (IE) for the firms listed on the Pakistan Stock Exchange during the period 2007-2014.

The authors use pooled ordinary least squares (OLS) regression which cluster at the firm and year level to test the hypotheses. For sensitivity check, the authors also account for reverse causality and cross-sectional dependence by using the GMM and FGLS regression methods. Furthermore, the authors built their theoretical arguments based on alignment hypothesis of the agency theory and resource-based view of the firm.

The findings suggest that higher FRQ and AQ are associated with higher IE. The results for these particular estimates are robust when tested using alternative estimation techniques. Overall, the outcomes of this study are in line with the arguments presented by the alignment hypothesis of the agency theory and resource-based view of the firm.

This study is fruitful for policymakers’ and investors. This study finds that the audit done by the Big 4 also reduces the information gap and, thus, reduces the moral hazard and adverse selection problems, thereby enhancing the IE.

The authors extend the debate on determinates of IE and highlight two monitoring mechanisms: FRQ and AQ. The authors further extend the literature on the economic consequences of AQ in terms of IE, as proposed by Francis (2011). For the first time, this study investigates the impact of AQ on IE in a setting where minority shareholder risk of exploitation is high relative to other markets in Asia.

The halal food market is a large and fast-growing market. To maintain and boost the growth of the halal food industry, scholars have attempted to understand the behaviour of Muslims and non-Muslims towards halal food. To advance understating of previous studies on behaviour towards halal food and shedding light on future studies, this study aims to systematically review the literature.

A sample of 985 peer-reviewed papers was extracted from Scopus and Web of Science databases. A total of 96 articles related to customers' behaviour towards halal food by reviewing the titles, abstracts and contents of the extracted articles were identified and reviewed.

This study illustrates: (i) various research designs and methodology used in halal food context, (ii) theories that researchers used to explain customer behaviour towards halal food, (iii) most tested behaviours and (iv) determinants of customer behaviour towards halal food.

The findings provide deep insights into the current state of halal food literature. This paper highlights many gaps in the literature and suggests directions for future studies to advance the understanding of customer behaviour towards halal food. This study will help researchers to identify the new dimensions of research and contribute to the literature.

There has been a dramatic rise in the use of online food delivery apps (FDAs) services since the COVID-19 pandemic. Though online FDAs have contributed significantly to the rise in demand for products from the gourmet industry, little is known regarding the factors that inspire customers to order from online FDAs, subsequently influencing customers’ satisfaction. Considering the knowledge gap, this study utilizes the stimulus-organism-response (S-O-R) model to conceptualize the factors: stimuli (eWOM, online reviews and online deals as external stimuli, and late-night craving and convenience as internal stimuli) that determine the organism level (i.e. customers’ inspiration) to subsequently generate the response (i.e. customers’ satisfaction).

We collected the data from 388 users and analyzed it via partial least squares – structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM).

The results reveal that online reviews, deals, late-night food cravings and convenience positively determine customers’ inspiration and satisfaction. In contrast, eWOM fails to impact customers’ inspiration directly and indirectly, affecting customers’ satisfaction through inspiration. Besides, customers’ inspiration positively mediates the relationship between stimuli (e.g. online reviews, online deals, late-night cravings and convenience) and customers’ satisfaction.

This study is novel in that it explores the impact of internal (late-night craving and convenience) and external (eWOM, online reviews and online deals) stimuli on customer inspiration and subsequently predicts customer satisfaction. We also expand prior studies on food delivery apps by studying customer inspiration as a mediating mechanism between internal and external stimuli and customer satisfaction.

Despite the fact that the success of e-government services is contingent on their continuous usage, the continuance intention to use e-government services has received extremely little scholarly attention. This study aims to investigate the determinants of the residents’ continuous intention to use e-government services.

The research model was developed based on the integration of technology continuance theory along with trust, transparency and habit constructs. The authors adopted a survey approach to collect the data. The data were collected using an online questionnaire from 260 residents of Penang in Malaysia.

Results revealed that transparency has a positive effect on both perceived usefulness and trust. Contrary to earlier studies on e-government, perceived ease of use was found to have no significant relationship with residents' perceived usefulness. Similarly, the results also demonstrated that habit was not significantly related to users’ continuous intention to use e-government services. This study also applied importance-performance analysis map analysis and discovered that perceived usefulness has the highest impact on continuous intention to use e-government services, whereas satisfaction was found to have the least effect.

This study used an integrative framework and presented an in-depth knowledge of the basic aspects that contribute to the post-adoption usage process and resident satisfaction, trust and attitude towards e-government services.

The purpose of this study is to unearth the factors that influence tourists’ revisit intention. The proposed model of the study is grounded on using the theory of planned behaviour (TPB) and extending it with additional variables, i.e. satisfaction, destination image, perceived risk, service quality and perceived value.

This study adopted a cross-sectional approach to collect data. The data were collected by conducting a field survey questionnaire on 330 respondents and were analysed using partial least squares version 3.2.9.

The results show that perceived behavioural control, perceived value, destination image and satisfaction significantly affect visitors’ revisit intention. The influence of perceived value, perceived service quality and destination image on satisfaction is also confirmed. On the other hand, satisfaction is found to be a significant mediator between perceived service quality, destination image and perceived value.

The extended TPB model that includes perceived service quality, perceived value, perceived risk and satisfaction provided a model with a theoretical basis to explain tourist revisit intentions to a tourist destination.

El objetivo principal del estudio es descubrir los factores que influyen en la intención de revisita de los turistas. El modelo propuesto para el estudio se basa en el uso de la teoría del comportamiento planificado y se amplía con variables como la satisfacción, la imagen del destino, el riesgo percibido, la calidad del servicio y el valor percibido.

Este estudio adoptó un enfoque transversal para la recogida de datos. Los datos se recopilaron mediante un cuestionario de campo en el que participaron 330 encuestados. Los datos se analizaron utilizando la versión 3.2.9 de PLS.

Los resultados muestran que el control conductual percibido, el valor percibido, la imagen del destino y la satisfacción afectan significativamente a la intención de revisita. También se confirma la influencia del valor percibido, la calidad de servicio percibida y la imagen del destino sobre la satisfacción. Por otra parte, la satisfacción resulta ser un mediador significativo entre la calidad de servicio percibida, la imagen del destino y el valor percibido.

El modelo TPB ampliado que incluye la calidad de servicio percibida, el valor percibido, el riesgo percibido y la satisfacción proporcionó un modelo con una base teórica para explicar las intenciones de revisita de los turistas a un destino turístico.

本研究的目的是揭示影响游客重访意向的因素。本研究提出的模型以计划行为理论（TPB）为基础, 并以额外的变量（即满意度、目的地形象、感知风险、服务质量和感知价值）进行扩展。

本研究采用了横断面的方法来收集数据。通过对330名受访者进行实地调查问卷来收集数据, 并使用偏最小二乘法3.2.9版进行分析。

结果显示, 感知行为控制、感知价值、目的地形象和满意度对游客的再访意向有显著影响。感知价值、感知服务质量和目的地形象对满意度的影响也被证实。另一方面, 满意度被发现是感知服务质量、目的地形象和感知价值之间的一个重要中介因素。

包括感知服务质量、感知价值、感知风险和满意度在内的扩展TPB模型为解释游客对旅游目的地的再访意向提供了理论基础。

关键词: 满意度; 旅游; 计划行为理论; PLS-SEM; 目的地形象

Malaysian small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) are facing human capital development issues due to unskilled employees. The institutes of Malaysian education are providing ineffective science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) education which are generating unskilled graduates as a future workforce. The low capability of Malaysian graduates affect the performance of Malaysian SMEs. Therefore, the main purpose of this study is to examine the effect of STEM education in solving the human capital development issues for the enhancement of Malaysian SMEs performance. The current literature explores the ineffective system of STEM education for Malaysian graduates which result in human capital development issues in Malaysian SMEs. The curriculum of Malaysian education institutions plays a pivotal role in making the university graduates skillful since a teacher should teach the syllabus according to the need of the national curriculum and the student must learn practical knowledge for the sake of the professional employee in future. Hence, this study identified the significance of properly provided STEM education to deal with the human capital development issues faced by Malaysian SMEs. Effective STEM education is important in generating the human capital as it makes the university graduates skilled and capable which enable them to successfully meet the industry needs in future. Likewise, through the development of human capital, the performance of Malaysian SMEs could be improved.

Watermarking technique is one of the significant methods in which carrier signal hides digital information in the form of watermark to prevent the authenticity of the stakeholders by manipulating different coefficients as watermark in time and frequency domain to sustain trade-off in performance parameters. One challenging component among others is to maintain the robustness, to limit perceptibility with embedding information. Transform domain is more popular to achieve the required results in color image watermarking. Variants of complex Hadamard transform (CHT) have been applied for gray image watermarking, and it has been proved that it has better performance than other orthogonal transforms. This paper is aimed at analyzing the performance of spatio-chromatic complex Hadamard transform (Sp-CHT) that is proposed as an application of color image watermarking in sequency domain (SD).

In this paper, color image watermarking technique is designed and implemented in SD using spatio-chromatic – conjugate symmetric sequency – ordered CHT. The color of a pixel is represented as complex number a*+jb*, where a* and b* are chromatic components of International Commission on Illumination (CIE) La*b* color space. The embedded watermark is almost transparent to human eye although robust against common signal processing attacks.

Based on the results, bit error rate (BER) and peak signal to noise ratio are measured and discussed in comparison of CIE La*b* and hue, saturation and value color model with spatio-chromatic discrete Fourier transform (Sp-DFT), and results are also analyzed with other discrete orthogonal transforms. It is observed from BER that Sp-CHT has 8%–12% better performance than Sp-DFT. Structural similarity index has been measured at different watermark strength and it is observed that presented transform performs better than other transforms.

This work presents the details and comparative analysis of two orthogonal transforms as color image watermarking application using MATLAB software. A finding from this study demonstrates that the Complex Hadamard transform is the competent candidate that can be replaced with DFT in many signal processing applications.

This book is important for demonstrating a significant lacuna in our current view of the history of economic thought. It reflects many years of research, and of struggle with established views, on the part of the editor and principal author, S. M. Ghazanfar, who is to be congratulated for having thus carried his program to fruition. He has been ably aided by A. A. Islahi and Hamid Hosseini in this venture. I am reminded of the introduction to Maria Rosa Menocal's (1987) book on The Arabic role in medieval literary history where she poses the question of “courtly love” and thus, indirectly, of chivalry, for Medieval Europe. What is the origin of the troubadour, the bearer of songs of courtly love? A simple solution presents itself in the Arab word “tarab,” or song, from which troubadour seems to follow naturally. Nonetheless, the suggestion was dismissed out of hand because troubadour “could not” have arisen from a society which oppresses women! We should be more concerned with the facts than with our preconceptions about societies.

Our purpose in this paper is three‐fold. First, we shall briefly describe what is almost a truism— that is, the classical (especially the Greek) intellectual heritage of the Arab‐Islamic scholars upon which the latter, imbued by their young faith, developed their own comprehensive synthesis. Second, as part of that synthesis, we shall explore briefly the economic thought of a few early‐medieval Arab‐Islamic scholastics who extended that heritage and wrote on numerous issues of human concern, including economics. Those discourses took place during what is sometimes called the “golden age” of Islam — a period that coincided roughly with the so‐called Dark Age of Europe. Parenthetically, it might be noted that one of 20th century's most prominent economists, the late Joseph Schumpeter (1883–1950) had, unfortunately for the continuity and evolution of human intellectual tradition, declared that period as “the Great Gap,” representing “blank centuries,” during which nothing of significance to economics, or for that matter to any field, was said or written anywhere — as though there was a complete lacuna over intellectual evolution throughout the rest of the world (Schumpeter, 52, 74; see Ghazanfar, 1991). And finally, we will provide some evidence as to the historically influential linkages of the Arab‐Islamic thought, including economic thought, with the Latin‐European scholastics‐a phenomenon that facilitated the European intellectual evolution. An underlying theme of this paper is predicated on the premise that the classical tradition (i.e., Greek knowledge, though not exclusively) is part of a long historical continuum that represents the inextricably linked Judeo‐Christian‐and‐Islamic tradition of the West. This theme, though not common appreciated, is amply corroborated through the writings of well‐known scholars from the East and the West (see, for example, Durant, Haskins, Myers, O'Leary, Said, Sarton, Sharif, and others).