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This study aims to analyze the level of customer awareness of Islamic Banks’ activities toward corporate social responsibility (CSR) in the Kingdoms of Bahrain and Saudi Arabia and test whether both groups have similarities or not. The outcome of this study determines the extent to which customer awareness regarding Islamic banking activities furthering the betterment of society and achieving socioeconomic goals beyond their financial objectives.

Quantitative methods are used in this study covering Islamic Banks in both the Kingdoms of Bahrain and Saudi Arabia; using a survey questionnaire distributed to a total of 150 customers in the Kingdom of Bahrain and 100 customers in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. The weighted means are calculated, and statistical tests are used, such as, Kruskal–Wallis H and independent sample tests, in analyzing the data.

The results of the survey reveal that the level of customer awareness is generally low in terms of the pursuit of corporate social responsibilities by the Islamic Banks. The significant statistical difference in the data gathered from the sample is highlighted when they are grouped according to their respective banks. It proves that the level of customer awareness varies considerably among the Islamic banks in the survey. It was also found that there is no significant difference between the two groups of Islamic banks’ customers in the two countries in terms of their awareness toward the CSR practices of the Islamic banks.

The findings of this study could be used to aid policymakers in the field of CSR of Islamic banks to formulate a more efficient set of CSR activities that are better aligned with the ultimate goal of achieving society’s betterment. This study may also facilitate Islamic banks in the region to set up strategies that highlight their CSR efforts and raise the awareness levels of their customers.

This study aims to evaluate the awareness level of Islamic finance principles among employees of financial institutions in Moscow, Russia.

A quantitative method is used with a Likert scale questionnaire. A survey was conducted to 310 financial institutions’ employees to determine the level of their awareness of major Islamic finance principles. The sample population is selected using the judgment sampling technique. A descriptive analysis with frequency, percentage and weighted mean are used to analyze the data.

The study finds that the level of awareness of financial institutions’ employees towards Islamic finance is low. This is probably due to the minority of the Muslim population and geographically far from to the countries where Islamic finance is being implemented. All respondents have a good education background, thus implementing some training sessions for its employees or hiring some outside specialists could transfer the knowledge and widespread the adoption of Islamic finance instruments.

The academic institutions such as universities in Russia could play a pivotal role to offer Islamic finance-related subjects, while the government as a regulatory body, should support the Islamic finance initiatives.

The purpose of this paper is to identify the contemporary implementation of social media within the public sector in the Kingdom of Bahrain by reviewing each of the ministry’s presence in the social media especially on specific social media websites (Twitter, Facebook and YouTube). This study also attempts to identify the types of information that the public is interested to receive from various government social media accounts.

A descriptive analysis with frequency distribution and weighted mean was used to analyze the demographic profile of the respondents, internet preferences and government information sources. The study has employed two types of survey methods in collecting data, namely, checklist and questionnaire surveys. A snowball sampling technique was employed for the sampling selection. Among the selected respondents of 500, 384 (76.8 percent) respondents completely responded to the questionnaires.

The study has confirmed the fact that most of the Bahrain Government’s ministries have social media platforms with a minimum of at least one official account to reach out to the various segments of the society. It also reveals that the respondents are active internet users who are looking for information in different platforms, i.e. search engines, social media, and have interests in different media forms like blogs, forums, official websites as well as multimedia images and videos. Meanwhile, the respondents are found to be interested in various types of information from the government that ranges from serious topics like emergency alerts, citizens’ rights and healthcare, to lighter topics like ways to protect the environment, science and technology and job seeking advice.

This clearly declares the inevitability of an increase in the dissemination of information by the Government of Bahrain through social media. The recommendations in this research could be highly beneficial for the Government of Bahrain if implemented as it could improve the cyber relationship between the government and the public.

This paper aims to analyze the Halal industry before, during and after the COVID-19 outbreak.

Qualitative content analysis derived from a narrative-type literature review – supported by expert opinions elicited from semi-structured interviews and transcripts from the keynotes of five prominent speakers at a Halal industry conference during the pandemic. The conference theme covered the Halal industry’s development and strategies before, during and after the COVID-19 outbreak.

There are opinions, concerns and actionable suggestions from the five prominent guests on how the Halal industry is faced with challenges but also new opportunities, with the potential to lead an agenda toward community and transparency.

The halal industry could survive the ravaging COVID-19 and still has the potential to be explored. Expectedly, it makes this occasion an assessment or benchmark to improve the Halal industry and lifestyle in the future and contributes to the betterment of the ummah and Muslim countries.

The purpose of this paper is to analyze the excecution of various leadership styles, namely, transactional, transformational and laissez-faire that are being practiced among the government organizations in the Kingdom of Bahrain. The study compares and differentiates these three leadership styles with that of the major Islamic leadership concepts.

The study used a descriptive analytical method. A number of 100 government employees participated in the survey which has been selected as the sample of the study using the snowball sampling technique.

The study detects that the transactional leadership is the most highly applied leadership style in the government organizations of Bahrain. The finding is identified on the basis of the employees’ attributes based on their gender (male and female); current positions (employee and manager); work experience (less than a year, from one to five years, from 6 to 10 years); and age (less than 20 years, from 20 to 35 years, from 36 to 50 years, more than 50 years). Meanwhile, the second style mostly applied among the employees is the transformational leadership style. It is perceived that this style has been applied by employees with 10 years of work experience and are in the age group of more than 50 years. The least applied leadership style is the laissez-faire.

The study can be used by the Government of Bahrain to set up policies on how to improve efficiency within the government organizations in the Kingdom. This study also fills up the gap in the leadership styles literature, as no prior studies of this manner involving the government organizations of the Island have ever been conducted.

This paper aims to study the performance of the Journal of Islamic Marketing (JIMA). This study identifies the influential scientific actors and identifies the major dimensions and themes of the journal.

This study adopts a bibliometric method. A total of 483 articles and 27 reviews of the journal were collected from the Scopus database. This paper analyses the data using RStudio, VOSviewer and Microsoft Excel. Analyses were divided into three main categories: general performance indicators, citations analysis and cross-dimensional keywords analysis.

Islamic marketing establishes itself as an industry of its own, not as a cohort of Islamic finance. This study finds that JIMA played an active role in that respect. Islamic marketing has been primarily an Asian-dominated industry. Malaysia has led the development and publication of resources on Islamic marketing, followed by recent initiatives in Indonesia, Iran and Pakistan. There are also unique cases of Islamic marketing growth in non-Asian Muslim-minority countries, including the USA, the UK and Australia. Finally, loyalty, religiosity, halal food and intention of the Muslim consumers are the key dimensions covered by JIMA authors. This paper expects that JIMA will cater to the growing needs of Islamic marketing in diversified sectors, Islamic social marketing analytics, post-purchase attributes and multidimensional integration of Islamic marketing research in the dominance of diverse leadership styles and ownership structures.

The study provides an objective evaluation of the journal’s progress through a decade of its operation; it highlights the achievements and discusses the progress and contribution of the journal to the scientific community.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the relationship between customer relationship management (CRM) dimensions (i.e. top management support, customer orientation, training orientation, customer data, customer information-processing and integration) and organizational performance in telecommunication companies in Kuwait.

This is a quantitative study, and the response came from 167 employees of three telecommunication companies. Data collected were subjected to correlation and regression analyses in pursuance of the study’s stated objective.

The results of this study found that top management support, customer data and customer information processing are positively related to organizational performance, while other variables of customer orientation, training orientation and integration of CRM have no significant influence on organizational performance.

The paper addresses CRM dimensions issues specifically for telecommunication companies in Kuwait.

This study aims to examine the moderator effect of religiosity on the relationship between halal brand awareness and habit towards purchasing decisions of halal products.

The quantitative method is used in this study. Descriptive and statistical (multiple and moderated regression) analyses are employed to test the hypothesis according to the research model. The data is collected using a cross-sectional design from 197 respondents consisting of business owners in North Sumatera, Indonesia.

It is found that both halal brand awareness and habit have a positive and significant effect on the purchasing decision of halal products. Meanwhile, religiosity significantly acts as a moderating variable in the relationship between awareness and purchasing decisions, as well as habit and purchasing decisions.

This study revealed the important factor of religiosity as a moderating factor in purchase decisions of halal products. The government may need to collaborate with Islamic educational institutions to raise awareness of the halal concept and product awareness. It is assumed that individuals who know about the Islamic religion will have a higher degree of awareness of halal products compared to individuals with limited knowledge of Islam; thus, providers of Islamic education play a crucial role in raising the level of awareness of halal products. Schools may serve as catalysts for the dissemination of knowledge of halal products.

Developing halal product markets can be done by enhancing the religiosity level of consumers, one of them through attending formal or informal religious classes.

The purpose of this study is to critically evaluate how conventional and Islamic banks trade off risk, efficiency and financial performance in their business models, to investigate how patterns of risk and efficiency vary between conventional and Islamic banks and to critically evaluate how the profitability of conventional and Islamic banks varies following the financial crisis.

This study uses univariate and multivariate statistical techniques by investigating 12 Islamic banks and 34 conventional banks operating in the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) region has been studied over the period 2011–2018.

The results suggest that Islamic and conventional banks differ not in the levels of efficiency, risk and profitability, but rather in how risk and efficiency influence banks’ financial performance. Islamic banks are found to be less influenced by the adverse effects of credit risk, which is consistent with the risk-sharing nature of Islamic financing. However, the results only hold for return on assets (ROA) and return on equity (ROE) while the net interest margin is observed to be negatively influenced by credit risk. Lower cost-income efficiency is also found to boost ROA and ROE of Islamic banks which could be attributed to a larger share of non-interest revenues due to Sharīʿah-compliance.

From a theoretical point of view, this study helps to understand the risk, efficiency and financial performance of Islamic banks in comparison with conventional banks.

The results of this study can serve bank managers, regulators and shareholders. Policymakers should encourage a more risk-sharing structure of Islamic financing as it brings less adverse effects of credit risk and increases income sustainability for Islamic banks. The present study may help bank managers to improve the financial performance of their firms by controlling risk and efficiency. The study results also have implications for shareholders and depositors of Islamic and conventional banks as they should have a predetermined position about the level of credit risk and efficiency in each banking system.

The foremost contribution is that this is one of the few studies to compare risk, efficiency and financial performance of Islamic and conventional banks in the GCC region. By using the latest data, this paper hopes that the findings will be more relevant than previous studies to the current situation of the banking industry in the region.