Net-zero emission targets and the role of managerial environmental awareness,customer pressure,and regulatory control toward environmental performance

To avoid the worst effects of global warming, countries agreed to limit warming below 2.0°C and ideally to 1.5°C preindustrial level. This requires countries to drop half of their greenhouse gas emission by 2030 and reach net-zero emission by 2050. In this regard, current study explores the role of green production as a mediator in the impact of managerial environmental awareness, customer pressure, and regulatory control on environmental performance. The data collected from 381 managers was analyzed using structural equation modeling (SEM) technique. Results indicate that customer pressure, regulatory control, and managerial environmental awareness play a pivotal role toward green production, whereas only managerial environmental awareness among them directly influences environmental performance. Green production fully mediates the relationship from customer pressure and regulatory control to environmental performance. However, it partially mediates the relation between managerial environmental awareness and environmental performance. Similarly, the importance of green production for environmental performance is highlighted.     

Rainfed mechanized farming and deforestation in central Sudan

Sudan is threatened by a serious deforestation problem. Total forested area decreased by about 20 percent over the last two decades, largely as a result of the expansion of rainfed mechanized farming (RMF). To safeguard against the problems of deforestation, the government's Mechanized Farming Corporation requires each farmer to leave at least ten percent of the total farm area under shelterbelts. Few farmers pay attention to this clause. This paper addresses the problem of RMF expansion and analyzes the effects of different factors on the preservation of shelterbelts. Results indicate that the following factors influence the decision to preserve shelterbelts: farmer's belief in the value of shelterbelts, the production of gum arabic, farm size, farmer's wealth, years a farm has been cultivated, and type of farm.     

The Pivotal Role of User-Friendly Food Label and Personality Traits on Intention to Consume Packaged Food Products

The objective of the present study was to examine the effect of friendly food labels on packaged food consumption intention. A questionnaire method was adopted for data collection. The data were collected from 14 Pakistani universities. The systematic random sampling technique was used to draw the required sample size. The sample size was 365, where 730 questionnaires were distributed among students of 14 universities to achieve the required sample. Findings disclosed that a friendly food label has a positive and significant relation with packaged food consumption intention. But in the intervening effect of personality traits between exogenous and endogenous variables, only three personality traits have positive significant mediation—extraversion, conscientiousness, and openness—whereas no mediation was found with neuroticism and agreeableness. Studies have unveiled the fact that there is need to investigate the decisiveness of personality traits for the selection of healthy food (Friedman & Kern, 2014).     

Consumer decision making process in shopping for halal food in Malaysia

This paper reports on the results obtained from quantitative and qualitative data on consumer decision making process in shopping for halal food. A total of 213 questionnaires were returned by respondents, confirming that our respondents who are concerning about the ＂halal＂ logo are also concerning about the ingredients used. The study also confirms that there is a significant relationship between respondents＇religion and their perceptions towards halal logo and ingredients. While the qualitative data from a focus group interview on how Muslim consumers shop for halal food shows that there is a need for assurance that food to be purchased is halal, implying the presence of risk and uncertainty when making purchase considerations. Using the audit risk framework in conventional assurance services, the study finds that assurance is sought in relation to the halalness of business premise, halalness of product, and assurance from environmental elements such as the halal logo displayed.     

Effects of communication and financial concerns on banking attitude-behaviour relations

Despite extensive discussion of the concept of Islamic banking, which is based on the fundamental doctrines of Islamic law (Shariah) and Islamic economics (prohibition of interest and profit-loss sharing), few studies have explored the factors that potentially affect behaviour intentions among customers. This study investigates direct and moderating effects of communication and financial factors on customer attitudes and behavioural intentions towards Islamic banking. Data were collected from the customers of Islamic banks and the Islamic banking divisions of conventional banks in Malaysia using online surveys. The hypotheses were tested using hierarchical regression analysis. The results suggest that relationship marketing, informative advertising, perceived benefits, and profit-loss sharing are important determinants of behavioural intentions among both Muslim and non-Muslim customer groups. This study also found moderating effects for most of the conceptualized moderating variables, particularly attitude interactions with informative advertising, ease of online banking, and the principle of profit-loss sharing. There are both notable similarities and differences in the results for the two customer groups. The findings imply that different strategies should be used both to retain existing customers and attract new ones.     

Expected-loss-based Accounting for Impairment of Financial Instruments: The FASB and IASB Proposals 2009–2016

The financial and banking crisis of the late 2000s prompted claims that the incurred-loss method for the recognition of credit losses had caused undesirable delay in the recognition of credit-loss impairment. In the wake of the crisis, the US Financial Accounting Standards Board (FASB) and the International Accounting Standards Board (IASB) worked towards the development of expected-loss-based methods of accounting for credit-loss impairment. Their work included an ultimately unsuccessful attempt to develop a converged FASB/IASB standard on credit-loss impairment. The FASB and IASB eventually developed their own separate expected-loss models to be included, respectively, in a 2016 FASB standard and in the IASB’s 2014 final version of IFRS 9 Financial Instruments. The failure to achieve convergence on an issue of such high profile and materiality has generated some controversy, and it is claimed that it will impose significant costs on the preparers and users of the financial statements of banks. This paper examines the various sets of expected-loss-based proposals issued separately or jointly since 2009 by the FASB and the IASB. It describes and compares key features of the different approaches eventually developed by the two standard setters, referring to issues that arose in arriving at practically workable solutions and to issues that may have impeded FASB/IASB convergence. It also provides information indicative of the possible effect of differences between the two approaches.     

What: An argumentative groupware approach for organizing and documenting research activities

The topic of this paper is a process‐vs.‐product design method representation called Argumentative Writing (AW). Argumentative writing is a multi‐representation approach for conducting and reporting research projects. AW has at least two representations: one for structuring the problem‐understanding/solving process and one for communicating its product to others. We discuss WHAT, a hypertext‐based tool for AW. In WHAT (Writing with a Hypermedia‐based Argumentative Tool), the design process is captured using Rittel's Issue Based Information Systems (IBIS) method (Conklin, 1988; Hashim, 1990a; Rittel, 1980). The product of the design process is represented in WHAT using a general document‐representation scheme. In the Introduction we raise four major issues that we explore in the rest of the paper. Also in the Introduction, we show the impact the WHAT approach can have on organizational computing applications such as business education and training (Hashim, Rathnam, & Whinston, 1991) and the design of dialectical organizational information systems. The section “A Methodological Basis for AW Tools”; deals with the rationale behind choosing the IBIS method in capturing the design process. The section after that explains WHAT, and the section following it explores its use as a groupware tool. The applicability of WHAT and its pros and cons are discussed in two separate sections. In the Conclusion we outline the potentiality of the approach and present suggestions for its further development. Since our first reporting on WHAT (Hashim, 1990b), the AW approach was found applicable to educational, scientific, and business areas. One such application is for structuring case discussions in business schools (Hashim et al., 1991).