Examining Impact of Islamic Work Ethic on Task Performance: Mediating Effect of Psychological Capital and a Moderating Role of Ethical Leadership

The twenty-first century has seen an increase in ethical misconduct at the workplace, highlighting the need to stimulate discussion on the role of work ethics. The objective of the current study is to extend the literature on work ethics by examining the role of Islamic work ethic in enhancing the task performance of employees. The current study proposes that psychological capital mediates the relationship between Islamic work ethic and task performance. It is also proposed that ethical leadership might act as a boundary condition that boosts the positive relationship between Islamic work ethic and psychological capital. Data were collected in three-time lags from employees working in the service sector of Pakistan (N?=?218) through the questionnaire. The results supported the mediation and moderation hypothesis, confirming that psychological capital mediates the relationship between Islamic work ethic and task performance. Ethical leadership moderates the relationship between Islamic work ethic and psychological capital. The results offer implications for theory and practice. Limitations and future research directions are also discussed.

     

Building relationship innovation in global collaborative partnerships: big data analytics and traditional organizational powers

This study examines how relationship innovation can be developed in global collaborative partnerships (alliances, joint ventures, mergers, and acquisitions). The recently emerging theory of big data analytics linked with traditional organizational powers has attracted a growing interest, but surprisingly little research has been devoted to this important and complex topic. Therefore, after developing the theoretical foundations, our study empirically quantifies the links between the theoretical constructs based on the data collected from chief executive officers, managing directors, and heads of departments who work in contemporary global data‐and‐information driven collaborative partnerships. The results from structural equation modeling indicate that the relationship innovation depends on the power of big data analytics and non‐mediated powers (NMP, expert and referent). The power of big data analytics also mediates the correlation between NMP and relationship innovation. However, mediated powers (coercive and manipulative) negatively affect the power of big data analytics and relationship innovation. The interaction effects further depict that analytically powered partnerships have better relationship innovation compared with those which focus less on the analytical power. Consequently, the contributions of this study provide a deeper understanding of mechanisms of how modern collaborative partnerships can use big data analytics and traditional organizational powers to co‐create relationship innovation.     

A Pyramid of Hate Perspective on Religious Bias,Discrimination and Violence

Journal of Business Ethics - This study provides a ‘pyramid of hate’ perspective on issues and challenges facing minority religious communities in social and political climates that...     

Entrepreneurial intention and startup preparation: A study among business students in Malaysia

Intention, as the starting point of pursuing self-employment and creating new ventures, is crucial before actually establishing a business enterprise. Entrepreneurship is understood to be an essential ingredient for enhancing a country's economic competitiveness, growth, and sustainability while confronting the escalating challenges of globalization, such as increasing unemployment. This study provides empirical evidence on the factors influencing entrepreneurial intention and startup preparations among university students in Malaysia. The findings provide scholars and academic policymakers with insights into the effectiveness of Malaysia's entrepreneurial education as designed and practiced by public universities. The Malaysian government should apply these findings to fortify existing policies and programs and formulate new ones to support graduate entrepreneurs, while universities and other higher education institutions should provide high-quality entrepreneurial courses and programs to young Malaysians to foster an inclination toward entrepreneurship.     

New Keynesian Phillips Curve and inflation dynamics in Australia

The New Keynesian Phillips Curve (NKPC) was developed as a response to the New Classical critique that Keynesian macroeconomics lacked micro-foundations. The NKPC provides theoretical micro-foundations that attempt to explain, inter alia, nominal rigidities and, explicitly price stickiness. This paper investigates the validity of the NKPC for Australia. In contrast to the findings for the USA and Euro area, we find that neither the output gap nor marginal cost appears to be a key driving force variable across different set of instruments and estimators (GMM and 2SLS) over the sample period from 1959 to 2009. The flattening of the NKPC along with significant presence of price stickiness is also found in the data. In particular, the reduced form coefficients and implied estimates from the structural parameters of the model support the view that inflation dynamics are forward looking while the role of lagged inflation is also statistically important only after 1980s. However, we claim that the forward looking baseline NKPC contrary to the hybrid NKPC is stable and better explains inflation dynamics for the Australian economy.     

Epidemiological patterns of suicide terrorism in the civilian Pakistani population

In this study, we assessed the epidemiological patterns of suicide terrorism in the civilian population of Pakistan. Information about suicide terrorism-related events, deaths and injuries was extracted from the South-Asian Terrorism Portal (SATP) for the period from 2002 to October 2009. Of 198 events, civilians were involved in 194 events. Civilians accounted for 74.1% (N?=?2017) of those who died and 93.8% (N?=?6129) of those who were injured. In nine districts, mortality rates were more than one death per 100,000 inhabitants per year. The yearly trend showed a shift of attack targets from foreigners and sectarian targets in 2002-2005 to security forces or general public in 2006-2009. Attacks on public installations (mosques) or political gatherings resulted in a significantly greater (P?≤?0.02) number of deaths (22 vs. 8) and injuries (59 vs. 24) per event compared with security installations. These results show that prevention might focus on political negotiation with armed groups and that appropriate measures should be taken to protect mosques and political gatherings.     

Organizational differences in managerial compensation and benefits in Chinese firms

More than two decades of economic reforms have brought profound changes in human resource management practices in both the state and non-state sectors in China. This study focuses on the impact of organizational factors on compensation and benefits for Chinese managers in state-owned enterprises (SOEs), publicly listed firms (PLFs), and foreign-invested enterprises (FIEs). The empirical investigation of 465 firms located in three major Chinese cities, Shanghai, Nanjing and Guangzhou, provides evidence that organizational factors, such as ownership, firm size, firm age, location and industrial sector, have significant impacts on the variances in Chinese managers' compensation levels, compensation structures and benefits. The trends in the development of compensation and benefits for Chinese managers are also discussed as the Chinese economy moves closer to a more globalized, highly dynamic economy after China's accession to the World Trade Organization in 2001.     

Reprint of: Stock salience and the asymmetric market effect of consumer sentiment news

We document asymmetric announcement effects of consumer sentiment news on United States stock and stock futures markets. While a negative market effect occurs upon the release of bad sentiment news, there is no market reaction for the counterpart good news. This supports the “negativity effect” hypothesis. Notably, this effect seems most likely to occur in salient stocks, which is consistent with the availability heuristic.     

TD-LTE抢占无线全新商机

如今,为了努力满足用户对移动数据日益增长的需求,大部分运营商的网络和频段都在满负荷运行。据相关数据显示,2010年用户每月使用的数据流量已经超过了5GB。由于数据增长的关键驱动因素——smartphone的普及率在全球仍低于20%,运营商预计用户每月使用的数据流量仍将继续增长。因此,如何充分利用自身的频谱资源、开发包括TD-LTE在内的不同技术选择的潜力,就成为运营商极为关注的重要课题。