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The survival of hotel business in maintaining market competitiveness depends on the constant improvement of the quality of hotel facilities and services. The key to sustain hotel business is lean on the adaptability of the hotel management team towards current lifestyle trends and its surrounding context in fulfilling customer satisfaction. Because of hotel operating service complexity, the hotel contributes a higher impact on environmental degradation in performing their daily activities. Therefore, hoteliers need to determine sustainable strategies to minimize environmental impact and at the same time be able to provide satisfaction to their customers. However, green initiatives require a proactive action by the organizational management engaging both employees and guests in the environmental management process. Thus, this paper aims to review the concept of green practices, the implementation of green practices from the stakeholders’ perspectives (manager, employee and customers) in the hotel industry, the performance impact from the green practices on the sustainability pillars and to further develop a conceptual green practice to sustainable hotel operations and performance impact.

This paper identified relevant empirical research that published in the recent 10 years from January 2012 to December 2021. The articles are searched through reputable databases such as Emerald, Elsevier and Taylor and Francis. The obtained data were screened preliminarily from 108 research papers. The post-screening process has finalized a total of 57 articles as the findings for this paper, where the themes were delineated to the attributes that need to implemented by the stakeholder in hotels industry, that is, manager’s perspectives, employee’s perspectives and customer’s perspectives.

The findings of this paper revealed that there are 27 attributes of green practices and initiatives for sustainable hotel operations from the manager perspectives (10 attributes – Green Marketing Strategy, Green Managerial Attitude, Eco-Innovation Investment, Marketing and Sustainability, Environmental Management Strategy, Green Supply Chain, Green Managerial Awareness, Green Procurement, Green Human Resources and Green Technology), employee perspectives (5 attributes – Employee Green Awareness, Employee Green Training and Educating, Employee Environmental Behaviour, Employee Green Performance and Employee Green Reward) and customer’s perspectives (12 attributes – Customer Perception, Customer Loyalty, Customer Awareness, Customer Behaviour, Customer Trust, Green Supply Chain, Green Value, Green Marketing Strategy, Customer Perceived Value, Service Quality, Brand Image and Hotel Design). All of the attributes are aligned to the performance effectiveness as the major concern in the hotel’s operations and impacted towards the sustainability pillars, environmental performance, economic performance and social performance. Sustainable practice in organization benefits the owners towards sustainable economic, environmental, socio-cultural and legal policy.

This review paper provides key elements of current green practices and sustainable initiatives for the hotel’s operations, as proactive measures. The novelty of the findings is to be able to convey valuable inputs to the relevant stakeholders (hotel’s owner, consultants, designers, maintenance officers, hoteliers, staffs, customers and end-users) in perceiving the elements of green practices into the preliminary planning of the hotel’s design. The review also helps to identify practices and measures to the performance impact to the hotel’s operations.

The purpose of this paper is to tackle one of the issues in tax evasion, that is from the perspective of fraudulent financial reporting amongst small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in Malaysia. This study is intended to examine the relationships between certain company attributes, namely, company ownership structure, the size of company and the frequency of tax audits and how they relate to tax evasion practices amongst SMEs in Malaysia.

This paper examined 397 companies which have been audited by the Inland Revenue Board of Malaysia (IRBM) during the years 2016 and 2017. A research model was developed and the authors use ordinary least square regression analysis to examine the effect of three prominent independent variables, which are company ownership structure, the size of company and the frequency of tax audits on SMEs’ tax evasion practices in Malaysia.

The authors find that family ownership firms and company size have statistically significant positive relationship with tax evasion practices detected during tax audits. The results also show that the frequency of tax audits conducted positively affect the increase of tax evasion activities amongst SMEs in Malaysia.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this study could be the first in Malaysia that uses the actual audited data examining the fraudulent financial reporting cases amongst SMEs, and this could provide important insights to the IRBM to enable this tax authority to improve its policy-making decisions in relation to selecting the right companies for audits in the future and subsequently may assist its collection department in generating additional income for the nation.

This study looks at how local grassroots organizations as well as international Women Non-Governmental Organizations (WNGOs) and multilateral organizations such as the United Nations utilize social media to empower women in Jamaica and Brazil. The researchers also evaluate how issues of socio-economic background as well as social media infrastructure influence the selection of entities with which the respective WNGOS connect.

This study uses NodeXL, a social media research tool, to analyze the information found on WNGO social media pages such as Facebook and Twitter. The authors also use content analysis to make sense of the data on WNGO Facebook pages. The study specifically uses summative content analysis, a method that translates the frequency of occurrence of certain symbols into summary judgments and comparisons.

Social media usage by WNGOs in Jamaica and Brazil show striking similarities regarding who gets reached or are connected to the networks. The study reveals that women of lower socio-economic backgrounds in both cases are not being reached via social media. Further, the outcomes of the observed current social media communication patterns on WNGO social media sites suggest the occurrence of what the authors refer to as the “noticeboard” effect, wherein communication patterns are top-down, exclusive, and non-reciprocal in nature.

While social media offer less centralized ways of engaging in communication with local communities, inherent in social media infrastructure are issues of race, gender, and social class that affect how these communication platforms are used, potentially another dimension of the “Mathew Effect” in the context of social media usage for purposes of achieving national development objectives.

With the rise in internet penetration in both countries, WNGOs are increasingly incorporating social media into their communication strategies to accomplish development goals. This study is the first to compare both countries in this respect and so adds new insights to this area of the communication field.

The issue of tax evasion through fraudulent financial reporting committed by companies is a major concern facing the tax authority in Malaysia. As such, the purpose of this study is to propose a cohesive model of predicting tax evasion from the perspective of fraudulent financial reporting amongst small- and medium-sized enterprise (SME) taxpayers.

The proposed model for this study is designed to explore the extent of the relationships between the independent variables: family ownership firms, company size, presence of tax professionals, company’s duration in business and frequency of tax audits and the moderating variable, i.e. tax audit officers’ level of competence; and the dependent variable, i.e. tax evasion from the perspective of fraudulent financial reporting. This study is grounded on four theories: agency theory, political cost theory, economic deterrence theory and competency theory. Data will be gathered from actual audit cases resolved by the Inland Revenue Board of Malaysia. Ordinary least square regression analysis is proposed for the investigation.

This study anticipates that family ownership firms, company size, presence of tax professionals, company’s duration in business and frequency of tax audits could be associated with tax evasion amongst SMEs in Malaysia. This study further proposes that highly competent tax audit officers could mitigate the relationship between frequency of tax audits and tax evasion practices amongst SMEs in Malaysia.

This study should be able to provide a cohesive model of predicting tax evasion from the perspective of fraudulent financial reporting amongst SMEs in Malaysia. Research on fraudulent financial reporting amongst SMEs is very limited, especially involving the level of competence of the tax audit officers; therefore, this study should contribute to the tax evasion literature by providing a comprehensive model of predicting tax evasion through fraudulent financial reporting using a Malaysian tax setting.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the efficiency of selected conventional and Islamic unit trust companies in Malaysia during the period 2002 to 2005.

The paper adopts Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) to investigate efficiency, as measured by the Malmquist index, which is decomposed into two components: efficiency change and technical change indexes.

The study indicates that technical efficiency is the main contributor to enhancing the efficiency of the Malaysian unit trust industry. In addition, the larger the size of the unit trust companies, the more inefficient the performance. In comparing the efficiency of unit trust companies, the study finds that some of the Islamic unit trust companies perform better than their conventional counterparts.

The study is limited to five Islamic unit trust companies. Thus, the findings of this study are indicative, but inconclusive for the unit trust industry as a whole.

The results have two important implications for both conventional and Islamic unit trust companies in Malaysia. First, the deterioration of total factor productivity (TFP) in the unit trust industry in Malaysia is due to the deficiency of innovation in technical components. Second, the size of the unit trust companies has an adverse effect on the TFP performance.

The contribution of this study is that it analyzes the efficiency of the two types of unit trust industry which are important and relevant for Malaysia. This significance arises from the dual financial system, in which the Islamic unit trust companies operate in parallel with their conventional counterparts. The comparison sheds some light on the performance of the Islamic unit trust companies, whose operations are based on profit‐sharing, in contrast to the conventional unit trust companies.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the influence of intellectual capital (IC) on the performance of Malaysian automotive manufacturing firms. It also examines the role of strategic thinking (ST) as a moderating variable in the relationship between IC and performance in these firms.

This study used a quantitative approach, with an initial sample of 228 firms in Malaysia. Partial least squares structural equation modelling (PLS-SEM) was employed to test the study hypotheses.

The results of the PLS-SEM analysis are as follows: Human capital (HC) and relational capital (RC) have significant effect on performance, but not structural capital (SC). ST has no moderating effect on the relationship between RC or SC and performance although it does moderate the relationship between performance and HC.

Together with the government, CEOs hold responsibility for ensuring that organizations practice effective ST and IC. With the assistance of government, CEOs should exert every effort to be leaders in this matter. In addition, CEOs of automotive manufacturing firm should reduce their emphasis on classical ways of managing organizations processes.

The findings offer guidance to automotive firms considering how to develop IC and ST to improve performance, especially in Malaysia and Southeast Asia.

This is the first study to examine the moderating effect of ST on the relationship between IC and performance worldwide.

This study, using systematic literature review (SLR) aims to highlight and summarise current studies on the factors influencing customers’ Islamic home financing (IHF) selection and Islamic banking product preference, which has gained popularity within the banking sector over the past three decades. The SLR could map evolution and research fields, recommend a particular categorisation and determine primary issues to demonstrate current trends, future research directions and theoretical development.

The SLR was performed with a four-step reporting standard for the systematic evidence syntheses review method (research question formulation, systematic searching, quality assessment and data extraction) using 33 screened articles between 2008 and 2020 from two primary databases (Scopus and Web of Science) and one supporting database (Google Scholar).

The resulting factors could be categorised into four primary themes: consumer behaviour, consumer attributes, bank attributes and bank attributes (Islamic). The themes were subsequently divided into 16 sub-themes. Notably, all the factors proved essential for consumers’ evolving preferences and product competitiveness in the market.

This study encountered two limitations based on database selection and research period.

This SLR aimed to offer useful insights into the factors that should be prioritised by financial institutions for marketing approaches by investigating consumer behaviours.

This study pioneered an SLR on the study area for useful insights into the current research limitations and recommendations on future study directions. Specifically, the study method facilitated critical discussions and comparisons to past research outcomes and objectivity with triangulation from distinct perspectives.

This paper aims to fill the noticeably fragmented zakat literature repertoire by empirically exploring stakeholders’ views toward zakat management performance issues based on a selected zakat institution (ZI) operating on a corporatized platform with corporate administrative style.

A quantitative approach using a questionnaire survey distributed to Muslims in the State which ZI is operating was adopted. A total of 448 usable responses are used in the analysis covering descriptive and mean difference.

The results indicate that managerial reform configuration in terms of corporatization has been viewed positively by stakeholders, translated into a comforting agreement score toward ZI’s improved management performance (collection, disbursement and reporting). Such perceptions are, however, observably sensitive to demographic factors of gender and employment type. The survey also document evidence that the corporatization exercise itself had improved respondents’ confidence toward ZI being the zakat administrator in the State.

The research contributes to the public policy debate with respect to corporatized ZI’s management performance from the stakeholders’ perspective. The results are arguably informative at various levels, forming a basis for reality check and policy inputs for various stakeholders, including (but not limited to) the ZI itself, zakat payers and asnafs, particularly in designing relevant and necessary administrative strategies and relevant policy formulation in addressing the performance and accountability issues in ZIs.

The purpose of this paper is to find applicable Islamic pricing benchmarks (IPBs) instead of the market interest rates which are currently used in Islamic finance as benchmark.

The suggested model (Islamic pricing benchmark model (IPBM)) obviously reveals the feasibility and practical effectiveness of a substitute to London Interbank Offered Rate (LIBOR) and as an evaluator tool to suggested investment projects. The model is a suggested mechanism which could be used as an alternative choice to the conventional borrowing based on the forbidden Riba or on interest. The suggested IPBM depends on estimating the rate of return for any project on consideration of the cash flows in future which is expected to be relative to the invested capital.

The IPBM approach might be applied to financial tools, where the fund owner bears the loss since it is not because of negligence. An instrument to help identify the investment for target rates of return (as an alternative choice to LIBOR) to identify a breakeven point based on expected cash flows for the project to be financed instead of based on seeking the indicators of interest or Riba (as LIBOR). This feature of the IPBM model as an Islamic benchmark renders it as a Shariah pricing mechanism for the Islamic financial products.

The IPBM could be used as a financial instrument to assist in identifying the investment for the target return rates to determine a breakeven point based on expected cash flows for the project to be funded instead of being based on seeking the interest indicators or Riba (as LIBOR). This feature as an Islamic benchmark is considered as a Shariah pricing mechanism for the Islamic financial products. In particular, the proposed model incorporates the Shariah parameters. In that, it is hoped that the Islamic financial instruments will be more comprehensive in their Shariah compliance and thereby may bring more credibility to the Islamic financial system in general.

This paper highlights several important issues related to the IPBMs in Islamic financial institutions which are not widely discussed among researchers. This study contributes to finding an alternative IPB for the Islamic financial products which is currently using the conventional interest rate (LIBOR) as its benchmark. The current study provides empirical evidence for the possibility of relying on the IPBM as an Islamic benchmark to price Islamic financial transactions.

The Asian crisis, which exploded in Thailand in July 1997 initially, spilled to the other ASEAN countries (Indonesia, Malaysia, and Philippines) and later it spreads to Korea and even crossing the continent to Russia and Brazil. The chronological pattern seems to indicate the contagious behaviour of the crisis. However, the sequential economic down‐turns that occurred in the Asia Pacific do look like a contagion effect. The idea that currency speculators contributed to the depth of the crisis is agreeable but to conclude that they are the roots of the problem would be misleading. This paper argued that the roots of the problems lie in current account deficit and loss of competitiveness, and moral hazard and over‐investment This paper also argued that the currency crisis is a symptom and not the cause of the Asian crisis.