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.

     

Out‐of‐sample stock return predictability in emerging markets

This article builds on the widely debated issue of stock return predictability by applying a broad range of predictor variables and comprehensively considering the in‐sample and out‐of‐sample stock return predictability of ten advanced emerging markets. It compares forecasts from models with a single predictor variable, multiple predictor variables and a combination forecast approach. The results confirm the findings of Welch and Goyal (2008) for US data that only a limited number of individual predictor variables are able to deliver significant out‐of‐sample forecasts. However, a combination forecast approach provides statistically and economically significant out‐of‐sample forecast results.     

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...     

Risk-Taking Behavior and Capital Adequacy in a Mixed Banking System: New Evidence from Malaysia Using Dynamic OLS and Two-Step Dynamic System GMM Estimators

This study is the first attempt to investigate the relationship between the level of risky assets and capital level in a mixed Malaysian banking system covering 83 months starting December 2006. The results of dynamic ordinary least squares indicate positive relationship between capital ratio (CAR) and risk-weighted asset ratio (RWA) in the long run. Furthermore, the causality analysis based on panel vector error correction model (VECM) and two-step dynamic system generalized method of moments indicates unidirectional causality from CAR to RWA. Our results further suggest that higher capital growth and capital buffer provide an extra cushion for the Malaysian banks to pursue relatively riskier financial activities, and the nature of risk-taking behavior of Islamic banks follows that of the conventional banks.     

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.     

Immigration and the unemployment benefit programme in Australia

A widely held view is that immigrants contribute to public debt through their over representation in the unemployment benefit programme. An empirical investigation, based on the 1990 Income Distribution Survey, finds support for this view. In contrast to the US and Canadian studies, this paper observes that the probability of receiving unemployment benefits is higher for immigrants than the native-born population and immigrants, who participate in the unemployment benefit programme, also receive a greater amount of unemployment benefits.     

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.     

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.     

Sterilisation and Monetary Control by the GCC Member Countries

The prevailing dollar peg of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries and the absence of any significant current and capital account restrictions led some to believe that these countries have lost monetary independence. However, the paper presents evidence that interest rates of the GCC countries did not converge to the interest rates of the US implying that the assets of the GCC countries are not perfect substitutes to the US assets. This imperfect asset substitutability has allowed the GCC countries to manoeuvre their monetary policies and the central banks of the GCC countries have had some control over their money growth rates by sterilising the changes in international reserves. Results indicate that the monetary authorities of these countries used domestic credit policy to attain some domestic policy objective while engaging in sterilised foreign exchange intervention. This result implies that the proposed GCC central bank should be able to maintain the monetary independence as a group and can reap the benefit of monetary efficiency of the proposed Gulf Monetary Union.     

The Exploitation of Inside Information at the Wall Street Journal: A Test of Strong Form Efficiency

The study examines if tradings on stocks based on the inside information about the “Heard on the Street” column of the Wall Street Journal could generate abnormal returns. We found significant abnormal returns on days t =?1 and t= 0 (publication date) for the stocks related to insider trading. For a comparable control group of noninsider traded stocks, the abnormal returns were not significant on day t=?1 but were significant on day t= 0. The abnormal returns for the insider trade group on days t=?1 and t= 0 were greater than the returns for the control group. The results indicate that the inside information was the cause for the differences.